Hitler Slept Here (Often)- Shock and Diligence in the Age of Google

I travel frequently and am used to trolling travel websites for hotel deals, but

recently came to terms with what the reviews and ratings don’t tell you. We are so

attuned to restaurants and entertainment venues posting pictures of celebrities who

were there to add cache, that we never stop to think about the infamous who may

have frequented the haunt.

I’m an American living in Europe, and had one of those trips you remember for the

good and the bad. We needed a place to stay last minute, and given a number of

factors wanted to stay near Cologne, Germany, returning from the Rhine wine

region. Given a long day on the road and weather conditions, it was shorter, easier

and cheaper to stay near Bonn, the capital of West Germany from after WWII until

reunification in 1999. I’d never been there and thought it would be a nice change of

pace for one evening. Expedia had a number of options, and it turned out that a

suburb Koenigswinter, with forested hills along the banks of the Rhine river, offered

resort type accommodations for less than your typical business hotel in Cologne.

Free wi-fi, free parking, breakfast included, charm, and elegance to boot. Sold.

The drive there turned into more of an adventure than planned: horizontal snow

coming at the windshield while driving the autobahn followed by GPS guidance that

took us to the wrong side of the river waiting for a ferry as the only car going across.

Exhausted, we arrived, thankfully to find the hotel living up to billing, with a bonus

of learning that Beethoven had been born nearby in Bonn (the lobby featuring busts

and images of the composer). We took a lovely stroll into town in the light falling

snow, past grand buildings with an Edwardian feel, and I later learned that the

general area had been the seat of embassies when Bonn was the capital. Before

tucking into sleep, I thought I’d Google the town to learn more, and pulling out my

iPad entered the district Bad Godesberg. Naturally Wikipedia came up, so I hit that

link, and was a bit stunned by the following entry in the highlights: “1938 - Neville

Chamberlain meets with Hitler over the Sudetenland crisis at the Rheinhotel

Dreesen in Bad Godesberg.” I was staying at the Rheinhotel Dreesen.

That let me to search for the hotel more generally, at which point websites like

tracesofevil.com and tracesofwar.com popped up. I probably should have stopped,

but with a macabre curiosity continued to read that it was one of Hitler’s favorite

places, with different sites claiming that he stayed there 70 times, that Herr Dreesen

was an early Nazi crony of his, and that there was a specific suite held as the Fuhrer

suite. At least I wasn’t staying in that room (106). Images of Hitler in front of the

hotel, the hotel adorned with the Nazi flag, articles of his delivering speeches from

there, and reflections on appeasement kept me up that night.

In the morning, everything seemed normal, with guests at breakfast in the elegant

dining room-- which felt almost like a ship on the river -- lazily enjoying the view

over fresh squeezed orange juice and buffet favorites. My mind, though, wandered

to whether travel sites or the hotel itself had some culpability in not apprising me of

select historic gems. The desk clerk certainly didn’t think it was needed or

appropriate, mentioning that many heads of state and celebrities had stayed there

too, when we mentioned being uncomfortable on checking out. And then I

wondered whether there is a need for a so-called infamous app, so in searching

hotels we could learn the dark side of otherwise trophy and historic properties.

Then I wondered if there was a dark side to the dark side, in that people trying to

glorify villains or rekindle sparks of hatred-past would use such an app to find those

places. Let someone else pitch this one to a venture capitalist. I ultimately found

myself looking for a cathartic way out, wondering if I was a bit crazy to be going

down this rathole. The pact with Chamberlain after all was to annex part of the

former Czechoslovakia and I’d just been to Prague, the hometown of Kafka, so

surreal thoughts were not out of character.

In the end, I guess it’s just another travel story, but in my catharsis thought I would

share it with you.