Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz


The Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz was a cinema located at 4 Nollendorfplatz, Schöneberg, Berlin. Built in 1912–13 and designed and decorated by leading artistic practitioners of the day, it was the German capital's first purpose-built, free-standing cinema Described as "historically, the most important cinema in Berlin", it incorporated a number of technical innovations such as an opening roof and a daylight projection screen, and opened as the Nollendorf-Theater in March 1913.
The cinema was built by a group of US investors allied with the Italian film company Cines which included the American millionaire Joe Goldsoll ; Albert H. Woods, a Hungarian theatrical producer based in New York to whom Goldsoll was related by marriage; and Edward B. Kinsila, later a film studio architect. The Nollendorf-Theater was rumoured to have been "paid for by the Pope's money." One of the directors of Cines was Ernesto Pacelli, President of the Banco di Roma, who was in the confidence of Pope Leo XIII and the cousin of Pope Pius XII.
It became the Cines Nollendorf-Theater in 1914, but Cines collapsed in late 1915 after the Banco di Roma, one of its main investors, fell into financial difficulties. The building was acquired by the Union-Theater Lichtspiele chain of cinemas, part of Paul Davidson's PAGU company. Although PAGU was bought in late 1917 by Universum-Film AG, the cinema continued to be known as the Union-Theater Nollendorfplatz until 1923. It was renamed as Ufa-Theater Nollendorfplatz in 1924 and finally as the Ufa-Pavillon in 1927. It was badly damaged during World War 2 in an RAF bombing raid in late 1943.

Design

The Cines Nollendorf Theater was one of a number of buildings constructed during a brief period in Berlin's industrial and public architecture from around 1900 where Historicism came to an end, to be replaced by Modern Architecture from the early 1920s onwards.
The architect was Oskar Kaufmann, one of the proponents of the so-called 'Neuberliner' architectural style, largely influenced by the work of Alfred Messel who had died in 1909:
The seated figure over the entrance and the bas-reliefs of the external frieze were by sculptor Franz Metzner, and was responsible for the internal decoration. The stained glass windows in the foyer were executed by from Unger's designs: and and created the ceiling lights with their figurines in the auditorium.
The Nollendorf-Theater can be seen as an example of architectural 'Gesamtkunstwerk', a work created by a typical assemblage of masters of their craft found particularly in Germany. The films made by Ufa and other companies shown in the cinema during the 20s and 30s were also informed by this idea of an artistic guild of equals. This collective approach resulted in a flexible, dynamic and fluid group of artistically minded, highly creative and even visionary film-makers which produced many of the classic films which are still discussed and referenced in the 21st century.
The architecture of the Nollendorf-Theater is plainer and more severe than the Gründerzeit and Jugendstil styles, and embodies distinctly 'modern' sculptural and artistic motifs. The overall approach seems to have some stylistic connections with and the Deutscher Werkbund, a "cultural-economic association of artists, architects, entrepreneurs/businessmen and experts", founded in 1907.
Other contemporary developments in search of "a more modern and useful architecture" for Berlin include: the AEG turbine plant by Peter Behrens ; Kaufmann's Volksbühne and the introduced new trends in theatre construction (in addition to the Ufa-Pavillon and his 1914 conversion of the Groß-Berlin Theater, later the Ufa-Palast am Zoo; the Pergamon Museum and the capital's first department stores were drafted by Alfred Messel; and Hermann Muthesius designed a new and modern Country House style for Berlin's newly developing suburbs.

Description

Edward B. Kinsila in his book Modern Theater Construction gives a description of the interior of the Nollendorf.
Also, from an article in the contemporary trade journal Kinotheater:
The film critic of the Berlin daily was much taken with the auditorium on the opening night:
It was not as big as the Ufa-Palast am Zoo, which soon become Berlin's premier cinema. The Ufa-Palast was also owned/leased by Goldsoll and Woods and converted in 1913 from a stage theatre by Oskar Kaufmann. The Ufa-Pavillon was seems to have been used more for press showings.
;Not so Oriental
Somewhat confusingly, 'Cines' is also a native adjective in the German language, meaning 'Chinese'. However, the Cines-Theater was not a 'Chinese theatre', as at least two writers seem to believe.

