Latin Quarter (Berlin)

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Varieté Wintergarten on Potsdamer Strasse, 2010. Berlin's Latin Quarter was on the
ground floor for 17 years .

The Latin Quarter at Potsdamer Strasse 96 in the Tiergarten district of Berlin was a concert venue that was operated between 1972 and 1990. From 1992, the new winter garden vaudeville found its place in its largest hall .

history

The facility was taken over in 1972 by the married couple Christa and Manfred ("Manne") Saß and continued under the name Quartier Latin , reminding of the more famous area in Paris .

The premises were set up in 1913 by Artur Wolff as the Kino Biophon Theater Lichtspiele on the ground floor and in the courtyard of a residential building that was built in 1896. During the Nazi era , the cinema was called BTL-Lichtspiele , operated by the owners Brandt & Deutsch.

BTL-Lichtspiele cinema ticket, around 1940

The building remained largely undamaged during World War II . As early as 1946, cinema screenings took place again, the cinema now continued to operate as BTL-Lichtspiele.

Extensive renovation work, planned and carried out by the then operator Karl Heger in the mid-1950s , led to a significant increase in the size of the demonstration room, which now offered space for 800 visitors. Heger took over the cinema from UFA in 1955 and ceased operations in October 1967.

The premises of the residential building above and next to the cinema (front building and side wing) have been used by numerous traders from various industries as offices or workshops since the 1910s. Among many others, the FDP had its Berlin administrative headquarters on the second floor of the building, but gave it up again in 1971.

After the BTL cinema closed in October 1967, it stood empty for a while. After some efforts against the authorities, the Berlin liqueur manufacturer Johann Mews received permission in September 1968 to convert the movie theater into an "entertainment venue". He then ran the “Veilchen am Potsdamer Platz” as a restaurant and ballroom, but closed it again in 1970.

In 1970, the new operator of the former cinema was Epicur GmbH, which at that time was already running the Steve Club and Quasimodo (today: Quasimodo), both music bars in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg. With the takeover of the former “Festsaal” in Potsdamer Strasse, the Epicur shareholders connected larger plans, and they also gave the name Quartier Latin a name. But they gave up after almost two years due to economic difficulties and looked for someone who could take over the Latin Quarter through newspaper advertisements.

The former ship's cook and pub owner Manfred Saß read the advertisement in Hamburg and decided in the summer of 1972 with his wife Christa to take over and run the Latin Quarter. Initially, he maintained it primarily as a pub and restaurant, mainly using the former cinema foyer and occasionally playing in the hall with mostly self-organized concerts, for example by the blues musician champion Jack Dupree .

Thanks to the collaboration of journalist and photographer Klaus Achterberg , who hired artists from 1974, planned concerts and set up monthly programs, the Latin Quarter gradually developed into a concert venue with a lot of folk, blues and jazz, shortly afterwards also rock and pop live presented was. Numerous annual series of events, such as the improvisational music festival Total Music Meeting of Free Music Production, the Jazz in July festival or Rock News, the rock competition of the Berlin Senate, took place in the Latin Quarter.

In the 1960s and 1970s, little effort had been made to maintain or even modernize the rooms. It was not until 1981 that the facility was thoroughly renovated with the support of the Senate, which had provided around 500,000 marks for it.

The Saß family ran the Latin Quarter (the "shop") from 1972 to 1989. The lettering above the two entrances was black on a white background in oval frames and in capital letters .

In the Latin Quarter there were mainly concerts to which well-known singers and music groups were invited. The performances of Ton Steine ​​Schorben , Peter Brötzmann and Albert Mangelsdorff (1970s), Udo Lindenberg , Herbert Grönemeyer (1984), Blixa Bargeld with the Einstürzende Neubauten (1986), Nina Hagen , Tamara Danz with the band Silly ( 1989), die Puhdys , Pankow , Die Ärzte , Wolfgang Niedecken , Phillip Boa and the Voodooclub or Barbara Thalheim (1989, 1990). The West Berlin Senate supported the operators, for example, by financing the aforementioned annual rock competition with awards. A total of almost 6,000 individual events took place in the Latin Quarter from 1970 to 1989.

The Latin Quarter was given up at the end of 1989 due to a rent increase that could no longer be achieved by the operators. Now the private people Holger Klotzbach (from the 3 Tornados ), Lutz Deisinger and Wolfgang Niedecken from BAP took over the shop, which from then on was only called Quartier . Concerts were held for some time under the shortened name, but the three also tried to continue the business with variety shows, cabaret, theater and other public events. Since this did not succeed, the Latin had to close, the premises were empty. (Klotzbach and Seisinger then founded the bar of every reason .)

Only the trio of Peter Schwenkow , André Heller and Bernhard Paul succeeded in making a comeback for the cultural location on Potsdamer Straße in 1992 with the revitalization of the winter garden.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Andreas Kurtz: Beloved store . In: Berliner Zeitung , August 3, 2018, p. 15. (print edition).
  2. ↑ a b c Kino Biophon on www.allekinos.com, accessed on September 25, 2018.
  3. ^ Potsdamer Strasse 96> Brandt & Deutsch . In: Berliner Adreßbuch , 1943, III, p. 673.
  4. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, p. 311.
  5. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 274–275.
  6. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 314–317.
  7. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 28–41.
  8. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 43–44.
  9. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 132–138.
  10. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 86–90.
  11. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, p. 138.
  12. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 146–155.
  13. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 236–245.
  14. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 338–357.
  15. ^ Quartier Latin - Berlin's legendary music store 1970–1989, pp. 318–326.
  16. ↑ Der Tagesspiegel , May 29, 2018.

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 8 "  N , 13 ° 21 ′ 52.3"  E