Gloria palace

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Neon sign of the Gloria Palace, 2008

The Gloria-Palast was an important movie theater in Berlin on Kurfürstendamm 10 / 10a (later: Kurfürstendamm 12/13). It existed from 1925 to 1998. After that, the cinema had to give way to other uses, and it was finally demolished in 2017.

history

Gloria Palace in the Romanesque House

Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and the old Gloria Palast (right), around 1940
Ruins of the first Gloria Palace July 1945 ( Special Film Project 186 )

The neo-baroque cinema was built in 1924–1925 by Ernst Lessing and Max Bremer on the first to third floors of the first Romanesque house , which was built between 1894 and 1896 by Franz Schwechten . In order to preserve the listed facade, no new building was built, but the existing one was gutted and its inner courtyard was built over. The cinema was equipped with 1200 seats.

The Gloria-Palast opened on January 26, 1926 with a pantomime by Frank Wedekind and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's film adaptation of Molières Tartuffe . In 1930 the film was at the Gloria Palace on April 1, The Blue Angel , and on August 15 the film Under the Roofs of Paris by René Clair premiered.

In 1943, the cinema was destroyed by a bomb strike and the subsequent fire in World War II.

Post-war construction

New Gloria Palace with Gloriette, 1985

After the war, the destroyed cinema was rebuilt in 1953 on a section of the former building site: At Kurfürstendamm 12, the architects Siegfried Fehr and Gerhard Jäckel built a five-storey reinforced concrete skeleton building with a grid facade. For a few years the cinema was one of the venues for the International Film Festival (Berlinale).

In 1971 the hall was rebuilt. A year later, a small hall, the Gloriette , was added in the basement. In 1986 both halls were completely rebuilt as part of the new construction of the Gloria-Passage .

On August 15, 1998, the Gloria Palace was closed. After renovations, the restored foyer of the former cinema with the ticket booth and the spiral staircase as well as the also listed neon sign on the facade were still preserved. At the beginning of the 2000s, Centrum Holding and RFR Frankfurt am Main became owners of the property. In September 2008, the jeans label Replay opened its second store in Berlin in the former cinema. In 2015/2016, the owner submitted an appraisal that considers the facade of the 1950s to be no longer stable. He had submitted an application for (partial) demolition and conversion or new construction. At the beginning of 2017, the decision was made that the Gloria-Palast would be demolished despite being listed. The reason is that if the former cinema was to be refurbished, the “monument-defining substance” could not be preserved.

New building of the Gloria Berlin

Following the demolition of the cinema building in early 2017, the Gloria Berlin will be built on the Kurfürstendamm 12-15 area according to plans by the architects Ortner & Ortner . It is a steel and glass complex consisting of two office and commercial buildings, which, with a few small details , is to be designed as a memorial building . The neighboring Wilhelminian style building is being renovated under the direction of architects Petra and Paul Kahlfeldt and is also part of the Gloria Berlin project . The neon advertising, the spiral staircase and the ticket booth from the foyer of the old Gloria Palace were initially stored. The costs for the new building project are given as "several hundred million" euros . The work was delayed, however, because the design of the new building and the outbuilding did not seem appropriate to the overall situation. In particular, the structural connections to the neighboring houses, the technology projected on the roof were not integrated into the architecture and the real division of the two houses was not clear, as there should be only one entrance. In October 2017, the modified design with a clear facade separation of the two new buildings as well as a lowering of the top floor for the necessary building technology was accepted by the building board. Five floors are planned above ground, and an underground car park is to be built. On the three lower floors, around 11,000 square meters of usable space are available for several retailers. The upper floors will contain office space. The groundbreaking ceremony for the new building took place in May 2018 .

literature

  • Hans-Jürgen Tast: Cinemas in the 1980s. Example: Berlin / West (=  googly eyes 35). Kulleraugen, Schellerten 2008, ISBN 978-3-88842-035-1 .
  • Norbert Huse (Ed.): Lost. endangered. protected. Architectural monuments in Berlin. Exhibition in the former occupational safety center in Berlin-Charlottenburg. December 7, 1988 to March 5, 1989 , herein: pp. 313-315.
  • Ditta Ahmadi: movie theaters. In: Berlin and its buildings. Volume 5: Buildings for art, education and science. Part A: Buildings for Art. Ernst, Berlin a. a. 1983, ISBN 3-433-00944-9 , in particular pp. 167-169 and 190.
  • From the Filmpalast to the Zoo-Palast cinema center , ed. vom Zentrum am Zoo Geschäftsbauten AG, Berlin 1983, therein: pp. 27–40.
  • The "Gloria-Palast" in Berlin . In: Bauwelt 47, 1953, pp. 927–929.
  • Armin Arents: Left Senator for Culture hands over the Gloria Palast to the executioner. At: Menschen und Medien , January 2018.
  • Heinz Frick: My Gloria Palast. Universitas 1985, ISBN 9783800411191 .

Web links

Commons : Gloria-Palast (Berlin)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulrich Paul: Kurfürstendamm - Plans for the new construction of the Gloria-Palast presented , In: Berliner Zeitung , May 2, 2016, accessed on March 26, 2019.
  2. ↑ Matthias Vogel: Architects have to sit in detention: New building for Gloria-Palast is delayed. At: berliner-woche.de , September 1, 2017, accessed on March 26, 2019.
  3. ↑ Cay Dobberke: Groundbreaking for Gloria Berlin In: tagesspiegel.de , May 3, 2018, accessed on March 27, 2019.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '15.9 "  N , 13 ° 19' 58.9"  E