Hebbel-Theater

The Hebbel-Theater (Hebbel Theatre) is a historic theatre building for plays in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Germany. It has been a venue of the company Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) from 2003.

The theatre, with approximately 800 seats, was built by Oskar Kaufmann in 1907/08 in Jugendstil. The corner building is integrated into the row of houses. It was an early and unique work by the theatre architect, and established his fame as a master theatre builder who then created five more theatres in Berlin. The Hebbel-Theater thrived in the 1920s. It was the only Berlin play theatre to survive World War II almost without damage. The Hebbel-Theater, the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer [de] and the Theater am Ufer are all venues of HAU.

In May 1906, the Hungarian theatre director Eugen Robert [de] (aka Jenö Kovázs) planned the construction of a Schauspielhaus in Berlin with the intention of staging popular and modern acting there. He remembered having seen a bedroom's design at an exhibition in Wertheim the same year, by Oskar Kaufmann, who afterwards gained experience in theatre building with the Berlin architect Bernhard Sehring. Robert commissioned him to build a playhouse at Berlin's Café Central.

Kaufmann found the property in the southern Friedrichstadt, which the registered Building owners' association [de] Theater in der Königgrätzer Straße acquired in October 1906 for 460,000 marks. The corner plot was located between Belle-Alliance-Platz and Askanischer Platz in what is now Stresemannstraße 61, in a middle-class residential area. The theatre was incorporated into the existing perimeter block development [de].

Kaufmann delivered the first designs for the theatre in August 1906. Construction was postponed due to the sudden death of the financier Herzfeld causing financial uncertainties. In addition, the Ministry of Public Works initially refused permission due to unsettled legal relations of the adjacent private road on which the theatre was to be built. After minor changes to the plans, the execution of the construction could finally begin in February 1907. In addition to Kaufmann, three other collaborators were involved in the design of the theatre, architects Albert Weber and San Micheli Wolkenstein, and the private lecturer and structural engineer Bruno Schulz.

The theatre was opened on 29 January 1908 after a three-month construction period. It was named Hebbel-Theater, after the playwright Friedrich Hebbel who died in 1863. His Maria Magdalena [de] was chosen to celebrate the opening. Robert, the founder and first director of the theatre, had to give up the management at the beginning of 1909 due to financial problems; and was criticised for numerous miscasts, unfavourable choices of plays and the lack of independent direction. After a short period of self-administration, the two directors Carl Meinhard [de] and Rudolf Bernauer followed, and the theatre was renamed Theater in der Königgrätzer Straße on 30 September 1911. One of the stars was Maria Orska who appeared as Wedekind's Lulu in 1916, and as Wilde's Salome.

The Hebbel-Theatre had its heyday in the 1920s, when Paul Wegener, Tilla Durieux, Elisabeth Bergner and Fritzi Massary appeared in plays by Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Frank Wedekind and later in works by William Shakespeare and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The repertoire was expanded to include comedies, social satires, political comedies and operetta-type performances, in keeping with prevailing audience preferences. Victor Barnowsky [de] took over the management in 1925, and engaged stars such as Hans Albers, Fritz Kortner, Paul Hörbiger and Curt Bois. In 1927, Hans Kaltneker's mystery The Sister was performed, with Orska as Ruth. He also engaged director Erwin Piscator.

During the Nazi era, the theatre was gleichgeschaltet in 1934, under the general directorship of Eugen Klöpfer from the Volksbühne, who completely renewed the equipment and reduced the hall to 672 seats. The house was largely spared destruction in the Second World War, apart from a bomb that hit it in the 1943/44 season, damaging the foyer and the roof of the stage. By the end of July 1945, the theatre was operational again.