Star-Club Memorial Stone, Große Freiheit 39, Hamburg

The Star-Club memorial is a stone in the courtyard of Große Freiheit 39 in Hamburg's St. Pauli district, reached through an archway from the street. It stands where the Star-Club operated from 13 April 1962 to 31 December 1969. Photographer Günter Zint and his St. Pauli Museum set it up, and it lists acts that played there, starting with the Beatles.

A stone in the back courtyard

The Star-Club itself is gone, so there is no club front to find on Große Freiheit. The memorial stands in the courtyard behind No. 39, through an archway off the street. One German local-history site says its shape looks a little like a gravestone.

Günter Zint had it put there with his St. Pauli Museum. He worked as a photographer at the Star-Club from 1964 to 1969. A separate plaque stands beside the stone, marking the club's 40th anniversary on 13 April 2002. We could not confirm whether the stone dates from that anniversary too. A photo on Wikimedia Commons shows it was in place by August 2006.

What the stone lists

The stone gives the club's dates, 13.04.1962 to 31.12.1969, then a list of acts under the heading "Hier gastierten" ("appearing here were"). The Beatles come first. After them come names such as The Liverbirds, Ray Charles, Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Tony Sheridan and The Rattles, followed by "and many more". The last line credits Manfred Weissleder and his team, naming Horst, Pico and Hans.

The first version had two mistakes. It listed The Who, who had only visited the club as guests and never played there, and it spelt Hendrix as "Jimmy". Both were corrected. The Rivets took the place of The Who, and Hendrix's first name was fixed.

The Beatles at No. 39 in 1962

Manfred Weissleder ran the Stern-Kino cinema at this address. Promoter Horst Fascher suggested turning it into a music club. The Star-Club opened on Friday 13 April 1962, and the Beatles played the opening. That first stint ran until 31 May. They came back from 1 to 14 November, and again from 18 December. Their last Star-Club night was 31 December 1962. A tape of the band at the club in late 1962 came out in 1977 as Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962.

The club closed on 31 December 1969. After that, the building housed the Salambo, an erotic nightclub.

When the building burned, and when it came down

Sources disagree here. The German Wikipedia article and reeperbahn.de say a fire damaged the building in 1983, it stood empty, and it was demolished in 1987. English Wikipedia has a single line saying a fire destroyed it in 1987. A Beatles fan site dates the demolition to October 1986, and a Hamburg local-history site puts it in 1983. Hamburg's official tourism site says only that the building burned and was pulled down in 1987. Most of the German sources give 1983 for the fire and 1987 for the demolition, but we found no contemporary press report to settle it.

Große Freiheit on foot

Going by map coordinates, the Kaiserkeller at No. 36, where the band played in late 1960, is about 30 m away. The Indra at No. 64, their first Hamburg club, is about 110 m away. Beatles-Platz at the Reeperbahn corner is about 145 m away.