The grand hotel of the turn of the century was a place of experience, a dream house, and a media event. Its history offers a multifaceted social portrait of this era. Whether seen as a 'wonder' or an 'existential form of homelessness': grand hotels were at the center of social life for the European and American elites from the beginning of high modernity around 1880 and beyond the First World War. Here, the powerful and the upwardly mobile, merchants and travelers, writers and impostors met. The trailblazers of cosmopolitan hotel culture were New York, London, and later also Berlin. A growing upper class sought luxurious splendor and extravagant consumption, mysterious discretion, and public attention. State-of-the-art technology, rational organization, and global exchange made the modern hotel as a 'world in the city' possible. With the luxurious life of the grand hotels, H.