Critical reception

According to one contemporary critic, the building exhibited "the gracefully ironic pathos, the erotically overloaded sacrilege, the rhythmical dissonance of solemnity and dance", which became the key formal elements of the 'Ufa style.'
"Cinema buildings are not, at any rate, slow in arriving, and take interesting forms of great experimental significance, as is the case of Oskar Kaufmann's Cines Theater, inaugurated in 1913."
Before World War 1, "Germany had led the world in the development of serious, modern cinema architecture. Oskar Kauffmann's Cines-Theater in Berlin's Nollendorfplatz was one of the first significant free-standing purpose-built cinema structures. It was among the first attempts at a sober, modern language of cinema architecture, presenting an austere picture to the world with three looming blank walls ".
With its somewhat detached, intellectual, high-cultural prose, Berliner Architekturwelt briefly referred to the new cinemas in Berlin, singling out the building on the Nollendorfplatz:
"An early high point of the grounding phase of the film palaces was the Cines-Theater, opened in 1913, the first "free-standing building conceived solely in the interests of cinema", a "sober, grey, and particularly windowless cube."

Early history

Background

In December 1908 a highly restrictive and monopolistic trust, the Motion Picture Patents Company, otherwise known as the 'Edison Trust', was set up to combine the power of the major US film companies. This was particularly worrying for European film makers, since they were almost entirely excluded from the American market. They met in Paris in February 1909 to discuss sales and rental methods to get out a crisis of over-production and the supply of film stock to the European manufacturers.
Present at the meeting was a representative of Cines, an Italian film production company based in Rome. It had opened branches in London, Paris and Barcelona by 1907, and was the distributor for the Ambrosio Film production company of Turin. Cines began to expand considerably outside Italy, making preparations for an 'escalation strategy' to spend more on film productions and film portfolios. Cines had no distributor in the US at the time, and Mario A. Stevani made a trip to the USA in March–May 1911, and signed a contract with the Edison Trust to sell a million meters of film per year. His main contact was George Kleine, a Chicago film importer and leading member of the MPPC, who made huge profits importing foreign films into the US, using his MPPC-license to acquire the films. Kleine became the distributor of Cines films in the US, and the Marquis di Serra was appointed agent in the UK.
Cines also received an injection of capital from a group of US investors, acquiring cinemas and distributors in Germany to increase its share of the marginal cinema revenues that its films generated: in 1912 Cines had a capital of 3.75 million lire. Among the American investors and interested parties were: F. J. "Joe" Goldsoll; his younger brother L. H. Goldsoll, and Edward B. Kinsila; Albert H. Woods ; Klaw and Erlanger and Charles Frohman, theatrical impresarios; and Pat Casey, an experienced vaudeville agent. Goldsoll was the general manager of his [|Cines-Theater AG] company, which held the Cines rights for Germany. This was a separate entity from the parent Cines company in Rome.

Construction

Although its exact origins are slightly unclear, the cinema seems to have been built from mid-1912 by Joe Goldsoll, a millionaire high-class con man and swindler whose Cines-Theater AG company owned the rights to Cines films in Germany. He appears as its owner ' in the 1913 Berlin address book. Goldsoll, as the main financial backer, was joined by Albert H. Woods, a Hungarian theatrical producer based in New York, whose interest in films and cinemas seems to have begun with his involvement with the 1912 film The Miracle, produced by Joseph Menchen. Al. Woods's wife was Goldsoll's cousin.
The late owner of the previous building on the new cinema's site was Baron Rudolf von Renvers, von Bülow's doctor and confidant, who died in 1909. The deal to build the cinema was promoted by the slightly unusual Edward B. Kinsila, at the time a London-based American property developer: he later became a cinema and film studio designer in the US.
Goldsoll, "a non-combatant in show-things", with Al. Woods and a "theatrical mob" including A. L. Erlanger, Pat Casey and Charles Frohman, sailed on the for a 4- to 6-week tour of Europe on 3 April 1912.
One of the first mentions of the new cinema appeared in the Moving Picture World in October 1912:
In December 1912 Kinsila claimed to be associated with Goldsoll in the building of the new cinema:
It was also the first cinema with a sloping floor and the seating in a fan-shaped arrangement. However, by the time the Nollendorf-Theater opened in March 1913 Kinsila seems to have left the scene, and it was being reported as the "creation and property of F. J. Goldsoll and Al. Woods."

