Alhambra (Berlin)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Invitation to the opening of the Alhambra cinema (1922)
Memorial plaque on the house at Kurfürstendamm 68

The Alhambra was a cinema palace on Kurfürstendamm 68 in Berlin-Charlottenburg and in 1922 the sound film was premiered .

history

Czutzka & Co. GmbH had the Alhambra built from 1921 to 1922 as a two-storey central wing in a five-storey residential building according to plans by building council and cinema architect Max Bischoff . Friedrich August Kraus was entrusted with the stucco work . In a longitudinal rectangular auditorium with 1,340 seats was Parquet by a peripheral place surrounded. Bischoff also played a decisive role in the construction or renovation of other Berlin cinemas, such as B. the cinema of the same name in Seestrasse (formerly Apollo , today Cineplex Alhambra ), the Ufa-Palast am Zoo , the Colosseum in Schönhauser Allee , the Turm-Palast (originally Ufa-Theater Turmstrasse ) in the Turmstrasse and the Stern Palast cinema in Hermannstrasse with. In 1922 the Alhambra was opened by the operator Alhambra GmbH Film- und Bühnenschau, and the curtain parted for the first time in front of a paying audience. On September 17 of that year became the first here in the Tri-Ergon - optical sound produced sound film in the world listed.

In 1924 Deulig Film AG became the new operator of the cinema. Deulig briefly changed the name of the cinema in 1926 to Alhambra Deulig Palast , the subsequent operator Süd-Film AG later to Emelka-Palast . Between 1928 and 1929 the building was converted into the Hotel Alhambra and the cinema was given its original name Alhambra . In the course of the renovations, the cinema was modernized according to a design by Siegfried Ittelson. The now stucco-free facade was provided with a tent porch in front of the entrance, in which backlit opaque glass walls and showcases were integrated. Further renovations of the cinema in the following years by Gustav Neustein and Werner Anke reduced the number of seats to a total of 1014 (668 in the stalls; 336 in the tier). In 1930 the cinema operator changed again. From then on, Hein & Kreisle GmbH ran the business for almost five years. In 1934 the Bayerische Hypotheken- und Wechsel-Bank took over the building, and from 1935 at the latest, Willy Hein, whose GmbH still maintained the Universum and several other Berlin cinemas, ran the Alhambra alone. After the beginning of the Second World War, but at the earliest in 1940, the cinema in the Alhambra, which in the meantime was also called Tobis- Alhambra , ceased.

Erich Bukofzer and Werner Mörschel resumed cinema operations in 1949 in the cinema building, which was partially destroyed by aerial bombs . Architects Helmut Remmelmann and Fritz Gaulke combined the green and white former ticket hall and vestibule of the Alhambra to create the intimate film theater Bonbonniere with only 310 seats, which cinema-goers were now allowed to enter through a small bar instead of a foyer . The seventh Ku'damm cinema was reopened with Karl-Heinz Stroux's film “ Encounter with Werther ”.

After the previous tenant Willy Hein filed for eviction, Bukofzer and Mörschel were forced to close the cinema in 1952. Hein did not pursue his original intention of rebuilding the Alhambra in its old size. Instead, he simply had the hotel rebuilt. The cinema hall of the bonbonniere was initially used as the dance bar, later as the breakfast room of the new Kurfürstendamm hotel .

In 2017-2018 the facade was reconstructed in its historical form from before the renovation in 1928/29 and given a modern addition.

literature

  • Peter Boeger: Architecture of the theater in Berlin - buildings and projects 1919-1930 . Willmuth Arenhövel, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-922912-28-1 .
  • Sylvaine Hänsel, Angelika Schmitt: Cinema architecture in Berlin 1895-1995. Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-496-01129-7 .

Web links

Commons : Alhambra (cinema)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Bonbonniere . On: ALLEKINOS.COM - film theater history in Germany and Austria
  2. ↑ Lexicon: Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf from A to Z - Alhambra (formerly cinema) . Information from the district office of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in Berlin at: berlin.de
  3. ↑ www.medicke.de, accessed on April 9, 2018

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '1.66 "  N , 13 ° 18' 30.28"  O