Schlüterstr. 45 became a hotel in 1964. Then there were four separate hotels on four floors. In 1967 they were combined to form HOTEL BOGOTA as it is today.
Even now you can recognize from the varied sizes of the rooms and from the high ceilings typical for older Berlin apartment houses that the builing was originally one of these. All the rooms are attractively decorated. Many regular guests choose rooms of the simplest category because they offer accomodation in a central location for a modest price.
The building in which Hotel Bogota is housed is also interesting because of its turbulent past and could stand as a symbol for the recent history of Berlin.
It was built as an apartement house in 1911. For example, during the 1920s the entrepeneur Oskar Skaller lived here. He staged frequent parties in his apartment, at one of which the young Benny Goodman played.
Immediatly after the war the British occupation forces discovered that the house still contained a great many of the Chamber´s files. They therefore used it for the de-nazification of important figures in the arts such Gründgens, Furtwängler and Rühmann. Not only was the Chamber of Artist founded here, but the house was also the venue for its first art exhibition in July 1945, the first staged in the city after the war. J.B. Becher´s Culture Association (Kulturbund) was founded here.
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On the ground floor the apartement of Oskar Skaller was a meeting place for artists and politicians. Skaller had an important collection of Persian ceramics and works by the impressionists including this painting by van Gogh.
At Verborgenes Museum (Schlüterstraße, near Hotel Bogota ) til 22nd July 01 the exhibition "Yva - Fotografien 1925 - 1938" can be visited (then, August/September in Aachen, and November/December 01 in Munich. Catalogue is available at Ernst Wasmuth Verlag Tübingen (also see the review in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 26, 2001).
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