The end of a successful hotel history: The Ellington Hotel on Nürnberger Strasse will finally close its doors on August 16. But it did not fall victim to the corona crisis, but apparently stands in the way of a bigger plan. The owner company NOG Nürnberger Straße Objekt GmbH & Co. KG – the majority shareholder is the Ideal insurance group – was sold, the lease for the hotel ends on September 30th.
The new owner is particularly interesting: according to information from the “Gourmetwelten” Internet portal, which reported first, it is the Austrian Signa Group, which also owns KaDeWe. That would make sense, because the department store is currently building a new parking garage and other facilities on its property on Passauer Strasse – and this property is directly adjacent to the Ellington building.
Signa does not operate hotels, so there is already speculation that the purchase is linked to further expansion of the department store, which could actually become the largest in the world.
But there is no confirmation for this. Signa did not answer a mail request on Wednesday, and the Berlin Ideal Group did not want to comment either. A press release will probably go out soon, it said. Schöneberg City Councilor Jörn Oltmann announced that he was not aware of the sale.
The building was built in the late twenties
The Ellington currently employs around 80 people, to whom the Estrel Hotel has offered the takeover, as Ellington director Tina Brack said. Ellington operator and building minority shareholder Ekkehard Streletzki is also the owner of the Neukölln hotel, which with 1125 rooms is the largest hotel in the country with the highest turnover. And: in 2024/25 the additional hotel tower on Sonnenallee should be ready, which will bring a further 750 rooms to the Berlin market. Then it would be the highest German hotel at 175 meters.
The four-story, listed building on Nürnberger Straße was built between 1928 and 1931 as the “Femina Palace”. The building owner was the Jewish businessman Heinrich Liemann, the plans come from the architects Richard Bielenberg and Josef Moser – Erich Mendelsohn is often mistakenly named. The 150 meter long building with the round bay windows and projections is considered one of the most important representatives of the New Objectivity in Berlin.
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It was designed as an office building with a shop front. But especially the ballroom inside was considered to be one of the most popular dance halls of the 1930s. Only this hall was destroyed in the war, the building itself served many purposes, initially as an emergency sales point for the KaDeWe. It later became famous for the “Bathtub”, the city’s most famous jazz club in the 1950s and 1960s; From 1978 to 1993 the “Dschungel” discotheque had a similar reputation.
The Berlin financial administration was housed in the office floors until 1996. Then the building and the shops stood empty until the four-star hotel was opened after renovation in 2007. In keeping with its name, it also made a name for itself with jazz events.
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