Gruenspan
The Gruenspan is an internationally known music club, event center and concert hall in Große Freiheit No. 58 in Hamburg-St. Pauli .
To the tradition of the location
The tradition of the location reveals a lot about the change in the nightlife culture of the district. The first dance salon in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg was built in 1889 in the same place where the Gruenspan is located today - the Palmengarten . With its nine-meter-high vaulted ceiling supported by columns, its acoustics were designed so that the guests could hear the live music well anywhere in the hall. The music came from an orchestral shell and was likely to have been performed by one of the string quartets or quintets customary at the time, which played for the classical couple dance. But 20 years later it was over. From 1909 to 1919, No. 58 was redesigned into one of the hippodromes that were then fashionable . For this purpose, a ring was built and the orchestra pit was moved to the second floor. "Then scantily clad girls rode in circles to music on horses", reports the managing director of Gruenspan GmbH Robert Hager.
In 1919 the venue was converted into a so-called movie theater, i.e. a cinema. With 800 seats, twice as many people went in as can fit in today's Gruenspan . From 1930 the building became a bathing establishment for St. Pauli for three decades, with wash tubs, saunas and steam bath. From 1963 to 1968 the house was again a dance palace and cinema, most recently under the name Hit Club .
Foundation and naming
In 1968, a year of great change, the Hamburg local operators Dervis Börü and Dr. Karl Lehwald the "dilapidated shed" and turned it into the "Gr ü nspan" (now "Gr ue nspan" written). The name "Grünspan" not only alludes to the copper roofs that are typical of Hamburg and which turn green over time, but is also intended as a reference to Herschel Grynszpan , the Polish resistance fighter of the Jewish faith.
Special marks
The fact that the location was soon able to assert itself on an equal footing with Round House and UFO in London, the Paradiso in Amsterdam and the CBGB in New York in terms of reputation and acceptance had something to do with some special characteristics that shaped its early days and thus its international reputation .
architectural art
The “poppy” wall painting on the 70 meter long side facade and the entrance area of the building, with a total of 500 square meters of painted space, contributed to the music club's quick popularity and later world fame, as it were, “at first glance” -Painting Europe and one of the largest in the world became famous. The colorful structure was designed by Pop Art artists Dieter Glasmacher and Werner Nöfer , while artist colleague Jürgen Klossowski, who lives in the Hanseatic city, took care of the technical implementation and execution of their idea sketches. Although she is now badly weathered and extremely urgent need for the renovation, the mural is now one of the most popular attractions, a curious-making visual attraction of the Kiez and a welcome day in day Background Selfie -Schnappschüsse of music-loving young people from around the world.
DJing
The fact that up to 3,000 people came to the new place of entertainment on the first weekend days after the founding had a lot to do with the fact that it was the first discotheque where the music was no longer live (with a correspondingly limited repertoire), but whole current and selected by a DJ , from the record came and thundered through huge loudspeaker boxes into the hall. For this purpose, the operators brought in "decoys" like the two artists Natias Neutert and Walter Thielsch with their very subjective selection of the very latest rock and pop music and their subversive sayings as DJs at the mixer in the early days , before they decided to do so in the following years Contemporaries who were available at all times, worked Tuesday through Sunday and only got Monday off; including “DJ Lothar”, who has remained legendary to this day.
Light shows
Another special feature was the reputation of being a “disco with psychedelic flickering light from slide and film projectors”, as a description from the days after it was founded went.
Responsible for this was the Swiss lighting designer Bruno Schmidli, who with the help of strong light sources from old projectors and a mixture of oils and colors projected constantly changing sequences of images onto the big screen. One of his boldest experiments was this: to the music of the British folk rock band Fairport Convention , he made hundreds of water fleas dance - with enough room for survival between two glass plates. A show that got around the world. The photographer Günter Zint , who is probably most closely associated with St. Pauli , also provided for a few months on-site 'psychedelic slides', which he fabricated “from paint, glycerine and oil”. The first stroboscopic effects came from him, "until the projectors were stolen from me in a break-in," as he remembers. Documentary photos of it can be viewed in the St. Pauli Museum.
From the discotheque to the concert hall
Grünspan became known when it was primarily still a discotheque for playing progressive rock in all its forms. During the 1970s, as a leisure guide at the time noted, it was primarily a destination for "hippie and beat types, students, art disciples, abandoned husbands, young intellectuals, all of the bohemians from near and far."
As in the 1980s, the House called electronic dance music came up, an evening pleasure every time took place every Thursday of "House Club", between 2000 and 3000 people frequented. However, the transition point from the dance palace to the concert hall was in 1995. After the building, including the exterior painting, had been thoroughly renovated, from now on it became a real concert hall: Live music was fully introduced. One of the highlights, especially as a TV event that was circulated millions of times in the mass media, was the live performance recorded for the Rockpalast by REM in Gruenspan in 1998.
Diversity as a principle
Among everything that has performed there since then, there are big names in solo artists and bands like Bryan Adams , Alice in Chains , Grandmaster Flash , Jack Johnson , Linkin Park , The Mavericks , Mayer Hawthorne , Millencolin , Morcheeba , Pet Shop Boys , Seeed or Turbonegro - pop music protagonists of completely different styles: rock , grunge , rap , pop , nu metal , soul , skate punk , trip hop , electropop , reggae , punk 'n' roll , new country . Freely adapted from Paul Feyerabend : "The only general principle that does not hinder progress is: Anything goes."
Award
- 1969 Builder Prize of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f Matthias Kahrs: "For me the Gruenspan is St. Pauli" . In: St. Pauli Blog / Schlaglicht. March 20, 2015.
- ^ Armin Fuhrer : Herschel: The assassination attempt of Herschel Grynszpan on November 7, 1938 and the beginning of the Holocaust. Berlin Story Verlag, 2013. ISBN 978-3-86368-101-2 .
- ↑ See review by Rainer Blasius: Shots in the Palais Beauharnais . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . 3rd November 2013.
- ^ Raphael Gross : November 1938. The catastrophe before the catastrophe . Beck, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-406-65470-1 .
- ↑ Christoph Dallach: Pop literature: From stoners and artists . In: Der Spiegel . December 24, 2010.
- ↑ After the death of the latter in 2011, an event entitled Thank you Walter took place in Gruenspan, with which closest friends, artistic colleagues and clients of his graphic arts paid their last respects.
- ↑ See also journalists as Disc Jockeys NDR broadcast with Natias Neutert on August 29, 1971, 7 p.m.
- ↑ See Benny's comment in the appendix from: http://st.pauli-news.de/schlaglicht/das-gruenspan-ist-fuer-mich-st-pauli/
- ^ Comment by Günter Zint in the appendix from http://st.pauli-news.de/schlaglicht/das-gruenspan-ist-fuer-mich-st-pauli/
- ↑ Cf. Günter Zint in an interview with Uli Kreikebaum: "Many have remained megalomaniac" . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . May 10, 2010.
- ↑ http://www.kiezmuseum.de
- ^ Paul Feyerabend: Against method pressure . Frankfurt am Main 1976, ISBN 3518060074 .
Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 6.2 " N , 9 ° 57 ′ 29.4" E