Reinhard Konzack
Reinhard Konzack (* 1950 in Berlin ), called Conny Konzack , is a German artist manager, impresario and art collector who made a name for himself as the owner of the Berlin Kant cinema and concert organizer of the OFF culture.
Career
Konzack grew up in Berlin-Neukölln and trained as a textile retailer from 1971 to 1974. From 1974 to 1975 he worked for the city magazine Hobo (today: Zitty ). In 1975 he took over the somewhat shabby Kant cinema in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg and converted it into an art house cinema that showed German, European and American author cinema, as well as music films.
From the winter of 1975/1976, Konzack organized regular concerts with Michael Duwe , who later founded the Albatros Concerts , so that the cinema became a venue for the emerging punk and new wave scene. On Christmas Eve 1975, Duwe and his band Metropolis premiered a multimedia show based on Ray Bradbury's The Illustrated Man . The concerts, initially only intended as an advertising measure for the cinema, quickly turned the cinema, with a hall that could hold 800 people, into one of the most interesting theaters of the 1970s and 1980s in Berlin.
At the beginning, German bands performed, which were quickly joined by well-known names. In 1976 the avant-garde band Can , founded in Cologne , or the political rock band Lokomotive Kreuzberg appeared . Bands like Doctors of Madness , Mink DeVille , Jam , Ultravox , Police , B-52s , Dr. Feelgood , Suicide , Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh and almost all other greats of older and newer British and US rock music . Rock bands from the GDR like the Puhdys or City also had their appearances in the Kant cinema. On February 17, 1981, U2's first Berlin concert took place here. The British company Simple Minds even dedicated an instrumental piece of almost two minutes to the venue. The track Kant-Kino appeared on her LP Empires and Dance , released in 1980 .
In addition, artists such as the Austrian pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda and the American jazz flutist Jeremy Steig also appeared here on Konzack's initiative.
The Kant-Kino also attracted many Berlin musicians, bands like PVC , Morgenrot , Nina Hagen and Spliff performed here. The concert of the vibrators in the spring of 1977 in the Kant cinema is considered the starting sign for the formation of the first Berlin punk band, PVC. In the first five years of the concert, over 220 musicians and bands had their appointments in the Kant cinema. Demand exploded and capacity in the Kant cinema was soon exhausted. New and different places were needed.
From 1977 to 1983 he was managing director and partner of Albatros Concert GmbH , since Duwe withdrew from this business. The company led u. a. the first concerts from the mid-1970s in the Berlin Waldbühne and organized the first concert in front of the Reichstag with u. a. with Ideal and Barclay James Harvest .
From 1982 to 1983 he participated in the planning and implementation of the European premiere of the reconstructed film Napoleon by Abel Gance , presented by Francis Ford Coppola in the Waldbühne, followed by a tour of Germany. The desired success did not materialize, however, so that Konzack had to file for bankruptcy for the Albatros, which also meant the end of the concerts in the Kant cinema.
In addition, from 1983 to 1996, Konzack was managing director and partner of hit & run promotion GmbH as an artist manager for Die Ärzte , DÖF , Humpe & Humpe , Extrabreit u. a. In 1987 he took part in the design of the exhibition project Feeling and Hardness - On the History of German Rock Music for the Goethe Institute .
From 1987 to 1991, Konzack was managing director and partner of the concert promoter Zetka Show & Concert GmbH with which he u. a. produced the concert for Berlin on November 12, 1989 on the occasion of the fall of the Berlin Wall . A documentary film was made of the concert and premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 1990 . From 1991, Konzack dealt with merchandising and event marketing until he retired from professional life in 2001.
RCK Art Foundation
Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, stimulated by his acquaintance with Wolfgang Mertens from the DEPLANA art gallery, he started collecting works of art.In 2007, he founded the RCK Art Foundation, into which a large part of his 200-plus works flowed, with the aim of preserving the collection and making it accessible to the public . In 2009 the first exhibition took place in Berlin. Konzack has lived in Damshagen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania since 2015 .
Web links
- Reinhard Konzack Art Foundation
- Conny and the band Extrabreit
- discogs.com
- Conny at the IMDB
- Torsten Haak: Kant-Lichtspiele - cinema, concerts, tradition ... berlinreporter.eu, July 17, 2014, accessed on March 10, 2017 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ December 24, 1975 Metropolis, Berliner Rock Ensemble - Rockinberlin. Retrieved December 24, 2019 .
- ↑ berlinreporter.eu
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Konzack, Reinhard |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Konzack, Conny |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German artist manager and cinema operator |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1950 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |