Schillertheater

In Schillertheater once stood a Berlin stage whose life was repeatedly rewritten by catastrophe, ideology, and money—until the point where even the building’s most famous “incarnation” was driven off its original track. The structure that opened in 1907—and the auditorium that was the heart of it—was effectively erased during World War II. Today, the name still belongs to a theatre venue, but the historical shockwave you’re following begins with the destruction of what was there before.

A theatre born in social ambition

The Schiller Theater was built from 1905 to 1906 on plans by the Munich architect Max Littmann, acting for both the Schiller-Theater company and the then-independent city of Charlottenburg. Littmann had already designed and built the Munich Prinzregententheater and the Kammerspiele in 1900–1901, giving him a direct background in theatre architecture. This Charlottenburg complex included not only a theatre hall, but also a multipurpose room and a restaurant. Its sculptural decoration came from Düll and Petzold, while the auditorium decoration and the painted curtain were by Julius Mössel. The theatre opened on 1 January 1907 with Friedrich Schiller’s Die Räuber, and it was run by the Schiller-Theater-Gesellschaft with its own ensemble.