Café Continental (Hanover)

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Interior shot of the Café Continental furnished in a mixture of Art Nouveau and Art Deco ; left the staircase to the hotel of the same name ; Postcard from the publishing house of the architectural photographer Edmund Lill , around 1910

The Café Continental in Hanover was in the Hotel Continental in the 19th century furnished posh concert - cafe with a challenging music program. It was especially valid until the Second World War "[...] as a prominent venue for orchestras with ambitious swing ".

history

Dance events and modern concerts were performed on the ground floor of the Hotel Continental ; Colored postcard number 145 by an unknown photographer, around 1900

The building of the former Royal Hanoverian Higher Trade School , built in the 1830s, was extensively rebuilt after the Karmarschstrasse was laid out . 1881, was designed by architects Gustav Heine and Wallbrecht Ferdinand two storeys increased and an elegantly furnished hotel with a glass-covered vestibule rebuilt.

"Partie nd Georgstrasse "; On the top left the glass ceiling of the vestibule , on the right the raised concert stage with railing, piano and music stands

The café of the same name then opened on the ground floor of the Hotel Continental, which - as evidenced by one of several postcards - belonged to Emil Pfefferle , who around 1910 commissioned the architectural photographer Edmund Lill to take photos of the interior.

On January 2, 1924, the Continental Café wrote with the set up there "Radio Research Station" radio history : agent detector receivers and headphones were guests - with coffee and cake - first radio broadcasts heard. At first only British concert broadcasts could be heard. Nordische Rundfunk AG (NORAG) was only founded two weeks later, on January 16, 1924, and in December of the same year the broadcasting facilities , which were initially operated as NORAG secondary station in Hanover , went into operation.

Orchestra conductor Barnabás von Géczy (1932)

From the mid-1920s, the Café Continental with its sophisticated music program - alongside the Georgspalast and the Rote Mühle - developed into one of the most important venues for guest performances, especially by well-known dance and entertainment bands. Numerous pacemakers of the modern dance music of the time were enthusiastically celebrated here, including Bernard Etté : The NORAG subsidiary station Hanover broadcast the performance with his jazz symphonians live from the Café Continental in 1926.

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, the music program of the café changed in the course of "light entertainment", the "light entertainment" Well were mainly with strings and woodwinds presented studded concert and dance music, beginning approximately with Barnabas von Géczy , then also by Will Glahé with his big band- like orchestra .

From 1936 - the year of the Berlin Olympics and the Winter Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen - additional offers were presented in the exquisite "Queen Bar" of the Continentals under the roof of the hotel: guest appearances in the big dance bar among others from London who had traveled Saxophonist Billy Bartholomew with " Hot Dance " and Swing.

1945: A result of the air raids on Hanover , here the view from Bahnhofstrasse near the Kröpcke clock to the building on the corner of Georgstrasse and Andreaestrasse , with survivors between mountains of rubble . The cross marking on the right edge of the picture stands for the message "Searched for corpses "; Documentary photography by Edmund Lill

In the last year before the war, 1938, the guests of the Café Continental were among other things performed the “sensational guest performance ” of the top Berlin dance orchestra by Oscar Joost . But the concert hall, known as a “ traditionally dignified café”, gradually lost its importance - also due to the Second World War. During the air raids on Hanover , the entire hotel and with it the Café Continental were destroyed by aerial bombs .

Literature (selection)

  • A club makes jazz - 25 years of the Jazz Club Hannover . Ed .: Gerhard Evertz on behalf of the Hanover Jazz Club. Jazz Club, Hannover 1991, pp. 25-57

Web links

Commons : Café Continental  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Waldemar R. Röhrbein : Café Continental. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 104; online through google books
  2. ^ Waldemar R. Röhrbein: Hotel Continental. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 308.
  3. ↑ Compare this reverse to a picture postcard from the Lill publishing house
  4. ^ Klaus Mlynek : The radio. In: Waldemar R. Röhrbein , Klaus Mlynek (ed.): History of the City of Hanover , Volume 2, From the beginning of the 19th century to the present. Schlütersche Verlagsgesellschaft, Hanover 1994, ISBN 3-87706-351-9 , p. 471 f. ( limited preview of Google Books )

Coordinates: 52 ° 22 ′ 27.1 ″  N , 9 ° 44 ′ 18.7 ″  E