When, on October 17, 1913, the first performance of an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Mistress of the Nile” flickered across the screen in the Sendlinger Tor film theater, the city chronicler Ernst von Destouches noted: “Since today, Munich has been a movie theater of the first dignified equipment, richer”. The projection room, which at that time still held 700 people, was “equipped with all the innovations and comforts”, according to Destouches, who emphasized the “amphitheatrically rising parquet floor” and the “spletely effective lighting”. Carl Gabriel, builder and operator of the theater building at Sendlinger Tor, quickly celebrated such great success with his cinema that on September 14, 1915 even a royal visit in the form of King Ludwig III. visited the cinema.
But now, around 110 years after the ceremonial opening, to which one was only admitted with a golden honorary ticket, the film theater at Sendlinger Tor is possibly finally on the brink of collapse. Last Friday, the Munich I Regional Court upheld the lessor’s lawsuit for eviction and surrender of the cinema. The first disputes about the rental agreement already arose in 2014. In May 2019, the termination of the lease agreement by the end of June 2020 was finally communicated in writing. The current operators, Fritz and Christoph Preßmar, had so far resisted this. In the current proceedings, they wanted to push through the extension of the lease until July 2025.
The Preßmar family has been running the cinema since shortly after the end of the war in 1945. The building was returned in 1946 to the original homeowners, the Winkelmann and Kramer families, on whose behalf Birte Winkelmann acts. The current lease agreement dates back to 1956 and, instead of a fixed rent, provides for a share in the sales of the cinema tickets sold, which was set at a minimum of 5000 euros. Far too little, finds Winkelmann, who has meanwhile demanded a sum of 240,000 euros in lease per year. However, this is “completely illusory,” according to Fritz Preßmar, who considers no more than half the sum to be realistic.
The termination of the lease in 2019 was decided at a meeting of all co-owners, of which two withdrew their consent in March 2021 in writing. Too late, as has now been judged. After evaluating an expert opinion obtained from an expert from the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the court came to the conclusion that a fair market lease must be a third higher than the annual turnover shares currently being paid. The decision to terminate the contract in 2019 was therefore economically sensible, also taking into account that there was a vacancy in the meantime to look for a new tenant. However, according to the conviction of the court, this is not difficult to find anyway.
Cinema operators want to appeal the verdict
The judgment is not yet final, the one-month appeal period applies, starting after delivery of the fully drafted judgment. “We will discuss this with our lawyer and will appeal in any case,” says Christoph Preßmar when asked. However, the plaintiffs could insist on a provisional enforcement of the judgment, even in the ongoing appeal proceedings.
The film theater is not only important to the tenant family. By February 2021, more than 10,000 Munich residents had signed an online petition to keep the cinema, which the Preßmar family had launched. Among them were well-known personalities such as former Mayor Christian Ude, former Prime Minister Horst Seehofer and Oscar winner Caroline Link. The petition was then sent to Mayor Dieter Reiter and Prime Minister Markus Söder and to the state parliament. The Munich SPD had also announced that they wanted to campaign for the preservation of the cinema. An undertaking with which the SPD city council faction had already failed at the traditional Gabriel Filmtheater and the cinemas at the Münchner Freiheit.
Due to the fact that the building is a listed building, the situation at the Sendlinger Tor film theater is somewhat different. It could make it more difficult to allow a change of use of the premises. Finding a new cinema operator who would pay the large amount of rent demanded by the lessors has so far been unsuccessful. Several applicants have withdrawn their interest over the past few years.
A life’s work is at stake for the Preßmar family. The cinema, which still seats around 400 people today and is designed like a small opera house, survived the first major cinema crisis in the 1960s under her direction, when the number of movie theaters in Germany almost halved from around 7,000 to around 3,800 . But the film theater established itself more and more as a permanent institution in Munich and survived the doldrums of the 1980s with major productions such as “Indiana Jones”, “Dirty Dancing” and “Das Boot” until there was a renewed upswing in the 1990s. In 1997 the cinema was completely renovated and, after being closed for two months, reopened in a modernized form. Since then, the film theater had also defied adversities such as the corona pandemic or the permanent construction site at Sendlinger Tor.
A special feature are still the large, hand-painted cinema posters for the films shown. There are regular premieres in the cinema, which attract a large number of prominent guests. It is still one of the highest-grossing cinema halls in Germany and is regularly included in the lists of the most popular and best cinemas in the Federal Republic. The film theater has repeatedly received awards, most recently in 2023 by the city of Munich for the special cinema programme. According to the city, the prize is intended to support the preservation of Munich’s art house cinemas. The continuation of the Sendlinger Tor film theater in its current form is probably in the hands of a judge at the Higher Regional Court for the time being.