Hotel Esplanade

The Hotel Esplanade on Bellevuestraße, where the Anglo-German couple Count and Countess Blücher spent part of the First World War, was only slightly smaller than the Adlon, with 400 rooms, and only very slightly cheaper. It was situated off Potsdamer Platz, within walking distance of the Tiergarten park. It was considered one of the leading hotels during the 1920s and ’30s. Aristocratic visitors from all over the world, many of whom were not in favour of the newly established Weimar republic, were its most frequent visitors. Its neo-baroque and neo-rococo style was considered highly desirable when it was established between 1907 and 1908. 

Evelyn Blücher described the sumptuous rooms: ‘the wide flight of steps leading up so gracefully into the brilliance of the dining-room […]; the soft luminance falling from the crystal chandeliers on the rosy redness of silken curtains and screens – style of Louis XVI. – what an enchanting setting for those gay festivities of but a few short years ago!’ Some of the remains of the hotel, which was bombed during the Second World War, have been integrated into the Sony Centre on Potsdamer Platz. The surviving Kaisersaal, a favourite location of Kaiser Wilhelm before he was forced to abdicate during the November Revolution in 1918, features in Wim Wenders’ iconic Berlin film Wings of Desire (1987), as well as in Bob Fosse’s film Cabaret (1972), based on the Berlin novels of Christopher Isherwood. Gesa Stedman

1—Evelyn Blücher, An English Wife in Berlin (London: Constable & Co., 1920), p. 103.