Classic hotel celebrates

Charlie Chaplin and leading Nazis liked it, the communists neglected it and popstar Michael Jackson dangled a baby from one of its windows. Berlin’s famous Adlon Hotel celebrated 100 years of history this week.

The luxury hotel, which overlooks the Brandenburg Gate, has been a centre for the rich and powerful since it was opened by Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1907.

“There were tales of Prussian princes, pashas and movie stars,” said Felix Adlon, great-great grandson of the hotel’s founder, recalling stories of the hotel told by his family.

“We heard about the luxury of the beds, the bathrooms, the marble staircase in the lobby. And of course, the food,” he said, at a party marking the twists and turns of a century.

Founded by merchant Lorenz Adlon, the son of a shoemaker, the Adlon was the hotel of choice for royals to inventors, actors to millionaires during its heyday in the 1920s and 1930s.

Physicist Albert Einstein, oil tycoon John D Rockefeller and composer Richard Strauss all passed through the Adlon’s ornate front doors.

It soon became well-known as a hub for Hollywood stars and in the 1930s, actor Charlie Chaplin was mobbed by adoring fans outside the hotel, who tore the buttons off his trousers.

“In the foyer of the hotel you can hear the languages of all civilized countries,” a Berlin newspaper gushed in 1929.

A decade later, things were not so civilized at Berlin’s most famous hotel.

With its prestige and central location, the hotel became a popular meeting point during Adolf Hitler’s rule. Swastika flags hung from the facade and a bust of the Kaiser was replaced by one of Hitler.

Links to Germany’s troubled past came back to haunt the hotel in 2006 when its director resigned, accused of having collaborated with the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police.

The hotel, which offers rooms from 420 euros ($NZ796) a night, has at times struggled to come to terms with the darker aspects of its past. Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering and Nazi ideologue Alfred Rosenberg were among its more infamous patrons.

“Hitler and the SS did not really care much for the hotel,” television presenter Nina Ruge told the assembled audience. “There are not too many bad ghosts here.”

The hotel escaped serious damage from bombing in World War Two, but much of it was burnt down in 1945 by drunken Soviet soldiers who had got their hands on the Adlon’s wine collection.

During the partition of Berlin, the burnt-out shell of the hotel stood empty just inside the eastern sector and was demolished in the 1980s. It was rebuilt in 1997.

In 2002, the new building was back in the spotlight again when Michael Jackson was photographed dangling his baby son to fans from his hotel window with one arm around its neck.

A Report by The Mole from Reuters