Lustspielhaus (Berlin)

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Lustspielhaus, hall 1912

The Lustspielhaus was a private theater in the southern Friedrichstadt in Berlin (today Berlin-Kreuzberg ), which was used from 1904 to 1939. The building was destroyed in World War II and was not rebuilt after 1945.

history

Building and audience

The Lustspielhaus stood on the rear part of the property at Friedrichstrasse 236, on which the Friedrichstädtische Casino was previously located, and was created through the renovation of the old hall building. The building could be reached from Friedrichstrasse through a narrow entrance next to the “Bodega Reinhold Blaurock” , which led to the inner courtyard. The theater opened on October 1, 1904 and seated about 600 people. A Berlin guide briefly describes the theater in 1905: “Elegant rooms, elegant spectators. In the intervening acts of the foyer music. ” Alfred Döblin, on the other hand, judged the house and visitors more critically in 1921:

“You walk across a courtyard. And then the foyer is right on the way to the seats. A dining room, a drinking room. I didn't like it. They sat, stuffed their cheeks, swallowed and looked at each other. They had their hands full at the buffet. Only when the doorbell rings do they get up, wipe their mouths and go into the room, sucking on their teeth. Then comes the theater. / The room - I didn't like the room. What should I, inclined to praise for who I am, find in a room whose ceiling - only one tier - falls deep, suffocatingly low on the parquet. And at the top of the tier, two gigantic stucco figures support the ceiling of the house. Oh, such stucco figures are very doubtful in themselves, but these are quite unquestionable: a man on the left looks at his wife, who throws him a kiss on the hand. A kiss on the hand with a hand a full meter long, from a mouth that width. Over the heads of the audience! The kiss-throwing, kiss-throwing person grins. I couldn't have been ranked beneath this disgust. "

The theater was located in the center of the Berlin film industry at the time in Untere Friedrichstrasse between Leipziger Strasse and Belle-Alliance-Platz . Deutsche Bioskop , founded in 1897 and initially operating a film studio in an attic on Friedrichstrasse , also resided in the Friedrichstrasse 236 building complex for several years . Later there were u. a. the Henry Müller Monopolfilms , producer of the Fred Horst detective series, and the Beef Steak Film, which existed from December 1928 to 1931, by the actors Siegfried Arno ("Beef") and Kurt Gerron ("Steak").

Owner and ensemble

The owner was initially the banker and investor Fedor Berg . Determining in the first phase of Lustspielhaus but was Martin Zickel , the 1904-1911 Director and from 1915 to 1917 chief director was the theater. The initial ensemble included Victor Barnowsky , Hugo Flink , Toni Impekoven , who also worked there as a director and set designer, Rudolf Lettinger , Olga Limburg , Fritz Spira and his later wife Lotte Spira (as Lotte Andresen). Franz Arnold , who was engaged as a theater actor at the Lustspielhaus from 1909 , met Ernst Bach there and wrote numerous extremely successful comedies with him. Zickel's theater license was withdrawn in November 1911 after a scandalous trial, and Heinrich Bolten-Baeckers was succeeded as director .

In 1921/22 Heinz Saltenburg took over the Lustspielhaus together with the ensemble to which a. a. Albert Bassermann , Jakob Tiedtke and Hans Marr , integrated the stage into his Berlin theater empire and later rented the theater several times to Ensemble ohne Haus. This included the group Die Truppe founded by Ernst Josef Aufricht and Berthold Viertel , which played in the house in 1923/24 and wanted to bring a more modern approach to theater to the stage. This ensemble included Fritz Kortner , Johanna Hofer , Rudolf Forster , Oskar Homolka , Aribert Wäscher , Leonard Steckel and Salka Viertel .

At the end of the 1920s, the stage was taken over by the Deutsche Schauspiel-Betriebs-Aktiengesellschaft of the theater entrepreneurs Alfred and Fritz Rotter (“Rotter-Bühnen”). For the 1929/30 season they initially engaged Martin Zickel again as director, followed by Hans Lüpschütz , previously director of the Theater des Westens, which also belonged to the Rotters . During this time, numerous actors from the other Rotter theaters played at the Lustspielhaus , for example Hansi Arnstaedt , Alice Hechy , Lori Leux and Else von Moellendorff . The Rotters also leased the theater several times - like all their theaters, for example in 1930/31 to Curt Goetz . The brothers emigrated from Germany in 1933, their theaters went bankrupt.

