U.T.-Lichtspiele

The U.T.-Lichtspiele was a short-lived cinema in Lübeck’s Konzerthaus Fünfhausen. The building at Fünfhausen 17–19 housed a Varieté theatre from 1884, where moving pictures were first shown in 1897 during Emil Naucke’s Hamburg variety season. The Lumière cinematograph drew special notice in local reports, and by 1905 film shows were almost daily events. In 1912 Wilhelm Senff converted the first-floor hall into the 800-seat Victoria-Lichtspiele, but safety breaches and disputes with authorities soon ended its run. After the First World War the space became the Fledermaus nightclub and a small Varieté, before Ernst Schmutzer turned the ground-floor room into the 500-seat U.T.-Lichtspiele in November 1921. The cinema’s name borrowed from the Union-Theater chain, though no formal link existed. After only five months Otto Tangermann bought the house, yet by October 1922 no further advertisements appeared and the venture closed. The building’s cinema era ended, and the room reverted to storage for the Fledermaus club until the house was destroyed in 1942. The site therefore marks the close of Lübeck’s earliest film culture, begun in 1897 with Naucke’s Lumière showings. Visitors today find a plain corner building that once held Varieté, two cinemas and a nightclub. The ground-floor room where the U.T.-Lichtspiele operated is now part of a modern façade, but the address still recalls the city’s first decade of moving pictures. The street itself, Fünfhausen, runs between the Trave river and the old town walls, linking the site to Lübeck’s medieval harbour lanes.