Adlon (hotel)

By the beginning of the 20th century, the highest strata of society in Europe had a fashion for throwing balls, formal dinners and other celebrations according to the American pattern, in public places - luxury hotels. In previous centuries, hotels in Europe and in particular in Germany were considered exclusively as places to sleep, and it was customary to celebrate holidays at home or on a country estate. In accordance with the new fashion trend, many European capitals have acquired luxurious hotels that have not only all the amenities available, but also gaming rooms and smoking rooms, libraries and cafes: the Ritz hotels in Paris and London, Astoria in St. Petersburg and Imperial » In Vienna . Berlin did not want to lag behind, and with the support of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1905, the businessman Lorenz Adlon , the owner of several Berlin restaurants and coffee houses, purchased two land plots on Unter den Linden boulevard , where the Rödern Palace was built by Schinkel , under the support of Kaiser Wilhelm II . The construction of the hotel under the direction of architects Karl Gauze and Robert Leibniz lasted two years. Contrary to Berliners' expectations, the exterior facade of the new hotel did not show signs of feudal architecture in the Pandanum of the City Palace , but showed clear classicist forms with few art nouveau elements. Thus, Lorenz Adlon declared his aesthetic preferences: he was not going to compete with the imperial court, his hotel did not claim a dominant role in the ensemble of Paris Square , and harmoniously fit into the environment, picking up the clear lines of the Brandenburg Gate. Together with the Arnim Palace , the Adlon Hotel formed the southeast corner of Paris Square.

The classically conservative walls of the hotel hid technical equipment, unique for its time. All rooms had electricity and hot water. The lower floors were distinguished by the splendor of the interiors. A cafe, a restaurant, a ladies' room, a music salon and a winter garden, where guests were served tea, worked around the clock. The hotel also had spacious meeting rooms and a ballroom. Almost all the rooms were designed in Neo-Baroque or Louis XVI style, furnished with furniture produced by the Mainz company Bembé , where Lorenz Adlon once studied as a carpenter.

October 23, 1907, when the new hotel was examined by the emperor and his family and expressed his pleasure from what he saw to his owner, it became the birthday of the famous Adlon. Soon after its opening, Adlon became very popular. Higher nobility sold their winter palaces in Berlin to settle in deluxe rooms at Adlon. William II escaped from drafts in the City Palace into the luxurious and well-heated rooms of Adlon. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs placed its high-ranking foreign guests in the Adlon rooms. Under the able guidance of the owner, Adlon turned into the place where the Berliners gathered to show themselves and others to see. The rulers of Europe, the Russian tsar, the Indian Maharajah, industrialists and high-level politicians were among the eminent guests of Adlon in its first years of existence. The Adlon Hotel was famous for its cuisine and specialties, among which were the Adlon fillet of the sea language and the Adlon veal steak.

After the First World War , changes have taken place in the hotel’s registration journal. The court society and the big bourgeoisie disappeared along with old Europe. In the chambers where the emperor once slept, wealthy Americans traveled to Europe, who subsequently made the hotel a name across the ocean. Golden twenties became gold for Adlon. On the way to the hotel, he lost buttons on Charlie Chaplin’s trousers, star Marlene Dietrich rose here. In 1925-1930, Adlon received almost two million visitors, becoming a real attraction of the city.

The end of the prosperity of Adlon came with the advent of the National Socialists . The number of American tourists has gradually declined. The successful period for Adlon was the 1936 Olympics . The managers of the hotel, Louis Adlon and his wife Hedda, hoped that meetings of SS generals and the country's political leadership and various celebrations would be held at Adlon , but this did not happen. It is not known for certain why the choice of the leaders of the Third Reich fell on the competing Hotel Kaiserhof on Wilhelmstrasse and not on Adlon, but historians suggest that the atmosphere of Adlon was too conservative for the National Socialists and at the same time cosmopolitan and did not correspond to the fanatical German spirit spread at that time.

At the beginning of World War II , Adlon acquired its own bomb shelter near Paris Square, designed for both guests and staff, and equipped to all standards of a luxury hotel. In 1943, the number of guests began to increase after the Kaiserhof was completely destroyed as a result of the bombing.

In the last years of the war, Adlon, which was not affected by the bombing, unlike the Paris Square itself, housed a hospital. Hotel owner Louis Adlon was arrested on April 25, 1945 at his home in Potsdam Neu Farland and died of heart failure on May 7, 1945. In the first days after the surrender of Berlin, the building was occupied by Soviet soldiers and completely burned down during a fire. Only one outbuilding has survived. The settled walls of the burnt hotel were demolished only in 1952. The uninhabited outbuilding, in which the windows facing the west were laid after the construction of the Berlin Wall , was used as a hotel and restaurant until the early 1980s, and in recent years, until the demolition in 1984, it housed a boarding school in the vocational education system.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1995-1997, the new building of the Adlon Hotel, which was part of the Kempinski hotel chain, was erected in its former place according to the design of the architectural bureau Patzschke & Partner . The new Adlon is not a reconstruction of the original building, but is based on its traditions. The opening ceremony of the new Adlon was held on August 23, 1997 in the presence of Federal President Roman Herzog . In 1998, the gourmet restaurant Lorenz Adlon was opened.

• Hedda Adlon: Hotel Adlon, das Berliner Hotel, in dem die große Welt zu Gast war. Kindler, München 1955
• Laurenz Demps, Carl-Ludwig Paeschke: Das Hotel Adlon. Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-87584-130-1 .
• Jürgen Ebertowski: Unter den Linden Nummer Eins. Der Roman des Hotel Adlon. Berliner Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8333-0469-9 ( BvT 469).
• Jürgen W. Schmidt: Prinz Joachim Albrecht von Preußen und der Zwischenfall im Berliner Hotel Adlon vom März 1920. In: Rolf Sauerzapf, Jürgen W. Schmidt (Hrsg.): Ein Leben für Preußen. Festschrift zum 75. Geburtstag von Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Stribrny. Ludwigsfelder Verlags-Haus, Ludwigsfelde 2010, ISBN 978-3-933022-64-6 , S. 32-72 (Schriftenreihe des Preußeninstituts, 13).
• Jahr100Buch, 100 Jahre Hotel Adlon. Hotel Adlon Kempinski, Berlin, 27. Februar 2007.

•   Wikimedia Commons has media related to the Hotel Adlon
• Official site
• cosmopolis.ch
• potsdamer-platz.org