Otto K. Eitel

Otto Karl Eitel ( born May 19, No 1901; † 1983) was a German-born hotel manager in Chicago.

Origin

Otto K. Eitel was born as the second child of Charles Eitel (1871-1954) and his first wife Marie Luise Eitel born Boldenweck ( 1875-1913 ). His father had emigrated 20 years old from Stuttgart to Chicago, where he had founded with his brother Emil Eitel the Bismarck Hotel Co., which operated the luxury hotel Bismarck Hotel and the large beer garden Marigold Gardens.

Marie Eitel was the daughter of the contractor, Louis Henry Boldenweck (1835-1896), who was born in Heilbronn and had emigrated in 1854 with his parents and six siblings to Chicago, and also its German origin, but born in Chicago already mother Luise Henriette Kober (1843 -1923 ).

Profession

After education and vocational training in the USA and in Germany, Otto K. Eitel volunteered at the luxury hotel, Hotel Astor in Times Square in New York, which was by the German emigrants William C. Musch home (1855-1918) and Frederick A. Musch Home Founded in 1904 was, and in which even his uncle Max Eitel had volontiert 1904-1906.

In 1926 he became director of the Bismarck hotel, which belonged to his father, Charles and his brother Emil. In 1933 he took over the management of luxury hotels founded in 1927 Stevens Hotel, which was right on Lake Michigan and at that time was considered the largest hotel in the world. He held this office at least held until 1939, even after the insolvency of the Stevens family in the Great Depression, 1935. 1949 he took over the office of President of the Bismarck Hotel Co., which he until the sale of the hotel in 1956 to the hotel and sports entrepreneur Arthur Wirtz held.

Advertising for Monel the example of the Stevens Hotel with a portrait of Otto. K. Eitel, 1937.

Honors

As a member of the Schwaben -Verein " He has distinguished himself in the years after the Second World War in particular, as a zealous promoter of the gifts of love donations for the old home ." For this he was awarded the 1953 Great Cross of Merit of the German Federal President Theodor Heuss.

During his trip to America, the German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was born on April 14, 1953 to Chicago and stayed twice at the Bismarck Hotel. On this occasion, he met with the President of the Bismarck Hotel Otto K. Eitel and handed him the Federal Cross of Merit. On April 14, 1953 Adenauer held in Bismarck hotel from a press conference and was then accompanied by Otto K. Eitel on his walk to the City Hall. Evening Adenauer met again Otto K. Eitel in Eitel 's Palace Theater during a benefit concert " for the benefit of refugees from the East in Berlin".

Publications

Together with his wife gave Otto K. Eitel in 1944 for the first time the music calendar From Bach to Gershwin out, " the ornate, the arch of the years shows graphically, which spans the life of the greatest composers in the world since the 18th century ."

• Otto K Eitel: From Bach to Gershwin. Two and one half centuries of music up to 1944, Chicago.
• Otto K Eitel; Joseph Feher; Raymond F Daboll; E Willis Jones: From Bach to Gershwin. Two and one half centuries of music, Chicago: Hotel Bismarck in 1951.