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A Brief History of Berlin Cinemas

Published: 1/7/2021
By: Jennifer Borrmann

“...for Berliners, cinema is a basic necessity” (Der Kinematograph, no. 267, Feb. 7, 1912; own translation)

Movie theaters, cinemas play a crucial role in the cultural and political attitude, and in the social, historical, geographical space of the city of Berlin – and this has been true since the beginning of the history of the movie theater. In Berlin, cinema or film history and city/contemporary history are only thinkable together. Not only is film itself a historical source, but the theater as a space. Today the number of Berlin‘s theaters range up to 90. The space cinema transformed from the panopticum and the wooden theater, to small hidden so-called „Ladenkinos“ and then to huge palaces, but also to repertory cinemas, communal and commercial cinemas. Right from the start, theater programs have always been a mix of entertainment and information. There has always been competition: from the radio, then TV, today digital streaming services – in all that time, there have always been discussions about cinema extinction. But continuous change and transition is an essential part of the Berlin cinema culture – of all cinema culture – in which there have been closures, breaks, foundations, and re-openings.

First cinemas during the German Empire

On 1st november 1895, the first public film screening Germany took place in the Wintergarden of the Central-Hotel in Berlin. It was a program of about 15 minutes and showed filmed numbers of the vaudeville/variety. Brothers and technical inventors Max and Emil Skladanowski offered not yet a real place-bound cinema, but the first public projection of live photographies. In April of the following year, the „Deutsche Kinematographische Gesellschaft“ opened up a theater in the Wilhelmshallen in the Mitte district of Berlin, in which viewers and projection was situated. After several fires, the Prussian Film Theater Ordinance in 1912 for the first time ordered the separation into two rooms. The first Ladenkino in Berlin allegedly opened in November 1899 in today's Memhardstrasse (former Münzstrasse) near Alexanderplatz in the middle of the local entertainment district: Otto Pritzkow’s Abnormitäten- und Biograph-Theater. The cinema was in operation until 1959. In Berlin there were already 16 fixed cinemas in 1905. In the period that followed, there was a rapid increase in the number of cinema theaters opening, mostly in busy areas and proletarian corners. The so-called Ladenkinos, often in elongated shop rooms on the ground floor, were quite inconspicuous from the outside. They were mostly founded in retail and pubs in the city center, later they also spread to the periphery. The typical "Kintopps" emerged, a mixture of cinema and entertainment bar. The cinema was not a quiet place; it was alive with heckling, commentary and audience participation. Theaters underwent some progresses in projection possibilities, more films and a dynamic development of auditory media. There were also all sorts of reciters and cinematographers for the silent slides. And as early as 1909, the first Union Theater with a permanent cinema orchestra opened on Alexanderplatz in the Grand Hotel. Two years later the German Reich already had over 2000 permanent cinemas, around 300 to 400 of them in Berlin alone. Even the first sedentary open-air cinema was opened in 1913 with the Garten-Kinematographen-Theater on Kurfürstendamm. In the 1910s the Soziale Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berlin-Ost carried out a social study on shop cinemas in East Berlin, visited and recorded cinemas, observed viewers and their reactions - a pioneering work in reception and cinema history. One of the typical Ladenkinos from those years that still exists today is the Intimes in Friedrichshain. It was played until April 2019, at the beginning of 2020, after it was closed, it was taken over by the second oldest cinema in Berlin - the Tilsiter Lichtspiele - in order to reopen it in the summer of 2020 and thus save it from collapse.

In the various areas that can be attributed to film culture, such as production, distribution, movie theaters, criticism, etc., a large number of companies, societies, magazines and associations developed rapidly in Berlin during the First World War. The first film studios began their work, press screenings took place in cinemas. In 1917 production, distribution and cinemas were to be operated together with Ufa. A political and social turning point was the November Revolution in 1918.

