Hotel Prinz Albrecht ( German: Hotel Prinz Albrecht ) is a well-known first-class first-class hotel in the center of Berlin along Prince Albrecht Strasse, named after Prince Albrecht of Prussia in the first half of the 20th century. In the 1920s, it was a meeting place for nationalist politicians. During the Third Reich , the headquarters of the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler was located in the hotel building. The Second World Building was destroyed.
In 1891, the owner of the land from a noble family Versternhagenov erected a hotel building, which ten years later sold to the Brandt brothers. They reconstructed the hotel and opened it in 1902 under the name "Prince Albrecht" by the name of the street. In 1909, the building was reconstructed in the Art Nouveau style by architect Bruno Möring. “Prince Albrecht” was a medium-sized hotel near the Anhalt and Potsdam stations, which had about a hundred rooms and also offered clients services for weddings, family celebrations and balls. In 1911, the hotel acquired a garage. Several offices and a liquor store worked in the building. After the First World War in the 1920s, the Prince Albrecht Hotel became a meeting place for nationalist circles, and the NSDAP leader Adolf Hitler appeared several times to meet with industrialists and representatives of the nobility and bureaucracy. Since February 1932, the Hitler, Goebbels, and the deputies of the Prussian Landtag from the NSDAP held meetings at the Prince Albrecht Hotel. In March 1932, the hotel filed for bankruptcy following a change of ownership. After the National Socialists came to power, the SS acquired several buildings on Prince Albrecht Strasse, which was located in close proximity to the government quarter on Wilhelmstrasse .
On November 8, 1934, senior SS officials and authorities entered the hotel building, including the personal headquarters of Heinrich Himmler, the SS department and the SS personnel office. An extension was added to the hotel’s garage building, which directly connected the hotel to the building that housed the Gestapo headquarters. In 1943-1945, the complex of buildings of the former Prince Albrecht Hotel was destroyed as a result of the bombing of Berlin by Allied aircraft. The ruins of the buildings were liquidated in the mid-1950s. Since May 2010, the site of the Prince Albrecht Hotel has hosted the Topography of Terror Foundation's documentation center.
Literature
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- Britta Guski, Ingo Schauermann: Topographie des Terrors. Der Neubau Peter Zumthors auf dem Prinz-Albrecht-Gelände in Berlin. In:: Wolfram Martini (Hrsg.): Architektur und Erinnerung. Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-35420-7 , S. 205-230.
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