Passage cinema

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The passage on Mönckebergstrasse

The Passage Kino (also Passage Lichtspiele , Passage Theater , abbreviated also Das Passage und Passage ) is a cinema that has existed since 1913 in Mönckebergstrasse , in the middle of Hamburg's city ​​center. It is the oldest still in existence and almost continuously played movie theater in Hamburg.

The cinema has three projection halls of different sizes with a total of 635 seats. The high-quality interior of the halls and the foyer in the Art Deco style is based on the original furnishings after the opening at the beginning of the 20th century, with the original furnishings being largely taken over.

The main program of the Passage Kino includes current blockbusters , but also more demanding films with a special focus on European productions. There are also special screenings of music films , ballet performances , operas and concert films as well as sneak previews .

Technical Equipment

The Passage Kino has three projection halls, the large hall 1 with 380 seats, hall 2 with 220 and the studio called hall 3 with 35 seats. All halls are equipped with 3-D projectors from Kinoton and Barco , room 1 also with 4K and high frame rate technology. For the sound engineering, Dolby Digital 7.1 is used in the two large halls and a 5.1 system in room 3. The canvases measure 15.5 × 6.5 m (Hall 1), 8.9 × 3.7 m (Hall 2) and 4.5 × 1.9 m (Hall 3). Hall 1 is barrier-free . The visually and hearing impaired have the option of watching appropriately equipped films via the Greta & Starks apps .

history

Passage cinema foyer

The Passage Lichtspiele were built by Julius Cohn in the courtyard of the Mönckebergstrasse 17 office building and opened on November 1, 1913. The house was furnished very tastefully with marble , Persian carpets and fine woods. The large screening room with its surrounding balcony offered around 1000 seats. A special feature was the full orchestra pit in which the in-house orchestra accompanied the silent film program . In terms of programming, the cinema was primarily aimed at well-heeled educated citizens . Richard Wagner's film biography was shown in the opening performance and Enrico Caruso was the star guest in the box. In 1917, James Henschel took over the cinema and sold it to UFA a year later . After another four years, Hans Struckmeyer and Wilhelm Behnke took over the theater from Münchner Lichtspielkunst AG (MLK, today Bavaria Film ). After a thorough renovation, the Passage Lichtspielhaus reopened on July 23, 1925 as one of the most elegant houses in the German Reich . With Lloyd Bacon's musical drama The Singing Fool , the first was on December 20, 1929 sound film in Hamburg listed.

Even before the National Socialists came to power , the operators of the Passage Kino adjusted their programs ideologically to the new rulers. In addition to cinema films, propaganda films such as Volk ohne Raum were on the schedule. At the beginning of 1934, a planned takeover attempt by the UFA , in order to allow politicians to have more influence on the program, failed due to high compensation demands from the owners. With the course of the Second World War , the number of "stick it out" films increased. The planned world premiere of Helmut Käutner's and Hans Albers' Große Freiheit No. 7 in the Passage Kino failed because the film was refused approval for Germany. On March 20, 1945, two aircraft bombs hit the house without detonating, so that the game could continue.

After the war, British occupation forces confiscated the Passage Kino together with the Lessing Theater and Urania Cinema and closed it to the population. While the other Hamburg cinemas were gradually reopened, tough negotiations between the cinema owners and the British military government followed; finally, on July 4, 1951, the cinema was opened again. Before the cinema was handed over, however, the occupants stole the Art Nouveau decorations from the foyer. After three weeks of renovation, gaming operations could be resumed on June 28, 1951, due to a lack of current productions with the older film Irrwege Zwei Herzen . In 1964 the cinema was modernized. The tier of the hall was divided into a second screening room during ongoing operations, so that the house now offered two halls with 522 and 271 seats. In April 1977, a former office was expanded into a third " box cinema " with just 52 seats. In 1980 Heinz Riech took over the Passage Kino, which made the schedule less demanding. On May 31, 1988, Hans-Joachim Flebbe took over the passage in his CinemaxX AG and had the cinema expanded into the “most beautiful cinema in town”. As a special feature, the cinema also has a retractable and fold-out screen for wide - screen films . Numerous premieres and world premieres followed with the participation of international celebrities. After the rent for the cinema was increased in 2009, it was no longer possible to run it economically; the CinemaxX group focused its investments increasingly on multiplex cinemas , which was at the expense of traditional facilities such as the passage. Finally, Flebbe closed the passage on November 11, 2009. The city also made no efforts to maintain the cinema in order to counteract the evening desertification of the inner city that has been progressing for years outside of shop opening times .

In 2010, the Baden-Württemberg entrepreneur Heinz Lochmann took over the cinema. He had it renovated, luxuriously furnished and equipped with the latest demonstration technology for 1.7 million euros . It reopened on May 25, 2010. Regular gaming began the next evening with the preview of Sex and the City 2 . After the closure of Streit's Filmtheater on Jungfernstieg in April 2013, the popular program items such as sneak previews , English original versions and press screenings were taken over to the Passage Kino.

literature

  • Michael Töteberg: A passage through 100 years - calendar pages from an eventful life . In: Film- und Fernsehmuseum Hamburg e. V. (Ed.): Hamburger Flimmern . No. 20 , 2013, p. 4–10 ( PDF [accessed March 9, 2020]).
  • Jürgen Lossau: Passage-Kino: Fall of a City Palace . In: Film- und Fernsehmuseum Hamburg e. V. (Ed.): Hamburger Flimmern . No. 16 , 2009, p. 3 ( PDF [accessed March 9, 2020]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Menu items: Our cinema on das-passage.de
  2. ↑ a b c Michael Töteberg: A passage through 100 years - calendar pages from an eventful life . In: Film- und Fernsehmuseum Hamburg e. V. (Ed.): Hamburger Flimmern . No. 20 , 2013, p. 4–10 ( PDF [accessed February 26, 2020]).
  3. ^ Jürgen Lossau: Passage-Kino: Fall of a City Palace . In: Film- und Fernsehmuseum Hamburg e. V. (Ed.): Hamburger Flimmern . No. 16 , 2009, p. 3 ( PDF [accessed March 9, 2020]).
  4. ↑ Katja Engler: From the push cinema to the elegant cinema. In: The world. May 25, 2010, accessed March 9, 2020 .
  5. ↑ Andreas Baumann: Ceremonial reopening of the traditional Passage Kino Hamburg. Lochmann Filmtheaterbetriebe press release (PDF, accessed on March 23, 2020)
  6. ↑ Volker Reissmann: Last curtain on Jungfernstieg - the Streit's cinema was closed after 57 years . In: Film- und Fernsehmuseum Hamburg eV (Ed.): Hamburger Flimmern . No. 20 , 2013, p. 11–15 ( PDF [accessed February 26, 2020]).

Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 2.1 ″  N , 9 ° 59 ′ 54.1 ″  E