Hotel Kaiserhof

Hotel Kaiserhof was a luxury hotel in Wilhelmplatz, Berlin, Germany. It opened in October 1875. It was located next to the Reich Chancellery in what was at the time the city's "government quarter".Berlin's first "grand hotel" it was the creation of the "Berlin Hotel AG" company, founded in 1872 and subsequently renamed "Berliner Hotelgesellschaft". The commission for the building went to the architects Hude & Hennicke. A few days after the opening ceremony in October 1875 the building was destroyed by fire. It reopened in 1876.The Kaiserhof offered more than 260 rooms which were fitted out in a modern and luxurious manner. It was the first Berlin hotel in which every room had an electricity supply, its own bathroom and its own telephone. The hotel also featured steam heating, pneumatic elevators/lifts. The kitchens used gas cookers. Electric power came from Berlin's second power station, recently built in Mauerstraße by Siemens & Halske.Dr. Ludwig Roselius had a luxury suite in the Hotel and Barbara Goette cared for him for many months until he died there on 15/5/1943.On 22 November 1943 the hotel was badly damaged by British bombers during an air-raid on Berlin. The ruins ended up in East Berlin after the division of the city and were later completely torn down.In 1974 the North Korean embassy to East Germany was constructed on the site. East Germany ceased to be a state in 1990 and the embassy closed. However in 2001 its successor state, the Federal Republic of Germany, re-established diplomatic relations with North Korea and the North Korean embassy returned to the building. Since 2004, the annex on the south half of the site has been leased to Cityhostel Berlin, which pays the North Korean government an estimated €38,000 per month.