Grand Hotel Esplanade, Berlin

Grand Hotel Esplanade, on Bellevue Strasse, close to the Potsdamer Platz, was among Berlin’s most famous during the Golden Twenties. It was largely destroyed during World War II in a bombing raid. 

 
The Esplanade Hotel was built to be a luxurious hotel — fit with 400 rooms suited for aristocrats, a winter garden, and banqueting halls. The Emperor's Ballroom (Kaisersaal), buried for many years in the hotel's ruins, has been restored and is now a high-end restaurant in a neo-rococo look integrated in the modern Sony Center. It was in this feudal ambience that Germany's last emperor, Wilhelm II used to dine. It is worth to note that also Hotel Adlon had a Kaisersaal. Grand Hotel Esplanade was the heart of social life in the Berlin of the 19th century. Wilhelm II, the last kaiser, frequented the place and is said to have spent many evenings there with other gentlemen (no women were allowed).

In the 1920s, stars like Charlie Chaplin and Greta Garbo stayed here. Billy Wilder is said to have worked here as a so-called Eintänzer (taxi-dancer) before the beginning of his career, Marek Weber played with his orchestra to dance.

The hotel was popular among nostalgics of the Kaiser; management refused to raise the black, red and gold flag of the Weimar Republic out of consideration for those guests. Aafter 1933 it was avoided by Nazi bigwigs; Albert Speer even announced it would be demolished. Nazis and monarchists were not necessarily good friends and Hitler was contemptuous of aristocrats.

Before the attempt to kill Hitler of 20 July 1944, the conspirators (among whom there were aristocrats, probably monarchists) met several times at Hotel Esplanade and it was there they awaited the (unhappy) outcome of the attack.

The hotel stood next door to the infamous Volksgerichtshof, the People's Court as the Nazi called it.

In 1922 Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau held his last meeting with German industrialists  at the hotel only a few hours before his assassination by extreme right thugs.

    

Grand Hotel Excelsior, Berlin's largest

One of the most modern and biggest hotels in the world, opened in 1908 on Askanischen Platz, across the street from the train station Anhalter Bahnhof.

Efim Schachmeister, a jazz-musician in Weimar Berlin

Chaim "Efim" Schachmeister, born 1894 as Chaim Chaissowsky in Kiev, Russian Empire, of Romanian parents, died 1944 in Buenos Aires, was a violinist and orchestra conductor.

He moved early to Germany where he appeared in 1915 with Zigeuner-Kapelle Popescu. In 1923 he had his own orchestra, with which he toured through Germany before obtaining a steady commitment at fashionable Hotel Excelsior in Berlin. This was followed by shorter or longer performances at dance venues such as Barberina, Palais de Danse and Pavillon Mascotte.

In parallel, Schachmeister embarked on a very productive career as a record artist with Deutsche Grammophon, especially for its sub-label Polydor. Here, Schachmeister made hundreds of recordings of everything from lounge music, gypsy music and schlager to pure jazz. Schachmeister himself - who was marketed as "the king of all dance violinists" - appeared as an instrumental soloist primarily in Gypsy style, but could also exhibit features of blues and of Jewish folk music.

At Hitler's takeover of power in 1933, Schachmeister – of Jewish descent - fled, first to the Benelux countries and then to Argentina, where he died in 1944. Which is to show that not only Nazis fled to that South American country in the 30's and 40s..

Von OTFW, Berlin - Selbst fotografiert, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=31703581

More info about this artist: https://grammophon-platten.de/page.php?459

    

Marianne von Werefkin

The owner of Die Sturm gallery Herwarth Walden recognized Marianne von Werefkin’s genius at an early date. She had a firm hold on the reins of the Blaue Reiter and defied tragic blows and the world war.

All those who painted her portrait depicted her as a young woman. Hers was the pulsating energy that drove everyone around her and gave them the courage to be modern: Jawlensky, Kandinsky, Muenter, Marc, Erma Bossi. As early as 1913 Else Lasker-Schueler described her as the “Blaue Reiter-Reit­erin”: Were­fkin had firm grip on the artist commu­nity.

"I am woman, am devoid of any creativity. I can under­stand all and create nothing … I lack the words to express my ideal. I seek the person, the man, who would personify this ideal. As woman, demanding that which would give her inner world expres­sion, I met Jawlensky … I thought I could create them in Jawlensky … A purely divine desire. Not attain­able on earth." Marianne von Werefkin

Was she indulging the genius cult of the 19th century, clinging to a bour­geois role model? Her fate brings to mind that of sculp­tress GelaForster, whose artistic activ­i­ties came to a halt following her marriage to Alexander Archipenko. Or that of the painter Minna Tube, who Max Beck­mann demanded not touch a paint­brush as long as she was married to him. It is only after about eight years that Mari­anne von Were­fkin, albeit secretly at first, began to paint again and eased herself away from her misbe­lief.

Werefkin, by Ilja Repin, 1888

In 1896, Were­fkin initially moved to Munich with Jawlensky and her young maid Helene Nesnako­moff, who was to bear Jawlensky’s son in 1902. Were­fkin rented a large double apart­ment in Gise­las­trasse 123 in Schwabing, where she forth­with hosted an influ­en­tial salon and which became a much frequented meeting point for the cosmopolitan avant-garde.

 

Together with Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter and Alexej Jawlensky, she founded the Neue Kuen­stlervere­ini­gung München (Artist Asso­ci­a­tion Munich) in 1909, which two years later would become the Blaue Reiter. From 1912 onwards, she becomes one of the most renowned STURM artists. Her gallery owner became so enam­ored with her painting “Herb­stidyll” (Autumn idyll) that he not only exhib­ited it but also turned the image into a STURM post­card, which he then used to market his artists and his STURM gallery.

She died in 1938 in Switzerland and was buried according to Russian Orthodox rites.

(From an article by Ekkehard Tanner in SchirnMag)
 

 https://www.schirn.de/en/magazine/context/between_life_crisis_and_world_war/

M. von Werefkin, by Gabriele Münter

    

Bruno Voigt, in the footsteps of Grosz

Bruno Voigt (born 1912 in Gotha, † 1988 in Berlin) was a painter and graphic designer. His father was a pacifist and wrote for the social-democratic press.
He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Weimar. In 1932 Voigt started working for Bavaria-Verlag, a publishing house in Munich.
In his biography he recalled that he would every evening draw the guests of cafés and pubs, hidden under the table. His drawings and paintings of the late 1920s, ferociously social critical, seem influenced by the much older George Grosz.
But the arrival of the Nazis to power put an end to his career, as he was labeled, like many others, a "degenerate artist".
He survived the Second World War. As a prisoner in France, he was forced to clear land mines there, a dangerous work which he survived as well.
In 1951, he was named director of the State Museums in Gotha and three years later he became director of the East Asian Collection of the National Museums in Berlin.

    

Berlin 1911

The link above (click on the image) shows a rare Berlin film from 1911, made by a Swedish cameraman. 1911 is 3 years before the war and 8 years before the Weimar Republic is proclaimed. 

Still, I find it fascinating to see scenes from those years. And then, Berlin cannot have changed that much in those 8 years. It is the car models and the ladies' attires which would be completely different some years later.

The Cathedral, the Siegessäule, those monuments I find quite uninteresting. They looked the same 1911, 1930 and 2019. But the street scenes, the people boarding the trams, the café terraces, I find that fascinating. The closest we can come to a time travel.