Weimar Republic

The post-war period in Berlin was consequently shaped politically by violent internal political conflicts. Economically and culturally, Berlin continued to develop rapidly. At the end of 1920, Greater Berlin became a metropolis through the incorporation of the Berlin suburbs Charlottenburg, Köpenick and others. With around four million inhabitants, it was the fifth largest city in the world and Europe's cultural center. Central contact points for artists were the areas around Kurfürstendamm and Friedrichstrasse. Cinema palaces - especially in the West of the city - and buildings and halls specially built for the cinema emerged in the city, often in the vicinity of cafes, restaurants and dance halls. The films that were shown here had to be submitted to an official inspection body from 1920 onwards.

Johannisthaler Filmanstalt GmbH opened in early 1920, and by 1930 brought almost 400 films to Berlin cinemas, including numerous films that are now considered classics of German film, such as F.W. Murnaus Nosferatu. A symphony of horror or, later, Wolfgang Staudte's The Murderers Are Among Us (1946). The former premiered in 1922, followed by a costume party in the Marble Hall of the Zoological Garden. The so-called eventing of the cinema business can therefore be seen in a long line of tradition. Many cinemas played the films, which were produced in large numbers, in several screenings throughout the day and sometimes held up to 2000 viewers. The longing for pleasure was in the foreground after the war years. The buildings themselves were often a mixture of representative and functional structures and combined art and function. The cinema venues themselves, not just the films, should be fun, stimulate the imagination and at the same time be festive. The U.T. (Union Theater) on Kurfürstendamm, for example, was built in Wilhelminian Classicism with a temple-like gable front and housed a café, a beer cellar and the cinema under its roof.

Fritz Wilms was one of the most important cinema architects. He was mainly responsible for the Mercedespalast Neukölln on Hermannstrasse, which opened at the beginning of 1927 - with approx. 2,600 seats the largest purpose-built cinema in Germany at the time. The Colosseum on Schönhauser Allee was also rebuilt by Wilms in the mid-1920s. Until the International Cinema was built, the Colosseum was later the premiere cinema in the GDR. A preliminary building permit for the property was applied for in September 2019, and the Colosseum filed for bankruptcy in May 2020. Probably the best-known architect of Berlin's cinema buildings and responsible for one of the most magnificent cinema locations in the city is Hans Poelzig. In 1929 he planned the Babylon in Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse, which celebrated its opening in 1929 and can still be visited today with its original cinema organ in Berlin.

At the same time as the mass production of a wide variety of films and series during this time, inflation and the global economic crisis, but also the emergence of National Socialism and the associated reprisals, had an impact on the population and the cultural life of the city.

Theaters Under National Socialism

After Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor on January 30, 1933, the entire German film industry was immediately placed under state control. In March, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels spoke at the meeting of the umbrella organization of German filmmakers in the Hotel Kaiserhof in Berlin. In his speech he made it clear what the National Socialist film work would look like and that film, and thus cinema, would play a central role in the Nazi propaganda machine. The cinemas were to be brought into line in terms of personnel and business. The so-called "Berlin film Jews" were to disappear completely from the industry, the cinemas were to be filled with allegedly folk material: The immediate result was discrimination, expropriation, mass layoffs, the exclusion and persecution of Jewish or politically unpopular film and cinema professionals. In Berlin in 1933, 30,000 people were arrested for political reasons and taken to concentration camps. More than 1,500 film artists fled into exile in the following months, mainly to live and work in France and later the USA. Film criticism had in fact been abolished and was replaced by “film viewing” in the mid-1930s. There was no German film - open propaganda film or subtle Nazi entertainment film - that came to Berlin cinemas during the Nazi era that was not carefully written, prepared, produced, edited and staged for the cinema audience with advertising material in accordance with Nazi propaganda has been. A quota regulation stipulated the number of foreign films shown; in the early years of the war, the showing of films from individual countries was completely banned in movie theaters. Many of the existing cinemas continued to be used or theaters were converted into cinemas and the main venues continued to be located between Schöneberg and Kurfürstendamm up to the Zoo. In 1934, for example, the Astor was built according to plans by the architect Rudolf Möhring at the popular Kurfürstendamm cinema location with almost 300 seats. In 1935 the first pure sound film cinema in Berlin opened on Giesebrechtstrasse near Kurfürstendamm: Die Kurbel. The original operators were of Jewish origin and had to contend with great hostility in the opening year. Just a year later, the cinema changed hands, including a veteran of the Berlin cinema business, Walter Jonigkeit. Today the former cinema location, where Gone with the Wind ran for two years in a row, is an organic supermarket. Also and especially during the war years from 1938 to 1945 there were numerous cinema premieres, mainly of German productions. The mass ideological instrumentalization of the medium of film in a cinema room suitable for the masses was an elementary component of the endurance ideology under National Socialism.

