Grand Hotel
αα·αα»ααΆ 2016 Β· New York Review of Books
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A luxury hotel in 1920s Berlin is a microcosm of modern society in this classic that inspired a hit Broadway musical and the classic film starring Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, and John Barrymore.
βPrefigures Downtown Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs by examining multiple characters from different classes.β βShelf Awareness
Β
The luxury Grand Hotel is a revolving door for the stray souls of 1920s Berlin. Among the guests is Doctor Otternschlag, a World War I veteran whose face has been sliced in half by a shell. Day after day he emerges to read the paper in the lobby, discreetly inquiring at the desk if the letter heβs been awaiting for years has arrived. Then there is Grusinskaya, a great ballerina now fighting a losing battle not so much against age as against her fear of it, who may or may not be made for Gaigern, a sleek professional thief. Herr Preysing also checks in, the director of a family firm that isnβt as flourishing as it appears, who would never imagine that Kringelein, his underling, a timorous petty clerk heβs bullied for years, has also come to Berlin, determined to live at last now that heβs received a medical death sentence.
All these characters and more, with all their secrets and aspirations, come together and come alive in the pages of Baumβs delicious andΒ disturbing masterpieceβa Weimar-era bestseller that retains all its verve and luster today.
βPrefigures Downtown Abbey and Upstairs, Downstairs by examining multiple characters from different classes.β βShelf Awareness
Β
The luxury Grand Hotel is a revolving door for the stray souls of 1920s Berlin. Among the guests is Doctor Otternschlag, a World War I veteran whose face has been sliced in half by a shell. Day after day he emerges to read the paper in the lobby, discreetly inquiring at the desk if the letter heβs been awaiting for years has arrived. Then there is Grusinskaya, a great ballerina now fighting a losing battle not so much against age as against her fear of it, who may or may not be made for Gaigern, a sleek professional thief. Herr Preysing also checks in, the director of a family firm that isnβt as flourishing as it appears, who would never imagine that Kringelein, his underling, a timorous petty clerk heβs bullied for years, has also come to Berlin, determined to live at last now that heβs received a medical death sentence.
All these characters and more, with all their secrets and aspirations, come together and come alive in the pages of Baumβs delicious andΒ disturbing masterpieceβa Weimar-era bestseller that retains all its verve and luster today.
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Vicki Baum (1888β1960) was born into an affluent Jewish family in Vienna. Her childhood was dominated by a depressed mother and an authoritarian, hypochondriac father, who discouraged her early forays into literature. She studied harp at the Vienna Academy for Music and the Performing Arts and left home at eighteen to marry Max Prels, a journalist under whose name her first short stories were published. In 1916, after the dissolution of her first marriage, she married the conductor Richard Lert and launched her literary career, eventually writing nearly a book a year while working as an editor at the German publishing house Ullstein. Her first major success came in 1920 with the publication of her second novel, Once in Vienna. She spent several months in New York and Hollywood during the making of the film adaptation of Grand Hotelβwhich starred Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford and went on to win the 1933 Oscar for Best Filmβand, before Hitlerβs rise to power, resettled in Los Angeles, where she continued to publish novels while also working as a screenwriter for Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Her memoir, It Was All Quite Different, was published posthumously.Β
Basil Creighton (1886β1989) translated many notable works of German literature, including Hermann Hesseβs Steppenwolf, B. Travenβs The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Alma Mahlerβs Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters.
Margot Bettauer Dembo (1928-2019)Β was the translator ofΒ works by Judith Hermann, Robert Gernhardt, Joachim Fest, ΓdΓΆn von HorvΓ‘th, and Feridun Zaimoglu, among others. She was awarded the Goethe-Institut/Berlin Translatorβs Prize in 1994 and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translatorβs Prize in 2003. Dembo also worked as a translator for two feature documentary films:Β The Restless Conscience, which was nominated for an Academy Award, andΒ The Burning Wall. For NYRB Classics she translatedΒ TransitΒ andΒ The Seventh CrossΒ by Anna SeghersΒ andΒ Grand HotelΒ by Vicki Baum.
Noah Isenberg is a professor of culture and media at the New School, where he also serves as the director of screen studies. He is the author of several books on film, a regular contributor to Bookforum, The Nation, and the Times Literary Supplement, and the book review editor of Film Quarterly. Isenberg is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and the recipient of a 2015 NEH Public Scholar award.
Basil Creighton (1886β1989) translated many notable works of German literature, including Hermann Hesseβs Steppenwolf, B. Travenβs The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Alma Mahlerβs Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters.
Margot Bettauer Dembo (1928-2019)Β was the translator ofΒ works by Judith Hermann, Robert Gernhardt, Joachim Fest, ΓdΓΆn von HorvΓ‘th, and Feridun Zaimoglu, among others. She was awarded the Goethe-Institut/Berlin Translatorβs Prize in 1994 and the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translatorβs Prize in 2003. Dembo also worked as a translator for two feature documentary films:Β The Restless Conscience, which was nominated for an Academy Award, andΒ The Burning Wall. For NYRB Classics she translatedΒ TransitΒ andΒ The Seventh CrossΒ by Anna SeghersΒ andΒ Grand HotelΒ by Vicki Baum.
Noah Isenberg is a professor of culture and media at the New School, where he also serves as the director of screen studies. He is the author of several books on film, a regular contributor to Bookforum, The Nation, and the Times Literary Supplement, and the book review editor of Film Quarterly. Isenberg is a fellow at the New York Institute for the Humanities and the recipient of a 2015 NEH Public Scholar award.
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