[6] During those years, Adlon couldn't resist the appeal, often visiting the Holländische Hof hotel near the bank of the Rhine, there taking note of the German aristocracy and its culinary customs.

[1] In 1878, Lorenz Adlon opened the Raimundigarten restaurant, a wooden building, built over an abandoned fortification of Mainz,[7] at its northwest, over the bank of the Rhine.

It became so successful, that Adlon's shop of the Wilhelmstrasse would store three million bottles at some point;[3] the value of the investment skyrocketed after a vine pest of the late 1910s, and – in general – also overmastering the German inflation.

[1] Meanwhile, Lorenz Adlon kept managing the catering for international events, in 1881 for the festival of gymnastics of Frankfurt (Deutsches Turnfest), in 1882 for the Bavarian Trade exhibition,[6] in 1883 for Amsterdam World's Fair.

In 1896, Lorenz Adlon together with two other businessmen, Hiller and Rudolf Dressel, managed the main restaurant facilities at the Neuer See, during the Universal Exposition of Berlin (Gewerbe-Ausstellung).

[3] Adlon managed the process, acquiring several available properties round the 1 Unter den Linden just besides the Brandenburg Gate, despite the protests of many Berliners.

Emperor William inaugurated it, praising on that occasion the hotel's beauty being even superior to his own Royal Palace,[6] he patronized it regularly for his unofficial residence.

[6] Before 1914, the aristocracy of all Europe was fond for gathering in it;[6] then – sharing the same area with the most important embassies – the hotel hosted a series of international meetings, relevant to the historical development of the First World War.

He refused to remove the monarch's bronze bust from the fireplace room when the emperor had already left for Holland and Philipp Scheidemann had proclaimed the republic.

[14] Tilly moved with her daughter Elisabeth, then two, to the south of Germany, while the other children Susanne (mother of Percy Adlon), Lorenz and the twins Carl and Louis (junior) were sent to boarding school and later all four emigrated to America.

Solveig Grothe[16] on 2007-10-21 in Spiegel Online writes that[9] on April 21, 1945, the first explosions hit the Unter den Linden and the hotel stopped and the Adlon became a hospital for a short time.

His wife Hedda Adlon relates in her autobiography[10] that Louis himself was taken by the Soviets and shot, after they mistook him for a General, because a servant had called him by his title of "Generaldirektor".