Beginning of the Cold War Period

From February 1946 Berlin was divided into zones of occupation or four Allied sectors. Great Britain, France, USA and the Soviet Union divided the city. Sharp political conflicts arose between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. In 1949 this led to the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany in the three Western zones of occupation and the establishment of the German Democratic Republic on the other side. Both states claimed Berlin for themselves, but until October 1990 neither had the power of disposal. Numerous people looked for relatives, food and a home in Berlin. There was also a great desire for distraction and film culture after the war years, which can be seen in the (re) openings of cinemas.

While still in the ruins of the completely destroyed city, the Bali / Bahnhofslichtspiele in Zehlendorf was reopened in the Western part of Berlin in 1946 and developed into one of the famous border cinemas in the 1950s. Die Kurbel had already resumed operation in May 1945. In 1948, the marble house on Kurfürstendamm drew attention to Vittorio de Sicas Ladri di Biciclette (bicycle thieves) with a surprising advertising campaign when it let numerous cyclists ride through the city. After the founding of the two states of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, numerous cinemas were built in both parts of Berlin or closed cinemas were reopened or rebuilt. In July 1950, the state-owned GDR film distributor Progress-Film-Vertrieb GmbH was founded in East Berlin. The first Berlinale took place in West Berlin in 1951 on the initiative of Oscar Martay - film officer for the Allied High Commission - which from 1957 found its central cinema in the Zoo Palast. Before the Wall was built, the Delphi / Delphi Filmpalast at the Zoo was put back into operation in 1949. In 1950, the Sylvia Filmbühne in the Hauptstrasse (today Odeon) followed in Schöneberg, whose unique selling point was that the films were shown in the original language versions. All visitors had access to the screenings there - in contrast to the cinemas, which were reserved exclusively for the Allies. In 1952 the Adria Lichtspiele was created in Steglitz. A special feature of Berlin's cinemas at that time were the so-called border cinemas. These cinemas, as the name suggests, were located directly on the inner-city border in the Western sector and were operated between 1950 and 1961. With the help of the “Gesamtberliner Kulturplan”, which provided enormous financial resources, and the elimination of the entertainment tax for border cinemas, it was possible for people from the Eastern part of the city to acquire, among other things, cinema tickets at an exchange rate of 1: 1 for those movie theaters. Western films could be seen there. These cinemas included the Lido at the Schlesisches Tor underground station, which is now used as a club. The City directly at Checkpoint Charlie in what was then the American sector or the Bali in Reinickendorf in the former French sector. In the aftermath of the construction of the Wall, numerous West Berlin cinemas had to close - border cinemas were particularly affected.

The Wall: A Tale of two Cities?

On August 13, 1961, the German Democratic Republic began building the Wall at Potsdamer Platz. The western part of Berlin - the so-called showcase of the West - was heavily subsidized. In 1967 he or the Free University was the focus of the student revolts. In addition, the housing shortage and vacancy that existed in the 1970s and 1980s led to the famous squatter movement and, in general, to a new societal politicization.

A number of collective cinema foundations have lined up in this movement, which is committed to culture and politics. Alongside the collectives like Eiszeit or Regenbogenkino, a critical political stance was also reflected in the communal cinema movement. The first cinemas of this type were founded in the mid-1960s, and since the mid-1970s they have been organized under the umbrella association of the Federal Association of Communal Film Work. The municipal and non-commercial cinemas developed in part from previously existing film clubs. As is often the case with the collectives, their focus was and is on film as a cultural asset, film material, contextualization, film history and original film technology. Today the Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art and Zeughauskino, which opened in 1958 but was not regularly programmed and curated, are still two of the most important municipal cinemas in Berlin.

