Hotel King of Prussia

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The Hotel König von Preußen on Brüderstraße 39a (the middle building) was Berlin's best hotel for a long time in the 18th century. Photo by Peter Wallé, 1903.
The Hotel König von Preußen was located on Berlin's Brüderstraße not far from Schlossplatz. Detail from Selter's Berlin map, 1846.
The Brüderstraße in Berlin around 1863. Painting by Eduard Gaertner .

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Hotel König von Preußen was considered the best hotel in the Prussian capital Berlin . It was located on Brüderstraße in the Berlin district of Cölln and was initially called Montgobert before 1769 , later the City of Paris . In 1913 the hotel was closed and from then on the building was used as a residential and commercial building.

The Hotel Montgobert

At the address Brüderstraße 39, not far from the Royal Palace and right next to the so-called Schlüter-Haus (Brüderstraße No. 40), the former home of the palace architect Andreas Schlüter , there was already a hotel under the name of Hôtel in an elongated, four-story building in 1740 de Montgobert, operated by Urbain du Moutier de Montgobert. The Brüderstraße connected the Schlossplatz with the square around the Petrikirche in the Cölln district. In the first-class hotel, at the direct suggestion of the Prussian King Frederick the Great, Berlin's first Freemason Lodge was founded on September 13, 1740 under the name Aux trois globes . The king, who had already been involved in Freemasonry as crown prince , gave his privy councilor Charles Étiennes Jordan permission to found a civic lodge. The hotel was later renamed City of Paris . In 1769 there were other hotels on Brüderstraße: the first-class Hotel König von England and the simpler Hotel Stadt Breslau .

The hotel city of Paris

The Hotel Stadt Paris is mentioned by Friedrich Nicolai in his famous description of Berlin in 1769 (innkeepers: 1769 Quien, 1786 Dacke). According to Nicolai, the hotel "has to be counted among the most exquisite inns in Germany" because of its size and good interior design, cleanliness and order .

The hotel had a larger hall that was used for events, e.g. B. concerts, was used.

In 1786, the French enlightener , writer and politician Honoré Gabriel de Riqueti , Count von Mirabeau, who later wrote the book The Secrets of the Court of Berlin, stayed in the Prussian capital, where he managed to get an audience with King Frederick the Great . During this time he stayed at the Hotel Stadt Paris on Brüderstrasse. Even Beethoven resided in 1796 during his stay in Berlin at the Hotel Paris .

According to the Berlin guide von Rumpf (1804), the hotel was distinguished by its size and its "good interior furnishings". He names the widow Dacke as the owner. In the Berlin address book of 1818/19 the business is named as the inn “La ville de Paris” and the widow Charlotte Riedinger is given as the innkeeper. In 1823 the name Riedinger no longer appears in the Berlin address book.

The Hotel King of Prussia

In 1824, part of the elongated building at Brüderstraße 39 was separated with the house number 39a. In this house, the hotel business was continued under the management of M. Denk as the Gasthof König von Prußen. Although the hotel must have been significantly reduced in size due to the division of the house, it also received good marks from the experts in its new shape: Kertbeny (1831) counts the Hotel König von Prussia among the "most excellent Berlin inns" . In the Berlin travel guide published by Carl Barthol Verlag, the company is mentioned as a first-class hotel under the name of König von Preußen and the address Brüderstraße 39a in 1855 . Also in Robert Springer's Berlin Guide (1861)

The well-known painting of the Brüderstraße by Eduard Gaertner (see illustration) shows the view that would have been offered to a guest at the Hotel König von Preußen , who stepped out of the building around 1863 and looked south towards Petrikirche.

Change of ownership

The owners of the hotel and the owners of the house at Brüderstraße 39a changed several times over the decades. The last owner of the hotel was Johann Jakob Latt, who also owned a wine shop. He ceased hotel operations in 1913 and the widow A. Happoldt, whose family also owned houses with hotel operations in other parts of Berlin and who at that time was the owner of the house at Brüderstraße 39a, instead rented the rooms permanently to various individuals. In 1914, the hotel was therefore no longer mentioned in the hotel list in the Berlin address book.

