Harper\'s Bazaar UK - 10.2019

308 | HARPER’S BAZAAR | October 2019 http://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk

was born in the summer of 1961, when construc-

tion on the Berlin Wall began, and I gave birth to

my son 28 years later, just before its momentous

demise, in the autumn of 1989. Yet it was not

until this year – the 30th anniversary of the fall of

the Wall – that I have finally spent time in the city, and

traced the scar of that great edifice that divided East

and West Berlin. It is, of course, impossible to traverse

the streets of Germany’s capital without a sense of the

immensity of its past; which is why I was glad to be staying at

the Hotel Adlon, a place that is not only at the heart of the city,

but is itsel f pa r t of Berlin’s histor y.

The original hotel opened in October 1907, in a prime position

overlooking the Brandenburg Gate, launched by its owner Lorenz

Adlon as a European palace to rival the Paris Ritz. Kaiser Wilhelm

II attended its grand debut with his family, and among the many

other notable guests was his cousin, Tsar Nicholas II. Even after the

disaster of World War I, and despite the financial and political

turmoil that racked Germany, the Adlon continued to thrive.

Hollywood royalty – Charlie Chaplin, Louise Brooks, Marlene

Dietrich and Greta Garbo – checked in during the Roaring Twenties,

alongside American presidents and powerful industrialists, includ-

ing Franklin Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. The Adlon remained

open throughout the Nazi era and for much of World War II (it is

I

just a few hundred metres from here to Hitler’s notorious bunker);

though part of it was converted to a military field hospital during

the final days of the Battle of Berlin. But having survived the bomb-

ing and shelling, it was left in ruins after a fire started by Soviet

soldiers in the hotel wine cellars, in May 1945.

During the East German era, what remained of the original

Adlon was closed to guests, while the square in front of it was aban-

doned as wasteland, a grim buffer zone with the West, leaving

the Brandenburg Gate standing isolated beside the Berlin Wall.

Following the reunification of Germany, the hotel was rebuilt and

reopened in 1997, and has continued to feature in popular culture: it

was here, for example, that Michael Jackson dangled his infant son

out of the window of the presidential suite in 2002 (subsequently

explaining that ‘I got caught up in the excitement of the moment’).

Nowadays known as the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, the property

THE WALL

& THE WATER S

Justine Picardie embarks on a transformative tour of Germany,

discovering Berlin’s momentous history and Baden-Baden’s gentler delights

A bridge in

Brenners Park,

Baden-Baden

The Hotel Adlon

in Berlin

Baden-Baden.

Below: the Royal Suite

at the Brenners

Park-Hotel in the town