This book met in the twenty years of the spirit of the times and made its author to the edition of Queen of the Weimar Republic. A Berlin, Grand hotel becomes the stage for Fortune-seekers and death-longing.
It hits the entertainment magazine of the Weimar Republic, not to this woman. Vicki tree was something of the face of the modern woman of the twenties – working, independent, modern. As editor of the Ullstein publishing house, she conquered the Berlin Boulevard. Her trademark bobbed hair and extravagant clothes. The daughter from a bourgeois home wanted to be more than just a good match. She studied music, was looking for their men themselves, got married early and had just as quickly divorced.
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“Grand Hotel” by Vicki Baum
Kitsch as a brand?
Your articles and books changeable between entertainment and social critique. The literary criticism rejected them. To calculate her style seemed too close to the mass taste, to kitsch-trivial. Read them anyway, especially of young women. “I’m a first-class writer of the second quality,” she said once. But you had success. She was the first author that with a targeted advertising strategy for the brand was built – photo galleries, home stories included.
After her Bestseller “Stud. chem. Helene Willfüer” urged the Ullstein Verlag Vicki tree, soon another book to deliver. You wanted to take advantage of the interest in the highest-circulation author of the Weimar Republic more profitable. Vicki Baum knew only too well what a challenge awaited them: to write A novel – realistic, yet with a touch of escapism seasoned. Authentic and yet, in a glittering world of luxuriating.
Melting Pot Hotel
To listen to true life, she began to work in Berlin’s luxury hotels. At the end of her novel “people in hotels”. The “popular novel”, as the subtitle says, was world-famous. The paths cross of different characters. A neurotic dancer, which has its best years already behind itself. A Baron, earns his livelihood with daring burglaries. Terminally ill accountant and love drunken secretaries. An illustrious group of people met here between the Foyer and the reception. The Hotel will be at your stage, a mirror image of the society.
“… colossal operation. Always what’s going on. One arrested, one dead, one travels, one comes. The one they carry by stretcher up the back stairs, and at the same time is born the other a child. Very interesting, actually. But such is life.”
Similar to the novel, the Hollywood film adaptation was a success with the public. “Grand Hotel” was awarded in 1932, even with the Oscar as best Film.
“People in the Hotel” was a huge success, and Vicki Baum’s fame has spread to the USA. Under the title of “Grand Hotel” was staged in the novel, on Broadway and later in Hollywood, filmed with Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford in the lead roles. Buoyed by the success, it took the author himself, in the Land of unlimited possibilities. In 1932, she moved to the United States – just in time.
A year later, the national acquisitions socialists to Power. The books of the Jewess were burned and “a shallow, amoral sensation novels” which is frowned upon. That they belonged to a couple of years previously, the most widely read works of the Weimar Republic – it could not, and would not want to remember.
Vicki Baum: the people in the Hotel (1929), Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag
Hedwig tree, like the musician, and the author was actually called, was born in 1888 in Vienna. The writer was one of the most successful of the Weimar Republic. As your books in 1933, the burning of books fell victim to, was tree emigrated in the USA. She has published in English, columnists tables, texts, novels, short stories, and dramas. Many of her works have been filmed. She died in 1960 in Los Angeles.