The audience favorite of the house was the comedian Guido Thielscher for many years . After going to the theater in the Lustspielhaus, Thielscher fan Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary: “We laughed half sick.” When Thielscher celebrated his 50th stage anniversary in the Lustspielhaus in 1928 , Renate Müller , Trude Hesterberg and Marlene Dietrich appeared in his honor as dancing “Thielscher Girls” .

Over the years, Alfred Abel , Else Bassermann , Trude Berliner , Paul Biensfeldt , Hansi Burg , the married couple Lia Eibenschütz and Kurt Vespermann , Johanna Ewald , Erika Glässner , Reinhold Häussermann , Werner Hollmann , Viktor de Kowa , Ruth Landshoff played at the house , Leo Peukert , Claire Rommer , Willi Schaeffers , Wanda Treumann , Ewald Wenck and Anneliese Würtz . The up-and-coming young actress Carola Neher celebrated her first great success in Berlin in August 1926 as the Samoan “Kukuli”.

repertoire

Gustav Kadelburg's “Family Day ”, 1904

In keeping with its name, the Lustspielhaus mainly provided light entertainment, especially pranks and comedies . “Without an artistic program”, a Berlin guide gave a succinct judgment in 1905. Alfred Döblin describes the atmosphere of a usual performance in 1921 as follows:

“The curtain went up. Then it started. You chew on the right, you chew on the left. The parchment paper crackles. Pieces of chocolate were broken off and cracked. You clicked, sucked, smacked, licked. The jaws ground. A piece was also played. For the eyes and for the ears. The other senses were already busy. You have to make the most of your time. I am in favor of cutting your nails and rinsing your mouth during the theater, otherwise you won't get around to it. For the boxes, the installation of water closets under folding seats is not to be despised; it should increase the number of people going to these places and the theater in general. "

Between 1924 and 1928 the successful Schwänke of the author duo Arnold and Bach were premiered in the Lustspielhaus , such as The True Jacob (1924), Hurray, a Boy (1926), Under Business Supervision (1927) and Weekend in Paradise (1928). Curt Goetz played a number of his pieces there in 1930/31, including Hocus-Pocus , The Dead Aunt and Other Occurrences, and The Liar and the Nun .

The occasional performances of serious pieces were mostly unsuccessful in the first few years. Gerhart Hauptmann's weak tragic comedy Peter Brauer premiered with moderate success on November 1, 1921 under the direction of Heinz Saltenburg in the Lustspielhaus . The Aufricht / Viertel-Ensemble Die Truppe opened its season in 1923 with William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice and then played O'Neill's Kaiser Jones , Hamsun's Vom Teufelschlag , Georg Kaiser's Side by Side , Robert Musil's Vinzenz or The Friend of Important Men and 1924 one-act play by Karl Kraus .

The theater's repertoire remained inconsistent. In October 1931 August Strindberg's tragic comedy Believer was played for a short time . In 1932 Bertolt Brecht's didactic play The Mother was performed after the premiere in the Komödienhaus on Schiffbauerdamm in the Lustspielhaus .

As of May 1932, the outdated theater was no longer used. Only in January 1933, Jean Weidt's left-wing dance group Die Rote Tänzer performed there .

From 1933

The comedy theater remained closed in 1933. In early 1934, however, the pacifist play Am Himmel Europa by Per Schwenzen and JB Malina (director: Hugo Werner-Kahle , leading role: Adolf Wohlbrück ) was performed for months. The play originally premiered in June 1933 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and was then briefly banned by the National Socialists. The comedy theater was only used occasionally in the next few years, for a time under the name Theater in Friedrichstrasse . Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary in 1937 that a play by the Nazi Reich Labor Service was to be performed there. The last director of the theater was Ludwig Manfred Lommel , who ran the theater as a comedy theater in Friedrichstrasse in September 1938 . The theater was closed from autumn 1939.

