Bremen City Theater (1843)

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The Bremen city theater from 1843 on the bishop's needle bastion 1851/52

The second Bremen City Theater (from 1933 State Theater ) was a theater in Bremen , which was built in 1843, became the property of the city in 1855 and was destroyed in 1944 after just over 100 years of existence.

prehistory

Daniel Schuette's treatise on the advantages of standing theater over travelers ... from 1806

After the first Bremen city theater , built in 1792, had to struggle with financial difficulties and also had no standing ensemble, theater director Daniel Schütte - who took over the Comödienhaus in 1797 - made various attempts to improve the efficiency and quality of the stage. In 1806 he published a 46-page treatise on this, entitled On the Advantage of Standing Theater in Front of Travelers, and proposals for the establishment of one in Bremen . In the introduction to the memorandum he wrote: “Bremen has enjoyed the pleasure of a theater for about fourteen years, but it has always been such a vacillating, indefinite thing that one really had no cause to be completely satisfied with it, although among the members from time to time Time could be called excellent artists. Our stage was only walking , and what can one expect from walking theaters? The good actor is constantly forced to start all over again, rehearse himself over and over again in the game of his fellow actors, who are new every year, and, so to speak, to form his public anew [...]. "

However, Schuette's efforts were initially unsuccessful, as the continental blockade and later the occupation of northern Germany by Napoleonic troops severely damaged Bremen's trade and, as a result, the construction of a new theater did not receive sufficient political and financial support.

In 1826 a theater association was founded by Senator Georg Heinrich Olbers . a. set up a theater and music library. In 1835, a theater share association was formed (later renamed Theater-Neubauverein ), which was to replace the previous theater with a larger new building with the funds of wealthy theater friends and to improve the quality of the stage in the sense of Schütte. The new association had 153 members, including senators like Dr. Franz Friedrich Droste and well-known merchants like Diedrich Heinrich Wätjen . By selling shares worth 100 Reichstalers each , the association was finally able to collect the necessary capital for a new building in 1840.

The construction

The second Bremen city theater shortly after its completion

In 1841 the construction of the new playhouse based on designs by Heinrich Seemann began on the bishop's needle bastion on the Wall , later also known as the Tempelberg or Theaterberg . The new city theater was a three-storey classical building with a width of 36 meters (at the front to the wall) and a depth of 47 meters. The facade facing the wall was marked by a risalit that ended in a triangular gable with acroteria . The three entrance portals could be reached via a seven-step flight of stairs. The side facades were characterized by two small risalits, between which there was a balcony supported by six columns, which could be entered from the foyer on the main floor. The auditorium offered space for around 1,400 people. The balustrades of the open spaces and the decorative grilles in front of the windows on the main floor were the work of the Vegesack iron casting master Andreas Friedrich Uhthoff .

After completion of the building, the old city theater bought by the association in 1840 was closed and demolished so that it would not compete with the new theater.

The city theater was rebuilt several times during the 100 years of its existence, for example in 1882, 1886 and 1889. Various additions were made for the backstage, the set store and a restaurant. The auditorium was also enlarged. The extensions and renovations meant that the shape of the original building was largely lost.

business

Costume ball of the artists' association in the city theater in 1861

The theater was in turn operated by an association, the theater company association . Karl August Ritter from Mannheim was appointed first manager of the house . At the opening on October 16, 1843, the play Hans Sachs by the Viennese writer Johann Ludwig Deinhardstein was performed.

Five years after the theater opened, the sponsoring association became insolvent and sold the theater to Seemann, who leased the house to changing directors. The operation was then financially quite successful. The program included classical and modern plays as well as operas . With the latter, from 1853 - with the first performance of Tannhäuser  - works by Richard Wagner in particular enjoyed great popularity, but pieces by Mozart , Rossini , Donizetti and others were also performed.

After Heinrich Seemann's death, the house was sold to the city for 47,600 thalers in 1855. At the end of the 19th century, the Bremen artists Heinrich Bulthaupt and Arthur Fitger had a major influence on the further development of the theater, both of whom were also represented on the stage with their own plays, such as Bulthaupts Saul (1870) or Fitgers Adalbert von Bremen (1873). Bulthaupt was also active as a critic and author of numerous works on theater theory, while the painter and poet Fitger a. a. 1889 designed the new main curtain of the theater.

From 1883 to 1885 Angelo Neumann was in charge of the city theater. Under artistic director Alexander Senger , naturalism found its way into the repertoire of the stage from 1885 with plays by Gerhart Hauptmann and Henrik Ibsen in drama or Pietro Mascagni and Giacomo Puccini in opera. Before that, Ibsen's The pillars of society had already been performed in 1878 in the Tivoli Theater .

The era of Julius Otto , which lasted from 1910 to 1924 and which also saw the final abolition of the leasing system in 1920, is considered particularly successful . After the new theater at Goetheplatz No. 1–3 was inaugurated in 1913 - today Theater am Goetheplatz  - the city theater mainly performed operas and operettas .

In 1933 the house was renamed the State Theater and connected to the subscription system of the National Socialist German Labor Front (DAF). From 1942 the house was called the “Theater of the Hanseatic City of Bremen”. On October 6, 1944, the building was largely destroyed in an air raid after the theater had already ceased in August 1944.

After the end of the war, the few undestroyed parts of the theater were used as rehearsal rooms until the remains of the ruins were finally completely removed in 1965.

Art crypt and theater garden

Aegina sculpture by Gerhard Marcks in the theater garden

In 1949 , Peter Hagenah set up the Kunst-Krypta gallery in the former air raid shelter under the theater , in which mainly unique ceramics were exhibited. It lasted until 1962. From 1966 the location of the former theater was converted into the terraced theater garden, in which the sculpture of Aegina by Gerhard Marcks was installed in 1968 . As part of the Bremer Wallanlagen park , the theater garden still exists today.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Daniel Schütte: About the advantage of standing theater in front of the traveling, and proposals for the establishment of such in Bremen . Bremen 1806, p. 3.

literature

Coordinates: 53 ° 4 ′ 36 "  N , 8 ° 48 ′ 47"  E