Grand Hotel in Around the World in 80 Books

Jul 21, 2018 Steve rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, fiction

I was quite surprised by Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel. I was expecting, with its high-end Berlin hotel and multiple characters, some sort of Jazz Age version of an Arthur Hailey novel. Not so. Grand Hotel, IMHO, should be regarded as one of the modernist classics. Yes, it's accessible, but it's definitely literary fiction. Published in 1929, made into play in 1930, and finally a star-studded film in 1932, it told a story of what would turn out to be a Germany on the brink. If you're into Cabaret, Be I was quite surprised by Vicki Baum's Grand Hotel. I was expecting, with its high-end Berlin hotel and multiple characters, some sort of Jazz Age version of an Arthur Hailey novel. Not so. Grand Hotel, IMHO, should be regarded as one of the modernist classics. Yes, it's accessible, but it's definitely literary fiction. Published in 1929, made into play in 1930, and finally a star-studded film in 1932, it told a story of what would turn out to be a Germany on the brink. If you're into Cabaret, Berlin Stories (which is basically Cabaret), Babylon Berlin, and all things Weimar, Grand Hotel is a must read. I don't know why it's not more highly regarded. Maybe it's that Baum, a prolific writer, was never really able to duplicate her success. From what a little I know, it sounds like she basically kept trying to write the same novel, but with different settings.

The book is different than the movie in a number of areas. The basic arc of the story is the same, but the characters are much richer than than the generally flat creations of the movie. The "hero" of the novel eventually turns out to be a dying bookkeeper named Kringlestein, who has a manic intensity usually found in a Dostoevsky novel. Kringelstein, after his fatal diagnosis, has come to the Big Town to finally live a life he's denied himself for so many years. And what better place than Berlin's ritziest hotel? What follows is a series of adventures and misadventures with various characters such as a baron who is also a cat burglar, an aging ballerina (played brilliantly in the movie by a much younger Garbo), a young stenographer ("Flaemmchen" my favorite character and probably the co-hero of the novel) who wants to make it the movies, a corrupt (and kind of kinky) businessman, a cynical doctor, and a large cast of secondary characters, all quite realistically portrayed.

And there is always the shadow of the Great War on the periphery of the story, which adds to the brittleness of the setting and the various stories. The doctor's face is disfigured, elevator attendants have one arm, the Baron has his own scars, etc. From what I understand, Baum was part of the New Objectivity movement (which sounds to me like some sort of version of Realism or Naturalism). I recently encountered the N.O movement in the films of G.W. Pabst, and those are pretty good. If you want to see Louise Brooks at her best, it's in the Pabst movies, Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl which are a considerable distance from the sometimes silly sentiments of Hollywood's Grand Hotel. The book is usually better. It certainly is in this case. ...more

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