Hitler Imperial Hotel Vienna

[Michele Firmasyah]

ToorderHitler Sites ($55) click hereVienna (first district)This "place of heroes" furnished the splendid stage for Hitlers first great speech in Vienna. He chose the Heldenplatz partly for its huge size, but also because of its tradition, especially for German nationalists. The "heroes" were the heroes in the 19th century wars of liberation against Napoleon, the 17th century heroes in the war with the Turks, and the unknown soldier, whose monument is still part of the Heldentor, the heroes gate, that separates the Heldenplatz from the Ring.In 1908, Hitler was cogitating renovation plans for the Heldenplatz. Hitler wanted to connect the court museums on the opposite side of the ring with the Heldenplatz, thus making the Heldentor a centerpiece. On the opposite side of the Heldenplatz from the imperial palace (Hofburg), Hitler wanted to build two mighty triumphal arches.In the gigantic new Heldenplatz Hitler envisioned "an ideal spot for mass marches," where the marchers would "feel a great, monumental impression."In fact, these ideas for the Heldenplatz were not Hitlers own. He had filched them froma 19th century architect, Gottfried Semper. Sempers plans had never come to fruition, and Hitler had simply read about them.On March 15, 1938, Hitler spoke from the balustraded balcony of the newest part of the Hofburg, the neue Burg, facing the Heldenplatz. Before 250,000 wildly cheering Viennese, the Fhrer proclaimed the "homecoming of Austria" into the German Reich. In the meantime, the Gestapo was hunting down political opponents and Jews.

He took over the royal suite, a high-ceilinged affair of three main rooms done up in much red drapery and furniture of white and gold. The bathroom was modernized, but not much else. The Imperial Hotel definitely had been coasting along on its reputation and made no attempt to rival the up-to-date Bristol and Grand across the way. But Hitler had his reason for coming to the Imperial, and that night he gathered a small circle of intimates around him and talked to them until the small hours of Vienna and his days there. He had [Julius] Schaub, the personal adjutant, pull the glossy boots off his feet and occasionally bring him a glass of warm milk. Then he reclined in loose comfort on the sofa and delved into reminiscences, waxing excited enough to sit up straight and rumple his hair when telling of some of the hard times he had seen in that city.

"Even as a boy I knew inside of me that I could never reconcile myself to living for very long in a small Austrian village like Braunau," he told the listeners around him, who were served all the food and drinks they wanted but did not smoke. "My father wanted me to enter government service but even in those days I had a horror of the Beamte (official) who carries his letters from house to house day by day or who sits for a fixed number of hours behind a desk and fills out the same papers until he can retire on pension. I left home when I was seventeen years old to escape this fearful future and came to Vienna to create my own life....

"In the old days the Viennese used to have a sentimental way of saying: And when I die, I want to go to Heaven and have a little hole among the stars to see my Vienna, my fair Vienna. I didn't feel very much that way. The Hapsburgs and the spendthrifts may have looked at Vienna as a playground and paradise, but to me it was a city going to decay in its own grandeur. Only the Jews made money, and only those with Jewish friends or those willing to do the work for Jews made a decent living. I, and a lot of others like me, practically starved, and some went begging.

"I used to walk past the Imperial Hotel of nights when there was nothing else to do and I hadn't even enough money to buy a book. I'd watch the automobiles and the coaches drive up to the entrance and be received with a deep bow by the white-mustached porter out in front, who never talked to me if I came near him. I could see the glittering lights and chandeliers in the lobby but I knew it was impossible for me to set foot inside. One night, after a bad blizzard which piled up several feet of snow, I had a chance to make some money for food by shoveling snow. Ironically enough, the five or six of us in my group were sent to clean the street and sidewalk in front of the Imperial Hotel.

"That was the night the Hapsburgs were entertaining. Old Josef [Kaiser Franz Josef] was still alive but he didn't appear. I saw Karl and Zita step out of their imperial coach and grandly walk into this hotel over the red carpet. We poor devils shoveled the snow away on all sides and took our hats off every time the aristocrats arrived. They didn't even look at us, although I still smell the perfume that came to our noses. We were about as important to them, or for that matter to Vienna, as the snow that kept coming down all night, and this hotel did not even have the decency to send out a cup of hot coffee to us. We were kept there most of the night, and each time the wind blew hard it covered the red carpet with snow. Then I'd take a broom and brush it off, glancing at the same time into the brilliantly lit interior, which fascinated me. I heard the music and it made me wish to cry. It made me pretty angry, too, and feel the injustice of life. I resolved that night that someday I would come back to the Imperial Hotel and walk over the red carpet into that glittering interior where the Hapsburgs danced. I didn't know how or when, but I have waited for this day and tonight I am here.

"I shall have this hotel listed as our party hotel and I shall come here each time I am in Vienna. I shall have it renovated and modernized, but the name shall remain the same. And a red carpet shall be on the sidewalk every time I come so that I can walk over it into the hotel the same as those aristocrats did back in the days when I shoveled snow. I have never forgotten the resolution I made. Providence fulfilled my wish."

In some similarly historic hotels, the bathrooms can be more distinctly contemporary but not here; the grand old marble bathrooms, though now with heated floors and rainforest showers (plus bathtubs), continue the Belle Epoque theme.

The service is outstanding and has an air of civility and formality that also belongs to another era. Every guest is treated with respect and courtesy that, for anyone more used to contemporary hotels, can almost take a bit of getting used to.

And the staff are impeccably turned out too; The porters wear smart uniforms and caps, the maids wear traditional aprons, and when the butler turns up at your door there will be no confusion as to who he is either.

The OPUS restaurant too has been making waves in the city in its re-interpretation of Austrian classics for the modern age. In 2016 it won its first Michelin Star and though a relatively new addition to the hotel it too has a classic dining ambience.

As previously mentioned the hotel is next door to the Wiener Musikverein, home of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, and also near the Wiener Konzerthaus, the State Opera, the Church of St. Charles, and the Krntner Strae shopping street to name but a few well-known points of interest.

Work started on the building in 1863 and after three years Duke Philipp of Wrttemberg had a magnificent Neo-Classical/Neo-Renaissance style palace to call home, right in the imperial centre of Vienna.

Hotel Imperial had a long reputation as being the place to stay in Vienna and over the years saw some very famous guests: the musical heavyweights, Brahms and Wagner, Queen Elizabeth II and Charlie Chaplin are just some examples, but also some less respectable figures in the forms of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.

Mussolini would also stay, in 1943, after being famously rescued from imprisonment in Italy by German paratroopers during Operation Oak. He would only spend one night at the hotel though before being spirited on to Munich.

This association with the Nazis would soon though be banished into history: In 1998, the famous Holocaust survivor and Jewish activist, Simon Wiesenthal, pointedly chose to celebrate his 90th birthday at the Hotel Imperial.

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