Ballhaus Berlin

The Ballhaus Berlin was built in Tierra del Fuego. This was the popular name for the Chausseestraße, where the factories of the Wilhelminian era were lined up with smoking furnaces, sparks and hammering, in the midst of a demimonde of poorhouses, cemeteries and sparse workers' housing estates. And with them the Ballhaus Berlin came, which first opened as the inn and coffee garden "Zum Alten Baden" in 1905 at 102 Chausseestraße, then known as the "Chausseepalast." As "Schwankes Festsäle," it then survived the turmoil of war and revolution and experienced the great era of amusement temples and "Pläsierkasernen" that began in Berlin in the late 1920s and is now legend in TV formats such as Babylon Berlin - until the war put an end to the partying.

The Ballhaus survived nonetheless. In 1949, it reopened as the Behrens Casino. The program now included "the cozy old German ball," every day except Monday and Tuesday, until the house became national property in 1975. Restored and re-christened as "Ballhaus Berlin", it experienced golden times: with couple dancing under the disco ball, telephone flirting and ladies' choice, sparkling wine and whiskey cola. In 2014, it was handed over to the current Ballhaus team. The idea of preserving over a hundred years of tradition and taking it on a journey into the future was quickly born. And indeed, a visitor of yesteryear would immediately recognize the carefully restored architecture, with balcony and spiral staircase, lights and table phones, bar and disco ball from over a hundred years of Ballhaus history.