Circus Gammelsdorf

The Circus Gammelsdorf was a live club with a cabaret in the premises of the former village cinema in Gammelsdorf in the Upper Bavarian district of Freising , which was known nationwide for its regular concert events from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s.

history

Consumption receipt over DM 2 (1981)

Originally, the location at Hauptstrasse 12 was operated as a daytime café with a village cinema, allegedly the “world's first country art house cinema”.

In the mid-1970s, the concept was changed, after which the circus gained fame especially in the indie scene in the greater Munich area . Among others, Nina Hagen and Konstantin Wecker performed here .

After a few years there was no tenant, the club was reopened in 1987 by Alexander Lacher , who co-opened the Atomic Café in Munich in 1997 and currently publishes the Spex and Riddim magazines . Shortly afterwards, Herbert Scholz also took part. In 1990 the musician and restaurateur Harald Richter from Landshut took over the restaurant. He presented a controversial and in parts controversial music program with a focus on extreme death / black metal and psychobilly bands and an equally mixed film program. In addition to mainstream films, the cinema program also contained indexed horror films and other oddities. House DJ has been DJ Tomahawk for the past seven years .

After the reopening in 1987, the then still young bands My Bloody Valentine and Nirvana (1989 still as the opening act for Tad ), as well as Beasts of Bourbon , The Flaming Lips , Gorgoroth , The Swans , Sonic Youth , The Meteors , Psychic TV , Big Black , The Young Gods , Paradise Lost , Type O Negative , New Christs , The Dickies , Hard-Ons and other well-known bands and artists such as Willy Michl concerts. Live recordings by well-known bands were also made in the Circus, for example pages 3 and 4 of the double album Negamusi by Sparifankal in 1981 , the live album Born Too Late by Saint Vitus in 1989 or the LP Mod Is Dead by Television Personalities in 1991 .

Especially in the last few years under the leadership of Harald Richter, the circus has reached its peak. While locals were hardly among the guests at all, guests from all over Germany or even from neighboring countries traveled in addition to the Bavarian scene audience from time to time, depending on the popularity of the performers, which is why the club was not very popular in the community, and even so should be closed. Many of the Munich club operators known today were among the regulars.

On May 14, 1994, a well-attended Saturday evening, the restaurant was burned. The perpetrator was never identified. The house owner Dorothea Schmid submitted an application for a new building to the municipality, which was rejected due to the objections of the residents.

aftermath

Members of the Circus Crew 1994 in the Muffatwerk , November 2013;
on the right: Harald Peter Richter, the last operator of the restaurant at the time

The concept of the club also inspired Jürgen Franke and Frank Bergmeyer, who in March 1990 opened the substance in a former Munich inn with an annex . On October 16, 2004 there was a “Gammelsdorf Revival” party in the Djungle in Abensberg . The so-called Circus Crew 1994 still exists today . The group's primary admission criterion is that one belonged to the crew at the time or was a guest at Circus Gammelsdorf.