The Ufa-Palast am Zoo, located near Berlin Zoological Garden in the New West area of Charlottenburg, was a major Berlin cinema owned by Universum Film AG, or Ufa. Opened in 1919 and enlarged in 1925, it was the largest cinema in Germany until 1929 and was one of the main locations of film premières in the country. The building was destroyed in November 1943 during the Bombing of Berlin in World War II and replaced in 1957 by the Zoo Palast.
History
The Neo-Romanesque building at Hardenbergstraße was designed as an exhibition hall by architect Carl Gause (1851–1907), an alumnus of the Bauakademie who had also drawn plans for the Hotel Adlon. Like the Romanisches Haus nearby, the design followed the model of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Auguste-Viktoria-Platz (present-day Breitscheidplatz), built in 1891–1895 according to plans by Franz Schwechten. The development of a "Romanesque forum" met the demands of Emperor Wilhelm II who even set guidelines for the design of streetlights and tram power lines. Construction work took place from 1905 to 1906; the building complex initially hosted the Ausstellungshallen am Zoologischen Garten exhibition halls, named after the adjacent Berlin Zoo.
In 1912, Arthur Biberfeld converted the western hall into a theatre. In 1913–15, projection facilities were installed by Oskar Kaufmann for the première of the film Quo Vadis, produced by the Italian Cines company, and from 1913 to 1914, the theatre was called the Cines-Palast. The other section of the building housed a café and variety theatre called the Wilhelmshallen.
In 1919, architect Max Bischoff rebuilt it for Ufa as a 1,740-seat cinema, which opened on 18 September 1919 with the première of Ernst Lubitsch's Madame Dubarry. The cinema had a rectangular auditorium with two levels of proscenium boxes and the remaining seating arranged in horseshoe-shaped rows. Siegfried Kracauer praised the sightlines from the amphitheatre-style seating and the "discreet" and "tasteful" colour scheme; the décor was simple, with faïence panels around the screen.
In 1925, the cinema was again rebuilt by Carl Stahl-Urach; it was enlarged to 2,165 seats by the addition of a balcony, the lighting was improved, and an illuminated cinema organ was added. The interior décor by Samuel Rachman resembled that of Broadway cinemas. It was the largest cinema in Germany until the 1929 opening of the Ufa-Palast in Hamburg, which was at that time the largest in Europe.
The reopening on 25 September 1925 was overseen by Ernö Rapée, a former employee of the American cinema impresario "Roxy" Rothafel who was brought over by Ufa together with Alexander Oumansky, who had been ballet director at Roxy's Capitol Theatre, to introduce US-style cinema shows to Germany. They were given an 85-member orchestra plus a jazz band, and Roxy himself came to offer assistance. The New York Times reported that the American "combination of symphony concert, ballet and film" had been successfully imported to Germany for the first time. Rapee stayed on for almost a year as manager and as Ufa's senior music director, in which role he arranged music to accompany several films; he left after supervising the opening of Ufa's new Gloria-Palast across the square. Berlin's own Capitol cinema, designed by Hans Poelzig, also opened in 1925 as a nearby competitor to the Ufa-Palast; by 1928, when Joseph Goebbels made a speech denouncing the entertainment and other business venues there, Berlin's premier cinemas were clustered close together around the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and some had deliberately sought to make it the "Broadway of Europe".