Hotel Bristol (Berlin)

Hotel Bristol was a hotel on Unter den Linden in Berlin, Germany. It was designed by architect Gustav Georg Carl Gause and opened in 1891.

Hotel Bristol
Hotel Bristol around 1910
General information
LocationBerlin, Germany
Opening1891
Closed1943

History

The Hotel Bristol was built in an era of economic boom and ever increasing travel and business. It was constructed between 1890-1891. It was designed by architect Gustav Georg Carl Gause for owner Conrad Uhl. The hotel opened fifteen years after the opening of the then leading luxury Kaiserhof Hotel. It also competed with the nearby Central-Hotel that opened 1881. The hotel initially had the address Unter den Linden 5–6, but after the numbering of the buildings on the street changed in 1936/37, it became Number 65.[1]

In 1904, following the hotel's bankruptcy, the Hotelbetriebs-Aktiengesellschaft (now Kempinski) acquired the hotel. The company paid over 10 million marks for the property, it also took over the nearby Behrenstraße property for 1.2 million marks.[1]

On February 15, 1944, an Allied air raid on Berlin destroyed the Hotel Bristol. After the War, the Soviet Union built its embassy in Berlin on the site of the former hotel.[1]

The Hotel Bristol was one of the most distinguished luxury hotels in Berlin. In 1904 it had 350 rooms and a garden. A hotel expert described it in a travel guide published in 1905 as the "most international" of Berlin hotels.[2] Later, the total number of living rooms, salons, bedrooms, and bathrooms, was 515.[3] The hotel's bar was popular with wealthy young naval officers during the World War I.[4]

Events

On September 30, 1897, the first International Motor Show Germany was held at the hotel, with a total of eight motor vehicles on display.[5]

Notable guests

Literature

Novelist Vicki Baum worked at the hotel as a chambermaid in order to get experience and inspiration to write Grand Hotel, her most well-known work.[9]

Hotel Bristol is one of the locations in Theodor Fontane's novel, Der Stechlin. Fontane's aging aristocrat Stechlin stays in the hotel and wonders why so many first-class hotels are called Bristol. "Bristol is at the end only a place of the second rank, but Hotel Bristol is always fine", he says.

References
  1. http://www.potsdamer-platz.org/bristol.htm
  2. Berlin und die Berliner. Leute, Dinge, Sitten, Winke. Verlag J. Bielefeld, Karlsruhe 1905, p. 427
  4. Hoyt, Edwin P. (1976). The Elusive Seagull. Tandem Publishing. p. 12. ISBN 0-426-17670-7.
  5. "IAA: Frankfurt International Car Show". Around-Germany.com. Archived from the original on 2014-10-18.
  6. Sauerbruch, Ferdinand (1951). Das war mein Leben.
  7. Anderson, Stanford (2000). Peter Behrens and a New Architecture for the Twentieth Century. The MIT Press. p. 252. ISBN 0-262-01176-X.
  8. Beachy, Robert (2014). Gay Berlin: Birthplace of a Modern Identity. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 9780385353076.
  9. Cocks, Geoffrey (2004). The Wolf at the Door: Stanley Kubrick, History, & the Holocaust. Peter Lang. p. 183. ISBN 9780820471150.
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