Heinz Smell

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Heinz Riech (born July 5, 1922 in Adlig Kermuschienen , East Prussia; † January 11, 1992 in Bad Rothenfelde ) was a German film salesman from Freckenhorst .

Life

After the Second World War , he worked as a traveling cinema operator and opened his first permanent film theater in Münster in 1955, the Castle Theater . Riech first took over individual film theaters with which he built up a small cinema chain, and later complete cinema chains. The film theater company Heinz Riech took over the Olympic film theater company (17 cinemas) and in 1971 from Bertelsmann the UFA-Theater AG (35 cinemas) for 43 million DM, under whose name the company would operate in the future.

At the time of the takeover of UFA , the state of the cinema industry in Germany was extremely desolate. Many houses were unprofitable because they had been built at the height of the cinema , in the 1950s, and were oversized for the now smaller audience.

Riech countered this crisis with a coup for which he was criticized a lot, especially by film lovers: the introduction of the so-called box cinema . For this purpose, an existing cinema hall was divided into several smaller "cinemas", which were called playback units within the industry .

By dividing the cinemas into so-called cinema centers, Riech achieved greater flexibility in playback. A successful film could be transferred to smaller and smaller cinemas when the audience's interest decreased - so the film could be evaluated to the maximum without having to run in front of an empty house. The victims of this practice were the post-production theaters , i.e. cinemas in the city districts and in the country. Since Riech took care of the post-production dates in his centers, many smaller cinemas had to close.

Since business with the cinema centers was booming, Riechs UFA was able to keep expanding. At the time of his death in 1992 there were 453 cinemas in 67 German cities - so Heinz Riech was Europe's largest cinema operator at that time. His theater park also included large, representative and historic cinemas such as the Passage Kino , Streit's Filmtheater , the Grindel and the UFA-Palast on Gänsemarkt (all four in Hamburg), the Royal Palast , the Marble House and the Filmbühne Wien in (West-) Berlin, the UFA-Palast and the Capitol am Ring in Cologne and the Royal (formerly MGM) in Frankfurt am Main. The economic success of the cinema king in the 70s and 80s is considered undisputed.

He has come under several criticisms for the business methods used to achieve this. For example, Riech made national headlines in 1985 when he unceremoniously closed several cinemas in Freiburg im Breisgau to prevent the establishment of a works council and reopened them a few weeks later through another company belonging to UFA. In 1989 the Cartel Office imposed heavy fines on Riech, another cinema operator and two film distributors after they had agreed to exclude a competitor in Karlsruhe from film deliveries.

Riech saw a particular challenge after German reunification. He acquired the film theater in the former GDR in packages from the Treuhandanstalt . This brought a lot of work to the UFA, as this new theater park had to be brought up to date. However, Riech did not live to see its completion, he died on January 11, 1992. The management of UFA-Theater AG was taken over by his only son, Volker Riech.

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personal data
SURNAME Smell, Heinz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German film salesman
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Noble Kermuschinen , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH January 11, 1992
Place of death Bad Rothenfelde