Beatles Museum In Hamburg Closing [You Say Goodbye]
A Beatles museum in Hamburg, Germany is set to close down due to a lack of interest and growing debts – just three years after it opened.
The ‘Beatlemania’ exhibition is dedicated entirely to the Fab Four, and boasts more than 1,000 pieces of Beatles memorabilia, spread out over five floors and 1,300 square metres of exhibition space. Yet on June 30, after receiving just 150,000 visitors in three years – a figure way below expectations – it will shut. Manager Folkert Koopmans told Hamburger Morgenpost:
“In view of the high deficits, there is no solution left but closure, if you want to act responsibly. A privately run museum as big as Beatlemania is condemned to fail without public support. That’s a fact we fought against until enthusiasm turned into resignation – a bitter experience. We had many hopes and wishes, unfortunately, only some of them were fulfilled in the city [in] which John Lennon used to say he became an adult.”
The museum, located on the Reeperbahn strip near where the band played many early shows, will now see many of its exhibits put into storage, but others may be dismantled. A yellow submarine that juts from the front of the building will be removed.
The Beatles and the city of Hamburg have always been closely linked: the young group staged numerous gigs there between 1960 and 1962, with venues such as the Star-Club, Kaiserkeller, Top Ten and Indra all hosting the group.