Sometimes the stage is back with the existing in the 1940s Lustspielhaus the Prussian State Theater confused, the former Komische Oper in Friedrichstrasse 104 (at the Weidendamm Bridge).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Neuer Theater-Almanach 16 (1905), p. 299f.
  2. ^ Ruth Freydank: Theater in Berlin. From the beginning until 1945. Berlin 1988, p. 305; Postcard greetings from Reinhold Blaurock's Bodega, Berlin SW., Friedrichstrasse 236 (before 1914).
  3. ↑ a b Berlin and the Berliners. People - things - customs - beckons. Karlsruhe 1905, p. 266.
  4. ^ A b Alfred Döblin: A guy must have an opinion. Reports and reviews 1921–1924. Munich 1981, p. 23f.
  5. ↑ Uwe Fleischer, Helge Trimpert: How did you do it? Babelsberg cameramen open their bag of tricks. Marburg 2005, p. 15; Hans-Michael Bock: Bioskop studio . (first 1987; accessed December 21, 2013).
  6. ^ Advertisement in Schall und Rauch 1 (1921), No. 5 (January 1921).
  7. ↑ Gero Gandert (ed.): The film of the Weimar Republic. Berlin, New York 1993, p. 847; Barbara Felsmann, Karl Prümm: Kurt Gerron - celebrated and hunted. Berlin 1992, p. 43.
  8. ^ A b Max Epstein : The theater business . In: Die Schaubühne 8 (1912), No. 1 v. Jan. 4, 1912, pp. 8-12.
  9. ↑ German Theater Lexicon. Volume VII. 38./39. Delivery. Berlin u. a. 2011, p. 3766.
  10. ↑ German Biographical Encyclopedia . 2nd edition. Vol. 1: Aachen - Braniss . Munich 2005, pp. 231, 297.
  11. ^ Siegfried Jacobsohn : The Zickel case. In: Die Schaubühne 7 (1911), No. 46 v. November 16, 1911, pp. 467-469; New Theater-Almanach 24 (1913), p. 131.
  12. ↑ Walter Jürgen Schorlies: The actor, director, stage builder and theater director Karl Heinz Martin. Univ. Diss., Cologne 1971, p. 74.
  13. ^ A b Alfred Döblin: A guy must have an opinion. Reports and reviews 1921–1924. Munich 1981, pp. 228f., 242f .; Salka Viertel: the incorrigible heart. Reinebck near Hamburg 1979, pp. 115-119.
  14. ↑ Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 41 (1930), p. 287.
  15. ↑ Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 43 (1932), p. 136; Theater advertisement in Vossische Zeitung v. October 3, 1930 (morning edition).
  16. ↑ a b Theater advertisements in Vossische Zeitung , October 1930 - April 1931.
  17. ↑ Joseph Goebbels, Diaries v. January 1, 1928, March 28, 1929 (quote there).
  18. ^ Uwe Klöckner-Draga: Renate Müller. Your life, a tightrope act. Bayreuth 2006, p. 37; Steven Bach : Marlene Dietrich. Life and Legend. Minneapolis MN 2011, p. 486.
  19. ↑ Tita Gaehme : Follow the dream. The life of the actress Carola Neher and her love for Klabund. Cologne 1996, pp. 71-74.
  20. ↑ Publishing information from Felix Bloch Erben (accessed December 23, 2013).
  21. ↑ Short review in: Vossische Zeitung v. November 2, 1921 (morning edition), p. 3; Alfred Klaar: Peter Brauer. Gerhart Hauptmann in the comedy theater. In: Vossische Zeitung v. November 2, 1921 (evening edition), p. 2f.
  22. ↑ Theater advertisement in Vossische Zeitung v. November 28, 1931 (morning edition).
  23. ↑ Jan Knopf : Brecht manual. Theatre. Special edition Frankfurt / M. 1986, p. 126.
  24. ↑ a b Theater advertisements in Vossische Zeitung , May 1932 - December 1933.
  25. ^ Heinrich Goertz: Laughing and Howling. Munich 1982, p. 62.
  26. ^ Klaus Budzinski: The cabaret. Düsseldorf 1985, p. 234; Theater advertisements in Vossische Zeitung , January 1934 - March 1934.
  27. ↑ cf. Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 47 (1936), p. 232; 50 (1939), passim.
  28. ^ Joseph Goebbels, diary of October 29, 1937.
  29. ↑ Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 50 (1939), p. 228; Program leaflet honeymoon without a man (no year) with photo of Lommel.
  30. ↑ Deutsches Bühnen-Jahrbuch 51 (1940), p. 221; Theater = directory. In: Berlin address book 1941, 1942, 1943.