Opening

The inauguration on 19 March 1913 of this "palace of unheard-of luxury" made a "genuine sensation." The evening began with a dithyrambic speech in praise of the cinema by Hanns Heinz Ewers, one of the most outspoken pro-Autorenfilm literati.
The main attraction, however, was the German première of the Cines blockbuster epic of Ancient Rome Quo Vadis?, to which Woods and Goldsoll controlled the German rights. Woods also owned the worldwide rights outside the US, where the rights were controlled by George Kleine. Like the presentation of the film of The Miracle in London and New York, Quo Vadis? also featured live actors in the auditorium to reinforce some scenes: "special mobs" were organised by Ryszard Ordynski, Max Reinhardt's manager at the Deutsches Theater, who had stage-managed performances of The Miracle in London in 1911–12, and later in Vienna in 1914. There was an orchestra of about twenty-five men and a full line of sound effects. The orchestra was hidden behind a balustrade between the audience and the screen.
The theatre manager Jacob J. Rosenthal, visiting Berlin, wrote that "Quo Vadis is creating a furore in Berlin though it has been very badly mutilated by the censor, who doesn't seem to offer much objection to the risqué or even the immoral, but who strenuously objects to fights or violence. You can imagine what happened to Quo Vadis.
The critic of the Berlin newspaper was more enthusiastic about Ewers' speech than the film which followed:
The critic Ferdinand Kiss was especially vitriolic about the whole affair:
According to one report, the Nollendorf-Theater and the Cines-Palast am Zoo, where Quo Vadis? also showed, were each taking about 4,500 marks a night with 'Quo Vadis,' giving two performances nightly but no matinees.
Siegfried Kracauer, writing in 1947, was evidently unaware of the live element incorporated into the film show:
Kracauer is referring here to the opening night of the Königspavillon-Theater on Promenadestrasse, Leipzig, on Thursday 24 April 1913 with Quo Vadis?, complete with real actors and a prologue. This seems to be exactly the same show as on the opening night of the Nollendorf-Theater in Berlin in March 1913.
The house manager of the Cines-Theater in 1913 and 1914 was the stage actor Valy Arnheim, later a film director and actor.

Later history

By the end of May 1913 the cinema had been renamed the Cines Nollendorf Theater.
After the success of Quo Vadis?, Woods and Goldsoll opened a large chain of theatres in Germany, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, many for Kinovaudeville shows. They leased fourteen houses in Germany, including six in Berlin; the second of these after the Nollendorf-Theater was the Groß-Berlin Theater which was converted into a kino-vaudeville cinema, where the architect was again Oscar Kaufmann.

Banco di Roma

Assertions that the Pope's money was involved in the building of the Nollendorf, appear to be based on more than mere rumour. The Banco di Roma was co-founded in 1880 by Ernesto Pacelli, who soon had the confidence of Pope Leo XIII. According to John F. Pollard, "It would be no exaggeration to say that the Pacellis were the most important family to be associated with the Papacy since the Borgias."
The Società Italiana Cines was founded in Rome in April 1906, and Pacelli became a director before August 1910. The Banco di Roma. apparently speculating with Papal funds, was also running dubious bank-owned enterprises in Tripoli and Salonika. Joe Goldsoll seems to have become involved with Cines in around 1912, and if there is any truth in the rumours that the Nollendorf-Theater was "paid for by the Pope's money", they would probably revolve around the fact that a hard-gambling, high-class con man and swindler and the president of a bank which was a quarter owned by the Vatican were both directors of closely linked film and theatre companies.
Unfortunately, the bank was in deep trouble by 1914, having suffered severe losses arising out of the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912
A contemporary memoir of pre-war Germany summed up the extravagance accompanying the whole corrupt situation:

