The Grand Hotel Heiligendamm is a luxury hotel and gated community in Heiligendamm on the Mecklenburg Baltic coast in Germany.
The five-star grand hotel is counted among the best hotels in Germany.[1] The hotel was the first seaside resort in Germany and was founded in 1793 by the then ruler Friedrich Franz I.
The operator is Grand Resort Heiligendamm GmbH & Co. KG. The Hotel was formerly managed by the Kempinski hotel group.[2]
History
The current hotel was founded in 1793 by Friedrich Franz I, Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, as the first German seaside resort. In the hotel stayed among others Rainer Maria Rilke, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Queen Luise of Prussia, Nicholas I of Russia, later Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
The ground of the hotel complex belonged to the chamber property of the respective dukes or grand dukes of Mecklenburg and Mecklenburg-Schwerin from 1793 to 1873. Grand Duke Friedrich Franz II sold most of the baths to Otto von Kahlden in 1873. Von Kahlden had founded a stock corporation for the property, but then acquired the majority of the shares himself and thus became the sole owner.
Under von Kahlden, the "Grand Hotel" was built, which later gave its name. After Otto von Kahlden's death, his son Rudolf von Kahlden took over. He sold the hotel to Walter John in 1911, who went bankrupt that same year. A consortium of the major creditors bought the hotel to save their mortgage. The consortium continued to operate the plant in the form of a GmbH. As a result of the World War I and the following inflation, the GmbH ran into difficulties and the Louis Wolff KG bank, as the majority shareholder, became insolvent.
In 1925, Oskar Adolf von Rosenberg bought the Louis Wolff banking house and thus became the owner of the facility in Heiligendamm. The daily business were still operated by Ostseebad Heiligendamm GmbH, so that the property of the Jewish-born Rosenberg was also visited by Nazi promints, including Adolf Hitler himself and their guests, such as Benito Mussolini. For ideological reasons, the bath was expropriated from its Jewish owner in 1932 and converted into the so-called Kraft durch Freude-facility.
Hotel
The complex consists of six buildings which were all built as a seaside resort between 1793 and 1870. It is renowned to be the first example of resort architecture. The main building (Haus Grandhotel) was built in 1814 and reopened on June 1, 2003 after three years of revitalisation work. [6]
See also
- List of G8 summit resorts
- List of hotels in Germany
External links
References
- Rath checkt ein: Grand Hotel Heiligendamm: Ein Besuch in den deutschen Hamptons www.handelsblatt.com, retrieved 2021-12-25^
- Bradley, Kimberly. "A Spa Town Reclaims Its Glory," New York Times. June 3, 2007.^
- "An Orgy of Violence as G8 Approaches; German City Rocked by Violent Riots,"