The Westin Grand Berlin is a luxury business hotel located on Friedrichstraße in the Mitte district of Berlin.
The site is the former location of the Kaisergalerie shopping center, opened in 1873, destroyed by an air raid in 1943, and demolished in 1957.
The site remained vacant until the East German state-run Interhotel monopoly decided to build a flagship luxury hotel for Western tourists in the 1980s. The structure was designed by a collective of architects headed by noted East German architect Erhardt Gisske in the style of early twentieth century luxury hotels, and with a glass dome modeled on the one in the former Kaisergalerie. The East German government hired the Japanese Kajima Corporation to manage the building of the 200 million mark structure, and Kajima in turn subcontracted the construction work to the Swedish Siab construction company.
The hotel was opened as the Grand Hotel Berlin on August 1, 1987 by East German leader Erich Honecker as part of the city-wide celebrations of the 750th anniversary of the founding of Berlin. It was only open to foreign guests, as it did not accept East German Marks, only Western hard currencies.
The hotel got it’s current name on july 1, 1997, after it was sold.
The Westin Grand Hotel is often used as a location in movies, tv-series, videoclips and commercials. Both international and German only.
This is mostly because of the beautiful lobby and the impressive grand staircase.
For example, parts of the action-thriller “The Bourne Supremacy” were shoot in the hotel, the German crime-thriller “Victoria” included scenes shot inside the hotel.
And also for the famous German tv-series “Tatort” scenes of some episodes have been shot here.
The hotel has been the location of at least 300 film and video shoots.
The video clip for Rammstein song Das Modell was also shot in the Westin Grand Hotel. But this video was never released because of the tragic death of a famous fashion model and the tragic death of Lady Diana in the same year.
There is a very rare “Making of” from this videoshoot. This video is only broadcasted once on German TV channel RTL2. It is mostly about two girls who were the price winners of a contest from this TV channel. And the price was playing a small part in the video.
That is a great, but it is getting a bit strange when the girls tell the audience the videoshoot is at the Western Crown Hotel in Berlin. But there has never been a Western Crown Hotel in Berlin, this must be the Westin Grand Hotel.
You can see the same grand staircase in the Making Of video as well as on the photo’s from the hotel’s website.