World Games (Hanover)

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World Games was the name of a building erected in Hanover at the beginning of the " Golden Twenties " and the cinema that was operated in it during the silent film era . It made a name for itself primarily through numerous world premieres and guest performances by popular actors and, as the largest Hanover theater, experienced its heyday in the 1950s. The property was located at Georgstrasse at the corner of Kleine Packhofstrasse and Heiligerstrasse in what is now the Mitte district .

history

Immediately after the peak of the German hyperinflation triggered by the First World War , a separate film theater was planned during the Weimar Republic , for which a separate theater was built on Georgstrasse in 1924 . Right from the start, the World Games showed important silent films in the “Roaring Twenties” that followed, with famous actors such as Henny Porten appearing on stage in person at the premieres .

At the beginning of the 1930s the theater was rebuilt. At the time of National Socialism , the World Games in 1936 became the property of UFA , under which the building was rebuilt. Set in the Second World War , in 1941, in which, through the action Lauterbacher the Jews of the city in the so-called " Jewish houses " as the Ahlem Israelite School of Horticulture isolated were for later transport to the death camps , the World Games showed Germany's first color film , the under Directed by Georg Jacoby with the actors Marika Rökk , Willy Fritsch , Georg Alexander and other filmed music films Women are better diplomats . This type of entertainment in the world games found by the bombing of Hannover an abrupt end: The building was by the bombs of the Allies destroyed in the bomb night of 9 October 1943 and on the ground.

The new building for the World Games took place at the original location, initiated by the film businessman Robert Billerbeck . Billerbeck built the new world games as Hanover's largest cinema with 1160 seats. On 24 March 1949, the theater opened with the directed by Clarence Brown turned US feature film Song of Love with Katharine Hepburn and Paul Henreid in the lead roles .

In the years of the economic miracle of the 1950s, the world games now experienced their heyday with German entertainment films. The Hanoverians and their guests saw numerous German productions in particular as world premieres in the cinema on Georgstrasse. Soon the world games could thoroughly modernized are: In 1954, the interior was redone, a 13-meter wide screen - screen installed and a stereophonic installed sound system.

With growing prosperity and the arrival of televisions in German apartments from the 1960s, however, the beginning German cinema crisis also made itself felt in the world games. In 1975 Robert Billerbeck sold the building to the Woolworth department store chain , which had previously rented part of the building. Now only a tenant himself, Billerbeck was able to continue to operate the World Games as sole owner , but at the end of his lease had to accept his worst competitor as a co-partner, the "King of the Cinema" Heinz Riech . Riech had previously offered Woolworth such a “ horrific rent” that Billerbeck had no choice but to accept Riech as co-owner of “his” World Games. In 1980 Billerbeck also sold his own shares in Riech, but this could not stop the gradual decline of the World Games.

In 1991 the City of Hanover finally approved the demolition of the World Games in favor of a new department store building for Woolworth. The branch , which was completed in 1994, was abandoned by the Woolworth Group in 2002.

literature

Specifically:

  • Sabine Guckel: World Games Georgstraße. Cinemas in Hanover , in Adelheid von Saldern et al. : Everyday life between Hindenburg and Haarmann. Another city guide through Hanover in the 20s , publisher: Geschichtswerkstatt Hannover, Hamburg: VSA-Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-87975-397-0 , pp. 27-38
  • Rolf Aurich (editor) and a .: cinematographic dreams. Kino in Hannover 1896–1991 Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Theater am Aegi from October 6th to November 24th 1991, Hannover: Gesellschaft für Filmstudien , 1991, passim
  • Susanne Höbermann, Pamela Müller (Red.): We child prodigies. 100 years of film production in Lower Saxony , catalog for the traveling exhibition of the same name , initially in the Hanover Historical Museum from October 15, 1995 to January 14, 1996, published by the Society for Film Studies eV, Hanover: R & T Verlag, 1995, passim
  • Hugo Thielen : World Games. In: Klaus Mlynek, Waldemar R. Röhrbein (eds.) U. a .: City Lexicon Hanover . From the beginning to the present. Schlütersche, Hannover 2009, ISBN 978-3-89993-662-9 , p. 669.
  • Michael Zgoll: Cinema history in the city of Leinestadt A look back at Hanover's film palaces / For younger people the Cinemaxx in Nikolaistraße may already be a traditional cinema - but when it comes to the century, the founding date of 1991 is of course nothing. In 1896 the first Hanover cinema opened its doors in Georgstrasse , with a picture gallery of historical photographs in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung from July 31, 2013; last accessed online on August 1, 2014

General:

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Hugo Thielen: World Games (see literature)
  2. ↑ World Games - History ... (see under the section Web Links )
  3. ^ Peter Schulze : Action Lauterbacher. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover , p. 17
  4. ↑ Note: Deviating from this, Billerbeck's biography, both in the Hanoverian Biographical Lexicon (p. 57; preview in the Google book search) and in the City Lexicon of Hanover, probably erroneously names Bahnhofstrasse as the location of the new World Games
  5. ↑ Compare, for example, the photograph from 1959 in the digitized version uploaded to the Photo Archive Photo Marburg
  6. ↑ a b Capital , Vol. 20, Capital Verlagsgesellschaft, 1981, p. 21; Preview in Google Book Search

Coordinates: 52 ° 22 ′ 29.4 "  N , 9 ° 44 ′ 9.7"  E