The Imperial after World War 2

After World War 2, the arriving allied forces moved into the hotels that were left: an English Senior Officers Transit Club moved into the Sacher, American officers into the Bristol, the Soviet High Commission took the Imperial, Soviet staff officers were quartered in the Grand Hotel.

The Russian liberators left the portrait of Emperor Franz Joseph hanging in their new quarters, probably because they didn't know who he was. However, most likely because they knew their own men, they nailed boards over the naked Danube nymph. Manager Stefan Plank, who had been imprisoned during the war as a resistance fighter, resumed his post immediately after the war in May of 1945. His short-term replacement Postl once again left the (no longer) Greater German stage. While the Russian occupants were convinced that they had everything under control, the house was in fact in Austrian hands. One day almost 150 Persian rugs gradually left the hotel, supposedly for cleaning. But they never returned. Plank used this ruse to get them out of the hotel and secure them in a bank. Perhaps such caution was not necessary.

The Russian guests conducted themselves extremely considerately. While in other places horror stories were the order of the day, of parquet floors being torn up for fire wood, the Soviets in the Royal Suite covered the old floor with boards so as not to damage it.