Haus Vaterland

Haus Vaterland (Fatherland House) was a pleasure palace on the southwest side of Potsdamer Platz in central Berlin. Preceded by Haus Potsdam, a multi-use building including a large cinema and a huge cafe, from 1928 to 1943 it was a large, famous establishment including the largest cafe in the world, a major cinema and numerous theme restaurants, promoted as a showcase of all nations. It was partially destroyed by fire in World War II, reopened in a limited form until 1953, and was finally demolished in 1976.

The six-storey building was designed by Franz Heinrich Schwechten, who was also the architect of the Anhalter Bahnhof and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, and constructed between 1911 and 1912 as Haus Potsdam. It was primarily an office building; from 1917 or 1919 until 1927 Universum Film AG or UfA, which owned the site, was headquartered there; but the lower floors contained a 1,196-seat cinema, called the Lichtspieltheater im Piccadillyhaus or the Kammerlichtspiele im Haus Potsdam (Cinematograph in the Piccadilly House, Moving Pictures in Haus Potsdam), and the Café Piccadilly. The building was faced with sandstone and gave the impression of masonry, but had a steel frame and the cinema space was spanned by five girders. At the northern end, facing the square, was a circular pavilion topped by a copper dome rising 35 metres above the pavement, with a row of Attic statues beneath it; this was essentially a recreation of the mausoleum of the Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great in Ravenna. The cafe entrance was on the bottom two floors of this section. Behind it, a long, narrow section in a simplified Wilhelmine architectural style, with a mansard roof, extended some 100 metres alongside the Potsdamer Bahnhof.

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