#koenigsallee

[arcobalengo]

I nazisti iniziarono a lavorare sottotraccia, in segreto, a partire dal 16 maggio 1943. Prima ci fu un grande lavoro preparatorio nella sede della Gestapo, a Berlino, dove Himmler aveva il suo quartier generale al secondo piano. Il 16 maggio tutti coloro cui era stato assegnato il compito di organizzare la fuga furono trasferiti in un edificio bianco al numero 11 di Koenigsallee, nel quartiere di Grunewald, periferia sud-ovest di Berlino, ai margini di un grande bosco. Un posto tranquillo, isolato, per non dare nell’occhio, insomma. Un edificio che era appartenuto a un banchiere ebreo, prima di essere stato sequestrato nel 1938. Grandi stanze al piano terra e al primo piano e molte stanzette al secondo. Sul retro, nell’ampio parco, furono abbattuti degli alberi per tirare su dei piccoli bungalow, a prova di bomba. Decine di persone erano impegnate giorno e notte agli ordini dell’Obergruppenführer delle Ss (secondo solo a Himmler) Ernst Kaltenbrunner, capo della Direzione generale per la sicurezza del Reich (che si occupava di deportazione e sterminio), e di un medico del campo di concentramento di Neuengamme, vicino Amburgo, Kurt Heissmeyer. Quest’ultimo un giorno era entrato nella baracca dov’erano ammassati i bambini che avrebbero dovuto essere sottoposti agli esperimenti di Joseph Mengele ad Auschwitz e disse: «Chi vuole vedere la mamma faccia un passo avanti». I venti che lo fecero furono trasferiti a Neuengamme e divennero cavie umane per gli esperimenti di Heissmeyer. Nessuno sopravvisse. Kaltenbrunner aveva dato prova di grandi doti di organizzatore negli anni Trenta, quando aveva messo su in Austria una rete clandestina di nazisti. Heissmeyer era stato scelto per le sue capacità di conoscitore e manipolatore dell’animo umano. Per portare a termine con successo la gigantesca operazione di “fuga dalla sconfitta” era necessario poter contare su uomini molto motivati, capaci e in grado di reggere il grado di segretezza necessario. Fu creato un vero e proprio ministero ombra, in grado di lavorare sottotraccia per la rete segreta. Due, trecentomila uomini lavoravano (più o meno consapevolmente) per il futuro del Reich. Su idea di Hierl, erano tutti compartimentati, divisi in cellule composte da tre a sei persone, ciascuna ignara di ciò che stava facendo la cellula contigua. Dal numero 11 di Koenigsallee cominciarono a partire ordini bizzarri, apparentemente senza logica, né fine. Interi reparti delle Ss furono sciolti e aggregati a civili che lavoravano in alcuni ministeri. In altre parole, si stava segretamente riorganizzando la struttura stessa del potere del Terzo Reich. Tutto in gran segreto. Tutto per farsi trovare preparati una volta persa la guerra.

Franco Fracassi - 1945 Hitler

[boeselnrw]

So sieht eine nackte G-Klasse aus 😂 Alle Anbauteile wie Radläufe, Zierleisten, Griffe , Spiegel , Blinker und Rückleuchten müssen demontiert werden um@eine perfekte Farbveränderung durchführen zu können. Besonders aufwendig ist es wenn die Grundfarbe des Fahrzeuges weiß ist. #carwrap #carwrapping #carwraps #folierer #folie #gklasse #rotmatt #boesel #wrapacar #solingen #duesseldorf #koeln #koenigsallee #kpmf #kpmfusa (hier: Düsseldorf, Germany) https://www.instagram.com/p/CgoG7qTjI9N/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[willkommen-in-germany]

Autumn in Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Northwestern Germany

[bondagewheels]

#mercedesgklasse #gklasse #brabus #brabusstore #duesseldorf #koenigsallee #kö #26bmx #bmxcruiser #bmxlife #brabusgklasse (hier: Brabus Store Kö90 Düsseldorf)

[mkuck]

Düssel #kö #koenigsallee #dusseldorf #duesseldorf #reflections (hier: Duesseldorf Koenigsallee) https://www.instagram.com/p/B7b6WN3og9r/?igshid=zpco7jifql76

[wordacrosstime]

Menschen im Hotel [Grand Hotel]

[Edition reviewed: Menschen im Hotel. Vicki Baum. 2007. Kiepenheuer & Witsch ISBN 9783462037982 // First editions: // Menschen im Hotel. Vicki Baum. First published 1929. // English language title: Grand Hotel. Vicki Baum. First published 1931, Doubleday Doran & Co. New York]

A COUPLE OF YEARS AGO my esteemed friend and editor of Words Across Time, John Park, asked me if I could read and then review the original German-language version of this novel. Some of you may know that this book, originally published in 1929, was eventually made into an Academy-Award-winning film a few years later, as Grand Hotel. John told me that the English translation he read seemed a bit ‘flat’, and wondered if the original German novel (or roman, as it’s known in German) had a bit more spice to it. Since I am able to read German literature (not easily, but with perseverance and industry), I accepted the challenge. Fast-forward to today: I have finished the novel, and will give a brief summary of my impressions. Again, please note that I am referring to the original German version of this novel, and not a translation.

