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Plexiglass and staggered seating: How cinemas in Germany plan to reopen

Cinemas in Germany are beginning to reopen - but with strict rules. Here's a look at what to expect if you venture back to the Big Screen.

Published: 27 May 2020 13:07 CEST
Plexiglass and staggered seating: How cinemas in Germany plan to reopen
Plexiglass between the seats of the Cineplex Alhambra in Berlin, where theatres don't yet have an opening date. Photo: DPA

Up until March, most people did not have to give a second thought to going to a movie theatre in Germany. But that had all changed by mid-month, when Kinos across the country closed their doors due to the coronavirus epidemic. 

Yet cinemas around the country are beginning to welcome guests again – albeit with strict hygiene and social distancing rules.

READ ALSO: Coronavirus in Germany: Which restrictions are changing from Monday May 25th?

The first cinemas have already opened nationwide, including some in Hesse, Saxony, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Rhineland-Palatinate. 

On Wednesday May 27th Hamburg will follow suit, as will Saxony-Anhalt on Thursday May 28th.

In the coming days re-openings have been announced for North Rhine-Westphalia on May 30th, Baden-Württemberg on June 1st, Brandenburg on June 6th  and Bavaria on June 15th.

But what will cinema attendance look like in the future?

Can you still choose your seats?

Choosing freely where to sit will likely be a thing of the past. Instead, many cinemas are asking their customers to buy their tickets in advance online for specific seats. However, in order to maintain the prescribed distances, not all seats will be available. 

Couples and friends may sit next to each other when booking together, but the current rules require a 1.5 metre distance to the next visitor. 

Cultural institutions around Germany, which have also been closed since mid-March, are also planning staggered seating in order to maintain the distance.

The Berliner Ensemble tweeted a photo on Tuesday of how it's planning to re-welcome guests again. 

Yet how exactly cinemas will enforce social distancing rules when booking is not yet clear everywhere

“Between the seats, which can be booked online as blocks of two, corresponding seats are blocked for the required distance and remain free,” said Cinemaxx managing director Frank Thomsen.

There will likely also be plexiglass between blocks of seats.

According to Christine Berg from the board of directors of HDF Kino, ticket systems could possibly also be modified so that the system automatically blocks the surrounding seats when a booking is made. 

Low capacity of moviegoers

However, the cinemas hope that these distance rules will be loosened. According to the HDF Kino and AG Kino associations, if the distance remains at 1.5 metres, a theatre can only be filled to a maximum of 20 or 25 percent capacity, meaning that the majority of seats remain empty.

 “If two seats are occupied, 12 must remain free,” said Berg. 

According to Christian Bräuer of AG Kino, even a metre distance – as is the case Austria – would be an improvement, because then every row could be occupied. 

“Then a chessboard system would be conceivable in which each row is occupied, but the seats are staggered and not occupied directly behind each other.”

An employee at Cineplex Alhambra demonstrating what the theatre and food counter will look like when they reopen. Photo: DPA

Food

For many people, one of the traditions of going to the cinema is to eat: Some indulge in nachos, others munch on a huge bag of popcorn, while others toast with a beer or prosecco. 

People won’t have to give up noshing in the theatre: at the bars and counters of the cinemas, drinks and snacks will be available as usual. But due to the hygiene regulations it will be a little different than before, similar to the case in supermarkets and other shops. 

That means in most cases: queuing and ordering with distance and a mask. Employees will often stand behind a Plexiglas screen. Maybe in the future, nachos and co. will be handed out with a small cover.

Going to the toilet

“Entschuldigung, darf ich mal kurz vorbei?” (Excuse me, can I squeeze past?) was a common term heard at German movies. 

Previously, if you wanted to go to the toilet, you had to push past the other moviegoers in your row, carefully avoiding stepping on toes in the dark. 

Now there will be far fewer people in the same row, if any. The toilets can still be used, yet it is expected that guests will have to wear a mask whenever they leave their seats.

Behind the scenes

Cinema operators are now also organising differently than before. Particularly in larger theatres, films will be more staggered than before so that not as many guests are waiting in the same area at once.

There will also be more frequent cleaning, especially for door handles and surfaces. The doors to the halls will also likely remain open for the time of admission, so that not everyone has to touch the handles. 

Have you been a newly reopened movie theatre in Germany yet? What was your experience?

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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