The competition of the grand hotels

The fate of the Hotel König von Preußen appears to be typical of the development of the older inns in Berlin - mostly from the late 18th century - in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The historian Renate Düttmann: “They were all housed in ordinary houses and under the competitive pressure of the newly emerging, financially much better organized grand hotels in the last third of the century suddenly had to put their nobly furnished guest rooms, coach houses and stables with electric light and heating at high cost , Telephone and elevators. If such modifications could not be carried out for financial reasons, the companies would go out. "

Today's use of the location

The building of the former Hotel König von Preußen in Brüderstraße 39a was destroyed in the Second World War (as was the neighboring Schlüter-Haus). During the GDR era , the Brüderstraße was robbed of its northern section by the construction of the GDR State Council building (today: ESMT Management School) and separated from the Berlin Palace Square. The garden of the ESMT management school is located where the Hotel König von Preußen was formerly located.

literature

  • Anonymous: Berlin. A guide through the city and its surroundings including Potsdam. New processing. Carl Barthol Publishing House, Berlin 1855.
  • Karl Baedeker : Berlin and surroundings. Guide for travelers. Verlag Karl Baedeker, 5th edition. Leipzig 1887.
  • Bodo-Michael Baumunk: Grand Hotel . In: The trip to Berlin. Ed. I. A. of the Berlin Senate for the exhibition of the same name, Berlin 1987, p. 192ff.
  • Richard Borrmann: The architectural and art monuments of Berlin . Julius Springer Publishing House, Berlin 1893.
  • Renate Düttmann: Berlin inns of the 18th and 19th centuries. In: The trip to Berlin. Ed. I. A. of the Berlin Senate for the exhibition of the same name, Berlin 1987, pp. 181–191.
  • Károly Mária Kertbeny: Berlin as it is. A painting of the life of this residential city and its inhabitants, presented in precise connection with history and topography. Verlag W. Natorff, Berlin 1831.
  • Friedrich Nicolai: Description of the royal royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam, and all peculiarities there. In addition to an appendix, it contains the lives of all artists who have lived in Berlin since Elector Friedrich Wilhelm the Great, or whose works of art are located there. (1 volume). Verlag Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin 1769.
  • Friedrich Nicolai: Description of the royal royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam, all the peculiarities located there, and the surrounding area. (4 volumes). Berlin 1786.
  • Johann David Friedrich Rumpf: Berlin and Potsdam. A complete display of the strangest items. Verlag Oehmigke jun., Berlin 1803-1804. (Two volumes).
  • Robert Springer: Berlin. A guide to the city and its surroundings. Verlag II Weber, Leipzig 1861.

Web links

Commons : Hotel König von Preußen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Friedrich Nicolai: Description of the royal royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam, and all peculiarities there . Verlag Friedrich Nicolai, Berlin 1769, p. 414.
  2. ↑ cf. Lecture by Albin Freiherr von Reitzenstein to the Association for the History of Berlin on February 8, 1908 on the subject of spruce and Freemasonry in Berlin . Shown in: J. Lazarus: Report on the meetings of the association . In: Communications from the Association for the History of Berlin. Vol. 25 (1908), pp. 53-55.
  3. ↑ cf. Nicolai: Description of the royal residence cities of Berlin and Potsdam, all peculiarities located there, and the surrounding area. (4 volumes). Berlin 1786, here: Volume 1, p. 120, and Volume 2, p. 965 f.
  4. ↑ cf. Hans v. Müller: Hoffmann, Julius v. Voss and Holbein in Berlin. In: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins, Vol. 24 (1907), p. 136.
  5. ↑ cf. Spatz's lecture on recent publications on Mirabeau , presented by H. Brendicke in: Report on the meetings of the association , in: Mitteilungen des Verein für die Geschichte Berlins, Vol. 18 (1901), pp. 45–53, here, p 48 f.
  6. ↑ Kopitz, Klaus Martin (1996): Beethoven's stay in Berlin 1796. In: Berlin contributions to musicology: Supplements to the Neue Berlinische Musikzeitung , 11 (1), pp. 48–50, here p. 48.
  7. ↑ cf. Johann David Friedrich Rumpf: Berlin and Potsdam. A complete display of the strangest items. Verlag Oehmigke jun., Berlin 1803-1804. (Two volumes), p. 523.
  8. ↑ cf. The reason for the division of the house is unknown. One can assume that the division was necessary in the context of an inheritance dispute.
  9. ↑ cf. Károly Mária Kertbeny: Berlin as it is. Verlag W. Natorff, Berlin 1831, p. 307.
  10. ↑ cf. Anonymous: Berlin. Carl Barthol Verlag, Berlin 1855, p. 10.
  11. ↑ cf. Robert Springer: Berlin. A guide to the city and its surroundings. Verlag II Weber, Leipzig 1861, p. 80f.
  12. ↑ cf. Düttmann: Berlin inns of the 18th and 19th centuries. In: The trip to Berlin. Ed. I. A. of the Berlin Senate for the exhibition of the same name, Berlin 1987, p. 188.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 54 ″  N , 13 ° 24 ′ 6 ″  E