ABSTRACT
Eager to maintain the distance between cathedral and carnival, neither Bartning nor Böhm continued the experiments with almost magical artificial colored light that made the Glashaus such an engaging feature of the Werkbund Exhibition. Others did not share their reservations. For Rudolf Fränkel, the architect of the Lichtberg (Mountain of Light) Cinema that opened in Berlin on Christmas Day 1929, for instance, dramatic night lighting established the basic continuity between this building, the centerpiece of a new working-class housing settlement, and Taut’s earlier city crown projects (Figure 4.1).1 In the Lichtberg, Fränkel advertised the movies with the light-based technology of this new form of entertainment that he elevated into an ethereal zone in which the distinction between fantasy and mysticism, the commercial and the idealistic quickly blurred.