Menschen im Hotel literally translates to People in the Hotel. The name of the hotel is, in fact, the Grand Hotel, and is situated in this novel in the heart of post-Weimar Berlin. The first impression the reader feels when starting this novel is that appositeness of the title – while the novel does indeed deal with a number of loosely intersecting personal dramas and scenarios, the hotel is at the heart of it all. It might have just as easily been entitled Das Hotel mit Menschen – Hotel with People. Because just as all roads led to Rome in ancient times, in this story, all personal trajectories intersect with or impinge upon the Grand Hotel. There is the desperate industrialist whose latest deal is failing. There is the aging prima ballerina who believes that her time for true love has come and gone. There is the terminally-ill patron who nevertheless takes a broad observational view of what’s going on around him in the Hotel with a certain amusement and even wonder. And the list goes on.

It’s a fun and fascinating glimpse at the worldviews that pervaded Germany in the years following World War I, when the economy was collapsed and an entire society was at odds with itself and the rest of the world. And yet life must go on, as indeed it does in the Grand Hotel.

On the whole, I would say that this novel, while perhaps falling short of what we might call serious fiction in the modern sense (think authors like Kingsley Amis or Donna Tartt), is by no means a pulp fiction work. It falls solidly in the spectrum of writing exemplified, for example, by novels like Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, or Stamboul Train by Graham Greene. The German is quite typical of its era, and compares favorably with novels by truly giant contemporaneous writers of fiction such as Thomas Mann or Heinrich Böll, but doesn’t dive nearly as deeply into the recesses of the human experience. Rather, it treats the Hotel as a waystation for life as lived in multiple layers of socio-economic condition, age, gender, fame (or infamy), and experience.

While reading it, I remember stumbling on a passage that I thought truly exemplified the book as a whole. I will present it in the original German, and then provide a modest and approximate translation of my own:

Alles stellt man sich höher vor, bis man's gesehen hat.  Sie kommen da angereist aus ihrem Provinzwinkel mit verdrehten Ideen über das Leben.  Grand Hotel denken Sie.  Teuerstes Hotel, denken Sie.  Gott weiß, was für Wunder Sie erwarten von so einem Hotel.  Sie werden schon merken, was los ist.  Das ganze Hotel ist ein dummes Kaff.  Genau so geht's mit dem ganzen Leben.  Das ganze Leben ist ein dummes Kaff, Herr Kringelein.  Man kommt an,  man bleibt ein bißchen, man reist ab.  Passanten, verstehense.  Zu kurzem Aufenthalt, wissense.  Was tun Sie im grossen Hotel? Essen, schlafen, herumlungern, Geschäfte machen, ein bißchen flirten, ein bißchen tanzen, wie?  Na, und was tun Sie im Leben?  Hundert Türen auf einem Gang, und keiner weiß was von dem Menschen, der nebenan wohnt.  Wennse abreisen, kommt ein andrer an und legt sich in Ihr Bett.  Schluß.  Setzense sich mal so ein paar Stunden in die Halle und sehense genau hin: aber die Leute haben ja kein Gesicht!  Sie sind nur Attrappen alle miteinander.  Sie sind alle tot und wissen's gar nicht.  Schönes Kaff, so ein großes Hotel.  Grand Hotel bella vita, was?  Na, Hauptsache:  man muß seinen Koffer gepackt haben...

“One always imagines, until one has seen (for oneself). You journey here bearing your provincial views, with twisted ideas about life. ‘Grand Hotel,’ you think. ‘Expensive hotel,’ you think. God knows what sort of wonders you await at such a hotel. You will already note what is going on. The entire hotel is a stupid dump. Exactly the way it goes with all of life. The entirety of life is a stupid dump, Mr. Kringelein. One comes here, one remains a bit, one travels on.  Passers-by, you understand. For short stays, you know. What do you do in a big hotel? Eating, sleeping, loitering, shopping, a bit of flirting, a bit of dancing, what? Well, and what do you do in life? A hundred doors in one corridor, and no one knows anything about the people who live beyond them. When you travel on, another comes and lays themselves in your bed. Enough. Sit down like that for a couple of hours in the hall and look: the people truly have no faces! They are merely dummies with each other. They are all dead, and know absolutely nothing. Beautiful dump, such a large hotel. Grand Hotel beautiful life, what? Well, the main thing is this: one must have one’s suitcase packed…”

This novel captures the post-Weimar Republic zeitgeist in microcosm, and is worth reading for that alone, if one is willing to forbear the occasional existential soliloquy as exemplified above.

