The Hebbel-Theater in the Kreuzberg district

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Located in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, the Hebbel-Theater was built in 1907/08 and is one of the most beautiful theatres in Germany. Virtually undamaged during the Second World War, the theatre's "Jugendstil" mahogany auditorium has lost none of its extraordinary charm. Artistically, however, the Hebbel-Theater lays claim to a rather eventful history, including frequent changes in ownership and name. Even the initial attempt by the Hungarian lawyer and founder of the Hebbel-Theater, Eugen Robert, to find an architect for his planned enterprise, was something of an artistic adventure: "... I remembered that I had seen an extremely well executed bedroom display by a Hungarian architect at the Wertheim department store. Up to this point, the architect's entire career could be summed up in a single sentence: he had put together a bedroom display at Wertheim, other than that, nothing else."

That man was Oskar Kaufmann
, and his building, which opened on January 29, 1908 with Friedrich Hebbel's play "Maria Magdalena", signaled a breakthrough for the young architect as a master-builder of theatres. With a total of six theatres built or renovated in Berlin alone, Oskar Kaufmann is among the best known theatre architects of his time. In addition to the Hebbel-Theater, he designed the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz (1914), the Theater am Kurfürstendamm (1921), the Kroll-Oper (1922/23), the Komödie (1924) and the Renaissance-Theater (1926). He built theatres in Vienna, Bremerhaven and Königsberg and also made a name for himself as the designer of office buildings and villas for the wealthy bourgeoisie. After the National Socialists took power in 1933, he emigrated to Palestine and was commissioned (among other things) to build the famous Hebrew theatre Habima (1937) in Tel Aviv.

"The first impression is disconcerting. The building does not resemble any known type of edifice: it is neither palace, nor temple, nor apartment or office block. The front section of the building appears solemn, squat, almost gloomy. Yet this impression is not disturbing. On the contrary, it awakens interest, it attracts, as does everything mysterious."
(January, 1908)


Following Robert Eugen's ambitious but difficult first years, Carl Meinhardt and Rudolf Bernauer took over the direction of the private theatre in Kreuzberg in 1911. Under the name "Theater in der Königgrätzer Strasse", they successfully presented a programme of events which included classical theatre but above all, the staging of contemporary plays.

In the following years, the theatre saw its first golden age, when Tilla Durieux, Paul Wegener, Elisabeth Bergner and Maria Orska performed Ibsen, Strindberg and Wedekind, as well as Shakespeare and Goethe. In 1925, Victor Barnowsky, a seasoned classical director, took over the artistic direction. He engaged stars such as Hans Albers, Fritz Kortner, Paul Hörbiger, Werner Krauss, Ernst Deutsch and Curt Bois, as well as the director Erwin Piscator, thereby creating some of the highlights of the Berlin theatre scene in the 1920's. In 1930, the house was renamed "Theater in der Stresemannstrasse". In 1934 under the National Socialists, it was renamed yet again, as "Theater in der Saarlandstrasse". During the Second World War, the theatre was placed under the direction of the Reich's Ministry for Peoples' Education and Propaganda, and became a part of the National-Socialist People's Stage Association.


Following Germany's capitulation to the Allies, the cultural and theatrical life of the city came back to life. The people's hunger for culture was voracious. The Hebbel-Theater was one of the few undamaged theatres in Berlin, and now lay in the American sector of the city. The occupational authorities seized the opportunity to use the theatre as part of their re-education programme. They gave the theatre back its original name and appointed Karl-Heinz Martin as director. Although the theatre lay in the middle of an enormous field of rubble and could only be reached by a twenty-minute walk from the nearest subway station, the performances were consistently sold out in the first winter after the war. The audience brought coal briquettes to pay the entrance price. Under the leadership of its progressive new director Martin, the theatre began to produce Western European and American contemporary drama which had been banned under the Nazis. In an effort to revive anti-fascist culture in Germany, Martin focused on contemporary work which dealt with the most recent events in German history. He pointedly chose Bertolt Brecht's "The Three-Penny Opera" as his opening piece on August 15, 1945: it had been banned by the Nazis in 1933. Martin continued to commit himself to creating a new and lively theatre - which included controversial debates about the content and form of contemporary drama - until his death in 1948. In his era, the Hebbel-Theater emerged as a cultural center, offering work to directors as diverse as Fritz Kortner, Karl-Heinz Stroux, Erich Engel, Jürgen Fehling and Rudolf Noelte.
 
With the opening of the Schiller Theater in 1951, the theatre on the Stresemannstrasse lost some of its significance. Under the direction of Rolf Külüs in the 1960's, however, it was able to regain its great popular success. The Hebbel-Theater developed into a people's theatre in the best sense of the word, engaging public favorites such as Harald Juhnke, Klaus Schwarzkopf, Rudolf Platte and Inge Meysel.Following Külüs' death, his wife Hela Gerber took over the theatre, which in the meantime had fallen into financial difficulties and had been bought by the municipality of Berlin in 1972. In 1978, Gerber was finally forced to declare bankruptcy.
 
A year later, the Hebbel-Theater was classified as a historical monument and saved from demolition. Thereafter, the theatre was used primarily as an alternative stage for other Berlin theatres - until the beginning of the 1980's, when its state of disrepair made it unusable. Thanks to the private association "Save the Hebbel-Theater in Berlin-Kreuzberg", and the engagement of Hans Rosenthal and other well-known actors and public figures, the dilapidated theatre was never completely abandoned. And on the 750th anniversary of Berlin, renovations on the building were finally undertaken by the Berlin Senate. In 1988, Berlin was chosen as the "Cultural Capital of Europe" and the Hebbel-Theater re-opened as part of the "Werkstatt Berlin" with international productions and guest performances. At the beginning of 1989, Nele Hertling took over as managing and artistic director, and transformed it within a few years into an attractive location for high caliber contemporary, international and genre-mixing theatre.


"The Hebbel Theater is located in the middle of a large field of rubble and remains unheated, but people still come in swarms."
(November 1945)