Portal:The Grand Budapest Hotel project
The Grand Budapest Hotel project is an independent, single-author project by the wiki user Erik. Started in September 2024, it aims to create a fictional world similar and compatible to what is featured in the 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel by American director and auteur Wes Anderson. The film is centered in the Central European country of Zubrowka, which is the project's main article. Artistic liberties has been taken by the author in order to bring the fictional story and its settings into the 21st century. Although the project aims to adhere to the names, places, descriptions, and characters within the film, many details are not elaborated or expanded upon, and requires assumptions to be made. Such assumptions are also listed on this page. The source material used in this project includes the film itself, the book The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Wes Anderson Collection by Matt Zoller Seitz, Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking by Annie Atkins, theatrical property such as the Trans-Alpine Yodel featured in the film, and various interviews with Anderson himself.
What the film and source material establishes
The film establishes that the story exclusively takes place in the Central European country of Zubrowka. The exact location of it is never revealed, though the position of the hotel below the "Alpine Sudetenwaltz" suggests that the country is located near the Sudetes mountain range. The language used in the film is primarily English, French, and some German. Zubrowkan langauge is never heard, though it is implied to exist. "Zubrowkian flags" are mentioned in the screenplay, but only once it is occupied by the Zig-Zag ('ZZ') armed forces. Said flag is the ZZ insignia on a black background. The flag of Zubrowka is otherwise never shown throughout the film. It established the following locations:
| Name | Location within Zubrowka | Screenplay description |
|---|---|---|
| The Grand Budapest Hotel | Upper Nebelsbad, Alpine Sudetenwaltz | "The camera comes to a stop as it reveals a sprawling nineteenth-century hotel and baths situated on a wide plateau. There is a deep, formidable staircase up to a regal entrance. There is a promenade above and a glass- panelled conservatory below. A rickety funicular groans as it slowly climbs its hillside tracks. The grass needs cutting, the roof needs patching, and more or less every surface of the building needs a coat of paint." The later, 1968 description is "a picturesque, elaborate, and once widely-celebrated establishment. I expect some of you will know it. It was off- season and, by that time, decidedly out- of-fashion; and it had already begun its descent into shabbiness and eventual demolition." |
| Nebelsbad (Upper & Lower) | Alpine Sudetenwaltz | "Nebelsbad is never described in detail in the screenplay, merely referred to as a village or under descriptions such as 'EXT. TOWN SQUARE. MORNING'" It is likely located nearer the western border toward Germany, since "High-command advanced to Nebelsbad." before the "Lutz Blitz" was over, which lasted the entire winter, according to a voice-over by older Zero. |
| Alpine Sudetenwaltz | Likelier to be in a geographical position where it succumbed to a German invasion quicker than Lutz. | A mountain range or region in which Nebelsbad is located, the screenplay states: "A number of years ago, while suffering from a mild case of “Scribe’s Fever” (a form of neurasthenia common among the intelligentsia of that time) I had decided to spend the month of August in the spa town of Nebelsbad below the Alpine Sudetenwaltz -- and had taken up rooms in the Grand Budapest."
