Hotel Excelsior

Hotel Excelsior 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.

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 in at the Anhalter Bahnhof across the street. When the Excelsior first opened on 2 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 had already 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 comparatively empty. As the war progressed the hotel’s fortunes dwindled. The saviour of the Excelsior appeared in 1919 in the form of Curt Elschner (1876–1963). In 1903 he took out a lease on the Hotel Metropol in Erfurt, before taking over the Hotel Esplanade in Hamburg and then a number of other hotels and restaurants across Germany. After his war service Elschner spent a short time in 1919 working as an advisor and frontman to the politician and industrialist Hugo Stinnes, when the latter was elected into parliament in Berlin, before Elschner finally took the reins of the Excelsior.

Under Elschner’s management the 1920s witnessed the Excelsior's transformation from a low-key and ailing enterprise into an extravagant, successful and modern 7,500 square metres (81,000 sq ft) hotel complex.

Using contemporary deluxe US hotels as inspiration, Elschner set about completely modernising and expanding his new property. New power and water systems and gas heating were established and the coal-powered bakery and kitchens were introduced to electricity. Between 1925 and 1926 the hotel's guest capacity was expanded under the guidance of architects Heidenreich und Michel. In 1927/28, under the direction of architect Johann Emil Schaudt (1871–1957), an 1800 m² area of the hotel cellars was transformed into a spa.

Arguably what established the Excelsior’s superior status beyond question was the 1929 construction of an underpass connecting the hotel with the Anhalter Bahnhof across the street. The 80-metre long, 3-metre wide and 3-metre high 1.2 million Reichmark construction, is believed to have been the largest of its type in the world. The tunnel meant that the hotel’s privileged guests could travel from their train compartment to their hotel bedroom and back again without ever having to step out into the chaotic bustle of Askanischen Platz. An official railway ticket booth in the hotel meant that they did not even need to bother queuing up at the station either.

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Wikipedia