AN ILLUSTRIOUS HISTORY FOR A HOTEL WITH GREAT HERITAGE

The hotel’s history begins in 1813. That year, the hotel’s proprietor, Johann Freinsheim, opened ‘Deutsches Haus’, which he rechristened ‘Hotel Nassau’ three years later. In 1819, the Johann Friedrich Goetz family purchased the building and subjected it to an extensive redesign based on a classical style.

In 1827, the duke’s new palace theatre opened in the direct vicinity of the hotel, benefiting the Goetz family, too. When the railway from Frankfurt am Main opened in 1840, guests of Wiesbaden, now an up-and-coming spa city, could travel in comfort by train. The city that would soon call itself ‘the world’s spa city’ experienced a great boom. Numerous guests travelled to the cosmopolitan spa, including Russian author Fyodor M. Dostoevsky, who took a room at Hotel Nassau, lost all his money at the casino and, to escape the resulting financial ruin, wrote the novel ‘The Gambler’, in which Wiesbaden lives on as Roulettenburg.

In 1866, after siding with Austria during the Austro-Prussian War, the Duchy of Nassau was annexed by the victorious Kingdom of Prussia. The duke was chased out of Wiesbaden City Palace, which was subsequently used by the Prussian kings and, later, German emperors for their many stays in the city. The countless visits by the emperor were one of the reasons behind the city developing enormous appeal, leading to it hosting most of Germany’s millionaires by the turn of the century. Numerous new buildings were constructed, including the theatre (in 1894) and the new spa building (in 1907) close by Hotel Nassau. In 1897, Emperor Wilhelm II dedicated a monument to his father directly in front of Nassauer Hof, as the hotel was now called. The neighbouring palace theatre was integrated into the hotel complex during the same year.

In 1903, the hotel bore witness to a meeting between Emperor Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II. In 1907, the new spa building was inaugurated within spitting distance of the hotel, which itself received a facelift in the form of a Wilhelmine facade and renovations. This left the hotel with 200 plushly decorated rooms and a luxurious thermal pool.

In 1917, the traditional family ownership came to an end. Hugo Stinnes, a businessman from Mülheim, bought the luxury hotel in Wiesbaden from the Goetz family after the First World War. The hotel was completely gutted by the Second World War, and 1950 saw the beginning of its reconstruction by architect Ernst Neufert, financed by Stinnes. Since 2001, Nassauer Hof has belonged to a group of investors who have established an operator company.