Lorenz Adlon

Lorenz Adlon (; 29 May 1849 – 7 April 1921) was a German caterer, gastronomer and hotelier.

Early life Lorenz Adlon (baptized Laurenz)

He was trained as a cabinet maker, finishing an apprenticeship in 1872 at the nationally leading Bembé cabinet-making workshop of Mainz. Indeed, Adlon would eventually request its services, for furnishing the future Hotel Adlon of Berlin.

Private life Lorenz Adlon was married twice. His first wife was Susanne Wannsiedel (died 1878), the daughter of a hotel manager in Mainz,

During those years, Adlon couldn't resist the appeal, often visiting the Holländische Hof hotel near the bank of the Rhine, there taking note of the German aristocracy and its culinary customs. He also leased the two then-decadent terraces of the zoo of Mainz. Revamped by Adlon, the place started serving famous international treats, highlighting the Bouillabaisse specialty; daily yielding 6,000 Goldmarks, which had once been reserved for the German nobility. In 1918 and 1921, he approached the middle vehicle lane in the attempt to cross the Pariser Platz. The central passage of the Brandenburg Gate was originally reserved for the emperor and therefore rarely frequented. In Adlon's mind, it had remained a safe traffic island. Adlon had suffered a severe street accident in 1918 and in 1921, at the same place, Adlon suffered a second, fatal accident, being hit by a car.

Ludwig Anton "Louis Adlon, Sr." His son Ludwig Anton, born on 3 October 1874 (he called himself "Louis"), had five children with his first wife Tilly. After almost 15 years of marriage, he met a hotel guest, a dancer, called Hedda, at a New Year's Eve party in the Hotel Adlon, left his wife and children, and in 1922 he married her. It was one of the biggest scandals of Berlin in the 1920s. Tilly moved with her daughter Elisabeth, then two, to the south of Germany, while the other children Susanne (mother of Percy Adlon), Lorenz and the twins Carl and Louis (junior) were sent to boarding school and later all four emigrated to America.

His son Louis continued managing the hotel until it was burned down by Soviet troops in 1945.

Solveig Grothe on 2007-10-21 in Spiegel Online writes that