Conservatory (Varieté)
The Wintergarten was a variety theater south of the Friedrichstrasse train station in Berlin-Mitte , which was built around 1887 on the model of the Viennese theater. The venue, the winter garden of a hotel, also gave its name. Despite initially modest variety events, the theater developed into a stage with an international reputation. In 1895 it became the world's first commercial movie theater with the Skladanowsky brothers' Bioskop screenings . However, the development as a variety theater and as a stage for numerous other events ended after a bomb attack in 1944.
Under the traditional name, a cinema vaudeville opened in 1946 on Berlin's Hasenheide and again a vaudeville theater in 1992 - in place of the Latin Quarter - on Potsdamer Strasse in Berlin-Tiergarten .
The winter garden and its importance for the discovery of the variety show
The Central Hotel and its winter garden
Around 1880, Berlin was given the position of a center between East and West due to its geographic location, which led to heavy traffic and increasing numbers of visitors. As a result of the expansion of the local rail network and its connection to the international rail network, which should now run through the center of the city, a new central station at the Spree crossing on Friedrichstrasse , today's Friedrichstrasse station , was built next to the Potsdamer Bahnhof at Potsdamer Platz .
Hermann Gebers, owner of the “Stadtpark” garden restaurant on Friedrichstrasse, bought land around the new Central train station , tore down the old buildings and in 1877 began building the “ Central Hotel ”. The plan was to build a hotel that could measure up to the large hotels in Paris, London and New York in terms of size, shine and comfort. The new hotel provided for two parts, a hotel area and a palm garden, as they were in vogue in the Wilhelmine Empire. The winter garden should not only serve the guests as a place to relax, but also as a venue for concerts and theater performances.
The former winter garden was an elongated room 75 meters long and 23 meters wide and was lit by a large number of gas lamps. It had a total area of about 1,700 square meters. The room had a domed glass dome, and at the highest point the ceiling was 18 meters.
Poster: winter garden
The Centralhotel on Friedrichstrasse around 1900
Presentation in the winter garden, 1940
View of auditorium and stage, 1940
The winter garden as an event location
In the autumn of 1881, the winter garden, thanks to its luxurious interior, had established itself as a musically entertaining venue for the affluent and wealthy Berlin audience, who until then had mostly gone to the Philharmonie. The success of the variety show had its roots in these musical programs.
Until 1886 the events consisted mainly of instrumental concerts. The well-known and popular entertainment melodies predominated. It was not until the 1886 season that the programs were expanded to include dancers and singers. The search for new dramaturgical principles began, against the logical-ordering text templates, for open stories such as those offered by the circus or the revue, without beginning, without end, arbitrarily, but not accidentally. Against the predominance of the word, pictures were set, montages developed, new performance locations tried out; everyday life and theatrical play permeated each other.
The band now filled the breaks between the performances of the dancers and singers and not the other way around. The first variety program in the winter garden was created through the connection of the band, singers and dancers. There were always new artists and business people who experimented with forms of theatrical and artistic performance. The attraction of the improbable, the desire to be amazed, the longing for roaring laughter had a major influence on the direction of the program. In the autumn of 1886, the Berlin actor Franz Dorn (his real name was Grüger) and the Hungarian Julius Baron took over the winter garden and after renovation work in the summer of 1887 they announced the premiere program “Big Concert and Performance”.
The winter garden as a variety show
In the autumn of 1887 the winter garden was opened as a variety show. The winter garden became the most famous number theater in Berlin and the German Empire.
Due to the frequent program changes that are typical of a variety show, one was forced to come up with new and bigger sensations. On November 1, 1895, the first public and commercial film screening took place in the winter garden, where the brothers Max and Emil Skladanowsky showed their bioscope as part of the variety program.
In 1900 the winter garden was rebuilt again, which gave it its specific face, which was retained until it was destroyed in the war year 1944. The plans for the renovation were provided by the builder Bernhard Sehring , who became famous for building the Theater des Westens . Among other things, the glass dome was covered from the outside with flexible panels and the room was given an interior typical of a theater. Based on an idea by Bernhard Sehring , light bulbs were attached to the ceiling to imitate a starry sky. The Berliner Lokalanzeiger reported at the time: “The new starry sky was opened in the winter garden yesterday [...]. In the shine of countless twinkling stars, "golden lies in the sky-blue nothing", the new old hall shone, at the re-christening of which everything that belongs in Berlin to those who can be found everywhere where something is going. "
In 1928 Ludwig Schuch took over the house as director. Under his direction, it was rebuilt again and with almost 3,000 seats was one of the largest and most modern theaters in Europe next to the Great Playhouse. During the “wild” twenties , eccentric fashion and original talents such as the “flippant” Diseuse Claire Waldoff and the couplet singer Otto Reutter were shown . The orchestra was sunk in a ditch in front of the broad stage. The space on the terrace, where you could eat during the performance, cost six marks, in the entrance you could stand for one mark. Berlin proved to be the international capital of pleasure and the winter garden was the popular meeting place.
