Big Business and the Crisis of German Democracy
Liberalism and the Grand Hotels of Berlin, 1875–1933

Explains why an industrial and financial elite decided that authoritarianism, and Hitler, would be better for business than democracy.

Adam Bisno (Author)

9781009012577, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 June 2025

233 pages
22.8 x 15.1 x 1.2 cm, 0.35 kg

'Replete with remarkable detail, from the fraying bedsheets to the separation of bone from gristle in the kitchen, Adam Bisno's fascinating account in Big Business and the Crisis of German Democracy demonstrates the strengths of microhistory.' Gary Bruce, American Historical Review

Through the colorful world of Berlin's grand hotels, this book charts a new history of German liberalism and explores the changing relationships among big business, society, and politics. Behind imposing facades, managers and workers were often the picture of orderly and harmonious service, despite living in sometimes uncomfortable proximity. Then, during World War I, class tensions rose to the surface and failed to resolve in the following years. Doubting the ability of the Weimar Republic to contain these conflicts, a group of hotel owners, some of the most prominent Jewish industrialists and financiers in the country, chose to let Adolf Hitler use their hotel, the Kaiserhof, as his Berlin headquarters in 1932. From a splendid suite opposite the chancellery, Hitler and his henchmen engineered the assumption of power, the death of the Weimar Republic, and the ruin of their hosts, the Kaiserhof's owners: Jewish liberals now fleeing for their lives. Big Business and the Crisis of German Democracy asks how this came about and explores the decision-making processes that produced such catastrophic consequences. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

Introduction
1. Hospitality incorporated
2. Managing heterogeneity
3. Grand hotels at war
4. Hoteliers against the republic
5. Abdication of the liberals
Epilogue.

Subject Areas: European history [HBJD]