Hotel de Brandebourg (Berlin)

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The Hotel de Brandebourg on Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin
Photo by F. Albert Schwartz, 1886
The Hotel de Brandebourg stood on the southwest corner of Berlin's Gendarmenmarkt from 1821/22 until the summer of 1886.
Detail from Selter's Berlin city map, 1846

The Hotel de Brandebourg was a well-known first-class hotel in the Prussian (later German) capital Berlin between 1821 and 1886 . It was located in the former Friedrichstadt district (today: Stadtmitte) on the southwest corner of the Gendarmenmarkt at Charlottenstrasse  42 (later number 59), directly opposite the German Cathedral . The hotel building was demolished in the summer of 1886 and replaced by a Wilhelmine-style office building.

From the coffee house to the hotel

The building at Charlottenstrasse 42 was built according to plans by Georg Christian Unger (1743–1802) in the last years of King Friedrich II's reign as a residence for the royal ambassador and chamberlain, Christoph Heinrich von Ammon . The building was a broad structure, three storeys, decorated with pilasters and crowned by a gable. Friedrich Nicolai mentioned the building in his description of the Gendarmenmarkt from 1786 and counted it among the “most exquisite” houses on the Gendarmenmarkt (then: Friedrichsstädtischer Markt). The innkeeper Carl Friedrich Krause bought the building in 1799 and set up a coffee house here on the northwest corner of the Charlottenstrasse / Mohrenstrasse intersection . In 1821/1822, Krause had this coffee house supplemented by an accommodation facility, which, according to the custom of the era , was called Hôtel de Brandebourg in French . The Berlin-leader of the fuselage above the Hotel de Brandebourg also in the 1823rd

Standard and services

Another tourist guide, the Berlin Guide published by Kertbeny in 1831 , lists the hotel and counts it among the most exquisite Berlin inns, of which he assures:

“In all these inns there is great cleanliness and a love of order; they are characterized by tasteful furnishings and with good service, the prices are on the whole not excessive. "

Zedlitz cites the hotel as the first of the Berlin hotels in his review of the “most exquisite inns in Germany” and describes it as follows:

“The Hotel de Brandebourg, near Wilh (elm) Krause, inn 1st class, in the middle and the liveliest part of the residential city on Gens-d'armes-Platz, askew across from the new theater, a hotel well known for many years with a large one Number of well-furnished rooms, coach houses and stables. Table d'hote at 2½ o'clock. This beautiful hotel has been tastefully restored from the outside since 1833. "

In his Berlin Guide in 1869, Kapp describes the Hotel de Brandebourg as a “comfortable hotel” that was mainly frequented by landowners.

Sale of the building

The hotel building passed into other hands via the heirs of the first innkeeper. In 1870, for example, the operator of the hotel was called Schrader. The last hotel owner, with the name Schulze, sold the house around 1880 to the owners' association of Königsmarcksche Erben under the direction of the chamber singer Albert Niemann . The hotel owner's widow was allowed to stay. The new owners had the old luxury hostel demolished in the summer of 1886 and the architects Kayser and von Großheim built a business and residential building in the Wilhelmine style. However, after a short time, the community of owners sold the property (certainly profitably) to the Lübeck German Life and Insurance Company , which originally had its headquarters at Lindenstrasse 13.

A Wilhelmine-style building was erected on the site of the Hotel de Brandebourg in 1886/1887.
Photo by Lucien Lévy, 1890

Renate Düttmann sees the fate of the Hotel de Brandebourg as a typical example of the development of the older inns in Berlin in the 19th century, mostly from the end of the 18th century:

“They were all housed in ordinary houses and, under the competitive pressure of the newly emerging, economically much better organized grand hotels in the last third of the century suddenly had to provide their nobly furnished guest rooms, coach houses and stables with electric lights, heating, telephones and elevators at high cost . If such modifications could not be carried out for financial reasons, the companies would go out. "

The Hotel Brandenburg

Hotel Brandenburg at Charlottenstrasse 71

The Schulze family tried, however, to continue their accommodation business at a different location under the now German name Hotel Brandenburg . In the house at Charlottenstrasse 71, not far from Gendarmenmarkt, she took over an already existing bed and breakfast hotel, which she continued under this new name.

The Hotel Brandenburg is still mentioned in the Berlin address book in 1917, but no longer in 1918, so it must have been closed by its owner (Paul Bläse) at that time.

