National (Lübeck)
The National was an early Lübeck cinema .
Tonhalle
On September 30, 1906, six months after the city's first cinema with Dierck's Hansa cinematograph went into operation, the former Lübeck furniture manufacturer and now privateer Eduard Senff opened in the hall of the former Tonhalle restaurant on the first floor of Schmiedestraße 20, the had served him as a storage room since 1904, a movie theater of the same name. The cinema was run as a family business in which Eduard Senff carried out the business, two of his sons worked as projectionists and a third was responsible for advertising . Senff's wife Agnes took over the sale of the tickets.
Until 1913, Senff worked primarily with the French film company Pathé Frères , but also showed films he had produced himself with his own cameras.
The Tonhalle was a popular cinema with a large regular audience, but has not been modernized in over 20 years. Eduard Senff spoke out against the renovation suggested by his sons in the mid-1920s , although the facility was now out of date and there was a risk that operation would be prohibited for violating fire safety regulations . After Senff's death in 1927, his widow and his eldest son Wilhelm continued the business and initiated modernization.
Capitol
At the beginning of 1929 the Tonhalle closed; the movie theater underwent a fundamental renovation that took over half a year. The cinema hall, moved from the first floor to the ground floor, was charged with a stage for live performances, a Hupfeld - cinema organ to the film support and a spectator balcony provided and ordered now has 684 seats. A foyer with a cash register and confectionery stand formed the entrance . The opening ceremony of the cinema, renamed Capitol , took place on September 9th , at which Ernst Albert also spoke.
It soon became apparent that the renovation had made two serious misjudgments. On the one hand, the newly emerged sound film had been neglected and the Capitol was designed entirely as a conventional silent film cinema. The Schauburg and the UT-Lichtspiele already had sound film devices, the Delta Palace also opened as a sound film theater after renovation on September 16. On the other hand, the Senff family had taken out loans to finance the modernization and calculated the repayment with the good visitor numbers of recent years. Due to the long renovation time, however, a large part of the regular audience had migrated to other cinemas. These problems were exacerbated by the beginning of the global economic crisis , which caused the audience numbers to drop significantly.
The situation worsened so much that the Senff family had to sell the Capitol in spring 1933 to Richard Wittenberg , the operator of the Rialto .
National
In the first half of 1933 the Capitol remained closed; Wittenberg had the cinema included in building plans that concerned a new shopping arcade on the other side of the block, on the parallel sand street. Construction work began in the autumn, with the cinema receiving a new entrance in the atrium of the shopping mall Sandstrasse 18. From now on only the exit led to Schmiedestrasse; The purpose of the separation was to avoid crowding between the newly arriving viewers and those who left the cinema between two performances. The number of places of the room has been reduced to 482, the new foyer was kept in simple shapes and - the time spirit to the seizure of the Nazis accordingly - with a bust Hitler equipped. The new name of the cinema, National , also reflected the new political conditions.
The National was opened on December 3, 1933 and quickly established itself as a popular cinema, although as a so-called follow-up cinema it mainly showed films that had already been shown in the larger cinemas.
At the beginning of 1934, rumors were spread in Lübeck that Wittenberg was of non-Aryan origin and had financed the renovation of the National with Jewish donors. Since the Lübeck newspapers refused to print Wittenberg's counter-statements, he tried to counter the rumors by distributing handouts with his statement.
Richard Wittenberg died soon afterwards; his wife Lydia continued to run the National with the family until it was hit by the British bombing raid on 28/29. March 1942 , which destroyed large parts of Lübeck's historic old town, was destroyed. After the war it was not rebuilt; 1951 drafted plans for a new cinema in the Sandstrasse were not implemented. Instead, Lydia Wittenberg opened the Burgtor-Lichtspiele with her son Kurt in 1948 .
See also
literature
- Petra Schaper: Cinemas in Lübeck . Verlag Graphische Werkstätten GmbH, Lübeck 1987. ISBN 3-925402-35-7