LIFE IS LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES. YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO GET.
TOM HANKS IN "FORREST GUMP"
The building was built around 1892 for the Great Berlin Horse Railway. Later it was rebuilt and repurposed several times and has served as a film screening facility since 1924. After the death of Artur Brauner as the last owner for the time being in 2019, the heirs had to file for insolvency and the building was up for sale. In 2022, a project developer was found as a buyer who wants to revive the cultural institution. The cinema as a whole is a listed building.
Part of the building was used in 1894 as a carriage shed for the Great Berlin Tramway. Initially, horses were also housed here at first, after the conversion to electric operation, only buses. The owner of the property was the Pferdeeisenbahngesellschaft.
After being converted into a cultural facility according to plans by Fritz Wilms and preliminary planning by Max Bischoff, the first movie theater opened on this site on September 12, 1924, and was named the Colosseum Theater. It continued to belong to the city of Berlin and was managed by the specially founded Colosseum Theater Betriebsgesellschaft mbH. The cinema theater had seats for 1,000 visitors, who were able to enjoy silent film screenings as well as variety events with orchestral accompaniment.
At the end of World War II, the cinema was closed, and in April/May 1945 it became a military hospital.
On July 27, 1945, the Metropol Theater, whose location on Behrenstrasse had been destroyed during the war, took over the building with its operetta performances. During the Hunger Winter of 1947/48, a warming hall was set up here.The building remained a venue for the Metropol Theater until 1955.
After a seven-month conversion by architects Adalbert Lemke and Friedrich Wildner into the GDR's first total-vision cinema, the Colosseum Filmtheater opened on May 2, 1957 with the DEFA film Mazurka der Liebe. It had 819 seats. In the 1950s and early 1960s, the Colosseum was one of East Berlin's premiere cinemas.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the state-owned cinema was privatized by the Treuhandanstalt. The Berlin film producer Artur Brauner and the Sputnik Group acquired the cinema as well as the old bus depot buildings on the neighboring property in 1992. From 1992, the newly founded Sputnik Colosseum Betrieb KG took over the management of the company. This was followed in 1997 by a joint operating company with Cinemaxx AG and the Colosseum now offered multiplex operation in ten screens.
Since a fundamental renovation in 1996-97, combined with a new building on both sites, the multiplex cinema had 2800 seats in ten theaters. But due to increasing competition, for example from the opening of a multiplex cinema in the neighboring Kulturbrauerei, the Colosseum's turnover plummeted. After Cinemaxx AG terminated the contract, the company UCI took over the continued operation of the cinema on September 1, 2006.
On March 24, 2020, the Colosseum closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 22, 2020, the owner, the Artur Brauner Heirs Association, filed for insolvency of the cinema with the district court, "[...] a cinema operation was no longer economically feasible." Numerous residents of Prenzlauer Berg campaigned for the preservation of the cinema with demonstrations and online petitions. The district of Pankow also wants to preserve the Colosseum as a cultural location.
In spring 2022, the Hamburg-based project developer Values Real Estate announced that it had acquired the property from Brauner's heirs; a purchase price was not disclosed. After renovation and conversion work, it plans to continue using the property for cultural purposes. Values CEO Thorsten Bischoff wants to create "livable new urban space at this location. [...] We are only at the beginning of our considerations [...] The utilization concept for a new cinema and cultural operation as a point of identification in the historic hall and a corresponding interim cultural use until the construction phase play a special role for us."
