Tuesday, February 15, 2022

Cinemas in Weimar Berlin

In the 1920s, Berlin was covered with hundreds of cinemas that dominated main streets and squares. The “film palaces” built in the capital during the Weimar era, seating up to 2.500 spectators, rivalled with each other in magnificence. Names like Universum, Titania-Palast, Gloria-Palast, Mercedes-Palast, Capitol, were echoed in cinemas built across Germany. These movie palaces, with ticket prices three times higher than the smaller theaters, turned the simple act of going to see a movie into a festive, glamorous experience. Uniformed ushers, 60-instrument orchestras, auditoriums decorated in purple and gold, multicolored spotlights, atomizers spraying eau de Cologne over the audience. Not to speak of the imposing building themselves, first designed in pseudo-classic fashion and towards the end of the twenties in more modern styles (Art Deco, functionalism).

The elite of Berlin cinemas consisted of premiere theaters, premieres often attended by high dignitaries and other celebrities. Those elite cinemas built a cluster in West Berlin, around the Gedächtniskirche and the Kurfürstendamm : Ufa-palast am Zoo, Gloria-Palast, Capitol am Zoo, Marmorhaus. But there were premiere cinemas outside that central hub too: around 1927, Universum and Titania-Palast opened, the former at the end of the Kurfürstendamm, the later three miles to the southwest. Films could also be premiered at Primus-Palast by the Potsdamer Platz, at Beba-Palast in Wilmersdorf, at Ufa-Pavillon or Mozartsaal in Nollendorfplatz. Rarely though in East Berlin.

Exactly where were all those cinemas? Take a look at the map below.

1. Ufa palast am Zoo, 2. Gloria-Palast 3. Capitol am Zoo, 4. Marmorhaus, 5.Filmbühne Wien, 6. Ufa Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz, 7. Mozartsaal,YY 8. Tauentzienpalast, 9. Prinzess, 10. Primus-Palast, 11. Kammerlichtspiele in Haus Vaterland, 12. Universum, 13. Phoebus-Palast, 14. Union-Theater Unter den Linden, 15. Piccadilly, 16. Mercedes-Palast, 17. U.T. Lichtspiele Theater am Alexanderplatz, 18. Ufa-Theater Turmstrasse, 19. Lichtburg, 20. Beba-Palast (Atrium), 21. Titania-Palast

Below, the more centrally located cinemas:

1. Ufa-Palast am Zoo, 2. Gloria-Palast, 3. Marmorhaus, 4. Capitol am Zoo, 5. Filmbühne Wien, 6. Prinzess, 7. Tauentzienpalast, 8. Mozartsaal, 9. Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz, 10. Ufa-Universum, 11. Beba Palast (Atrium), 12. Piccadilly

Below, the "cluster" around the Gedächtniskirche and Ku'damm.

1: Ufa Palast am Zoo, 2: Gloria-Palast, 3: Capitol theater, 4: Marmorhaus, 5: Romanische Café, 6: Zoo-station, 7: the Zoo.

Click on the following links for more info about different Berlin cinemas:

Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz

Monday, February 14, 2022

Some Berlin cinemas from the Weimar years

Beba-Palast (Atrium): located in the southwest Berlin district of Wilmersdorf, at the corner of Bundesallé (ex Kaiserallé) and Berlinerstrasse. Opened in 1926, this large premiere theater had a magnificent façade which curved around the corner, with the Colisseum in Rome as inspiration source. It was designed by architect Friedrich Lipp, and had 2.025 seats made of mahogany and covered with cardinal red fabric. There was a lighted dome over the hall. The name "Beba" was an acronym of Berliner-Babelsbergerstrasse, a nearby corner where a smaller cinema with the same owner had stood before.

Situation of the cinemas named in this blog

Filmbühne Wien (Ufa-Theater Kurfürstendamm, Union-Palast Kurfürstendamm, UT-Lichtspiele).

Called Union-Palast, it opened in 1913 at Kurfürstendamm 26. It was built in the style of Wilhelminian classicism; a temple-like facade with ionic columns and gables. It was one of the first Berlin theaters designed specifically for showing film and it had a café on the ground-floor. The cinema, seating 850, belonged to the UFA from 1924 and has hosted a great number of film premieres. In 1945 the name was changed to Filmbühne Wien.

Ufa-Theater Turmstrasse

In Moabit, Turmstrasse 25-26 at the corner of Stromstrasse. The UFA-Theater, designed by Max Bischoff after American standards, had room for 1700 visitors. In addition to an organ there was also an orchestra pit. A light source enhanced the atmosphere of the film during the screening, so that the auditorium could be bathed in white, blue, red or violet light. Neo-Classical exterior, Art Deco interior. There was also a café with a stage for an orchestra. The name of the café seems to have been Vaterland (not to mix up with the Haus Vaterland by Potsdamer Platz.)

UFA, which already owned three premiere cinemas around the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church (Gedächtniskirche) in the heart of West Berlin, took the somewhat risky decision to settle in Moabit, a densely populated area to the North that had previously lacked a modern cinema.

