Page - 140 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

140 siting futurity turned Vicky Baum’s 1929 novel into the classic film in which Greta Garbo declares that she “vant”s to be alone, the Südbahn- hotel and Panhans were competing to see who could build the most attractive swimming pool while the Kurhaus continued to acquire the latest in medical technology. By April 1938, how- ever, the Südbahn hotel found itself draped in swastika flags.9 It served as a military hospital during WWII and opened its doors again four days after the capitulation of May 8, 1945, although those doors were no longer as elegant as they had once been.10 Indeed, all eleven hotels in Semmering suffered considerable damage and looting during the war and its aftermath. Semmer- ing was split between the British and Soviet occupation zones, and even after the Soviets left in 1955, it never returned to its pre- war levels and type of tourism. In 1976 the Südbahn hotel shut its doors (ibid., 374), while the Panhans was initially rescued by new ownership in 1982, which resulted in a Bundesfachschule für Fremdenverkehrsberufe [“vocational college for tourist trades”] opening there in 1984, followed by an international institute for tourism and management in 1986. Both hotels have since ac- quired new owners; the Südbahn hotel was bought in the 1990s by the Klinik Bavaria Rudolf Presl GmbH, which replaced its roof (ibid., 176) but has in the meantime put it on the market again (Zoidl 2017); while the Panhans declared bankruptcy in 2012 and together with the Erzherzog Johann Hotel was pur- chased the following year by the Swiss Renco Invest AG (“Ho- tel Panhans an Schweizer verkauft” 2013). It turned out that the Swiss company had suspicious connections to Ukrainian inves- tors accused of money laundering, not to mention FPÖ repre- 9 There is a stunning image of it in Désirée Vasko-Juhász’s Die Südbahn: Ihre Kurorte und Hotels (2018, 371), which one wonders whether Wes Anderson had seen. 10 As Vasko-Juhász relates: “Doch unbeirrt von alldem öffnete das Südbahn- hotel bereits vier Tage nach der Kapitulation, die am 8.5.1945 erfolgte, wieder seine Pforten, die nun allerdings nicht mehr so nobel wie früher waren” [Undeterred by it all the Südbahn hotel opened its doors only four days after the capituation achieved on May 8, 1945, but they were not as elegant as they had been”] (Vasko-Juhász 2018, 373).