Eberhard Knopf

Leopold Wilhelm Georg Eberhard Knopf (born April 24, 1858 in Wernigerode , † May 2, 1945 in Hamburg ) was a German blacksmith , innkeeper and cinema operator .

Live and act

Eberhard Knopf was the son of Leopold Wilhelm Eberhard Knopf and his wife Henriette Christiane, née Riemenschneider. He attended school, trained as a blacksmith and then went hiking. Around 1890 he moved to Hamburg, where he worked in the restaurant trade on St. Pauli . In 1900 he opened his own restaurant at Spielbudenplatz 21 with “Eberhard Knopf's Konzert- und Automatenhaus”. In addition to musical entertainment, Knopf also showed moving images here. Initially, it was short film strips that ran in an automatic kinetoscope . On February 20, 1900, Knopf presented the "Living Motion Picture" for the first time. He showed three short films 25 and 30 meters long, which were projected using a device. Knopf had thus opened the first permanent cinema in Hamburg. Knopf bought the films and played the tapes until they were unusable. In the beginning he did not offer a changing program, but soon afterwards he also offered short feature films.

Since the movie theater in Knopf's concert and machine building was well received, the approximately 600 seats were soon no longer enough. Knopf bought more houses at Spielbudenplatz 19 and 20, which had previously been used as "Halls of Mirrors" and for the "Hagenbeck'sche Raubtierschau". The cinema now offered space for 1,100 spectators and had oil heating. Knopf used the most modern demonstration devices of the time from the Leitz works in Wetzlar . On November 3, 1908, he became a member of the Hamburg State Association.

During the First World War , Knopf cared for wounded people. After the end of the war in 1919, he converted the cinema into a GmbH and took over the management himself. Seven years later he liquidated the company; Martha Struckmeyer continued the business together with her husband.

Eberhard Knopf died in his retirement home in Hamburg-Bergedorf in mid-1945. The cinema was hardly damaged during the Second World War and was used for film screenings until the early 1970s. It was then converted into an erotic cinema. The Docks disco has been located in the premises since 1988 .

literature

• Volker Reissmann: Button, Eberhard . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 4 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8353-0229-7 , pp. 195 .

Web links

• Eberhard Knopf on Filmmuseum-Hamburg.de