“Come In and Feel at Home!”

For close to two centuries now, the slogan “Come In and Feel at Home!” has been both a program
and a promise. Anyone who decides to make the Nassauer Hof their temporary domicile can be sure that the hotel is as good as its word. Above all, they can look forward to an establishment with all the flair one associates with aninternational luxury hotel. Of course, off the cuff at least, hardly anyone will be able to come across with a surefire definition of what “flair” actually means. It is, and always will be, a very personal
category. One senses it, relishes it, praises it, make it the gage of one’s personal appreciation of a hotel.
But actually putting the implications of the term into words is a tall order.
Flair, perhaps, is something invisible, intangible, indescribable that is quite simply there and cossets
the spirit of the incoming guest. Flair is what gives a hotel its inimitable character while successfully
defying clear-cut definition. As soon as the visitor enters the Nassauer Hof, the entrance lounge envelops him or her with a pleasant feeling of seclusion that only very few grand hotels on this continent can compete with.
Passing through the heavy glass doors with their brass moldings, one is received with a congenial
warmth that really does conveys the impression that one is at home at last. The reticent hues of the
rootwood-paneled walls nip any potential feeling of strangeness in the bud. The promise “Come In
and Feel at Home!” is redeemed with an immensely appealing degree of understatement.
Some grand hotels do their best to impress with opulent entrance doors and a lounge of formidable
splendor. Not so the Nassauer Hof. It can afford to do without such tub-thumping. It convinces by
virtue of its undemonstrative elegance and an unpretentious simplicity that makes no attempt to gild
the lily. It is for that very reason that is so convincing in its effect and so soothing in its reticent
sobriety.

At first glance, the two gleaming door handles of the entrance make a vaguely symbolic impression:
a coat of arms held by two lions rampant, within it a florid letter N that might suggest to the guest
in a hurry that the hotel has something to do with Napoleon. In fact, it is nothing but a memorable,
lovingly elaborate trade mark. It conveys a touch of the aristocratic without actually claiming any
particular distinction for itself. The top-hatted gentlemen in livery who open the
doors for newcomers with an air of amicable empressement and usher them in to the lounge also
have a rather elitist air about them. But ultimately they too are no more than a relic, a nostalgic
throwback to the era of the classical grand hotel, a reminiscence of the so frequently apostrophized
“good old days.” But at the very least, and this is the best of all reasons for retaining them as they
are, they embody something akin to a ritual of welcome that instills in the incoming guest that
feeling of being at home at last that arrival at the Nassauer Hof has meant for so many people over
the last 200 years. In a sense, they are the bridge between the outside world and the inner workings
of the hotel.

A literary figure of the last century once referred to the hotel lounge as a forum for seeing and being
seen, even going so far as to suggest that it be a concourse of conceit, the equivalent of Vanity
Fair. The front-desk area of the Nassauer Hof has nothing of this quality about it. It presents itself
with congenial modesty, and in so doing appears to conjoin its guests to refrain from “showing off”
themselves. Instead, the wonderfully unobtrusive division of space in the hall creates the high degree
of intimacy that is the indispensable precondition for that untranslatable quality ‘Gemütlichkeit’.
Withdrawal into the self-effacing simplicity of clearly drawn lines and contemporary interior design
is not merely a response to changes in taste and the predilections of the mainstream. It is above
all a consequence of wartime events and (wherever the repercussions of those events were not as
devastatingly thorough as they usually were) the outward and visible effect of what is so graphically
referred to as the “gnawing tooth” of time. At the onset of the 20th century, an imposing,
late-Victorian entry area was just as much of a matter of course for the Nassauer Hof as it was for
any self-respecting grand hotel at the time. A lowering, stucco-incrusted coffered ceiling supported
by marble columns complete with Corinthian capitals hung weightily, if not a little menacingly, over
the gentlemen conversing below in small groups. Naturally these captains of society had not doffed
their top-hats for the duration of their earnest deliberations. Why should they? After all, the tophat
was the epitome of late-Victorian dignity. From the ceiling, the scene was animated by
the reticent glow of a mighty chandelier that had already taken the first step into the anything but
lengthy epoch of jugendstil. The porter’s lodge with the new-fangled telephone apparatus hung up
on the wall (much feted at hotels of the time as the non plus ultra in technical progress) symbolized
the first courageous step into an uncertain future. This future has long since turned into the
present, and this in its turn has found adequate representation in the new design of the Nassauer
Hof in tune with the age we live in. It is modern, to be sure, but not cool or stand-offish, strait-laced
but still graced by that self-deprecatory congeniality that ensures a feeling of “home away from
home.”

