Hotel Excelsior
Hotel Excelsior was a hotel in Berlin, Germany. It occupied number 112/113, Königgrätzer Straße (today's Stresemannstrasse) on Askanischer Platz in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg. It was once one of the largest and most luxurious hotels in Europe, but its destruction during World War II resigned it to the German capital's list of lost historical landmarks. Early years Otto Rehnig, the architect responsible for the similarly fated Hotel Esplanade Berlin, was commissioned to design a hotel to accommodate the floods of passengers arriving at the Anhalter Bahnhof across the street. When the Excelsior first opened on the 2nd of April 1908 after over two years of construction work it accommodated a modest 200 rooms, but when an additional section was built on Anhalter Strasse 6 in 1912/13 the hotel almost doubled in size. The untimely re-opening of the hotel on the eve of World War I meant that the building spent its early existence relatively empty. As the war progressed, t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jewish Philosophy
Jewish philosophy () includes all philosophy carried out by Jews, or in relation to the religion of Judaism. Until modern ''Haskalah'' (Jewish Enlightenment) and Jewish emancipation, Jewish philosophy was preoccupied with attempts to reconcile coherent new ideas into the tradition of Rabbinic Judaism, thus organizing emergent ideas that are not necessarily Jewish into a uniquely Jewish scholastic framework and world-view. With their acceptance into modern society, Jews with secular educations embraced or developed entirely new philosophies to meet the demands of the world in which they now found themselves. Medieval re-discovery of ancient Greek philosophy among the Geonim of 10th century Babylonian academies brought rationalist philosophy into Biblical-Talmudic Judaism. The philosophy was generally in competition with Kabbalah. Both schools would become part of classic rabbinic literature, though the decline of scholastic rationalism coincided with historical events which drew ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg (; ; pl, Róża Luksemburg or ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), the Spartacus League (), and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Born and raised in an assimilated Jewish family in Poland, she became a German citizen in 1897. After the SPD supported German involvement in World War I in 1915, Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht co-founded the anti-war Spartacus League () which eventually became the KPD. During the November Revolution, she co-founded the newspaper (''The Red Flag''), the central organ of the Spartacist movement. Luxemburg considered the Spartacist uprising of January 1919 a blunder, but supported the attempted overthrow of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Karl Liebknecht
Karl Paul August Friedrich Liebknecht (; 13 August 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a German socialist and anti-militarist. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) beginning in 1900, he was one of its deputies in the Reichstag from 1912 to 1916, where he represented the left-revolutionary wing of the party. In 1916 he was expelled from the SPD's parliamentary group for his opposition to the political truce between all parties in the Reichstag while the war lasted. He twice spent time in prison, first for writing an anti-militarism pamphlet in 1907 and then for his role in a 1916 antiwar demonstration. He was released from the second under a general amnesty three weeks before the end of the First World War. During the November Revolution that broke out across Germany in the final days of the war, Liebknecht proclaimed Germany a "Free Socialist Republic" from the Berlin Palace on 9 November 1918. On 11 November, together with Rosa Luxemburg and others he founded th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Symphony Of A Metropolis
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are almost always scored for an orchestra consisting of a string section (violin, viola, cello, and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30 to 100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their own instrument. Some symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony). Etymology and origins The word ''symphony'' is derived from the Greek word (), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Grand Hotel (1932 Film)
''Grand Hotel'' is a 1932 American pre-Code drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The screenplay by William A. Drake is based on the 1930 play of the same title by Drake, who had adapted it from the 1929 novel ''Menschen im Hotel'' by Vicki Baum. To date, it is the only film to have won the Academy Award for Best Picture without being nominated in any other category. The film was remade as ''Week-End at the Waldorf'' in 1945, as Menschen im Hotel in 1959, and also served as the basis for the 1989 Tony Award-winning stage musical ''Grand Hotel''. A movie musical remake, to take place at Las Vegas' MGM Grand Hotel, directed by Norman Jewison, was considered in 1977, and again in 1981, but eventually fell through. ''Grand Hotel'' has proven influential in the years since its original release. The line "I want to be alone", famously delivered by Greta Garbo, placed number 30 in '' AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes''. In 2007, the film was sele ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cinema Of The United States
