Central Theater (Berlin)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Central-Theater, seating 1894

The Berlin Central-Theater (also in the spellings Zentraltheater and Zentral-Theater ) was a private theater in what was then Berlin's Luisenstadt district , which existed under this name with interruptions from 1880 to 1933. It was located in a hall built in 1865 at Alte Jakobstraße 30-32 at today 's Waldeckpark and had around 1000 seats. The building was destroyed in World War II.

The theater was the successor to the Reunion Theater and the Henne Theater . At times the stage was also known as the Thomas Theater (1890-1892), Eden Theater (1919/1920), Theater in the Alte Jakobstrasse (1920) and Winterberg Theater (December 1926).

history

1869–1880: Reunion Theater and Henne Theater

The restaurateur Friedrich Bente also decided to found a theater due to the new freedom of theater in the German Confederation since 1869 . Bente owned the Orpheum ball and dance venue , which had been located on the rear site of the property at 32 Alte Jakobstrasse since around 1850, and was expanded around 1865 to include a second dance hall with a glass roof on the acquired property at Alte Jakobstrasse 30. There he opened the theater in the Glass Salon on October 30, 1869 . In 1870 the stage was called the Reunion Theater . Dance pieces, opera acts, antics and classics were played. In 1875 a café-chantant was set up. The theater was not particularly successful, however. That is why the actor Wilhelm Henne († 1883) took over the management of the house from the Belle Alliance Theater in 1879 and called it the Henne Theater . According to Henne's idea, the stage should be a serious theater. But it failed after a year.

1880–1898: Central Theater and Thomas Theater

Emil Thomas , 1899

In 1880, the previous director of the Luisenstadt Theater, Adolf Ernst, took over the house and renamed it the Central Theater . Folk plays, antics and parodies were played quite successfully. While Ernst visited theater in Paris and London in 1883 , the playwright and actor Heinrich Wilken was director of the house for a year. After that, Ernst took over the management again and also played equipment pieces . The star of the ensemble was the comedian Guido Thielscher from October 1883 .

In 1887 - the Burchardt brothers now owned the house and property - the actor Emil Thomas took over the Central Theater. Thomas does not take care of the house all the time, but started on an American tour in 1887 . In 1890 the house was closed for reasons of building control. Thomas bought the building and reopened it as the Thomas Theater in September 1890 . Josefine Dora belonged to the Thomas ensemble during these years . The theater only kept afloat with great difficulty. Thomas went on tour to America again in 1892 and 1893. He handed the stage over to the theater-loving dentist Carl Mallachow and the director of the Breslau City Theater Hermann Schaumberg . They reopened the theater on April 1, 1893. But the company had already failed in July 1893. The house was auctioned off under pressure from the Burchardt brothers and bought back by them for a little more than 25 percent of the original selling price.

The stage was leased from Richard Schultz in 1893 . With a series of lightweight pieces of equipment, under Schultz, the building, again named Central Theater , was "again a popular and flourishing entertainment theater " until 1898. In the 1890s, he brought real Arabs onto the stage in the revue Eine wildeache "along with donkeys and camels". But also Social Aristocrats , a drama by Arno Holz , had its world premiere under Holz 'direction as a self-financed production there on June 15, 1897. Max Reinhardt played the role of Bellermann. In 1898, Schultz gave up the management of the theater, instead took over the previous Theater Unter den Linden , renamed it the Metropol Theater and continued to successfully present major revues there.

1898–1907: Central Theater under José Ferenczy

José Ferenczy , 1898
Schedule December 1904

On August 14, 1898, José Ferenczy's theater was opened as an operetta house. Ferenczy also remained director of the Carl-Schultze-Theater in Hamburg until 1900 . In 1903 he was also director of the ensemble guest performances at the Theater des Westens and the Lessing Theater . The ensemble of the Central Theater during these years included Emil Albes , Hermann Litt , Heinrich Peer , Helene Voss and the Kapellmeister Curt Goldmann and Leo Fall . The operetta specialist Ferenczy was initially extremely successful, but ran into financial difficulties after the turn of the century. In mid-October 1907 he stopped his payments and resigned as director. The New Theater Almanac retrospectively described Ferenczy's work in 1909 as follows:

“Ferenczy was at the height of his success at the time. Never before in Germany had a stage manager succeeded in repeating a play 1000 times [...] But the huge success [...] was his undoing. Its stage, like a number of its actors, had achieved great popularity; but in the deadly monotony of years of repetition, the artistic level of his house sank deeper and deeper. In addition, there were financial difficulties [...] His novelties and his new productions proved to be rivets, and so the collapse of his management, which took place in 1907, was long foreseeable and inevitable.

From October 1907, under the direction of the actor and director Julius Sachs , the ensemble continued to play for a short period of time "on income sharing". From mid-November 1907, the Hebbel Theater ensemble performed in the house. On April 20, 1908, the aging theater was finally closed. Ferenczy died a few months later on July 27, 1908 in Buenos Aires .

