The cinema which had about 928 seats opened in 1929 and was very successful in the following decades. They showed stage plays and movies in the building, which meanwhile had the reputation as the most beautiful stage and cinema in West-Saxony. However, in the 1960s the technological equipment began to become obsolete and needed to be modernized. The renovation took place in 1965 and changed the look of the building drastically. A lot of the former charm got lost in the process. A lot of it was simplified, the orchestra pit was closed and the cinema organ was disassembled. In the 1970s many concerts took place but the revenue declined. Many basic maintenance measures couldn’t be carried out, which for example went this far that emergency exits were blocked because the structure was too damaged. The heating boiler was also obsolete and never modernized, which would have been very expensive.
After the GDR ended in 1990, the cinema was closed by the Treuhandanstalt. A couple of days later the doors were broken up and people destroyed the whole place with its furnishings. A lot of the roof collapsed in 1995 and the shape of the building got worse and worse. A Bavarian bought it in 1999 and said he had big plans for a renovation and use of the cinema. The building was gutted soon after and left in a carcass state. Further than this, nothing happened and the decay progressed. Sadly, there isn’t much to photograph, most of the place is very dark and completely destroyed.
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