Fallout from the Stremer Fire
Cine-Phono had reported in its issue of October 15, 1909, the same issue that reported the fire, that a new, better, theater, the Eden, had recently opened up, and it was causing Stremer financial difficulties: hurting his profits if not causing him losses.1
Kinemo noted that insurance companies paid out a lot after the fire. This is enough to cast some suspicion on Stremer that the fire was started for insurance money, but certainly not enough to prove it. And keep in mind that Pinsk hinted at something wrong with Stremer when its cinema closed. The article referenced “a painful smell, as they say in Minsk, of Stremerschina.”2
Minsk, Zakharyevskaya street, Beginning of the XXth century.
Source: https://citydog.io/post/dvorec/
Stremer did not rebuild or return to Minsk. Cine-phono wrote in its report on happenings in Minsk that “The manager of the Vilna branch of Stremer submitted a petition for permission to open a theater, where Stremer was before the fire.”3 The same report also said that “All the owners of the electrotheaters were obliged to keep fire brigades and pay for them.”4 A restaurant got the location instead of the theater.5
By the end of 1910, if not before, Stremer had left Gomel, too. His theater, the Railway Illusion, was referred to as “formerly Stremer.”6
A year later, in November 1911, the only mention of Stremer in the journals is that after the “disaster,” the Minsk city government banned cinema owners from building their own power sources for their theaters. The theaters had to use city power, instead.7
In 1913, the Stremer theater in Vilnius was still referred as the Stremer theater, and not the “former” Stremer.8 Cine-Phono even referred to an article that predicted Stremer would be around in Rostov-on-Don in another 10 years.9 But that seems to be the last mention of Stremer in early Russian language film journals.
Program of the theater "R. Stremer”, Rostov, 1913.
Source:https://www.rostovbereg.ru/publ/rostov_so_vsekh_storon/pervye_kinoseansy_i_pervyj_kinoteatr_r_shtremera_v_rostove_n_d/1-1-0-556
One final note: Early articles indicated that the name of Stremer’s theater was the Illusion. The articles regarding the fire do not name Stremer’s theater, nor do they indicate the fate of the theater. However, by 1910, film journal articles were still, or again, referring to a Minsk theater named the Illusion.10
1 Cine-Phono, October 15, 1909, Issue 2, p. 13.
2 Cine-Phono, October 1, 1910, Issue 1, pp. 14-15.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Cine-Phono, November 1, 1910, Issue 3, pp. 18-19.
6 Kine-Journal, November 23, 1911, Issue 22, p. 12.
7 Cine-Phono, November 1, 1911, Issue 3, p. 26.
8 Cine-Phono, October 26, 1913, Issue 2, p. 71
9 Cine-Phono, November 9, 1913, Issue 3, p. 42
10 Cine-Phono, March 15, 1910, Issue 12, p. 11.