Castle lights
The castle-air theater (today Municipal Cinema Mainspitze ) are a cinema in the South Hessian town of Ginsheim . The building at Darmstädter Landstrasse 62 was built in 1899 as a chapel for the Evangelical parish of Gustavsburg. After temporary use as barracks, gymnasium and school room, a cinema was set up there at the end of the 1940s by the later film producer Kurt Palm .
history
In the constantly growing industrial community, a Protestant church was founded in 1896. A room on the first floor of the school building on Dr.-Herrmann-Strasse served as the prayer room. There was a service there every third Sunday afternoon. However, the unsatisfactory spatial situation quickly led to the establishment of an Evangelical Association, which was to act as a developer for the construction of a church.
The negotiations for the purchase of a property turned out to be difficult. Initially, the association found only a secluded piece of land near the main dam. It was not until August 8, 1899 that a building site could be acquired in the center of Darmstädter Landstrasse, and three weeks later, on August 28, 1899, the responsible district office in Groß-Gerau issued the building permit. An emergency chapel was built within three months for the sum of 7,200 gold marks. It was designed as a simple, gable-independent half-timbered building. On the front of the gable roof was a small ridge turret, in which two bells hung. On the occasion of the celebration of the 2nd Advent on December 10, 1899, the chapel was consecrated by the superintendent Waas in the presence of the senior consistorial councilor Walz.
For 17 years the chapel served the Protestant parish for their services, then it moved to the new building that was being built in the immediate vicinity. During the occupation of the place as a result of the First World War, the building served the French army as a barracks from 1918, after which it was used as a gym from 1921 until the Second World War. Immediately after the end of the war, the local school had to be housed in the house for almost a year because the actual school building had been confiscated by American soldiers as accommodation. In 1946, the first elections for municipal councils took place there after the war. During this time, the roof turret was removed and the street-side facade redesigned.
After the school moved out, Kurt Palm, who was born in Gustavsburg and had returned to his hometown after a short period of imprisonment in the spring of 1946, rented the building from the management of the local MAN plant with the idea of setting up a small movie theater in it. For its operation, Palm received approval from the US military government on March 26, 1947. From the rubble of neighboring Mainz , he brought stones in rucksacks and bags to Gustavsburg and built a fire-proof demonstration room with 280 seats. He found two demonstration devices in the French occupation zone.
Finally, on Maundy Thursday of 1947, April 3, 1947, the Burg-Lichtspiele opened their gates. For an entry of 60 Reichspfennig, viewers could watch new films once on weekdays and four times on Sundays. The military government's intelligence control system initially only allocated American films with German subtitles, and from 1948 also German and Austrian films without political tendencies. In 1952, Palm built a restaurant on the east side of the cinema and directly connected to it.
For Palm, the opening of the Burg-Lichtspiele marked the start of a successful career as a film producer. The theater itself was leased in 1986 by the community of Ginsheim-Gustavsburg from the MAN works in order to operate a communal cinema. The Mainspitze Adult Education Center and the Ginsheim-Gustavsburg youth welfare organization acted as sponsors of the cinema, which has now been reduced to 99 seats. From February 2008 until the reopening in April 2012, the game was stopped due to significant construction defects.
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Coordinates: 49 ° 59 ′ 48.6 ″ N , 8 ° 19 ′ 13.1 ″ E