Tauentzienpalast

It was a large cinema with a spacious café at Nürnberger Straße 57-59, at the corner of Tauentzienstrasse, in what today is the district of Schöneberg. The building was adjacent to the well known Femina Palace, designed in an avant-garde style known as Neue Sachlichkeit. Close to the famous KaDeWe department store, it was one of the largest premiere cinemas run by the UFA, along with the nearby Ufa-Palast am Zoo and Gloria-Palast. The cinema boasted the largest organ in Europe and it enjoyed air conditioning that blew eau de cologne into the auditorium.

At first called Kammerlichtspiele, the theater opened in 1913 with 1200 seats as a subsidiary establishment – on the ever busy Tauentzienstrasse – to the one with the same name on Potsdamer Platz. A little later the name was changed to Tauentzienpalast. In 1920 the UFA took it over. Iconic films such as Walther Ruttmann's Berlin – The Symphony of the Big City (1927) or I Kiss Your Hand, Madame (1929) with Marlene Dietrich and Richard Tauber premiered here.

Lichtburg

Lichtburg, that means something like Castle of Light, was built by the architect Rudolf Fränkel in 1929 in a stunning Art Deco/Moderne style as part of the new garden-city Atlantic. Located in the north-east Berlin district of Wedding, at the corner of Behmstrasse and Heidebrinker Strasse, it could seat 2.300 in all. It was the first building to break with the straight lines which had hitherto been almost compulsory for any architect attempting to innovate.The outstanding element was the 40-meter-high round tower. The tower had space for events with up to 700 people, but it hosted also lighting gear which made the cinema visible from afar. In the glass roof pavilion, three searchlights with 1500 watt lamps rotated and shone into the sky, while around 1000 lamps illuminated the 15 vertical windows made of opal glass : it was like a lighthouse beam on top of the building. The Lichtburg is the first cinema in Berlin after which a street, the Lichtburgring, was named.

U.T. Lichtspiele Theater

On the Alexanderplatz, in the east of Berlin. It was enormous in comparison to its predecessors. It was created out of drastic rebuilding of the Grand Hotel Alexanderplatz in 1909 and was refurbished and enlarged once more in 1914. It had 1.055 seats and the effect of the interior was impressive, even if the architecture was relatively simple, probably thanks to rich painting at very little cost.

The original address was Alexanderstrasse 46-48, renumbered 5-7 in 1934. In 1924 the cinema it was renamed Ufa Lichtspiele Alexanderplatz.

Kammerlichtspiele im Haus Vaterland

This cinema has also been known as Ufa-Haus am Potsdamer Platz. Its auditorium was strikingly modern, on a circular plan and with red carpeting and gold-painted wooden trim on the 1.400 seats. The theater was hosted in one of the upper floors of the famous Haus Vaterland.

Phoebus Palast

Phoebus-Palast

The Phoebus-Palast was renamed Emelka Palast in 1932. It was hosted close to the Anhalter Bahnhof, in the ultra-modern Europa-Haus, at the corner of Königgrätzer Strasse (today Stresemannstrasse) and Anhalterstrasse. It had 1.840 seats and possessed all contemporary technical innovations. There were spotlights in various places and strengths, so that the house could also be used for revues or operettas in the summer. It had a double front on Anhalter and Königgrätzer Strasse.

Some other Berlin cinemas in the Weimar years:

Union-Theater - Unter den Linden, at Unter den Linden 21 (today 39)

Primus-Palast (Biophon-Theater-Lichtspiele) on Potsdamer Strasse at the corner of the no longer existing Margarethenstrasse, a bit SW of Potsdamer Platz.

Prinzess Theater
Kantstrasse 163, between Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche and Joachimsthaler Strasse

Two cinemas built by Fritz Wilms:

Piccadilly, on Bismarckstrasse 93, near Deutsche Oper

Mercedes-Palast, in Neukölln, on Hermannstrasse 214-216 at the corner of Rollbergstrasse, a bit east of Tempelhofer Feld.

Saturday, February 12, 2022

The Titania-Palast, a true palace

Photo from Friedenau-aktuell.de and Cabaret Berlin

The Titania-Palast, which opened on 26 January 1928, in the transition from silent to sound film, was truly a palace, a luxurious one, situated in the middle-class borough of Steglitz, about 3 miles south of Berlin’s own Broadway, the area around the Zoo and the Gedächtniskirche, where most premiere cinemas were located.

The architects Ernst Schöffler, Carlo Schloenbach and Carl Jacobi designed the exterior in the New Objectivity style, with simple geometrical forms, in this case an assembly of several cube-shaped structures. The most striking feature was the 30-meter-high tower at the corner of the building. A steamer chimney for some, a "ladder to heaven" for others, when illuminated by night it was visible from afar, like a beacon. Even critics who didn’t like the building, did approve the use of modern lighting technology: the lighting is here an element of the building. Three different means were used - indirect lighting for the cornices, neon lights for the name of the cinema and other texts, and opaque glass strips for the 27 divisions of the light tower and the other elements of the architecture. It was an example of so called "night-architecture".

