Rheinhotel Loreley

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Rheinhotel Loreley (2013)

The Rheinhotel Loreley (originally Hotel Monopol (-Metropol) ) is a former hotel in Königswinter , a town in the North Rhine-Westphalian Rhein-Sieg district . The neo-baroque hotel building dates back to 1895 and is a listed building . The hotel was closed in March 2019.

location

The former Rheinhotel Loreley is located on Rheinallee (house number 12), the city's promenade along the Rhine , on the north side of Klotzstraße leading up to the old town .

history

Hotel Monopoly (1895)
Entree of the Hotel Monopol (around 1905)

The construction of the hotel, which was initially supposed to open under the name Zum Goldenen Drachen , began in 1893. The builder and owner was the local restaurateur Hubert Wilhelm Wagner, the execution was in the hands of a Cologne builder. On September 30, 1893, the north side of the shell collapsed , killing four masons. As a result, the completion of the hotel was delayed considerably. It officially began operating on May 9, 1895, now as the Hotel Monopol . At that time the five-storey building was by far the tallest and most imposing on the banks of the Rhine in Königswinter. In addition to the upper class , the guests also included the nobility and high European nobility - in 1899, the 40th birthday party of Kaiser Wilhelm II was held in the Hotel Monopol . In 1903 the name was changed to Hotel Monopol-Metropol . After a change of ownership in 1911, a Viennese coffee house was opened on the ground floor .

After the First World War , the hotel operated as Haus Spangenberg . In 1925 it was taken over by the German Civil Service Association , gave it its current name and had the Rhine front redesigned according to plans by architect August Scheidgen . During the Second World War , the hotel with 100 beds at the time, which at that time also served as a day care center, was used as a result of a heavy air raid on Cologne on June 28, 1943, some of the 600 homeless people transported by ship to Koenigswinter, including those suffering from air damage from the Ruhr area and Bremen , and moved from here to Saxony and Lower Silesia until the end of August 1943 . Then it was cleared together with other facilities in Königswinter by order of the Reich Defense Commissioner for the Gau Cologne-Aachen and rebuilt in September 1943 to accommodate part of the Lindenburg hospital (university clinic) that had been bombed in Cologne . It reopened as a hotel after the seizure was lifted by the British occupation in 1947.

After a temporary closure in 1971, the company was realigned by 1974. In August 1982 a fire broke out that left severe damage - among other things, the tower partially collapsed - and made reconstruction necessary. The reopening in May 1983 was followed by extensive modernization and renovation work between 1984 and 1987, which was completed with the reopening of the "Monopol" restaurant based on the original style. The renovation of the adjacent Rheinallee was used in 1992 for an extension of the hotel when a previous outbuilding was demolished. In 2000 the restaurant on the first floor was torn down and a new one was added. In January 2019 it became known that the operating family had sold the hotel building and that the hotel should be closed at the end of March 2019. Apartments are now expected to be set up on the upper floors, while catering is expected to continue on the ground floor.

In terms of city history , the Rheinhotel Loreley is one of a series of four to five-storey hotel buildings that have been built as palace hotels on the Königswinterer Rhine front since the end of the 19th century, giving them a metropolitan character. The Rheinhotel Loreley was the only hotel still in operation from this period and is the only hotel building that still has a glazed viewing veranda .

“The“ Monopol ”(Loreley) was built as a (...) first-rate hotel in 1892/94 with an elaborate neo-baroque facade. The abundance of the baroque vocabulary of forms aims to evoke the impression of luxury and exclusivity that no longer has anything in common with local building tradition and seeks connection to international flair. "

- Angelika Schyma (1992)

literature

Web links

Commons : Rheinhotel Loreley  - Collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Rheinhotel Loreley closes , Kölnische Rundschau / Bonner Rundschau, January 30, 2019
  2. ^ Collapse of the hotel "Zum Goldenen Drachen" in Koenigswinter , Local-Anzeiger, no. 270, October 2, 1893
  3. ↑ Herbert Menden: Königswinter in old views. Volume 3, European Library, Zaltbommel 1995, Fig. 81.
  4. ↑ Glitz and Glory at the Hotel Loreley in Königswinter , General-Anzeiger , August 20, 2010.
  5. ↑ Helmut Scheidgen: A Rhenish family of architects. Rheinbrohl-Koenigswinter-Bonn. 1822-1977. Bouvier Verlag, Bonn 2007, ISBN 978-3-416-03129-5 , p. 61.
  6. ^ Ansgar Sebastian Klein : Rise and Rule of National Socialism in the Siebengebirge . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89861-915-8 , p. 601, 602 (also dissertation University of Bonn, 2007).
  7. ↑ Grandchildren and grandpa run the Hotel Loreley in Königswinter , General-Anzeiger , August 17, 2018
  8. ↑ Angelika Schyma: City of Königswinter (= monument topography of the Federal Republic of Germany, monuments in the Rhineland , volume 23.5.). P. 53.

Coordinates: 50 ° 40 ′ 28.4 "  N , 7 ° 11 ′ 29.6"  E