Hotel Quadriga

Berlin, Germany The son of a sweetmaker, Karl Jochum has ambitions for a life beyond his father's shop. Through hard work and perseverance he determines to open a cafe in Berlin where the Emperor will one day dine. As the city grows and prospers, so too does Karl's business empire, and he rises to become the proprietor of Europe's finest and most luxurious hotel. Situated close to Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, the Hotel Quadriga is a glorious monument to Imperialist Germany. Behind its grand façade, the lives of Karl and his wife Ricarda, along with their two daughters, Viktoria and Luise, are enacted, together with the wealthy Kraus and aristocratic von Biederstein families. From its first opening in the splendor of the Imperial era, through the anarchy of revolution and the wild abandon of the 1920s, to the dramatic rise of Hitler, the Hotel Quadriga is the palatial background to an epic saga, which charts the fate and fortunes of three families whose lives are irrevocably entwined. Will these changing times bring the families-and their country-closer together? Or leave them more divided than ever before? One thing is for sure-all their lives are about to change forever...

Berlin, Germany Two loves rule Viktoria Jochum-Kraus's life. One is the Hotel Quadriga, built by her father, opened on the day she was born and, in January 1933, the most luxurious hotel in Berlin. The other is her son, Stefan. Only Viktoria knows that Stefan is the result of a youthful infatuation with her husband's cousin, Count Peter von Biederstein. Independent and strong-minded, Viktoria has for many years run the Hotel Quadriga with her husband Benno. But as Hitler's stormtroopers march beneath the Brandenburg Gate, heralding the beginning of the Third Reich, Viktoria soon realizes that she no longer controls her own destiny. Not only is she forced to relinquish her hold over the hotel under the brutal Nazi regime, but Stefan embarks upon a fateful love affair which she alone knows can only end in heartbreak. As war wreaks its fearful devastation, on the city and on the people, she loves, all that Viktoria holds most dear is threatened... Will Viktoria's carefully guarded secret be discovered? Can Berlin and its inhabitants survive the horrors of war? As families are torn apart and lives destroyed, will loved ones be separated forever?

Viktoria's family is divided as her country is divided... Berlin, Germany: When Stefan Jochum returns from England to Berlin in August 1945, it is to find a city counting the cost of the Second World War. The Hotel Quadriga is in ruins, his father is dead and his sister, Monika, is living in the Soviet-occupied zone. Determined to survive despite unconquerable odds, his mother Viktoria ekes out an existence from the cellar of the Cafe Jochum. While Stefan builds a reputation as a well-respected journalist, Viktoria determinedly sets about establishing a new chain of elegant hotels in the spirit of the Quadriga, a symbol of faith and hope in her country's future. But as the new hotels rise from the rubble of war, so too do two rival Germanys, each haunted by the legacy of its Nazi past and imminently to be divided by the Berlin Wall. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, the children of the post-war generation seek to atone for their parents' past mistakes and impose their own influence upon Germany's future. Can a new generation learn from the mistakes of the past? Will Viktoria's family remain divided? And what will the future hold for them all when the Berlin Wall finally falls?