Abraham Icek Tuschinski (1886-1942) was the founder and creator of one of the world’s finest cinemas, the Royal Tuschinski Theatre [Koninklijk Theater Tuschinski] in Amsterdam.
Tuschinski was born to Polish parents in 1886, and after he married in his late teens he decided to take his new wife, Mariem Ehrlich, to a new life away from the antisemitism of their native country.
He settled in Rotterdam and over a period of thirteen years established four cinemas in the city, each more elaborate than its predecessor.
At the end of the First World War he made a partnership with two brothers-in-law, Hermann Gerschtanowitz and Hermann Ehrlich, and bought land on Amsterdam’s Reguliersbreestraat near the Rembrandtplein square.
Construction began in June 1919 and the cinema opened on October 28th 1921. The initial designer was Hijman Louis de Jong (1882-1944), who was dismissed before the building was completed: the interiors were finished by Pieter den Besten (1894-1972) and Jaap Gidding (1887-1955)
Art historians variously describe the styles employed as Jugendstil (otherwise Art Nouveau) and Art Deco (though the term didn’t become current until after the 1925 exhibition Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes). A useful umbrella term is the Amsterdam School. A practical adjective would be “exotic”.
Tuschinski wanted his patrons, when they stepped into the foyer, to feel they’d entered an illusion. The auditorium resembled an opera house, with two balconies above the stalls. Private spaces included a cabaret named La Gaité, a Japanese tearoom and a Moorish suite. A modern heating and ventilation system guaranteed comfort at all seasons, and after a refurbishment in 1936 the new carpet had two-inch pile. The building boasted the first organ in a Dutch cinema: Wurltizer couldn’t deliver in time, and Tuschinski grabbed a second-hand alternative from a cinema in Brussels.
There is a magnificent collection of archive photographs of the theatre’s early days together with modern images by Isabel Bronts at Cinema of Dreams: The Inspiring Story of Amsterdam’s Tuschinski Theate – Cabana Magazine.
The Tuschinski Theatre cost four million guilders and quickly became celebrated. Abraham Tuschinski was awarded Dutch citizenship in 1926, but the splendour went sour as war approached.
When the Nazi troops invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, four of Tuschinski’s cinemas in Rotterdam were destroyed. On Queen Wilhelmina’s birthday in August that year, British and Dutch flags appeared at a window at the Tuschniski. Abraham Tuschinksi declined an opportunity to escape to Britain, saying that he “grew up in this country in good times [and didn’t] want to be a deserter in bad times,” he said.
The three brothers-in-law were deprived of their business, and its Jewish name was changed to Tivoli by the Nazi-supported replacement owners, Tobis Film. Its programmes went over entirely to German films and performances by German artistes. A fire in the summer of 1941 destroyed some of the exquisite decoration.
Abraham Tuschinski was arrested on July 1st 1942 and sent first to Westerbork and then to Auschwitz where he was murdered on September 17th 1942. Only three members of the Tuschinski, Ehrlich and Gerschtanowitz families were still alive at the end of the war.
This was far from the end of the story, however. Max Gerschtanowitz took the business on after the war, and the cinema subsequently passed through successive owners until the French Pathé company acquired it as part of the MGM combine in 1995.
Pathé carried out painstaking restorations in 1998-2002 and again in 2019-20. Technical details of these restorations and much historical background can be found at Abraham Icek Tuschinski – Jewish Amsterdam and Pathé Tuschinski Cinema in Amsterdam | Amsterdam.info.
In 2021 King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands granted the complex the accolade “Royal” [Koninklijk]. Two grandsons of Hermann Gerschtanowitz and his great-grandson, the actor and TV personality Winston Gerschtanowitz, and a grandson of Hermann Ehrlich attended the ceremony.