Hotel Bilderberg is a factual novel by Bernt Engelmann , first published in 1977 , which indirectly deals with the Bilderberg Conference, which has taken place annually since 1954 . Stylistically, Engelmann, who is primarily known as a non-fiction author, bases the story on the factual novel Great Federal Cross of Merit , published in 1974, embedding history in a partially invented framework.

The journalist Pat Rosenblatt, who comes from New York, indirectly saves the life of the elderly and - as it later turns out - rich Mrs. Cornelia Vandermeulen on a flight to Amsterdam. This is loaded by Pat, who, among other things, dealing with juvenile crime and actually on the way to a conference, enters the Hotel Bilderberg. Pat agrees and, on Mrs. Vandermeulen's advice, takes on the role of her granddaughter.

Mrs. Vandermeulen also suspects the reasons for the probable assassination attempt on her: On the one hand, she owns some sought-after shares, and on the other hand, she has a list of names that are connected to the bribery scandal at the defense company Lockheed that has just become known .

As the story progresses, Mrs. Vandermeulen takes on the role of narrator, telling Pat the historical background to important representatives of the Bilderbergers in a conversational tone. Pat learns, among other things, how industrial dynasties such as the DuPonts , the Rockefellers and the Rothschild banking business came into being. This is also closely linked to the history of the Dutch and British royal families, which were also closely linked to Germany. Not least because Kaiser Wilhelm II was a great-grandson of Queen Victoria .

Franz Josef Strauss , about whom Mrs. Vandermeulen has various things to say about his time as Defense Minister and his connections to Lockheed , plays another role, albeit one that is only assumed in the entire novel . Some background information from Strauss' Starfighter affair is presented.

Other people mentioned in the book include: Hermann Josef Abs , Jimmy Carter , Henry Kissinger , Zbigniew Brzeziński and the noble families von Brühl and von Battenberg , who later renamed themselves Mountbatten .

At the end of the novel, which mainly takes place in the bar of the Bilderberg Hotel, Mrs. Vandermeulen has been able to profitably sell her coveted shares to an interested party and has also initiated a deal regarding Lockheed documents. Pat, for her part, had in the meantime met two journalist colleagues in the hotel who had "infiltrated" past the security guards and were now and then listening to Mrs. Vandermeulen's stories. All three journalists hope for a " scoop " and would like to use Mrs. Vandermeulen's documents as evidence for their story, but she ultimately decides otherwise after she meets David Rockefeller had telephoned. So Mrs. Vandermeulen, who had previously ordered Pat to pay a five-figure dollar sum to save her life, refuses to publish details.

She invites Pat to go with her to Paris to see Edmond Rothschild , but Pat refuses and instead wants to go on vacation to the Bahamas with one of her journalist colleagues after their conference.

The book description of the version of Hotel Bilderberg published by Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag in 1980 contains the sentence: “The information contained in this book can obviously be trusted.”