Use of the location

View of the previous location of the Hotel de Brandebourg
Photo: January 2014

The building erected by the architects Kayser & von Großheim in the style of the Wilhelmine era was rebuilt in 1940. The property fell victim to Allied bombing raids during the Second World War and was cleared after the war . A new building by the architect Oswald Ungers has been on the site since the 1990s, with an Italian restaurant on the ground floor.

The Hôtel de Brandebourg in literature

The hotel is mentioned in Theodor Fontane's novel Der Stechlin . Old Stechlin, who traveled from his manor house to Berlin for his son's wedding, has been billeted by him in the Bristol . He is very satisfied with this accommodation, but has to realize that it goes a bit beyond him: "I am still from the time of the Hôtel de Brandebourg, where the French only annoyed me - otherwise everything was excellent."

literature

  • Laurenz Demps : The Gensd'armen Market. Face and history of a Berliner Platz. Henschel-Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-362-00141-6 .
  • 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.
  • KL Kapp: Berlin in 1869. New and complete guide with special consideration for traffic, trade, industry, art and the public. Life. Published by KL Kapp, Berlin 1869.
  • 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, all the peculiarities located there, and the surrounding area. (4 volumes). Berlin 1786.
  • Johann David Friedrich Rumpf: Berlin and Potsdam. A description of all the peculiarities of these cities and their surroundings . 4th edition. CG Flittnersche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1823. (two volumes).
  • Robert Springer: Berlin. A guide to the city and its surroundings. Verlag II Weber, Leipzig 1861.
  • Volker Wagner: The Dorotheenstadt in the 19th century: from the suburban residential area of ​​baroque style to part of the modern Berlin city. Verlag De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1998, ISBN 3-11-015709-8 . Publications of the Historical Commission in Berlin, Vol. 94.
  • Leopold von Zedlitz: Balneographic statistical-historical hand and dictionary. Publishing house Gebrüder Reichenbach, Leipzig 1834.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Renate Düttmann: Berlin inns of the 18th and 19th centuries. In: The trip to Berlin. Berlin 1987, pp. 187f.
  2. ^ Friedrich Nicolai : Description of the royal royal cities of Berlin and Potsdam, of all the peculiarities located there, and the surrounding area. (4 volumes). Berlin 1786. Vol. 1, p. 200.
  3. ↑ Charlottenstrasse 42 . In: CF Wegener: House and General Address Book of the Royal. Capital and residence city of Berlin , 1822, part 3, p. 53. "Krause, Gastwirth, Hôtel de Brandebourg".
  4. ^ Johann David Friedrich Rumpf: Berlin and Potsdam. 4th edition Berlin 1823. (Two volumes) Vol. 1, p. 147.
  5. ↑ Károly Mária Kertbeny: Berlin as it is. Verlag W. Natorff, Berlin 1831, p. 307.
  6. ↑ Leopold von Zedlitz: Balneographisches statistical and historical hand and dictionary. Verlag Gebrüder Reichenbach, Leipzig 1834, p. 541
  7. ^ KL Kapp: Berlin in the year 1869. KL Kapp publisher, Berlin 1869, p. 204.
  8. ↑ Inns, 2nd class . In: Allgemeiner Wohnungs-Anzeiger together with address and business manual for Berlin , 1870, part 3, p. 317. “Schrader, Charlottenstrasse 59”.
  9. ^ Charlottenstrasse 59 . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1885, part 2, p. 64.
  10. ↑ cf. on the date of the demolition: Laurenz Demps in: Laurenz Demps / Hans-Werner Klünner: Berlin 1856–1896. Photographs by F. Albert Schwartz. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 1991. p. 9.
  11. ↑ Insurance notifications . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1885, in front of part 1, p. 3. “German life insurance company in Lübeck, Lindenstrasse 13”.
  12. ^ Charlottenstrasse 59 . In: Address book for Berlin and its suburbs , 1900, part 3, p. 96. “German life verse. Ges. I. Lübeck ".
  13. ↑ cf. the hotel lists under the keyword "Gasthöfe" in the branch section of the Berlin address books of those years.
  14. ↑ Theodor Fontane, Der Stechlin , chap. 33 on projekt-gutenberg.org

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 45 ″  N , 13 ° 23 ′ 29 ″  E