Emil & Max Skladanowskys Bioscop |
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| Written by: Thomas Hauerslev | Date: 13.08.2025 |
 Emil
& Max Skladanowsky's Bioscop double-film projector as seen at the Filmmuseum
Potsdam outside Berlin. The Bioscop machine is behind glass. Technical note:
to minimize various confusing reflections, this image is composited from
several images, which is why there are small anomalies here and there.
Picture: Thomas HauerslevWe are approaching 2026, and thus the unofficial 130th anniversary of the introduction of the first "living pictures" in Denmark. It is well documented that the premiere of "living pictures" took place on June 7, 1896 in painter Lauritz Vilhelm Pacht's Kinoptikon in his exhibition hall, Copenhagen Panorama. Perhaps less well known is that on June 11, 1896, only four days after the premiere at the town hall square, Maximilian "Max" Skladanowsky and his brother Emil ALSO showed "living photographs" with their Bioscop machine only 250 meters further along Vesterbrogade on the stage of the Pantomime Theatre in Tivoli gardens. • Go to gallery Emil & Max Skladanowskys Bioscop projector for 54mm film Eight months earlier, on November 1, 1895, the Skladanowsky brothers were the first in Europe, showing films to a paying audience. The premiere took place in the Wintergarten variety show in Berlin. The variety show was part of the large Hotel Central, close to Friedrichstraße station. At that time, "living photographs" were often the grand finale of a variety show, and not a proper cinema performance as we know it today. On the opening night, the Skladanowsky brothers were number 18, in a long line of acts right after a performance by Ephraim Thompson and his three fine elephants. |
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How the idea of "living images" was born |
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 "The
Bioscop" premiered in Berlin on November 1, 1895 and is considered the
European premiere of the first moving pictures for a paying audience.In general, moving pictures were in vogue in many places at that time. Thomas Edison's Kinetoscope from America had already made its way into European cities several years earlier, including Copenhagen. However, since the Kinetoscope was exclusively a single-person viewing experience, it doesn't really count in the true "cinema" scorecard, although most acknowledge the Kinetoscope as the first small step towards film and cinema as we know them today. Historically ever since the days of cave paintings, humans have tried to depict the illusion of "movement". In the beginning, people simply drew more legs on animals to portray movement. Later, moving shadow pictures, camera obscura, magic lamps, magic lanterns, illusions and other tricks were added. In 1878, photographer Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904) took a series of sequential shots (Chronophotography), 12 images of a horse running. He discovered that this gave the illusion of movement when the images were viewed in rapid succession. The idea of "living images" was born. As early as 1887, the Englishman William Friese-Greene and the Frenchman Louis Le Prince both tried their hand at moving images on 54mm wide film. The idea of public film screenings really broke through in the United States on May 20, 1895, when Woodville Latham's Eidoloscope premiered in New York (USA). This landmark date is considered to be the first showing of moving images to a paying audience in the history of film. Five and a half months later, a similar motion picture premiere would take place in Europe. |
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Emil and Max Skladanowsky |
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 Emil
and Max Skladanowsky with their Bioscop in 1936. Text about the machine can
be read below. Photo: WiKi (Public domain):
Max Skladanowsky (April 30, 1863 - November 30, 1939) was one of the
pioneers of the moving image and is considered the inventor (pioneer) of
film projection in Germany. |
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Wintergarten in Berlin |
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 In
Germany, the Skladanowsky brothers had a workshop to devise their Bioscop machine, which
they demonstrated in the Gasthaus Sello in the Berlin suburb of Pankow in
July 1895. The demonstration was attended by Julius Baron and Franz Dorn,
who engaged the brothers for the Wintergarten variety show in Berlin. It was
in this variety show on November 1, 1895 that Emil and Max Skladanowsky
showed their moving pictures publicly for the first time, to a
paying audience. The premiere was also the first time that moving pictures
were shown to a paying audience in Europe. The Bioscop played for four weeks, a total of 23
performances. A piece of music was composed and accompanied the film
performance, which lasted a total of 15 minutes. The music was to drown out
the noise of the running machine.In France, the Lumière brothers were working with their Cinématographe, a combined device for 35mm film photography, copying and projection. All of the Lumière's films had previously been shown to a non-paying audience. The Skladanowsky Bioscop premiere took place almost two months before the Lumière Brothers showed their Cinématographe at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris on December 28, 1895. • The Fight That Started the Movies • Projection and Wide Film (1895-1930) • Working for Louis de Rochemont • The History of 70mm Short Subjects Bioscop film titles demonstrated in the Wintergarten in Berlin: Skladanowsky's program in Berlin included nine short film sequences lasting a total of five to seven minutes: 1) Italienischer Bauerntanz with Kindergruppe Ploetz-Larella, 1895 (0:18) 2) Komisches Reck with Milton Borthers, 1895 (0:20) 3) Das boxende Känguruh with Mr. Delaware, 1895 (0:17) 4) Der Jongleur with Paul Petras, 1895 (0:19) 5) Akrobatisches Potpourri with Grunato familien, 1895 (0:16) 6) Kamarinskaja performed by the Tscherpanoff brothers, 1895 (0:19) 7) Die Serpentintänzerin performed by Miss Ancion, 1895 (0:18) 8) Ringkampf zwischen Grainer und Sandow (wrestling) with John Greiner & Eugen Sandow, 1895 (0:20) 9) "Apotheose" inventors of the Bioscop Emil og Max Skladanowsky greets the audience, 1895 (0:16) |