Almost at the same time, Erich Mendelsohn’s Universum Theater, also in avant-garde style, opened in Lehniner Platz.

1928. Photo Max Missmann, Stadtmuseum.

The cinema opened with the silent film Der Sprung ins Glück (The Leap into Happiness) starring Italian actress Carmen Boni, Berliner star Hans Junkermann and cabaret artist Rosa Valetti. The public was surprised by the contrast between the austere, functional exterior of the building and the luxurious interior. The large Art Deco foyer, the curved walls covered in red velour, the gilded elements, a round light dome on the ceiling and the shell-shaped arches around the screen imparted a feeling of elegance and sophistication. Still, some contemporary observers criticized it due to its deliberately asymmetrical arrangement and the entire facade parts without function. But the facades did have a function: they were meant for advertisement.

The film program of the Titania consisted mainly of light entertainment films and comedies distributed by National-Film AG. The premiere of the first German-speaking, sound film ("Die Königsloge"), with the legendary theater actor Alexander Moissi, took place here 21 november 1929. The film was shot in America.

The Titania-Palast was more than just a cinema: it became an important cultural centre in the district of Berlin-Steglitz during the Weimar years. Theatre performances were held here in addition to film screenings. The cinema was designed to accommodate an orchestra of up to 60 musicians. The mixture of different cultural offers was well received by the audience, so that the cinema corner of the Titania was compared by the press in terms of circulation, traffic and inflow with the cinema life in central Berlin.

After WWII, Titania-Palast provided the venue for several historical events. In May 1945 the Berlin Philharmonics gave here their first post-war concert and on December 1948, the founding ceremony of the Freie Universität Berlin took place here. During the Cold War, just after the Berlin Blockade by the Soviets, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF) was founded at the Titania, attended by writers and philosophers like Tennessee Williams, Bertrand Russell, Raymond Aron and Arthur Koestler.

Cabaret-Berlin and AKG-Images (akg60967)

Titania-Palast today

Films which premiered in Titania-Palast:

Carmen Boni in Der Sprung ins Glück

Dir: Hans Steinhoff. 1931

Dir. Carl Boese. Nov 1930

Dir: Jaap Speyer. 1930

Dir. Gerhard Lamprecht. 1931

Dir. Richard Oswald. 20 Sep 1932

Dir. Adolf Trotz. 21 July 1931

Dir. Wilhelm Thiele. 12 Jan 1932

Dir. Carl Boese. 1931

Dir. Manfred Noa. 1931

Ship Without a Harbour, Dir. Harry Piel 22 Dec 1932

Thursday, February 3, 2022

The Gloria-Palast

The Gloria-Palast was a movie theater in Berlin at the corner of Kurfürstendamm and Kantstrasse, directly across the Marmorhaus theater and very close to other iconic movie palaces like the Ufa Palast am Zoo and the Capitol. It existed from 1925 to 1998. After that, the cinema had to give way to other uses, and it was finally demolished in 2017.

The neo-baroque movie house was built in 1924-1925 by Ernst Lessing and Max Bremer, occupying the first to third floors of the so called First Romanesque House (erste Romanische Haus), built by Franz Schwechten 1896. The cinema was equipped with 1200 seats. In the vicinity there was a second building called Romanische, on the opposte side of the Gedächtniskirche. Its ground-floor was the location of the famous Romanische Café.

The Gloria-Palast opened on January 25, 1926 with Tartuffe (Herr Tartüff), a silent film produced by Erich Pommer for UFA and directed by F. W. Murnau. In later years, two major classics of German film premiered in the Gloria Palace : The Blue Angel by Josef von Sternberg and starring Marlene Dietrich (1st April 1930) and Die Buchse der Pandora (Pandora’ s Box), starring Louise Brooks, February 1929, directed by G. W. Pabst.

Around the Gedächtniskirche. 1: Ufa Palast am Zoo, 2: Gloria-Palast, 3: Capitol theater, 4: Marmorhaus, 5: Romanische Café, 6: Zoo-station, 7: the Zoo.

When the Ufa film Der Sieger (The Victor), starring Hans Albers and directed by Hans Hinrich and Paul Martin 21st March 1932, not less than three orchestras — the Comedian Harmonists, Hans Bund's Jazz Orchestra, and Ufa's symphony orchestra – played the accompaniment.

Other films premiered in Gloria-Palast were :

Geheimnisse einer Seele (Secrets of a Soul), 1925-26) by G. W. Pabst

Der Geiger von Florenz (The Fiddler of Florence), 1925-26, with Elisabeth Bergner, directed by Paul Czinner.

Am Rande der Welt (At the Edge of the World) 1927 directed by Karl Grune

Ihr dunkler Punkt (Her Dark Secret), 1929, with Lilian Harvey and Willy Fritsch directed by Johannes Guter.

"Germany's most elegant premiere theater located in the heart of west Berlin. The motion-picture theater of good society will premiere the best films in the most distinguished of settings", read an advertising text from 1926.