Berlin

The Adlon became a favorite stopover for the globetrotting plutocracy. It was especially popular with Americans, who appreciated its advanced plumbing. Soon other grand hotels sprang up to catch the travel-heavy crowd. The Esplanade, a worthy rival to the Adlon, opened in 1908 on Bellevue Strasse, close to the Pots-damer Platz. It too enjoyed the patronage of Kaiser Wilhelm, for whom one of its grandest reception rooms was named. Like the Adlon, the Esplanade imitated the English fashion of five o’clock tea, during which the jeunesse doree of Wilhelmian Berlin gathered to gossip and flirt. Slightly less opulent was the Excelsior, which went up across from the Anhalter Bahnhof in 1906-8. According to the snobbish Huret, the public rooms of these grand hotels displayed what passed for “elegance” in imperial Berlin. Here one found “officers with scarred faces, Jewish bankers and their wives, envoys on their way through town, young diplomats on the lookout for rich heiresses, Russian dowagers draped in costly raiment, American ladies wearing flowing veils and gloves running all the way up to their elbows, laughing and talking loudly to the clean-shaven, bespectacled men at their sides.”

The new hotels helped to make Berlin a major tourist destination for the first time in its history. In 1913 the number of overnight stays reached 1.4 million, double what it had been in 1896. Between 1909 and 1913 an average of 262,000 foreign guests visited the city annually, of whom 11 percent were Americans and 36 percent Russians. It is noteworthy that Berlin should already have been a favorite among the two nationalities that were to have such a lasting and fateful impact on the German capital.

Berlin Noir

The tourist hordes did not descend on Berlin simply because the hotel situation had improved. The erstwhile capital of Prussian rectitude was finally becoming an amusing place to spend some time, especially at night. Though Berlin was not yet famous around the world for its “decadence,” as it would be in the 1920s and early 1930s, Europe’s cognoscenti of dissolution were already smacking their lips over the wild things that went on there when the sun went down. After taking several nocturnal tours through Berlin in 1900, the ever-observant Huret could write: “The night life of Berlin is surprisingly lively. Will it surpass even Paris in this respect? Will we have to find a new location for the contemporary Babylon and Nineveh? The carousing continues all night long on Unter den Linden, on the Friedrich-strasse, and around Potsdamer and Leipziger Platz. Many nightspots don’t close at all. After the last guests have left, the clubs are quickly cleaned up and then it’s time to start all over again.” Hans Ostwald, who was an authority on Berlin’s seedier side, boasted (a bit prematurely): “If Paris was formerly regarded as the capital of vice and the birthplace of all forbidden pleasures, and if the super-decadent once spoke in hushed tones of the unbeatable delights of Budapest, Cairo, and Rome, today the whole world agrees that it is Berlin which has the most enticing nights.”

One of the reasons Berlin’s nights were so enticing was that the local authorities, in the interest of promoting tourism and cultivating a reputation for urban flair, did not enforce existing vice laws very strictly. According to a law on the books since 1866, establishments serving alcoholic beverages were supposed to remain closed between 11:00 p.m. and 4:00 a. m., but clubs and bars could apply for special exemption, and they were rarely turned down. Echoing the observation of Monsieur Huret, a police report of 1900 admitted that in the main streets of central Berlin the traditional Ruhepause

(rest period) in the middle of the night had “almost completely disappeared.” Promoters of the “new Berlin” were quick to convey the message that this was a city that did not go to bed. Thus a Berlin Guide for Connoisseurs (1912) enthused: “Two o’clock at night. Couples emerge from the Palais de danse and the Moulin Rouge. The glowing red letters at Maxim are extinguished. That is the sign for the lights to go on and the champagne buckets to be set out in the casinos on Unter den Linden, at Toni Grtinfeld’s club, at Monbijou in the JagerstraBe, in the New Buffet in the Franzosische StraBe, and so forth... . This is also the hour of the coquettes, who now, all fresh and frisky, begin their ‘day’ and completely dominate the milieu.”