Collapse of Cines

Goldsoll severed his connection with Cines in February 1914, buying out the interests of Al. Woods and the Società Italian Cines in the Berlin-based Cines-Theater AG: Woods pulled out of Germany altogether. Goldsoll re-organized his much-reduced assets as the Palast-Theater AG, taking control of the Cines Palast am Zoo and the Cines cinemas, and leasing the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Städtisches Theater for operetta.
The Cines Nollendorf-Theater "reverted" to the Società Italiana Cines. A German Cines company was formed, Deutsche Cines GmbH, whose offices occupied the old address of Cines-Theater AG at Friedrichstrasse 11. Goldsoll invested in Ambrosio Film, based in Turin, becoming a director by July 1914.
When World War 1 broke out in August 1914 Italy was nominally allied with the Central Powers, but remained neutral. The war triggered a general international financial instability, and in the public rush to buy War Bonds, 18.3 million lire were withdrawn from the Banco di Roma between January and March 1914. Italy eventually joined the Triple Entente and declared war on Austria-Hungary in May 1915. The bank continued to haemorrhage its cash deposits and the value of its shares plummeted, despite an emergency loan arranged by Pacelli from the Banco d'Italia. Pacelli resigned as president of the Banco di Roma in September 1915, although he was still personally highly indebted to it. To repay his loans he forfeited his shares in the bank, and was forced to sell his villa.
The investments made by Pacelli and the Banco di Roma suddenly unravelled as depositors continued to withdraw millions of lire: by November 1915 Cines had collapsed, along with the bank's other enterprises in Tripoli and Salonika.
Union-Theater/PAGU
It appears that the Nollendorf-Theater and all the former Cines properties were sold around this time to the Union-Theater chain of cinemas, owned by Paul Davidson of PAGU: its name was changed to the Union-Theater Lichtspiele. This corporate name was shared by many other cinemas in Berlin and Germany, such as the in Dresden, and the in Lübeck.
Goldsoll's later career
During World War 1 Goldsoll, a naturalised French citizen, was imprisoned in D.C. Jail in 1917 while Washington District courts decided whether or not to extradite him to France. He faced charges of defrauding the French war-time government out of millions of dollars in commissions on Pierce-Arrow trucks exported to the French War Department. Goldsoll was released on appeal to the US Supreme Court in 1919. Goldsoll invested heavily in Goldwyn Pictures, joining the board of directors in July 1919 and, ousting Samuel Goldwyn to become managing director from 1922 to 1924, turned around the fortunes of the ailing company. Woods joined him on the board as a director.

Ufa

Along with Messter-Film and Nordisk Film, PAGU was one of the three main companies which formed the nucleus of giant conglomerate Universum-Film AG, set up in complete secrecy by the German government as part of its propaganda effort in late 1917. The companies which made up Ufa retained their individual identities for some time, and by 1921 the cinema was known as the U.-T. Nollendorfplatz although it was owned by Universum-Film AG.
The composer Giuseppe Becce conducted the orchestra from 1922, having transferred from the Mozart-Saal at the Neues Schauspielhaus over the road at No. 5 Nollendorfplatz, where he had been since 1915.
The cinema was renamed the Ufa-Theater Nollendorfplatz in 1924, but Ufa was bankrupt by 1925, having spent enormous sums on films like Die Nibelungen and Der letzte Mann. It seems likely that Ufa sold back control of the old Union Theater Lichtspiele cinema chain to its former owner, Paul Davidson, former head of production at Ufa.
Then in December 1925 Ufa announced the so-called Parufamet contract, which gave virtual control of Ufa's first-run theatres to Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer while also granting them 50 percent of income from Ufa's own productions. Two years later Ufa was bought by the right-wing media tycoon Alfred Hugenberg, and the cinema received its final name, Ufa-Pavillon in 1927.

