TWAIN
HOTEL MYSTERY IN HEIDELBERG
Mark Twain Slept Here – Or Was it Over There
“I
don’t know anything about that, and I’ve
lived here all my life,” the attractive young lady behind the
counter at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Heidelberg replied to my inquiry
whether
Mark Twain had stayed in the hotel. “I think that was over at the
Hirschgasse.” So, despite the darkening hour and the chill, across
the river to the Hirschgasse I trod, a healthy walk. “This wasn’t
a hotel then,” said the young man working his way as a student
at Heidelberg’s University manning the desk at the boutique luxury
hotel reknowned for its Le Gourmet restaurant. “He just ate
here. He came for the dueling.” The Hirschgasse was an inn where
the student fraternity clubs hung out in the 19th Century, away from the
main
city, to
engage in a common ritual of duels in the courtyard when a high born
fellow would gladly bear a sword scar to his cheek to prove his collegiate
bonafides (see Heidelberg
Student Prison).
So,
back I went across the old Karl Theodor bridge, the lights glowing orange
on the red sandstone of the ancient city
on the banks of the Neckar River. Upon informing the girl at the Crown
Plaza that the other hotel did not claim that Twain had slept there,
she perked up. “Oh,
I looked it up on the web and it says that was the Alt Heidelberg,
which is just down the street”. So, with deepening determination
to get to the bottom of this quandary, to the desk of the Alt Heidelberg
I trundled, just a long block from the Crowne, to finally put a nail
in
the mystery. “What? I never heard that,” was the reply
of the girl on duty at the Alt Heidelberg.
I
have now followed Mark Twain half way across the world. Perhaps as
time goes
on, I’ll follow him the rest of the way. Viewing his
writing desk and his toilet in Virginia City Nevada where he began his
writing career as a columnist and reporter for the Territorial Enterprise
as
Samuel Clemens (see Mark
Twain Museum Virginia City),
to the gold fields of Calaveras California (see Mark
Twain Cabin) where
he set his story
of the Jumping Frog which launched his national awareness as Mark Twain,
and the hillsides of San Francisco, where he reported on the foibles
of the pioneer class pretending to urbanity.
Mark Twain's Travels
After achieving
success as a novelist, Mark Twain began traveling, making the European “Grand
Tour”,
using his wanderings for material, reporting his journeys, first in “Innocents
Abroad” and later when more successful and less innocent “A
Tramp Abroad”. I have seen his signature scratched in the window
pane left from the birth house of Shakespeare, the man from Stratford-Upon-Avon
whom he believed to be as fictional as his own non de plume (see Shakespeare
Birthplace). His signature can be found on the wall of
a restaurant in Vienna (see Greichenbeisl
Vienna), and his face
in a bar on Mt Rigi where he pursued walking ventures in the mountains
of Switzerland above Lake Lucerne (see Mt
Rigi Railway).
I
had found myself in Heidelberg Germany and curious of the Twainster’s
mysterious sleeping habits. Okay, perhaps not an earth shattering mystery,
but more a detection challenge. The American humorist on his second journey
walking through the wonderland of old European capitals, stopped in Heidelberg
in 1878. He apparently intended to stop for a day, but instead stayed
for almost three months. Mark Twain’s association with Heidelberg
is such that his name adorns an apartment complex barracks at the American
Army Europe base (the base closed in 2013). The mystery, why he
stayed so long, and where he laid his head upon his first night, perhaps
with
my own thought to stay a night where Twain slept.
"Scholss Hotel" in Tramp Abroad
All is generally agreed where the author resided during his long tenure, the Schloss Hotel, named in his book “A Tramp Abroad” a lodging located on a steep mountain slope over-looking the Neckar, gazing upon Heidelberg’s famous castle (see Heidelberg Castle). The former Schloss Hotel is no longer a hotel, but an apartment building of upscale exclusive real estate, recently renovated into a multistory nuisance which rises above the hillside trees that most Heidelbergers agree despoils the romantic view of the castle. The less certain is Twain’s first night.
Twain
wrote of his first day in Heidelberg of staying in a hotel near the
rail station,
and describing in humorous detail the pomp and falderal accompanying
the arrival of the Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden, staying at another
hotel in his view, watching the scene from his window over breakfast.
Two local official tourist guides both had said the hotel where he stayed
was now the Crowne Plaza, formerly a hotel called the Hotel Schrieder.
This reference is mentioned in a guide book about Mark Twain in
Heidelberg by
Werner Pieper “Mark Twain's Guide to Heidelberg”, which
can be found in local book stores. The hotel was indeed in place when
Mark Twain visited the city. Although Heidelberg’s current
main train station is about a kilometer away, built in 1955, moved
to better handle the increasing rail connections
through Baden, the original station was indeed across the way in the
now open grassy area at the end of Bahnhofstrasse - a significant clue.
Twain's Alt Heidelberg
The
opening of the 2nd chapter of Twain’s book describes his being
in one hotel and viewing the antics of a hotel porter in the other, which
was the grander as befitting a Duke and Duchess. The Alt Heidelberg,
now officially the Exzellenz Hotel, is close enough to the Crowne Plaza
for a guest at one to view the goings on at the other, but perhaps not
closely enough for significant detail. The Alt Heidelberg is indeed old
enough a building to be credible, but began life as a private residence,
and was not a hotel when Mark Twain arrived. The Bayerischerhof is another
charming hotel near the former train station which has stood since the
mid-19th Century, though without a clear view.
The
two blocks surrounding the corner of Rohrbacher Strasse and Bahnhof
Strasse are now filled with modern structures of shopping malls and office
fronts with the hotels which served the old rail station wiped away by
the ravages of bomb damage and urban renewal. The more magnificent hotels
of the time where nobility would have stayed are gone. When the central
rail station was built in 1840, the area was mostly open countryside
a distance from the old city with its hotels of past centuries centered
around the Church of the Holy Ghost and Town Hall (see Hotel
Ritter St Georg). By the late 19th Century the Bahnhof Strasse
area was bristling with hotels. What is now the Crowne Plaza was built
in 1838 as the Hotel Ernst.
It was acquired by Herr Schreider in 1845 and sold to another hotielier
in 1865, so would have had yet another name in 1878. It had a reputation
of being a good elegant hotel with a lower cost at the time and may have
indeed
attracted
the
traveling
author.
Grand Hotel Heidelberg
The
Grand Hotel Heidelberg was directly next to the square,
across
from the eastern end of the Crown Plaza, next to where the Seegarten
Health Clinic stands and might have provided a view of royal arrivals.
Nearby, a block away from the train station
was
the Hotel L'Europa or Europaisherhof, built in 1863 and still remaining
one of Heidelberg's finest luxury hotels, which in 1878 had a
view of the Hotel Victoria, named for the Queen of England and popular
with foreign royalty at the time, now gone, which could also have been
the choice of the dignitaries. Twain describes viewing a grand staircase
in the
hotel he was observing, which none of the surviving hotels possess.
Footsteps of Mark Twain
I won’t presume to solve the mystery and perhaps the guidebook and tourist guides are correct. But none of the properties in question seem confident enough to claim a Mark Twain bedroom, so perhaps there is space left for further detection. The tourism office in Heidelberg offers an “In the Footsteps of Mark Twain” guided tour in English, and as for the hotels, all are worthy of your own explorations and inquiries. © Bargain Travel Europe
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See Also:
GIANT WINE BARREL OF HEIDELBERG CASTLE
PHILOSOPHERS WALK - A POETS VIEW
HOLLANDER
HOF HOTEL HEIDELBERG
MARK
TWAIN ON THE ELBE - HAMBURG HARBOR
