Review on Vicki Baum's "Grand Hotel"
Are you tired of staying at home all the time? Don't you dream of finally travelling again, perhaps immersing yourself in a dazzling metropolis like Berlin and staying there in a grand hotel, of course? Then let's get a whiff of big city air together with Vicki Baum's novel "Grand Hotel", published in 1929, which I would like to introduce to you.
The model for the novel was presumably the hotel Excelsior (which no longer exists). It is very reminiscent of the hotel in the novel in terms of style and luxury and is also located directly at Berlin's main railway station at the time. The hotel is the hub of the plot. It contains a cross-section of society and, like on a theatre stage, the people all play a role, trying to present themselves as advantageously and brilliantly as possible in order to escape the often very harsh reality for a moment. The atmosphere of this "stage" is very well reflected in the following quote:
"Here the jazz music of the tea room met with the violin languor of the conservatory, in between the illuminated fountain trickled thinly into a faux Venetian basin, in between glasses clinked on little tables, wicker chairs rustled, and as the thinnest sound the delicate whirring with which women in furs and silk dresses moved melted into unison."
But let's take a closer look at the characters. First there is the auxiliary accountant Otto Kringelein from Fredersdorf. Almost fifty years old, after a cancer diagnosis he has gathered all his savings together, along with his inheritance, to spend his last days in luxury. In Berlin he hopes to get to know "real life". He initially receives help from one of the hotel's permanent guests, Doctor Otternschlag, a lonesome war invalid who always hopes in vain for mail during the day and whose nights become blurred in the morphine fog.
Another guest who comes to Kringelein's aid (albeit for not entirely altruistic motives) is the thirty-year-old Baron Gaigern. Permanently in need of money, he often resorts to dishonest means to finance his lavish lifestyle, which eventually becomes his undoing.
Probably the hotel's most prominent resident is a Russian prima ballerina known only as "the Grusinskaya". Drained by a long career as a dancer that has steadily gone downhill, she finds herself in an existential crisis. But a midnight encounter with a mysterious stranger puts things back into perspective.
The biggest loser among the guests would certainly be General Director Preysing of Saxonia Baumwoll A.G.. He enters the hotel as a successful businessman and leaves in handcuffs, but how this happens will not be revealed here.
Of course, Vicki Baum's novel also features some interesting minor characters, such as the secretary Fräulein Flamm, called Flämmchen or Flamm Two (as she also has a sister of the same name who also works as a secretary). Flämmchen is what you would call a flapper girl. She dreams of a career in film and is prepared to accept occasional offers from older patrons for the time being.
The fate of the guests is interwoven, with Otto Kringelein as one of the central figures, but too much should not be said here, just that some surprising twists await the reader.
And what would a grand hotel be without its staff? The worries and hardships of the maids, porters, telephone operators, bellboys, liftboys and receptionists are not the central theme of the novel, but they always accompany the plot like a thread.
"Grand Hotel" manages to paint an authentic portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. In a grand hotel, all social classes meet and it is not uncommon for the paths of the most diverse people to cross unexpectedly. The hotel is a place of transit, everyone arrives with hopes, expectations, but also worries and will leave changed and with new impressions. The guests are looking for pleasure, variety and relaxation, some for connection, adventure or just a temporary place to stay. The Grand Hotel is a microcosm, it is the big city in miniature. To banish anonymity and loneliness, many guests prepare to make fast friends in the dining room or at the tea dance, but they often don't last.
"No one cares about the other person in the big hotel, everyone is alone with himself in this big backwater [...]. Everyone lives behind double doors and has only his reflection in the dressing mirror for a companion or his shadow on the wall. [...] Perhaps it happens that a dance in the yellow pavilion approaches two bodies. Perhaps someone sneaks out of his room into another at night. That is all. Behind it lies an abysmal loneliness."
Splendour, speed, modernity
One could not do justice to Berlin in the 1920s if one did not mention the unique technical innovations that the metropolis already had to offer at that time. The Grand Hotel is highly modern, it runs on electric power, chauffeurs in automobiles wait outside the doors to drive guests to their desired destinations. Even air travel is not an impossibility in this world-class city.
But music must not be neglected either, and what could be more fitting here than jazz? Vicki Baum succeeds wonderfully in putting the crazy and almost hypnotic attraction of this music into words:
"But the most important and remarkable thing [...] was the music. It was produced by seven indescribably gleeful gentlemen in white shirts and tight trousers, the famous Eastman jazz band, it had a great liveliness, it drummed under the soles, tickled the hip muscles, it had two saxophones that could cry and two others that made fun of it in the most pointed and mocking way. It sawed, cracked, stood on its head, rattled, laid cackling eggs of melody, which it immediately trampled - and whoever fell within the radius of this music fell into the twitching rhythm of the hall, as if bewitched."
"Grand Hotel" is a great book that I highly recommend. It vividly shows the many facets of the big city of Berlin, the microcosm of the hotel and its inhabitants. The reader suffers with the lonely Grusinskaya, rejoices in Kringelein's courage and will to live and cheers along with Baron Gaigern's daring manoeuvres. There is something for everyone here, the fates of the characters do not leave the reader cold, but make him think. At the end, one is reluctant to leave this glittering but also abysmal world of the former Grand Hotels.
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