Puhlmann-Theater

The Puhlmann-Theater stood for nearly a century on Schönhauser Allee in Berlin’s lively Prenzlauer Berg district. It began in 1840 as a garden hall where Carl Puhlmann served beer and coffee to neighbours. After 1869 he turned part of the site into a vaudeville stage, one of the first theatres allowed by the new freedom of the stage in the German Confederation. The garden could seat up to three thousand guests in summer, while winter shows moved into a smaller hall that held nine hundred. The family kept the property through most of the 19th and 20th centuries, even after the theatre changed names many times. Several well-known figures shaped the house. August Kentsch, a kapellmeister since 1871, later ran the theatre between 1885 and 1892. The actor August Reiff led the stage from 1878 to 1894 and founded other Berlin theatres before returning as a performer. From 1905 to 1907 the Volkshumorist Wilhelm Fröbel and his wife Franziska presented plays, especially Jewish repertoire. In 1919 a proper cinema was built inside, seating seven hundred, and in 1925 the façade was given an oriental look. By 1933 the building had a darker use when an SA cellar nearby became an early concentration camp. Visitors today will find only a small park where the theatre once rose. The site is now a quiet paved space behind modern apartment blocks, with a few plaques recalling the past. On summer evenings the breeze still carries the memory of laughter from the garden stage and the hum of the old projector in the cinema. The surrounding streets keep the lively spirit of Prenzlauer Berg, lined with cafés and bookshops that echo the same cultural energy the Puhlmann once helped to create.