Hotel Kaiserhof (Berlin)

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The Hotel Kaiserhof, 1931

The Hotel Kaiserhof was the first luxury hotel in Berlin . It stood at Wilhelmplatz 3–5 diagonally across from the Reich Chancellery in what was then Berlin's government district. The hotel opened in October 1875 and was destroyed by several bombs on November 23, 1943 .

history

The first Berlin Grand Hotel was built by the Berliner Hotel AG, founded in 1872 (later the Berlin Hotel Company). The Berlin architecture firm von der Hude & Hennicke carried out the commission from 1873 to 1875. Just a few days after the opening on October 1, 1875, a major fire destroyed the house. The reopening took place in 1876. Before the opening, Kaiser Wilhelm I and Prince Carl of Prussia visited the first metropolitan hotel in Berlin.

The Kaiserhof had 260 rooms with modern and luxurious furnishings: The Kaiserhof was the first Berlin hotel to equip its rooms with its own bathroom, electric light and later even telephones. The entire equipment originally came from the Hotel Britannia in Vienna and the Hotel Donau in Vienna, which went bankrupt after the world exhibition in 1873. The hotel had steam heaters, pneumatic lifts and, for the time, state-of-the-art gas stoves. The electricity came from the second Berlin power station, built by Siemens & Halske in 1886 for Städtische Electricitäts-Werke, at Mauerstraße  80. The hotel had its own Romanesque café owned by the Viennese café animal Mathias Bauer, where guests and visitors could linger. In addition, the hotel operated a so-called city ​​kitchen , i.e. a catering service that delivered individual dishes, but also entire menus for larger parties outside the home.

In 1878 the Kaiserhof was the venue for the Berlin Congress initiated by Bismarck . From 1907 onwards, the Kaiserhof faced serious competition with the Hotel Adlon on Pariser Platz , which gradually overtook it as the “first hotel on the square”.

During the construction of the “ Spittelmarktlinie ” in 1908 , the elevated railway company designed the entrance to the Kaiserhof station to match the noble surroundings of the hotel

The importance and fame of the hotel can also be seen in the fact that the underground station under Wilhelmplatz on the Spittelmarkt line opened on October 1, 1908 (today's underground line 2 ) was named "Kaiserhof" (today: U- Mohrenstrasse train station ).

The glamorous years of the hotel with state guests and sumptuous receptions soon passed in the economic crisis of the early Weimar Republic .

The Aschinger 1924 AG acquired the majority stake in the Berlin hotel company, which is also the Hotel Baltic business. The imperial court, however, worked in deficit and brought the group into financial difficulties. A sale of the hotel to the German Reich failed in 1926. With the acquisition of the Hotelbetriebs-Aktiengesellschaft, the Aschinger Group secured further hotels in the luxury category such as the Bristol , Bellevue and the Central Hotel . Hotelbetriebs AG then took over the Berlin hotel company through financial reallocations within the group . The building was to be expanded, for which the architect Hans Poelzig provided detailed plans.

The foundation of the Deutsche Luft Hansa Aktiengesellschaft took place in January 1926 at the imperial court. It emerged from the merger of "Junkers Luftverkehr" and "Aero Lloyd".

Main entrance on Zietenplatz on the north side, 1928
The ruins of the hotel in early February 1945

In the 1920s, the operators sympathized with the right-wing nationalist currents and opened their house to groups that turned against the Weimar Republic. The outward sign of this was the black, white and red flag that was hoisted instead of the black, red and gold one. At the same time, the hotel also acted as a conference venue for the liberal-bourgeois " SeSiSo Club ", from which the Solf Circle later emerged. Viktoria von Dirksen , the second wife of the diplomat Willibald von Dirksen , organized “Thursday soirees ” for the “National Club” in the hotel , in which Adolf Hitler also took part. In 1931 there was a meeting of German industrialists with Hitler in his suite. In 1932 Hitler lived permanently in this hotel. From here he designed and coordinated the election campaign. The upper floor of the hotel became the provisional party headquarters of the NSDAP .

The naturalization of Adolf Hitler for his candidacy for the presidential election in 1932 also took place in the Hotel Kaiserhof, where the stateless person was appointed to the Government Council of the Free State of Braunschweig in a solemn ceremony on 25 February 1932 .

Other NSDAP functionaries also stayed in the hotel. In April 1935 Hermann Göring celebrated his splendid wedding with his second wife Emmy Sonnemann in the Kaiserhof . A souvenir book by Joseph Goebbels about " Kampfzeit " and " Seizungung " had the ambiguous title Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei (just briefly about Wilhelmplatz ).

In November 1943, the Kaiserhof was hit by several aerial bombs and badly damaged during an air raid by the Royal Air Force. The ruin was later demolished.

North Korea built its embassy building in the GDR on the property in 1974 . Since the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Federal Republic of Germany in 2001, the North Korean embassy has been located here again.

  • Advert of the Hotel Kaiserhof , 1903

  • Reception salon for discussions with business partners, visitors or friends

  • Luxury upper-priced bedroom, 1904

  • View of the hotel's restaurant, which was located in the covered courtyard

  • The ballroom

literature

Web links

Commons : Hotel Kaiserhof Berlin  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

  1. ^ Hotel Britannia in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
  2. ^ Hotel Donau in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
  3. ↑ Sebastian Hensel: Ein Lebensbild , B. Behr's Verlag, Berlin W. 35, 1908

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 41.9 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 7.5 ″  E