Hello, Goodbye
June 29, 2012
The "Beatlemania" museum on the legendary Reeperbahn in Hamburg's red light district was barely able to celebrate its third anniversary before closing its doors due to a lack of funds. Some 150,000 people have visited Beatlemania - not enough to cover high overheads and licensing and royalties fees.
"We started this project in May 2009, devoting a lot of enthusiasm and our hearts and souls to it," company head Folker Koopmans said on the Beatlemania website. "Today we have to recognize that despite the overwhelmingly positive feedback from our visitors and the media, the interest in the Beatles in the city where John Lennon said that he became a man is simply not as great as we had hoped."
The museum will open its doors for the final time on Saturday, June 30, closing at 7 p.m. local time.
The Beatles played some of their earliest concerts in the clubs of Hamburg's Reeperbahn, perhaps most notably the "Star Club," and achieved cult status in the northern German city long before they attained international renown.
Beatlemania had been fighting closure for some time, to no avail - having sought money and other support from local authorities. The innovative museum also launched a video appeal directly to Paul McCartney, calling it "With a little help from my friends."
The display items at Beatlemania will be returned to the collectors who provided them in the first place.
msh/ncy (epd, dpa)