Gloria in Weissenfels/Germany

 

I met the Gloria cinema in Weissenfels in summer 2013. On the way to the holidays destination on the Unstrut river, we got off the train with our bikes in Weissenfels. And immediately came across this impressive building (look the train on the postcard). It's a big box, unfortunately empty for many years.

The Gloria has had better days. It was opened on October 18, 1928. The architect was Carl Fugmann. The remarkable building in the Bauhaus style impresses with its nested cubes, slotted windows with originally preserved lattice division and a corner structure with brick strips. The neon sign Gloria was placed directly on the street. The cinema had 1.200 seats and was also used for congresses and variety events. It was already equipped with modern air conditioning and red plush armchairs.

It is a really big cinema for a city with 40.000 inhabitants. But Weissenfels is (or was?) an important industrial city, famous for shoe manufacturing and the food industry.

In 1991, the UFA-Theater AG took over the cinema. In 1994 a discotheque moved into the building, which had to close three years later. The building was emergency secured in 2019. And it is a listed historical monument. It was never parted in smaller halls.

The postcard was printed shortly after the opening. You can see at the cinema advertising for the film Dulderin Weib / Tesha with Maria Corda. This film was released in German cinemas in 1928. 

The postcard was sent in October 1943. Pierre wrote to his wife Suzan. He was a French slave laborer in Weissenfels and worked in a factory that was on the same street as the cinema. He walked past the cinema every day. I hope Pierre and Suzan saw each other again ...

I met another cinema designed by Carl Fugmann in my next holidays, the Centralkino in Wittenberg.

Vielen Dank an Greta, die mir die Postkarte übersetzte!