Rose-Theater

The Rose-Theater stood in Berlin’s Friedrichshain district on what is now the Karl-Marx-Allee. Built in 1877 as the Ostend-Theater, it opened with Shakespeare’s King Lear and Schiller’s Mary Stuart. The house seated between 1 200 and 1 800 people across a garden stage and a main stage. Repertory ranged from classics to operettas and sensational newspaper novels aimed at the city’s middle and lower classes. Early directors included Hermann Grünfeld and Arnold Lüders, followed by a rapid succession of managers who struggled to keep the theatre afloat. The theatre’s fortunes changed when Bernhard Rose took over in 1906 and renamed it the Rose-Theater. His sons Hans, Paul and Willi ran it after his death in 1927. Regular performers included Paul Albert Glaeser-Wilken, Georg August Koch and Traute Rose, while guest stars such as Claire Waldoff and Gustaf Gründgens appeared on its stage. The house specialised in Berlin folk plays that drew working-class and lower-middle-class audiences. Visitors found a lively proletarian stage where light comedies and musicals filled the seats. The garden stage was destroyed in an air raid in 1943, and the final operetta, Lehár’s Friederike, was given on 31 August 1944. After the war the shell was converted into a cinema, then levelled during rebuilding of the Stalinallee. Today only the address recalls the theatre that once entertained Berlin’s eastern districts.