A hotel, especially a grand one in the center of a major metropolis, can be its own world. Vicki Baum opens up one such world in Menschen im Hotel (lit. “People in a Hotel” but published under the better title of Grand Hotel), telling interlocking stories of people in Berlin’s finest hotel over the course of a few days in the late 1920s. She sets the scene with a humble porter, whose wife has been suddenly rushed to a hospital for the birth of their first child but who is nevertheless on duty in the hotel. She shifts focus to other staff members who keep the hotel running with aplomb and discretion before settling in on Dr Otternschlag, a disfigured veteran of the Great War, who spends several months each year in the hotel. Each time he enters the lobby, he asks at the front desk whether he has received any mail or whether anyone has asked after him; the answer is always no. Otternschlag settles in to watch the world pass through the lobby, and Baum gradually introduces the rest of her cast.

There’s Otto Kringelein, an assistant bookkeeper from the provinces who has traveled to Berlin for medical consultations. Having learned that his condition is incurable and will kill him in a matter of weeks, he decided to liquidate his savings and live the high life for the little time he has left, if only he knew how. There’s Grusinskaya, a renowned ballet dancer whose name can still fill seats, but whose fame is waning as time and changing tastes catch up with her. There’s Baron Felix von Gaigern, who also came through the war but whose wounds are not visible. In the decade or so of peace, he has squandered an inheritance and now lives as a confidence man and occasional thief. There’s Preysing, the general director of the factory where Kringelein has worked; he’s in Berlin for negotiations that he hopes will save the firm, and also redeem him in the eyes of his overbearing father-in-law, founder of the business.

It’s a cinematic book, with transitions from scene to scene and character to character that read as if a camera were gliding out of one conversation to another, or switching perspectives as characters cross paths in the great lobby, or maybe following one in through the revolving door and following another out. The novel was in fact adapted for both stage and screen, re-titled as “Grand Hotel.” The 1932 film won the Oscar for best picture and is the source of Greta Garbo’s famous line, as Grusinskaya, “I want to be alone.”

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