Filmburg (Hamburg)
The Filmburg at Veringstrasse 60 in the Hamburg district of Wilhelmsburg was a cinema building from 1929. It was considered "a particularly significant cinema building of the 1920s" and was used as a shop and for residential purposes from its closure in 1961 until the building was demolished.
history
The film castle was commissioned by Friedrich Renziehausen and his wife during the Weimar Republic in 1929, after Renziehausen had already moved from Hanover to Wilhelmsburg in 1920 to initially continue to operate the older monopoly theater with its 400 seats on a lease basis. With the experience gained in this way and the foresight about the coming technical innovations for the presentation of moving images, the couple wanted to build a new building that would be suitable for decades if possible. However, since a correspondingly large plot of land was not available near the old location between Fährstrasse and Vogelhüttendeich, the couple chose a building site that had been created by the area in the middle part of Veringstrasse that had only recently been flushed out. The Filmburg, built there in 1929, was the only building in the area until the 1930s, when the street row and what was then Weimarer Straße were also built on.
In the first few years the Filmburg, with its 720 seats advertised as the “largest film theater on the Elbe island”, only showed silent films that were accompanied by record music from 1931 onwards. It was not until 1932 that the optical sound system could also be used.
During the Second World War , the building was damaged several times by aerial bombs since the first air raids on Hamburg . Even after the death of the two company founders in 1942 and 1944, A. Renziehausen & Co. remained in family ownership and was continued by the couple's daughters, Hertha Arnecke and Irmgard Wille: The Filmburg was allowed to operate just a few weeks after the collapse of the Third Reich as one of the first of ten movie theaters in Hamburg at the time, it was back to showing films for the German civilian population on July 27, 1945 .
To mark the 25th anniversary of the founding, the Renziehausen daughters had the Filmburg redesigned in a construction period of three weeks in 1954 and brought it up to the latest state of the art of film technology: the interior walls and ceilings conveyed more comfort and "warmth" through a new, stepped division Thanks to the enlarged stage, visitors were now able to see films of all formats produced using optical and magnetic sound , right through to screenings in widescreen format (up to 4.50 meters high and 12.50 meters wide). A system for the hard of hearing was also installed.
Building description
The well-preserved building is considered "[...] as a particularly significant cinema building from the 1920s". Although references to the former cinema are no longer attached to the building, the three-storey structure with its flat roof uses simple means that can be read from the outside to indicate its original purpose. The multi-storey cinema facade subdivides the building according to its purpose: behind a large canopy and the foyer , the hall can also be seen from the street. The simple living or office floors above the ground floor with its cinema entrance show external wall pillars and are accessed by highlighted staircases.
Web links
- Film castle. In: cinema database. Film and TV Museum Hamburg, accessed on February 27, 2020 .
- Peter Pforr: The film castle on the private site alt-wilhelmsburg.de , with two historical recordings
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Volker Reissmann (responsible): Filmburg ( Memento from June 11, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) on the page filmmuseum-hamburg.de
- ↑ a b c d e Ernst Reinstorf: "Filmburg" Wilhelmsburg / A. Renziehausen & Co. - Largest movie theater on the Elbe island. 720 seats . In this: history of the Elbe island Wilhelmsburg. From the beginning to the present , new edition of the first edition, ed. from the future Elbinsel Wilhelmsburg eV association (Hamburg: Verlag Buchhaus Wilhelmsburg, 1955), Norderstedt: Books on Demand GmbH, 2003, ISBN 3-8334-0282-2 , p. 342; Preview in Google Book Search
Coordinates: 53 ° 30 ′ 44.5 " N , 9 ° 59 ′ 14.1" E