Photo credits: top: Vossische Zeitung, advertisement, 4 April 1929 / Vossische Zeitung, Anzeige, 4 April 1929 / thank you to Angela M Arnold, Berlin // middle: Portrait of Vicki Baum. Collection: Theatermuseum, Vienna / Porträt Vicki Baum. Sammlung: Theatermuseum, Wien. / Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Bilddatenbank / c 1930 by Max Fenichel  (1885–1942) // bottom; Berlin, memorial plaque for Vicki Baum, Koenigsallee 45, unveiled on October 4th, 1989 / Berlin, Gedenktafel für Vicki Baum, Koenigsallee 45, enthüllt am 04.10.1989 / photograph 15 March 2008 by and thank you to Axel Mauruszat.

Kevin Gillette

Words Across Time

18 December 2020

wordsacrosstime

[photography-duesseldorf-germany]

Düsseldorf Fotograf Freund filmt Prinzessin Mette-Marit mit dem iPhone zu Eröffnung. Royaler Glanz in Düsseldorf. Kronprinzessin Mette-Marit und Kronprinz Haakon aus Norwegen eröffnen die Kunstaustellung "Edvard Munch by Karl Ole Knausgard".

[antoniomontani]

#versace #newcollection #2017/2018 #fashionshow #düsseldorf #koenigsallee #antoniomontani #rockonteam #beautiful #models #wonderfullife #rockonmodels #welovestyle (at Versace)

[shadowycloudartisanspy]

Das Steigenberger Parkhotel in Düsseldorf an der Kö. (hier: Duesseldorf Koenigsallee) https://www.instagram.com/p/CiiC08Ksg_F/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[boeselnrw]

Auto hat neue Farbe - Styling ist ans Auto angepasst - Wochenende kann kommen ! #lambopink #pinkisthenewblack #pinkisgood #pinkislife #pink #rosa #pinkgirl #instagood #instalife #luxuslife #goodlife #picoftheday #picoftheweek #luxuscars #duesseldorf #koenigsallee #koeln #lamborghini #lamborghiniurus #boesel (at Boesel wrapacar) https://www.instagram.com/p/CfgLeeojabf/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[willkommen-in-germany]

The Königsallee (“King’s Avenue”) is an urban boulevard in Düsseldorf, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Northwestern Germany, noted for both the landscaped canal that runs along its center, as well as its fashion showrooms and luxury retail stores. Shortened to “Kö” by locals, it is one of Germany’s busiest shopping streets. It’s about 1 kilometer long and was mentioned in Herbert Grönemeyer’s 1984 hit “Bochum”. Song & lyrics: https://youtu.be/1kRi3mYsAKE

[krapalm]

Next.e.GO Mobile SE เปิดโชว์รูมแห่งแรกในเมืองดึสเซลดอร์ฟ ประเทศเยอรมนี

– โชว์รูมตั้งอยู่ใกล้กับถนน Koenigsallee หนึ่งในย่านแฟชั่นที่มีผู้มาเยือนมากที่สุดในยุโรป – โชว์รูมประกอบด้วยศูนย์สร้างประสบการณ์สำหรับลูกค้า ฝ่ายขาย และฝ่ายบริการ – เตรียมเปิดโชว์รูมเพิ่มเติมอีกในอนาคต หลังจากที่ประสบความสำเร็จในการเริ่มผลิตและจำหน่ายรถทั่วประเทศ Next.e.GO Mobile SE ผู้ผลิตรถยนต์ไฟฟ้าสัญชาติเยอรมัน ก็ได้ประกาศเปิดโชว์รูมทั่วทวีปยุโรป ประเดิมที่เมืองดึสเซลดอร์ฟ…

[matthiasthon-blog]

Wie die Zeit vergeht: Facebook erinnert mich... Fashion Lounge in entspannter und angenehmer Atmosphäre mit interessanten Gästen und freundlichen, aufmerksamen Mitarbeitern. #mode #style #fashion #fashionblogger #fashions #styleblogger #muensterland #deinnrw #picoftheday #instastyle #duesseldorf #koenigsallee #instagreat #instagood #bestoftheday #awesome #instadailey (hier: Düsseldorf, Germany)

[sewmuchblack]

- staying cold - shoot3picture2 (no advertisement) second shot of the third editorial type shoot i did with @florianxwichary a few weeks ago. we found a nice cargo container as a backdrop behind a restaurant directly near the luxury fashion street #königsallee in düsseldorf - had to take a few shots there! this is a detail shot of some #nylonstraps of his #chestrig and his #staycoldapparel #tshirt i really like. #cargocontainer #freightcontainer #container #photoshoot #techwear #mxdvs #blackclothing #blackandwhite #milsurp #milsurpvest #canondeutschland #niftyfifty #düsseldorf #shotindüsseldorf #stadtamrhein #shadowsonthewall #dynamicphotos #editorial #fashioneditorial #fashionphotography (hier: Duesseldorf Koenigsallee)

[photography-duesseldorf-germany]

Fotograf H1 Hummer Düsseldorf Königsallee

Fotograf H1 Hummer Düsseldorf Königsallee

instagram.com/stories/fotograf_robert_freund/2113303203185238031

[antoniomontani]

#versace #newcollection #2017/2018 #fashionshow #düsseldorf #koenigsallee #antoniomontani #rockonteam #beautiful #models #wonderfullife #rockonmodels #welovestyle (at Versace)