Homes Fey Cinema
The Homes Fey cinema on Kohlmarkt in Vienna in 1902 as a world panorama from from Brno originating Emil Gottlieb founded. In addition to curiosities such as a “self-playing piano” or abnormality shows in a separate hall, there were also daily “cinematographic presentations”.
Emil Gottlieb and his wife, née Fey , had traveled through the entire monarchy with his shows . The cinema was in the basement of a corner building. In 1905 the “World Panorama” was renamed “Homes-Fey-Theater”, later to “Homes-Fey-Davenport”. In 1909 the cinema had 180 visitors. In 1914 the entire building was converted into a cinema and renamed "Kohlmarkt Kino". However, it had to close just a year later.
Despite the comparatively short lifespan of the cinema, the journalist of the “ Neue Wiener Tagblatt ”, Robert Braun, remembered it in an article from October 20, 1934:
As a boy, I had a free go out on Saturday afternoons, and then the route usually led me to the Kohlmarkt, where the first cinema in our town was set up: It was called Homes and Fey. Mr. Homes, the owner, stood in front of the entrance between the notice boards leaning against the wall and made the crier. It looked like the director of a Schmierenbühne, was tall, had a red face, its chin stuck between the tips of a patricide, and its by no means exaggerated promotion of the latest living pictures and other oddities was difficult to resist. So I went down a few steps in advance to a vaulted cellar, where, if I was late, I was accommodated in a special room. It was called 'Das Weltpanorama', and after I had climbed the high seat I was able to see the most varied cities and landscapes through the lenses of a bioscope. Then the loud invitation from Mr. Homes made us enter the cinema room, which smelled of empty theater. And now on the hanging white curtain began the crackling game of 'living pictures', which, at that time still without music, developed from a rain net into tangled, jerking pieces. Mr Homes, who sat down in one of the seats in the aisle, gave his explanations in an echoing voice. And then we went on a short trip, during which an omnibus grew so rapidly to gigantic size that one might think that now and now it would drive right into us. Then there was a fairy tale or, in a few short acts, a Wild West story with a log cabin and with men in cowboy trousers, with a silent shot firing a rival in the rattling of the film. Unfortunately, this passed all too quickly. But I still had one last surprise when I stepped outside again. It was through a rear exit, and so I was at a different point on the street than where I had entered and first had to find my way for a few moments, dazed by all the oddities. When the lanterns were already burning on the way home, I felt comfortable enjoying so much strangeness.
Individual evidence
- ^ Office for Vienna Theater Research . Retrieved February 21, 2019.
Coordinates: 48 ° 12 ′ 31.7 ″ N , 16 ° 22 ′ 2.9 ″ E