However, the props featured in Designing Graphic Props for Filmmaking by Annie Atkins show that both on a hotel note and on an official police notice, the Alpine Sudetenwaltz is referred to or implied to be a region in which Nebelsbad is located. |
| Lutz | Unknown, likely not in the Alpine Sudetenwaltz | Descriptions include "[A graveyard in the city-center of] a great Eastern European capital", "A first-class state-room on the express to Lutz. The snowy foot-hills of the Zubrowkian Alps whiz by outside", "The cosmopolitan city of Lutz in the dead of night. A rickety Daimler taxi sputters along a winding cobblestone road at top speed. It squeezes up a narrow lane lined with shops. All are closed and shuttered. It dips into a tunnel through a brick building. It crosses a stone bridge high over a river. It drives through an iron gate, circles around a garden, and skids to a stop next to Madame D’s limousine." Lutz is also shown to have a tram system, the "Lutz Metropolitan", and an art museum, the "Kunstmuseum". |
| Gabelmeister’s Peak | Unknown, likely not in the Alpine Sudetenwaltz as Gustave and Zero have to travel far to get back to the hotel. | |
| Monastery at Gabelmeister’s Peak | "M. Gustave and Zero walk down a staircase and through the front gate into an empty church-yard. There are walls and low buildings on the sides, a few graves in the middle, and the entrance to a church at one end." | |
| Locations mentioned but never shown | ||
| Äugenzburg | Unknown, likely in geographic extremities in the country | Mentioned by Constable Henckels in the film, "We’re going to strip-search every pretzel-haus, waffel-hut, biergarten -- and especially every grand hotel -- from Äugenzburg to Zilchbrück." This use of the towns suggests that they lie opposite of each other, in geographic extremities within Zubrowka. |
| Zilchbrück | ||
| Brauenersbotten | Described as being located in northwestern Zubrowka | Mentioned in the Trans-Alpine Yodel newspaper in the film, regarding avalanches in the region. |
| Bärthelsbergers | Unknown | Mentioned as being a hamlet in the Trans-Alpine Yodel newspaper in the film, regarding "Gregor Lagerfeld", the half-brother once-removed of Madame C.V.D.u.T. |
| Pffeifelstad | Likely in Western Zubrowka | Described as "Pffeifelstad fell by lunch under heavy shelling, and the Zig-zags surged across the long, western border. The Lutz Blitz would last all winter." by Zero. |
| Lutzbahn Station | In Lutz | M. Gustave shouts the name to the driver of a Taxi, and although the building is named in the screenplay description of the scene, it is never revealed on camera. "Lutzbahn" further cements the importance of Lutz within the region. |
| Sudetenwaltz Monastery | Likely in the Sudetenwaltz | Shown on a film prop. (See: here) |
Artistic liberty
Verisimilitude
Some claims, which perfectly align with the real world, are marked with "V" footnotes, and are referred to as verisimilar source material.
Policy on real-life geographic places
The Policy on real-life geographic places, objects and buildings (PRLGEO) is a set of rules which are intended to maintain historical and contemporary realism within the project in respect to places, objects, and buildings featured within the project. It was established on the 26th of October 2024, and is as follows:
In accordance with the aim of maintaining realism to the upmost degree assuming key conjectures, the project shall take into acount when, where, and how geographic places were:
a) established,
b) attacked,
c) populated or depopulated,
d) expanded or abandoned,
e) maintained or lost to history,
f) built, expanded or destroyed,
based on historical precedent, political motivation, civic needs or desires, economic factors, and real-life counterparts. The author, in respect to the aforementioned aspects, shall consider each with equal weight, and if one or several aspects are missing or do not exist, shall make reasonable assumptions in their absence. If real-life geographic structures exist and are significantly altered from their real-life counterparts, the author shall take into respect the aforementioned aspects, in addition to architectural historicity.
Policy on real-life persons
The Policy on real-life persons (PRLP) is a set of rules which are inteded to maintain historical and contemporary realism within the project in respect to real-life persons. It was established on the 26th of October 2024, and is as follows:
In accordance with the aim of maintaining realism to the upmost degree assuming key conjectures, the project shall take into account real-life persons, when, how, and to what degree they would have acted based on their own interests and as a result of their surroundings. Characters shall always act within realistic boundaries, and shall not be explicitly nor obviously motivated to align with the vision of the author; rather, they will act in accordance with their own needs and desires, determined by themselves and their environment. Whilst divergence from real-life history are permitted, they must be performed within reason and plausibility. It is the role of the author to always assume this creed, and act within it to the most reasonable degree. The author shall always take into account biographical evidence, political motivation, the desires of the person, religious and social conditioning, including norms and culture, in order to determine a plausible action of the person. If any of the aforementioned aspects are lacking or do not exist, reasonable assumptions shall be made in their absence.