Haus Vaterland (Fatherland House) was a pleasure palace on the south-east side of Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin. Preceded by Haus Potsdam, a multi-use building including a large cinema and a huge café, from 1928 to 1943 it was a large, famous establishment including the largest cafe in the world, a major cinema, a large ballroom and numerous theme restaurants, promoted as a showcase of all nations. It was partially destroyed by fire in World War II, reopened in a limited form until 1953, and was finally demolished in 1976.
History
Haus Potsdam
The six-storey building was designed by Franz Heinrich Schwechten, who was also the architect of the Anhalter Bahnhof and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, and constructed between 1911 and 1912 as Haus Potsdam. It was primarily an office building; from 1917 or 1919 until 1927 Universum Film AG or UfA, which owned the site, was headquartered there; but the lower floors contained a 1,196-seat cinema, called the Lichtspieltheater im Piccadillyhaus or the Kammerlichtspiele im Haus Potsdam (Cinematograph in the Piccadilly House, Moving Pictures in Haus Potsdam), and the Café Piccadilly. The building was faced with sandstone and gave the impression of masonry, but had a steel frame and the cinema space was spanned by five girders. At the northern end, facing the square, was a circular pavilion topped by a copper dome rising 35 metres above the pavement, with a row of Attic statues beneath it; this was essentially a recreation of the mausoleum of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great in Ravenna. The cafe entrance was on the bottom two floors of this section. Behind it, a long, narrow section in a simplified Wilhelmine architectural style, with a mansard roof, extended some 100 metres alongside the Potsdamer Bahnhof.
The Café Piccadilly could accommodate some 2,500 guests and was lavishly decorated with wall and ceiling paintings and Sienese marble. Operated by Heinrich Braun, it was an attraction comparable to the Moulin Rouge in Paris, drawing "white collar workers, business people and tourists" by day, "amusement seekers, restaurant and variety patrons and also prostitutes" at night. One of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner's Street Scenes cycle of paintings, Potsdamer Platz in Berlin (1914), depicts two prostitutes on a traffic island in front of the building and the Potsdamer Bahnhof. After World War I began in 1914, it was renamed to the more patriotic Café Vaterland.
Haus Vaterland
Haus Potsdam became less successful during the 1920s, and in 1927 was sold to the Bank für Handel und Grundbesitz, which leased it for ten years to the Kempinski family of restaurateurs. They had an exclusive contract to provide all food and drink and to manage the business, which became their flagship. In 1928, the building was reopened as Haus Vaterland, based on an idea by Leo Kronau, who had visited Coney Island in New York and wanted to emulate the international attractions in the amusement parks there and improve on Berlin's own imitation, Lunapark. He persuaded the Kempinski family, who had a 65-year track record of success as restaurateurs in Berlin, to convert Haus Potsdam into a Haus der Nationen (house of nations), and became its first artistic director, arranging entertainment to suit the flavour of each of the gastronomic units.