The End of Stremer in Belarus
In the early years, cinemas could be dangerous places. The lamps used to light up the screen were powered by a chemical mixture that was flammable. It was the flames that provided the light that was concentrated through a giant lens, then through a pinhole, then the film, and across the room to the screen on a far wall. Early on, the lamp and projector were often in the same room as the audience. Unsurprisingly, there were several large fires reported in theaters.
Belarusians knew of the dangers of the lamps, too. Cine-Phono reported on a near disaster in Orsha.
"In the shop of the Chemnlivitsky house, located on Peterburgskaya Street, the owner of the cinematograph Simkhovich, together with his clerk Dombrovsky, extracted oxygen necessary for light; during this work, the iron retort burst, with fragments of which he was wounded in the right leg of Dombrovsky, and the scattered Berthollet salt and manganese wounded Simkhovich's face and damaged his eyes in many places.
By the force of the explosion in many places of the glass and ceiling, the plaster in the store was knocked off. The victims of the explosion are Dombrovsky, who is in the Orsha Zemstvo Bolitsa, and Simkhovich, after receiving first aid, was sent to the city of Smolensk for rehabilitation."1
Orsha, Peterburgskaya street, Beginning of the XXth century.
Source: https://smolbattle.ru/threads/Орша-путешествие-в-прошлое.51461
Minsk
In October of 1909, the Stremer theater caught fire and burned to the ground. Reports on the fire in Stremer’s theater in Minsk vary. They seem to agree only that there was a lot of damage and at least one person if not two people, died. The ultimately resulted in his leaving Minsk.
The issue of Nasha Niva from October 15, 1909, is below.
Nasha Niva newspaper, 1909.
"On October 7, a gasoline engine exploded in the Kaplan printing house on the street. The quarter, where the Stremer Electro-biograph was located, caught fire everywhere, and then the fire spread to other buildings. The fire did a lot of damage. About 15 people were seriously injured and one girl was killed."2
On the same day, Cine-Phono printed this:
“In Minsk, due to a gasoline explosion in a printing press located in the same building, the Stremer theater burned down. Unfortunately, there was also a drugstore there. The mass of flammable material did its job and a few minutes after the fire started, the entire building was a raging sea of fire. Several people fell victim to the flames, including, by the way, the young daughter of the theater mechanic, Mr. Savich. We express our condolences to Mr. Savich in his subsequent grief." 3
Cine-Phono Magazine
On October 15, 1909, Kinemo gave a very different report.
“In the Stremer cinematograph, in the most central place of the city, there was an explosion of an electric motor. Shrapnel shattered shop windows, destroyed a nearby printing house and wounded eight typesetters and many outsiders.
The fire took on large proportions. The best stores in the city were damaged. Three firefighters were injured during the extinguishing.
The total number of wounded reaches 20. Many are seriously injured.
The first explosion is believed to have occurred in the Kaplan printing house, where a gasoline engine burst, and the second in the Stremer Electrotheater, from the connection of electrical wires.
From a strong concussion of the air on four streets in the best stores, mirror windows are broken. In many apartments, the home furnishings were destroyed.
Panic began in the streets after the explosion. Many of the audience were knocked to the ground by the force of the explosion.
Following the explosions, a column of flame rose above the huge house of Rakovshchik, where the printing house was located. The typesetters of Kaplan's printing house were cut off from the exit by a raging fire. Eight of them received burns.
The family of the mechanic Savich, who lived in the mezzanine, fell into Stremer's theater, engulfed in flames. Merchants and customers who were in neighboring stores were wounded.
When the firefighters had already arrived, two walls of Rakovshchik's house collapsed. Three firefighters were bruised by the wreckage. The daughter of the fishmonger Levitan is buried in the cellar. The number of wounded is not exactly clear, but, in any case, reaches twenty.
It is believed that people remained under the collapsed walls. The losses from the fire are huge. Many retail establishments were affected.
The Stremer Theater burned to the ground. Rakovshchik's house was insured for 140 thousand rubles.
During the excavations, the charred corpse of the seventeen-year-old daughter of the fishmonger Levitan was extracted. As it turned out, a ten-month-old girl, the daughter of mechanic Savich, died in the fire. There are eight wounded in the Jewish hospital, two seriously. In addition to those firefighters, five more people who were in the yard and in the nearest shops at the time of the explosion were injured. Firefighters are still working at the scene of the fire. Excavations continue.
As a result of the police inquiry, there was an assumption about a new cause of the explosion - the ignition of gasoline in the warehouse of Levitan's apothecary store, located under Kaplan's printing house. The force of the explosion, which caused a terrible concussion of the air, is explained by the large accumulation of electric wires in this place.
Losses are estimated at 800,000 rubles, and the following insurance companies suffered: "Rossiyskoye", "Transportnoye", "2nd Rossiyskoye", "Salamander".4
Minsk, Gubernatorskaya street, beginning of the XXth century
Source: https://www.belarus.by/rel_image/330
Vladimir Volozhinsky’s 2013 Tut.by article reported that gasoline vapor in the theater ignited, then exploded.5 In short, we do not really how what caused the fire, only the results.
1 Cine-Phono, August 15, 1909, Issue 22, p. 13.
2 Nasha Niva, October 28, 1909, p. 612.
3 Cine-Phono, October 15, 1909, Issue 2, p. 7.
4 Kinemo, October 15, 1909, Issue 16, pp. 11-12.
5 Воложинский, Владимир, «Где в Минске был первый кинотеатр и о чем были первые минские фильмы?» Tut.by, 17 апреля 2013 г. Volozhinsky, Vladimir, “Where was the first Minsk Cinema located and what were the first Minsk films about?,” Tut.by, April 17, 2013.