Weimar Berlin: Universum, an ocean liner on the Kurfürstendamm

The most important cinemas – premiere cinemas – in Berlin stood within 100 meters from the Gedächtniskirche : Ufa Palast am Zoo, Gloria-Palast, Capitol am Zoo, Marmorhaus. But from 1928 there was another premiere cinema well outside that cluster : the Ufa Universum-Theater, at Lehninerplatz, some two kilometers to the west. Lehniner Platz was not named after Lenin, the Russian revolutionary but after Lehnin, a village south west from Berlin.

The Universum cinema was designed for the dominant UFA-chain by architect Erich Mendelsohn as a part on a whole urban complex. The name "Universum" had a specific meaning for Mendelsohn : it was not just a house but a world to live in. That was a typical view of a modernist architect: buildings that were not just aesthetic but also functional. No "rococo palace for Buster Keaton", as he put it himself. What he wanted instead was a synthesis of "space, color, and light."

Ultimately the ambitious project was reduced to the houses, an apartment-hotel, shops, a restaurant-cabaret and the cinema. "Universum" was a free standing building accessible from the Kurfürstendamm, facing the Lehniner Platz. It was huge but sober, elegant yet without any decorative features – although it was in itself a reference to the art of cinema because it looked like a giant film projector. The building was ovoid and constructed of stone with a brick-and-glass façade. Because of the interplay of the straight and curved lines and the balanced proportions, it was also very dynamic. The horseshoe-shaped auditorium, allowing no sharp angles to distort the picture but offering a good view of the screen from every seat, was hereafter adopted by the UFA for all their cinemas. Le Corbusier had called his houses "machines for living" ; Universum was a "machine for viewing" as somebody described it. Its total capacity was 1763 seats. The façade’s massive ventilation tower juts out over the Kurfürstendamm like the keel of an ocean liner.

After the war it was rebuilt internally as a theatre. While the characteristic curved exterior is still there, the interior has been thoroughly transformed.
In addition to the Universum Kino, Mendelsohn had designed an almost matching building across a plaza to the left. It was a 2.000 seat theatre where in 1928 the Kabarett Der Komiker, with stars including Max Hansen, Claire Waldoff, Karl Valentin, and Ilse Bois moved in.

Other noteworthy structures built by Erich Mendelsohn are the Einstein Tower in Potsdam and the Mossehaus on Jerusalemer Straße and the Columbushaus, a nine-storey office and shopping building in Potsdamer Platz. He died in 1953 in the U.S.