Swabian hotelier Friedrich Haerlin bought a narrow building with just 11 rooms at a public auction on his 40th birthday, February 24, 1897, paying roughly 420,000 marks to fulfill a longtime dream of running his own hotel on Hamburg’s Inner Alster Lake. Haerlin and his wife Thekla Toussaint gradually expanded the property over the following decades, buying up neighboring houses and knocking down walls to stitch them into what eventually became fourteen connected buildings.
Their son Fritz took over management in 1936 and continued the expansion. The hotel built a reputation among Europe’s elite and international travelers, hosting guests including shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis, who once stayed there with opera singer Maria Callas, and novelist Thomas Mann. The Haerlin family sold the property in 1989, and after passing through Japanese and Singaporean ownership, it joined the Fairmont portfolio in 2007. It remains one of Germany’s most decorated grand hotels, celebrating its 125th anniversary in 2022.