Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf

The Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf stood on a corner in the city’s Carl-Theodor-Straße from 1905 until its destruction in 1943. Louise Dumont and Gustav Lindemann founded it as a private theatre with ten shareholders from industry, administration and the art academy. The building was designed by Berlin architect Bernhard Sehring and built by Boswau & Knauer in less than two years. It opened with Friedrich Hebbel’s tragedy Judith on 28 October 1905. From the start it competed with the municipal Stadttheater, yet its ambitious repertoire and artistic standards earned it the nickname ‘Vorbühne des Westens’. The theatre’s design set it apart from other Rhineland houses of the period. The auditorium followed late-baroque Historicism, while the stage building adopted the new Reform architecture with plain brick walls, round towers and a battlemented crown. This contrast reflected the architects’ wish to link the stage tower to local building traditions. The stage house’s fortress-like appearance recalled Kaiserswerth’s early history, where Emperor Frederick Barbarossa built a mighty toll fortress on the Rhine. Inside, the auditorium had a reduced tier system, with the upper circle confined to the rear. The stalls were arranged in a wedge shape, side boxes were omitted, and proscenium boxes and their galleries disappeared. After the building’s ruins were cleared in 1952, only a small plaque marked the site. A new theatre bearing Gustaf Gründgens’s name now stands nearby, but the original Schauspielhaus survives only in photographs and documents.