Halle (Saale), Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Hidden in an unassuming courtyard, just steps away from Europe’s oldest variety theater, stands a charred ruin that almost no one remembers. Where mountains of rubble and decay now pile up, thousands once cheered for the pioneers of cycling. Later, the magnificent building became a dazzling variety theater, then a grand cinema for stars like Zarah Leander, and finally the scene of a devastating fire.
A journey to uncover the history of an abandoned site—a place whose remaining walls hold the legacy of an entire century, yet which is inexorably doomed to destruction.
In a remote backyard in an East German city lie the unnoticed remnants of an era when bicycle races still drew huge crowds. Later used as the "Schauburg" cinema, the historic velodrome is barely recognizable following a fire. They stand as witnesses to a history sadly on the path to ruin.
The legendary Halle-Saale-Schleife
The excavators did a thorough job. It took just a few days to transform the legendary Halle-Saale-Schleife—where car and motorcycle races once drew tens of thousands of spectators, particularly in the 1950s and 60s—back into a field.
The stretch of asphalt situated between an island in the Saale River and a flood levee protecting the modern district of Neustadt had to give way to nature during the construction of new flood defenses. The five-kilometer circuit—renowned for its high speeds and once raced by legendary motorcyclists like Wolfgang Becker, Willy Blume, and Hans Fromm, as well as Le Mans star Helmut Niedermayr and racing drivers Willy Lehmann and Heinz Melkus—vanished without a trace.
A forgotten era
With it, Central Germany lost one of the last vestiges of an era when Halle was a mecca for fans of both motor sports and cycling. While the Halle-Saale-Schleife—legendary among motor sports enthusiasts—was only rarely used for bicycle racing (hosting popular motor-paced races in the early 1950s, for instance), other locations in the city on the Saale were regular venues for major events in the burgeoning cycling scene.
A massive velodrome near the city center, built in the early 1930s as one of the most modern tracks in Germany at the time, had to be demolished as early as 1938 because it failed to achieve financial success, despite high attendance figures. The site became a football pitch; today, a new residential quarter is being built there.
The Albert Richter Velodrome
The successor track—located at the opposite end of the city—is also gone: built in 1949 and used until the late 1960s, the remnants of the Albert Richter Velodrome that had survived until the end of the GDR era eventually gave way to the construction of a new insurance company headquarters.
All that remains today of the glory days of early cycling enthusiasm in Saxony-Anhalt’s largest city is a dilapidated, completely forgotten brick building in an inner-city courtyard, right near the Steintor-Varieté—Europe’s oldest continuously operating variety theater. Unnoticed, unknown, and forgotten, its eventful history turns these last few charred walls into witnesses to an entire century.
Converted in the "Schauburg Lichtspiele"
The velodrome—created shortly before the turn of the century from the remains of a barn on the Rosch family farm to allow the people of Halle to "practice cycling in winter and bad weather"—first became the "Germania-Saal," a venue for dance and circus events. In the 1920s, it was converted into the "Schauburg-Lichtspiele," a cinema boasting 1,200 seats across the main floor and a massive balcony.
In the building's heyday—adorned with marble staircases, stucco work, and gold ornamentation—even film stars like Zarah Leander and Johannes Heesters came to perform.
The building survived the Second World War unscathed. By July 1945, films were already being shown again—selected by the Soviet Military Administration. These included Hans Albers’ Große Freiheit Nr. 7, a movie filmed during the Third Reich and—likely for that reason—labeled "Prohibited for Youths."
Killed by the socialists
The GDR expropriated the Schauburg’s owners, and the cinema was subsequently operated by the state-run film authority (Staatliche Lichtspielbetriebe). In the mid-1950s, the Schauburg was renovated and equipped with a massive 14-meter screen and a new sound system.
Yet, the end came as early as 1963: a fire broke out, and the cinema was history. Afterward, the premises served as a warehouse, a kitchen showroom, and an innovation center. For the next two decades, the building stood empty.
The cradle of cycling
Ownership was unresolved, and the structure was in a wretched state. Just as an association had decided to renovate the Schauburg and use it for events once more, fires broke out again—cases of arson by unknown perpetrators.
Since then, little remains to hint at the building’s former grandeur. The main hall has lost its roof, and the balcony hangs suspended in mid-air. Everything is charred and rotted, cluttered with trash and construction debris. Not even the smallest details reveal what once stood here: the cradle of cycling in central Germany.
