City Theatre

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

City Theater today are mostly theater of the public . In contrast to the state theater or state theater , a city theater is not financed by the respective state, but by the city in which it is located. The city theaters emerged from the court theaters of the later 18th or 19th centuries, partly also from private theaters financed jointly by wealthy citizens of a city , which were called city theaters as early as the 19th century.

institution

As a rule, a city theater is not just a theater, but a cultural institution in which a repertoire is possible; with permanent staff and an artistic ensemble . This is also how people speak of the expensive but unique system of German-speaking city theaters. Jürgen Flimm , as the outgoing President of the German Stage Association, said in 2003 that the “system of the city theater” was in danger.

“City theater” is often used as an alternative to other forms of performing arts . Formerly as a counterbalance to the circus , show booth and singspielhalle , today as a counterbalance to private theater (such as musical theater ), to the theater festival , to the so-called "free theater scene" ( free theater ) and other forms of event culture.

history

The house of the Bremen City Theater, for example, was built in 1792 by the principal of the Deutsche Wanderbühne as a permanent venue. After changing owners, it was taken over by a local association and called the City Theater since 1824. Funding from the city's Senate did not come about at the time. Since the 1830s, like many theaters of that time in the German-speaking area (such as the Zurich City Theater or the Riga City Theater), it was operated as a stock corporation . The oldest German city theater is in Ulm . The Ulm Theater was built in 1641 by the Ulm city architect Joseph Furttenbach.

In the small towns the city theater was often the only theater in bourgeois hands, in contrast to the princely court theater . A “city theater” need not always be the main or the publicly funded theater in the city. It could be a private theater among many, like the Wiener Stadttheater .

Since the middle of the 19th century, many city theaters were newly founded by citizens' initiatives in the smaller towns . This has to do with the emergence of a bourgeois understanding of culture and education and opposed the court theater on the one hand and the economically successful entertainment industry on the other. The attempt to set up a Dortmund City Theater as a stock corporation in a circus building, for example, failed several times. Some city theaters such as the Schaffhausen City Theater (1867) or the Grillo Theater in Essen (1892) also go back to individual initiatives by wealthy citizens. Some of these theaters, such as in Schaffhausen, remained mainly guest performances without their own ensemble .

At the end of the 19th century the city theaters increased rapidly. The architectural office Fellner & Helmer in Vienna (Austria) had specialized in this and designed representative houses for many cities in Central and Eastern Europe.

However, the cultural mission and the economic operation of the theater can rarely be combined. Around 1900, many of the joint-stock companies became public property. The City Theater Bern (CH) z. B. was established in 1903 by a stock corporation, but was sold to the city of Bern a little later.

A not inconsiderable part of the city theaters that still exist today was only built by the cities themselves in the years before the First World War : for example, the City Theater Gießen (1906), the City Theater Klagenfurt (1908), the City Theater Freiburg (1910) or the City Theater Bremerhaven ( 1911).

See also

literature

  • Stefan Koslowski: City theater versus show booths. On the history of theater in Basel in the 19th century. Chronos, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-905312-54-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ulm Theater - HISTORY. Retrieved October 11, 2019 .  ( Page no longer available )Template: dead link /! ... nourl