Grand Hotel - Literary Stage

One finds them in the most beautiful places, amidst the best of addresses, in flowering landscapes or in pulsating cities: the Grand Hotels. Arising in the middle of the 19th century they quickly became the stage for the most varied staged expressions of the self, intoxicating celebrations, the backdrop to a bourgeois dream world and a clear expression of wealth. Writers of the time could not free themselves from the fascination this world held for them and lived often for months at a time in the most splendid hotels. The greats of world literature enlivened the halls and rooms of the Grand Hotels: Thomas Mann, Vicki Baum, Marcel Proust, Joseph Roth, Arthur Schnitzler, Stefan Zweig, Agatha Christie, Vladimir Nabokov, Klaus Mann and Friedrich Dürrenmatt. These writers are at the centre of the exhibition, the architecture of their dramaturgie following that of a Grand Hotel. Biographies and works are attached to various "typical" areas within a hotel – to a revolving door, the reception, halls, the lift, and a guest room. The locations are intersections: between the hotel and the world, between intimacy and the public realm, between the life and work of the writer. Original exhibits from the Grand Hotels show the richness of the way life was lived in the hotels and complement and complete the literary examination thereof.