Hotel Kaiserhof was a luxury hotel in

Wilhelmplatz Wilhelmplatz was a square in the Mitte district of Berlin, at the corner of Wilhelmstrasse and Voßstraße. The square also gave its name to a Berlin U-Bahn station which has since been renamed Mohrenstraße. A number of notable buildings were c ...

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It opened in October 1875. It was located next to the

Reich Chancellery The Reich Chancellery (german: Reichskanzlei) was the traditional name of the office of the Chancellor of Germany (then called ''Reichskanzler'') in the period of the German Reich from 1878 to 1945. The Chancellery's seat, selected and prepared ...

in what was at the time the city's "government quarter". Berlin's first "grand hotel" it was the creation of the "Berlin Hotel AG" company, founded in 1872 and subsequently renamed "Berliner Hotelgesellschaft". The commission for the building went to the architects Hude & Hennicke. A few days after the opening ceremony in October 1875 the building was destroyed by fire. It reopened in 1876. The Kaiserhof offered more than 260 rooms which were fitted out in a modern and luxurious manner. It was the first Berlin hotel in which every room had an electricity supply, its own bathroom and its own telephone. The hotel also featured steam heating, pneumatic elevators/lifts. The kitchens used gas cookers. Electric power came from Berlin's second power station, recently built in Mauerstraße by

Siemens & Halske Siemens & Halske AG (or Siemens-Halske) was a German electrical engineering company that later became part of Siemens. It was founded on 12 October 1847 as ''Telegraphen-Bauanstalt von Siemens & Halske'' by Werner von Siemens and Johann Ge ...

. British PM Benjamin Disraeli stayed here in 1878. Joseph Goebbels, Ernst Röhm, and other

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

officials met in the Kaiserhof as Hitler was being sworn in as Chancellor. They were not aware if Hitler had indeed been appointed Chancellor until he had returned to the hotel to inform them. Dr.

Ludwig Roselius Ludwig Roselius (2 June 1874 – 15 May 1943) was a German coffee merchant and founder of the company Kaffee HAG. He was born in Bremen and is credited with the development of commercial decaffeination of coffee. As a patron, he supported arti ...

had a luxury suite in the Hotel and

Barbara Goette Barbara Goette (26 July 1908 – 23 October 1997) was a German academic. She lived in Germany and then Australia. From 1935 to 1943, she was the private secretary of Ludwig Roselius, creator of Böttcherstraße and Café HAG, and financier of Fo ...

cared for him for many months until he died there on 15 May 1943.Leidig, Ludwig. Bombshell. sbpra, 2013, On 22 November 1943 the hotel was badly damaged by British bombers during an air-raid on Berlin. The ruins ended up in East Berlin after the division of the city and were later completely torn down. The present-day

Mohrenstraße Mohrenstraße is a street in central Berlin. It runs from west to east between Wilhelmstraße and , and partially forming the southern edge of Gendarmenmarkt. The Berlin U-Bahn station Mohrenstraße is located at its western end, and is serve ...

station on the line of the

Berlin U-Bahn The Berlin U-Bahn (; short for , "underground railway") is a rapid transit system in Berlin, the capital and largest city of Germany, and a major part of the city's public transport system. Together with the S-Bahn, a network of suburban train li ...

was named "Kaiserhof" from its opening in 1908 until 1950. The station underwent several name changes before acquiring its current name in 1991. In 1974 the

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

embassy A diplomatic mission or foreign mission is a group of people from a state or organization present in another state to represent the sending state or organization officially in the receiving or host state. In practice, the phrase usually den ...

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In these years the state ...

was constructed on the site. East Germany ceased to be a state in

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

and the embassy closed. However, in 2001 its successor state, the

Federal Republic of Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated between ...

, re-established diplomatic relations with North Korea and the North Korean

returned to the building. Since 2004, the annex on the south half of the site has been leased to Cityhostel Berlin, which pays the North Korean government an estimated €38,000 per month. In November 1939, Georg Elser's family was imprisoned in the hotel for interrogation in the objective to find out if they contributed towards the assassination attempt on Hitler's life on November 8 in the Bürgerbräukeller, Munich. Even though they were imprisoned, it was like a holiday to Berlin in the Kaiserhof. However, they were monitored everywhere by the Gestapo

References

Hotels in Berlin Berlin Hotel Kaiserhof Berlin Hotel Kaiserhof Berlin Hotel Kaiserhof Berlin Hotel Kaiserhof Berlin Hotel Kaiserhof Buildings and structures in Berlin destroyed during World War II Demolished hotels 1875 in Germany {{Berlin-struct-stub