''Metropolis''

Announcements that Fritz Lang's Metropolis would be shown at the Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz had appeared as early as 6 January 1927. The cinema's exterior was coated all over with a shimmery silver paint, and illuminated by floodlights; the statue over the entrance was covered by a huge replica gong which featured towards the end of the film. Metropolis received a double world première on 10 January 1927: a gala première at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo, where the director, film crew and cast were in the audience along with the German President Marx, and a lower-key première at the Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorplatz.
Most of the press attended the gala performance at the 2,165 seat Ufa-Palast, and this seems to have given rise to the idea that Metropolis only premièred at the Ufa-Palast, along with a brief news item in Ufa's own publicity magazine: "Metropolis was shown with huge success at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo and from the 11th onwards at the Ufa-Pavillon Nollendorfplatz." For example, from a review which appeared the following day: "The film "Metropolis", after its premiere yesterday at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo, will be screened from to-day on at the Ufa Pavilion at the Nollendorfplatz. Many books have since repeated this idea that the première took place on 10 January at the Ufa-Palast only, e.g. "The day after the premiere, it transferred for four months to the UFA-Pavilion at the Nollendorfplatz"
However, at least one journalist did go to the screening at the Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz on 10 January and wrote a review concentrating on Gottfried Huppertz's score, which was conducted by Richard Etlinger. This review appeared in the daily Film Kurier the following day, 11 January, along with a general film review from the UFA-Palast am Zoo.
The film continued to show for about four months at the Ufa-Pavillon, the only cinema in the whole of Germany where it could be seen.
Ufa's own publicity magazine claimed that "Press and public are unanimously thrilled by the grandiose work of cinematography." Although many critics commented favourably on the film's technical achievements, a significant number were singularly unimpressed by the underlying philosophy of the script:
Herbert Ihering summed up the single performance at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo: "A great premiere – much applause by the audience for the director Fritz Lang, for the cameraman Karl Freund, for the actors Alfred Abel, Heinrich George and Brigitte Helm. As for the film? No effort spared with brilliant technical detail, but it was wasted on a banal, no longer pertinent idea. The city of the future with the text of a bourgeois past."

Destruction

The cinema was closed after it was damaged during an RAF bombing raid in 1943. There were 17 large raids on Berlin from November 1943 to the end of January 1944. It seems quite possible that the Ufa-Pavillon was bombed on 22/23 or 23/24 November 1943, right at the start of the Battle of Berlin: "A vast area of destruction stretched from the central districts westwards across the mainly residential districts of Tiergarten and Charlottenburg". Buildings destroyed or severely damaged include: Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and the Gloria-Palast, the Ufa-Palast am Zoo across the square, the Berlin Zoo and much of the Unter den Linden.
The American Church in Berlin was destroyed probably in early 1944.
A block of 1960’s era apartments now stands on the site.
See also § External links

Name changes

With only 650 seats, the cinema was not generally used as a premier release venue like the much bigger Ufa-Palast am Zoo or the Tauenzien-Palast. Although many films shown there were first runs of some sort, only few of them are particularly well known. The most notable films to show there are Quo Vadis?, F. W. Murnau's Faust in a pre-release showing, Ben-Hur, and Metropolis ; also two of Emil Jannings's early films, Die Augen die Mumie Ma and The Daughter of Mehemed directed by Ernst Lubitsch, and several more by the same director.
References to the 'Berliner Theater am Nollendorfplatz' in the 1930s mentioning Erwin Piscator, Berthold Brecht, Gustav von Wangenheim, Hans Meyer-Hanno and others, probably refer to the Neues Schauspielhaus at 5 Nollendorfplatz. The building also included a cinema, the Mozartsaal, converted from a concert hall.