Ramsay MacDonald speaks at the Hotel Kaiserhof, Berlin

Ramsay MacDonald speaks at the Hotel Kaiserhof, Berlin

In the ‘golden twenties’, Berlin’s role as a hub of intellectual, cultural and diplomatic activity saw it ascend to the status of a major world city. In this new era, grand hotels like the Kaiserhof provided luxurious settings for Berlin’s cultural and political elites to gather at receptions, conferences and meetings. The Kaiserhof hosted organisations of all types and political persuasions, from the SeSiSo Club and Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-European Union to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi party, who made it their Berlin headquarters in 1931. Among the political events hosted by the Kaiserhof was a July 1931 meeting of the ‘German-English Society’, convened on the occasion of the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald’s trip to Berlin to discuss peace and trade. This photo, taken by Erich Salomon, shows MacDonald (standing) in the company of an assortment of high-ranking members of the German political elite, including the Chancellor Heinrich Brüning and Foreign Minister Julius Curtius. At this point in time the German-English Society was primarily an economic endeavour. However, after the Nazi party rose to power it collapsed, only to be renewed by Joachim von Ribbentrop as part of the operations of his new Dienststelle Ribbentrop, an unofficial shadow Foreign Office tasked with conducting unorthodox propaganda efforts to win over British sympathies for Nazi Germany. The Kaiserhof, the Chancellery, the Foreign Office and the offices of the Dienststelle Ribbentrop were all located in close proximity to one another on Wilhelmstrasse.

Photograph of Ramsey MacDonald: Berlinische Galerie. Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture, Erich-Salomon-Archiv
Advert: Berliner Leben: Zeitschrift für Schönheit und Kunst 7(3) / Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin / CC0 1.0