The early years of the GDR were marked by clean-up work, the repair of the S-Bahn and U-Bahn, the erection of memorials, industrial standard housing, but also bringing into line the parties and increasing norms, some of which led to strikes and in 1953 to the popular uprising. After the war, east Berlin was characterized by extensive confiscation and nationalization of cinemas. They were factually expropriated from state-owned companies and many private cinemas, and film was used as an awareness-raising medium due to the centralized organization and uniform socialist cultural policy. In general, the condition of the cinema buildings was not very good, which was due to a lack of resources for maintenance - exceptions could be cinemas close to the border, such as the Gérard Philipe. The result was a significant reduction in the number of cinemas in Weissensee, for example. The Tilsiter Lichtspiele in Friedrichshain had to close from 1961 to 1994. As a rule, the old bourgeois cinema buildings were not used again. Cinemas in East Berlin (and also in other parts of the GDR) were often integrated into club culture or cultural institutions. The culture of projection and presentation took place in different places such as factories, schools, club cinemas, discos, tent cinemas or so-called Visionskinos(box area with glass pane). Here, too, it was customary to combine cinema with sociability and gastronomy, albeit with a different political background. The GDR professionalized the cinema professions, especially that of the projectionist with detailed training.

Since the end of the 1950s there has also been a decline in visitor numbers in the GDR, and here too television marked a turning point in film and cinema culture. At the same time, the technology developed rapidly and led to Totalvision - a different name for Cinemascope for patent reasons. In 1963 the huge socialist cinema building International was opened on Karl-Marx-Allee. Today's interior is still in its original condition. In December 1965 the 11th plenum of the Central Committee of the SED took place in the Eastern part of the capital. As a result, numerous DEFA films were banned from being shown in cinemas. Political and cultural activism could be felt in both the East and West of the city, and numerous demonstrations took place from the mid-1980s.

1990 and beyond: Reunification

The opposition movement, the peaceful revolution, the misunderstood statement by Schabowski - in the end there was the border crossing on Bornholmer Strasse in Berlin. On October 3, 1990, Berlin was declared the capital again. Parliament and government seats were relocated to Berlin, from the mid-1990s 20,000 apartments were built annually in Berlin, and from 2002 the S-Bahn ring was closed again. Numerous new open spaces such as the Gleisdreieck Park or the Mauerpark were created. Berlin and especially Potsdamer Platz were supposedly the largest construction site in Germany and Berlin declared “poor but sexy”. Numerous new cinemas emerged on their own initiative or were reopened. In the turbulent post-reunification period, the founding of collectives and associations continued in the early 1990s. After more than 30 years of forced break in the east of Berlin, an association reopened the Tilsiter Lichtspiele, the cinema founded in 1908. In addition, the Filmrauschpalast Moabit e.V. was founded in a house occupied by artists. In addition to these cinemas, which differ from commercial cinemas in terms of cinematography, some cinemas have positioned themselves in between and want to stand for a mixture of commerce and art. With this in mind, the Hackesche Höfe cinema was opened in mid-1996. In addition to these individual cinemas, numerous large cinema complexes - Cinestar, CinemaxX, Cineplex - with an average of up to nine halls were built primarily in the mid to late 1990s (including throughout Germany). But even the large commercial enterprises are not safe: The huge CineStar in the Sony Center had to close in December 2019 after 20 years due to financial difficulties. Digital film providers could appear to be more competitive with commercial cinemas and their programming than would appear to be the case with more cinephile individual cinemas.

2020/2021 Pandemic Forces

Almost 40 art-house cinemas in Berlin had joined forces in the course of the Covid-19-related closings of their theaters. They started a unique cinephile crowdfunding campaign, which should help the Berlin cinema landscape to remain as diverse as before. After a forced break in the program, the Berlin cinemas were allowed to reopen their doors and screens on July 2, 2020. After they were forced to close again in the fall of 2020 for eight months (240 days exactly) – they generally open up again July 1st, 2021.