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Skladanowsky on tour with the Bioscop |
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 On
Tour with the BioscopFollowing the screenings in Berlin, the Skladanowsky brothers went on tour with their Bioscop projector and the films they had shown at the premiere in Berlin. The tour took them around Germany and to France, England, Holland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Tour plan: • Central Hotel, Varietéteater Wintergarten, Berlin: 01.11.1895, (Bioscop premiere) • Concerthaus, Hamburg: 21.12.1895 • Paris 01.01.1896 (cancelled) • London (cancelled) • Köthen: March 1896 • Halle: March 1896 • Magdeburg: March 1896 • Circus Varieté, Oslo, Norway: 06.04.1896 - 05.05.1896 (First film show in Norway) • Groningen, Holland: 14.05.1896 - 24.05.1986 • (Amsterdam, Holland: ) • Tivoli, Copenhagen, Denmark: 11.06.1896 - 30.07.1896 *) • Stockholm, Sweden: 03.08.1896 - September 1896 • Zentralhallen-Theater, Stettin: Last Bioscop presentation 30.03.1897 *) On the day of the Bioscop premiere films were also shown at Lauritz Vilhelm Pacht's Kinoptikon in his exhibition hall Copenhagen Panorama, as well as "Bioscopticon" screenings in the "Wodrofflund" inn at 10:30 PM with several moving images. |
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Sequence Photography and the Bioscop Projector |
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 To
give an impression of the size of the Bioscop machine, here is in70mm.com's
Research Department visiting the Filmmuseum Potsdam (Berlin), June 14, 2025. Bo Hansgaard (right) & Thomas Hauerslev (left)The Skladanowsky brothers produced all their Bioscop film demonstration films themselves. They were short sequence photography photographed on George Eastman's Kodak film. Just as Eadweard Muybridge had made his sequential recordings of the horse in 1887. It was a complicated process to produce Bioscop film. The sequence recordings were uneven because the distance between the individual frames was not equal, because the negative was not provided with perforations. Skladanowsky therefore cut out the individual frames, repositioned them and assembled the frames with metal eyes on two film strips. Frames 1, 3, 5 etc. on one film, and frames 2, 4, 6 etc. on the other film. One strip with the odd frames, and one strip with the even frames. Finally, he cut the width of the strip to 54mm. The first Bioscop film was only 48 frames long, which gave a running time of a full three seconds divided between two strips of film in the machine. The demonstration films in the Wintergarten varied from 99 to 174 frames with a running time of between 6 and 11 seconds. The Bioscop machine showed 16 frames per second - 8 frames from each film roll, which was sufficient to give the illusion of movement. Each frame was equipped with two hand-made perforation holes - on the machine in Potsdam, these were small circular perforation holes with metal reinforcement. The films were endless and ran in a loop, lasting less than a minute. The machine was in practice a double projector with two lenses, a common front diaphragm and carbon arc light. It was a rear-projection system, so that the audience never saw the machine in operation. The two mirrored films were shown on a white screen, with a water surface to improve the picture quality. |
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 Emil
& Max Skladanowsky's Bioscop film machine (Patent 88599) with a copy of the
film "Komisches Reck" in the machine. Photo: Thomas HauerslevThe images on the two 54mm film strips were shown alternately on the two machines assembled together via a worm drive/gear. On the front, the machine was driven by a manual crank that pulled a bicycle chain. It had to be turned clockwise. The machine flashed alternately from one film to the other. The principle is evolved from the magic lantern, where animated slides could give the illusion of movement if one slide was moved in relation to the other. The Skladanowsky brothers had actually toured with a magic lantern for several years previously. Skladanowsky built the machine himself from wood and metal using screws and brackets. The Bioscop machine is unique, and so complicated that the principle never found any application or widespread use. Late in 1896, Skladanowsky launched the Bioscop II machine with only one film and only one lens. The last demonstrations of Bioscop took place in the Zentralhallen-Theater, Stettin on March 30, 1897. In 1936, Max and Emil Skladanowsky were reunited with the intervention of the Nazi Party. The brothers had not seen each other since their father's death three decades earlier. Bioscop and the Skladanowsky brothers are practically forgotten today. • Go to gallery Emil & Max Skladanowskys Bioscop projector for 54mm film |
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Wim Wenders' "Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky" |
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 Max
Skladanowsky's film star at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, June 2025. Somewhat
neglected and faded. Photo: Thomas HauerslevIn 1995, Wim Wenders directed the film "Die Gebrüder Skladanowsky" (literally, “The Skladanowsky Brothers”, but released generally under the title "A Trick of the Light") featuring Lucie Hürtgen-Skladanowsky (July 5, 1904 - May 14, 2001), daughter of Max Sklanadowsky. The film is about why the Sklanadowsky brothers' Bioscop was technically inferior to the Lumière Brothers' Cinématographe, and why Bioscop therefore did not have a real breakthrough. (In that same year, Mr. Wenders also participated in another film, “Lumière and Company”, providing a measure of equal attention and respect to the two pioneering cinematographic families.) |
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 • Go to Emil & Max Skladanowskys Bioscop • Go to gallery Emil & Max Skladanowskys Bioscop projector for 54mm film |
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 • Go to Emil & Max Skladanowskys Bioscop • Go to gallery Emil & Max Skladanowskys Bioscop projector for 54mm film |
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