Central Theater program sheet , November 17, 1922

The theater from 1908

From 1908 to 1918 the theater on Alte Jakobstrasse was not permanently used. Irritatingly, the name Central-Theater (or Central-Theater ) was used from 1917 to 1919 by the former Gebrüder-Herrnfeld-Theater in Luisenstädter Kommandantenstrasse 57. The director there was initially Emil Berisch , then Walter Kollo .

The house on Alte Jakobstrasse was rebuilt in 1919 and opened as the Eden Theater on October 1, 1919. The theater was managed by Victor Hollaender , head director was Martin Zickel , until 1912 director of the Berlin comedy theater . The guest star of the ensemble was the singer and actor Josef Josephi . From April 1, 1920 on, the building was briefly called the Theater in Alte Jakobstrasse . From August 1, 1920, it was renamed Central-Theater again with Martin Zickel as director.

Erwin Piscator took over the management of the theater from 1922 to 1923 together with the playwright Hans José Rehfisch . With his naturalistic productions ( Gorki , Tolstoy , Rolland ) that were purposefully true to the works, Piscator not only addressed the visitor base of his former Proletarian Theater and the visitor organization Freie Volksbühne Berlin , but also targeted petty bourgeois visitors. But the concept did not work financially. The theater became the property of the theater entrepreneurs Alfred and Fritz Rotter (Rotter-Bühnen) .

In theater directory of Berlin Address Book , the house was up in 1928 as Central Theater and in 1931 and 1933 as Theater Central- listed. According to another representation, in October 1927 the theater became a cinema, the Zentral-Kino-Palast , then around 1935 the Atlas-Lichtspiele . From 1938 Deutsche Grammophon used the hall for recordings. The building was destroyed in 1945, the remains were blown up in 1952.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See theater directory. In: Berlin address book 1924, 1931, 1933.
  2. ^ Peter Spahn: Paul Lincke in Berlin. Life - work - meaning. Norderstedt 2008, p. 5.
  3. ↑ a b German Biographical Encyclopedia . 2nd edition. Vol. 10: Thies - Zykan. Munich 2008, p. 12.
  4. ↑ Gerhard Wahnrau: Berlin. City of theaters. The Chronicle I. Part. Berlin 1957, p. 524.
  5. ↑ a b c d e f Horst Windelboth: "Small Temple of the Muses in the Alte Jacobstrasse." About the Berlin Central Theater. In: Der Bär von Berlin 6 (1956), pp. 86-107.
  6. ↑ a b c d Nic Leonhardt: Pictorial dramaturgy. Visual culture and theater in the 19th century (1869–1899). Bielefeld 2007, p. 243 f.
  7. ↑ Gerhard Wahnrau: Berlin. City of theaters. The Chronicle I. Part. Berlin 1957, p. 560.
  8. ^ A b Ludwig Eisenberg: Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century. Leipzig 1903, pp. 1036-1039; New Theater-Almanach 3 (1892), p. 186.
  9. ^ Heinz-Dieter Heinrichs: The Rose Theater. (= Theater and drama. 29). Berlin 1965, p. 105.
  10. ↑ ÖBL 1815-1950 , Vol. 11 (Lfg. 54, 1999), p. 351 f.
  11. ^ Ferdinand Avenarius: Arno wood and his work. Berlin 1923, p. 20; Robert Oeste: Arno Holz. The long poem and the tradition of poetic experiment. Bonn 1982, p. 175.
  12. ^ Nic Leonhardt: Pictorial dramaturgy. Visual culture and theater in the 19th century (1869–1899). Bielefeld 2007, pp. 161 f, 247.
  13. ↑ ÖBL 1815–1950, Vol. 1 (Lfg. 4, 1956), p. 302.
  14. ↑ a b Neuer Theater-Almanach 18 (1907), p. 302.
  15. ^ Ludwig Eisenberg: Large biographical lexicon of the German stage in the XIX. Century. Leipzig 1903, p. 253 f.
  16. ↑ New Theater-Almanach 10 (1899), p. 264 f.
  17. ↑ a b New Theater-Almanach 19 (1908), p. 257.
  18. ↑ a b New Theater-Almanach 20 (1909), p. 171.
  19. ↑ Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 29 (1918), p. 314; 31 (1920), pp. 274 f.
  20. ^ Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 31 (1920) - 33 (1922); to Zickel s. German Theater Lexicon. Volume VII. 38./39. Delivery. Berlin u. a. 2011, p. 3766.
  21. ↑ Heinrich Goertz: Erwin Piscator in personal testimonials and image documents. Reinbek 1974, p. 33; Piscator productions on erwin-piscator.de , accessed on December 27, 2013.
  22. ^ Tilla Durieux : The profession of actress. Berlin 2004, p. 55.
  23. ↑ Jens Dobler: From other shores. History of Berlin's lesbians and gays in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain. Berlin 2003, p. 77; Sophie Fetthauer. Deutsche Grammophon. History of a record company in the "Third Reich". (= Music in the “Third Reich” and in Exile 9), Hamburg 2000, p. 62 f.