Caroli, Regina, Rex in Rüsselsheim am Main / Germany

 

Rüsselsheim is famous for the Opel car production. And good workers need good entertainment in their spare time. The 1962 sent postcard shows the building Friedensplatz 6 in Rüsselsheim. Honestly, it doesn't show a cinema - only neon signs for three cinemas.

Caroli was opened on Christmas Day 1955 with 407 seats, Rex was opened in 1956 with 482 seats (not far away from Friedensplatz) and closed in 2011, Regina has opened from 1957 till 1985. From 1958 all three cinemas belonged to Kurt Palm.

Kurt Palm, born in 1924 in Mainz-Gustavsburg, made his first 8mm films at a young age and initially trained as an electrician. During the Second World War he was employed as a cameraman and reporter. In 1947, he opened his first movie theater Burg-Lichtspiele (today Burglichtspiele Gustavsheim) in a 1899 built chapel.

Palm soon expanded its business activities. He owned more than twenty movie theaters and began to produce films himself. His best-known projects include the documentary Der 2. Weltkrieg / The Second World War (1982) and various erotic films. His REPA Filmproduktion GmbH was one of the most successful German film producers in the early 1970s.

Palm's busy life finished in 2013.

I publish this no-cinema-showing postcard because cinemas are not only any buildings for showing films. Making good entertainment is a hard job from Monday till Sunday, all year long, done by enthusiastic men and women and not by machines. When these people die, a piece of culture and history and their stories are also dying.

Kino International in Berlin/Germany - "Die Frau, die man nie vergessen kann" 1964

 

Another postcard in my collection of Kino International in Berlin. It is a view of Karl-Marx-Allee (until 1961 Stalinallee) with the cinema on the left, looking east to Strausberger Platz. The two 14-story high-rise buildings were built in the 1950s as Haus des Kindes (House of the Child) and Haus Berlin. In addition to the apartments for hundreds of workers, there was a dancing bar in Haus Berlin and in Haus des Kindes there were a puppet theater, a kindergarten, a children's department store and a children's cafe.

It wasn't easy to read the advertised movie on the poster. I could identify it with the help of the book Mehr Kunst als Werbung. Das DDR-Filmplakat by Detlef Helmbold (even if the poster does not match the illustration in the book). It is the Polish movie Die Frau, die man nie vergessen kann / Naprawdę wczoraj (Poland 1963, directed by Jan Rybkowski). This movie was released in East Germany on July 10, 1964.

The postcard was published in 1965 by Gebr. Garloff KG Magdeburg.

In October 2020 I visited Berlin and Kino International. There was a little interesting exhibition inside Pavillions für die Karl-Marx-Allee. And I heard, that Berlin's Karl-Marx-Allee should be on the Unesco World Heritage List.

I didn't see a movie there. I preferred to walk along Karl-Marx-Allee to Warschauer Strasse. I was amazed that there was so little going on on the avenue on a Saturday afternoon.

Lichtspielhaus in Nerchau/Germany

 

Nerchau today has about 3800 inhabitants and belongs to the city of Grimma, it is located on the river Mulde.

The cinema Lichtspielhaus ("Light Play House" = Movie Theater) in Nerchau opened on 25th December 1912. Hermann Märker was the owner. I think he is the man on the picture below left, to the left of the door. Maybe, the woman to the right is his wife.

Hermann Märker was a plumber by trade, with his own business.

Look at his advertisment in the address book of Grimma 1912:

"Nerchauer Lichtspiel-Theater. Great constant theater, singing and speaking photographs in the highest perfection. The very latest events of the day in the picture. Pleasant, interesting stay.
Program changes every Wednesday and Saturday.
Excellent entertainment music from first-class instruments during the presentation of the slides.
Half price for students and children."

I don't know if the house was newly built with a cinema in 1912, it could be. A year later, Hermann Märker opened another cinema in Brandis, a city 25 km away.

The 1912 opened cinema with 200 seats was the only one in Nerchau and closed in 1991.

In its last years it was used as a Café-Kino with 60 seats, where you could have a meal during watching a movie. If you look at the postcard, there was already a Café in this house in 1912, maybe run by Hermann Märker's wife Lina.