After 56 years of gaming and one last performance on June 21, 1944, the winter garden was destroyed by a bomb attack. The ruins of the winter garden were blown up in 1950.
Attempted new beginning after 1945
As early as December 1945, Berlin newspapers reported on the opening of a new winter garden in the New World on the Hasenheide. The initiator was Ludwig Goebel from Wintergarten GmbH. In September 1946, the game began, but in the hall, which could hold almost 1,600 spectators, mainly films were shown with an upstream stage show. In 1955 the cinema vaudeville closed.
The "third" winter garden
September 1992 - January 2009
Peter Schwenkow , the artist André Heller and Circus Roncalli boss Bernhard Paul rented the premises of the former Latin Quarter on Potsdamer Strasse and had them extensively redesigned. On September 25, 1992, in the presence of Siegfried & Roy , the venue called Wintergarten was opened with a festive gala premiere.
In April of the following year, the first big gala took place on the occasion of the award of the Echo record award . International stars like Phil Collins appeared. In the same year the winter garden variety received the Culture Award of the Berlin tabloid BZ 1994, the result was " closed files " of the TV crime series " Tatort " from SFB partly in the conservatory, also RTL turned here ( "The Dream Wedding" with Linda de Mol ) 1998 Foyer and restaurant remodeled. The millennium show “As Time Goes By” (director: Bernhard Paul ) was celebrated in 2000 with two glamorous gala performances. The program accompanied each Robin Merrill & The Savoy Dance Orchestra and Max Raabe with the Palast Orchester . In the tenth year of its existence, a total of four programs were launched that offered a reunion with the outstanding artists of the last decade. The three visionary new founders tried to build on the great winter garden tradition in pre-war Berlin. In the first few years more than a million visitors came and there were imitators in other cities.
But André Heller left the house in 1995, and Bernhard Paul also withdrew in 2007. In 2007 Peter Schwenkow sold the winter garden to a group of investors led by long-time managing director Georg Strecker and his partner Frank Reinhardt. In 2008, Strecker left the house and Frank Reinhardt continued to run the business alone. In the summer of 2008, the Wintergarten had to file for bankruptcy; But initially it was still played. On January 31, 2009, the last curtain fell on the last show "Orientalis".
From 2009 on
In mid-2009, a new operator was found for the winter garden with its almost 500 seats: Arnold Kuthe Entertainment GmbH. Its shareholders had been tenants of the premises since the winter garden was re-established and in the spring of 2009 decided to acquire the inventory and the naming rights as a first step in order to keep the theater as such ready and the Wintergarten brand on the market. The house was later rented to Deutsche Entertainment AG, initially for a 3-month guest performance of the new burlesque show "Black Flamingo". This was followed by preparations for its own year-round performance. A representative of society: “This commitment cannot and should not be more than a real opportunity. We don't want to afford a long-term subsidy business as a nice figurehead. ”After it has been put on its feet, the winter garden will have to stand up to tough competition independently. "Only if he does this is he good enough."
“The Fabulous Variety Show” with vaudeville singer and conférencière Meret Becker premiered on February 5, 2010. Almost exactly one year after it was closed, the theater has since been used all year round with three self-produced variety shows. In the same year, Mark Scheibe played the house with the artist and orchestra show "Mark Scheibes Wilde Bühne" for three months every day. The event polarized the audience.
literature
- Wolfgang Jansen, Erich Leif: Festschrift 50 years of the winter garden 1888-1938 . Olms, 2nd edition (1994), ISBN 3487080982
- Wolfgang Jansen: The Varieté: the glamorous story of an entertaining art . Berlin: Ed. Hentrich, 1990
- Erich Leif: Festschrift - December magazine 1938 ; Ed .: Wintergarten GmbH, Berlin,
- Harald Neckelmann: Friedrichstrasse Berlin at the beginning of the 20th century , Berlin Story Verlag Berlin, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86368-069-5
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lothar Uebel and Hans-Werner Klünner Have fun: the history of the entertainment venues around the Kreuzberg and Hasenheide . Editor Nishen Communication. Berlin, 1985. Page 118. ISBN 978-38894-0108-3 .
- ↑ Ulrike Borowczyk: Crude mixture between variety and live concert. November 14, 2010, accessed on January 12, 2020 (German).
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 8 ″ N , 13 ° 21 ′ 52 ″ E