Berlin's most famous ballroom ended up in ruins

The most spectacular ballroom in Berlin was called Resi and was the place for dancing, flirting, and luxurious entertainment. World War II brought dancing to an abrupt end.

Ballrooms had their heyday in Berlin 100 years ago. The First World War was over, and the emperor had abdicated.

In Berlin, both Berliners and the many foreigners who came to the electrified metropolis flirted and danced in the city’s many ballrooms. The most spectacular was called Residenz-Casino or just Resi by the Berliners.

Resi opened in 1908, but it was not until the mid-1920s in the Weimar Republic that the ballroom experienced its peak.

The guests sat at tables around a dance floor with room for 1,000 people. There was a stage with a live orchestra. There were four bars where guests could get drinks.

The ceiling was decorated with mirrors, and there were also reflecting spheres spinning next to the tables. At the end of 1920, fountains were also installed, with water rising and falling in time to the music.

There were table phones so that the men could anonymously call the women at the other tables and start flirting.

If a woman allowed herself to be courted, the man could use a pneumatic post system at the table to order one of 135 small gifts and send it through a small tube to her table. He could also fill out a dance card with the table number and send it through the pneumatic post through the tube to invite her to dance.

All messages sent to the women through the tube were checked by the staff. If a man had written a complimentary message, it was delivered. If the message was obscene and vulgar, the guards were sent up to the table where the message had been sent from, and the man was thrown out.

Resi was a ballroom with class.

However, World War II put an end to the dancing. Resi closed in 1939 when the war broke out, and in 1943, the property at Blumenstraße 10 near Alexanderplatz, where Resi was located, was hit during an air raid.

Resi reopened in the shadows of the Cold War in 1951 in the American sector of Berlin. The new ballroom was located at Hasenheide 32 and had the same dazzling concept as before the war.

American and British servicemen and women in particular frequented the new Resi, but in 1978 the party came to an end.

The era of ballrooms had come to an end. Disco music was the new trend, and DJs ruled the party scene in the new nightclubs.

Resi was demolished that same year, and ballrooms are now a thing of the past.