The cinema of the United States, consisting mainly of major film studios (also known as Hollywood) along with some independent film, has had a large effect on the global film industry since the early 20th century. The dominant style of American cinema is classical Hollywood cinema, which developed from 1913 to 1969 and is still typical of most films made there to this day. While Frenchmen Auguste and Louis Lumière are generally credited with the birth of modern cinema, American cinema soon came to be a dominant force in the emerging industry. , it produced the third-largest number of films of any national cinema, after India and China, with more than 600 English-language films released on average every year. While the national cinemas of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also produce films in the same language, they are not part of the Hollywood system. That said, Hollywood has also been considered a transnational cinema, and has produced multiple lan ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vicki Baum
Hedwig "Vicki" Baum (; he, ויקי באום; January 24, 1888 – August 29, 1960) was an Austrian writer. She is known for the novel ''Menschen im Hotel'' ("People at a Hotel", 1929 — published in English as ''Grand Hotel (novel), Grand Hotel''), one of her first international successes. It was made into a Grand Hotel (1932 film), 1932 film and a Grand Hotel (musical), 1989 Broadway musical. Education and personal life Baum was born in Vienna into a Jewish family. Her mother Mathilde (née Donath) suffered from mental illness, and died of breast cancer when Vicki was still a child. Her father, described as "a tyrannical, hypochondriac" man, was a bank clerk who was killed in 1942 in Novi Sad (present-day Serbia) by soldiers of the Hungarian occupation. She began her artistic career as a musician playing the harp. She studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, Vienna Conservatory and played in the Vienna Concert Society. She went on to perform in Ger ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Menschen Im Hotel
''Menschen im Hotel'' (french: Grand Hotel) is a 1959 German and French black-and-white drama film directed by Gottfried Reinhardt, and produced by Artur Brauner. It starred O.W. Fischer, Michèle Morgan, Heinz Rühmann and Gert Fröbe. The screenplay was written by Ladislas Fodor and Hans Jacoby, based on the 1929 novel by Vicki Baum. The film is a remake of the 1932 classic '' Grand Hotel''. Plot The film shows two days and nights in a Berlin luxury hotel and tells the story of how the paths of various quite different characters cross. It begins with an attempted suicide by the famous dancer Grusinskaja. She is rescued by an impoverished noble, Baron von Gaigern, and falls in love with him. Von Gaigern, who makes a living as a hotel thief, learns about the corrupt dealings by businessman Preysing. He attempts to blackmail Preysing, with tragic results. Cast *O.W. Fischer as Baron von Gaigern *Michèle Morgan as Grusinskaja * Heinz Rühmann as Kringelein * Sonja Ziemann as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf () is the fourth borough of Berlin, formed in an administrative reform with effect from 1 January 2001, by merging the former boroughs of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf. Overview Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf covers the western city centre of Berlin and the adjacent affluent suburbs. It borders on the Mitte borough in the east, on Tempelhof-Schöneberg in the southeast, Steglitz-Zehlendorf in the south, Spandau in the west and on Reinickendorf in the north. The district includes the inner city localities of Charlottenburg, Wilmersdorf and Halensee. After World War II and the city's division by the Berlin Wall, the area around Kurfürstendamm and Bahnhof Zoo was the centre of former West Berlin, with the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church as its landmark. The Technical University of Berlin (''Technische Universität Berlin''), the Berlin University of the Arts (''Universität der Künste''), the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (''Bundesinstitut für Risi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Anhalter Bahnhof Site With Europahaus And Excelsiorhaus 2005
The Anhalter Bahnhof is a former railway terminus in Berlin, Germany, approximately southeast of Potsdamer Platz. Once one of Berlin's most important railway stations, it was severely damaged in World War II, and finally closed for traffic in 1952, when the GDR-owned ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'' rerouted all railway traffic between Berlin and places in the GDR avoiding the West Berlin area. The station's name lives on in the Berlin S-Bahn station of the same name, opened in October 1939 as part of the ''North-South S-Bahn link''. Construction Work to build the Anhalter Bahnhof began on 15 April 1839. As the Berlin terminus, of what become known as the Anhalt Railway, it opened on 1 July 1841 as far as Jüterbog (the inaugural train being hauled by the very first Borsig locomotive), and extended to Dessau, Köthen and beyond at later dates. It became known as the "Anhalt line" because it ran through the historical state of Anhalt, which in turn gave the new Berlin terminus its na ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hebbel Theater
The Hebbel-Theater (Hebbel Theatre) is a historic theatre building for plays in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Germany. It has been a venue of the company Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) from 2003. The theatre, with approximately 800 seats, was built by Oskar Kaufmann in 1907/08 in Jugendstil. The corner building is integrated into the row of houses. It was an early and unique work by the theatre architect, and established his fame as a master theatre builder who then created five more theatres in Berlin. The Hebbel-Theater thrived in the 1920s. It was the only Berlin play theatre to survive World War II almost without damage. The Hebbel-Theater, the and the Theater am Ufer are all venues of HAU. History History and construction period In May 1906, the Hungarian theatre director (aka Jenö Kovázs) planned the construction of a Schauspielhaus in Berlin with the intention of staging popular and modern acting there. He remembered having seen a bedroom's design at an exhibition in Wertheim the same ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |