Königliches Schauspielhaus

The Royal Playhouse in Potsdam was a Neoclassical theatre built between 1793 and 1796 by Michael Philipp Boumann for Frederick William II of Prussia. It stood beside the Stadtkanal at 8 Am Kanal and first opened with room for seven hundred spectators. The building served as a branch of Berlin’s Schauspielhaus, hosting plays, operas and ballets performed by visiting companies. A third of its early audiences were soldiers from the Potsdam garrison alongside the city’s middle class. After the Second World War the theatre was ruined by artillery fire and its remains were cleared in 1966. From 1846 the theatre operated under private managers who offered plays, operas, comedies and lighter entertainment. During the First World War patriotic productions filled the stage, and after the 1918–19 revolution the state leased the building to Kurt Pehlemann. Pehlemann staged German classics and popular works until 1924, when the house became a limited company and its seating reduced to six hundred and fifty. A renovation paid for by public funds and donations led to a reopening in 1929 with Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe. The Royal Playhouse’s later years included performances of light fare and National Socialist drama after 1933. Heavy artillery fire in 1945 destroyed the building, and in 1966 the ruins were demolished to make way for a modern apartment block. Today the site is marked by the 17-storey prefabricated building that replaced it, standing on the canal’s edge where the theatre once welcomed soldiers and citizens alike.