Entertainment on the Ruins of Berlin

Abstract

The study introduces the brief history of Palast – Das Varieté der 3000 (today Friedrichstadt-Palast) in Berlin. Founded by Marion Spadoni, the daughter of the renowned Berliner impresarioPaul Spadoni, it opened in August 1945 and produced new shows every month continuing thecity’s Großvarieté tradition. Her shows had to meet the expectations of the audience as well asthose of the Soviet authorities while bounded by the lack of materials, infrastructure, and staff.Being a private enterprise in the Soviet Occupation Zone, two years later she was accused ofcollaboration, and her business was expropriated. As the venue—despite its significance—isstill often overlooked by theater historians, a foundational research is necessary comparing andsynthesizing various primary sources. The Spadoni Agency’s documentation was destroyed in1944, however, a fragment still exists in the Stadtmuseum Berlin and the Landesarchiv Berlin; as wellas the fonds of the Magistrat der Stadt Berlin, Marion Spadoni’s unpublished memoirs in differentversions, and the reviews and press articles related to the house. The current management of thePalast attempts to establish a new narrative of the venue’s origin, claiming Max Reinhardt and ErikCharell as its founding fathers. The present study shows that this narrative is far from the reality:Spadoni’s establishment was not even rhetorically related to the former defining creative talentsresiding in the house, but to the heritage of the three Großvarietés destroyed during the war: thePlaza, the Scala and the Wintergarten.