The architectural diversity of the building has produced a lounge that is not an entrance hall
in the customary sense of the term but rather a charmingly kaleidoscopic array of harmoniously
ordered spaces that open up surprising perspectives in all directions. First there is the inviting bar,
generous in dimensions but intimate for all that, then the Orangerie restaurant, its lightness and
elegance half-discernible visible through the glass doors, then of course the gourmet temple Ente
that has been enticing connoisseurs of good food for over 34 years, the little café leading the way
to the Orangerie, a stylish venue for five o’clock tea or an aperitif before dinner, and finally a room
furnished in a very British manner with sofas and armchairs and full of reminiscences from the 200-
year history of the hotel. These are the accessories of historical memory, most of them photos
displayed in a glass case and commemorating the prominent guests that have graced the premises in
the recent past, images that emphasize and underscore the claims that this hotel stands for.
Perhaps this is the ideal place to order an Assam tea at tea-time or an English Breakfast Tea that
despite its name can be enjoyed at any time. Even in the afternoon, a breakfast tea can help free up
the mind and lend it the wings it needs to soar productively. Among the associations that pour
in on the visitor in this incomparable atmosphere (although they are purely conceptual and have
nothing to do with “hard facts”) is the question whether in the Nassauer Hof a “Nassauer” would
have any chance of living up to his proverbial reputation. In German, the word Nassauer refers to a
“scrounger,” someone who lets his friends pay for the drinks in a pub.

Inquiries into the origins of this strange word come up with all kinds of explanations, all of which
are etymologically anything but well-established. But one or two of them at least have the oldeworlde
charm of actually referring to the wideranging eponymous German aristocratic dynasty
dating back to the 12th century. Memories of this lineage are probably best preserved in connection
with the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau, whose colors (red, white, and blue) are identical
with the Dutch flag, thus referring unmistakably to the fact that the duchy of Nassau is the root
from which the Dutch royal family stems. The curious connection with the scrounger is
academic in origin. The citizens of Nassau studying in Göttingen had 12 state grants at their disposal.
If one of the recipients failed to turn up for the free lunch he was entitled to, another “Nassauer”
without a grant stood in for him and took advantage of the benefit he had failed to claim.
But there is another possible explanation that is said to have been recorded in Wiesbaden. In
this version, the landgrave of Hesse admitted all students from Nassau to his castle and treated
them to his hospitality. It was sufficient to appear at the entrance and give evidence of one’s
origins to be let in. Apparently, many students not entitled to these benefits abused this custom,
which was then referred to by the verb nassauern (to scrounge or inveigle) and remained in use
for many generations. As mentioned earlier, these explanations have little grounding in fact, but
they make amusing reading.Let us marshal our thoughts once again and train them back on reality.
What does the Nassauer Hof have that other grand hotels do not? And what is the deeper significance
of this decision by ten outstanding Leading Hotels to club together and form the Selection
of German Luxury Hotels? Independently of all those subjective evaluation criteria that prompt
satisfied guests to break out in paeans of praise, it is perhaps more persuasive to give ear to the
objective criteria applied by international panels of experts. In 2005, they admitted the Nassauer
Hof as the first hotel in Germany to the hotel classification category “5-star superior.” In other
words, they bestowed on this venerable hotel the ultimate distinction that the international hotel
branch has to confer. The establishment on Kaiser-Friedrich-Square could not wish for a more
prestigiousdistinction. It gives this legendary hotel the uplift it needs for its successful progress into
the future.