Thalia-Theater

The Thalia-Theater stood in Bremen’s Neustadt district on Neustadtswall 24. Built in 1907, it opened in May 1909 as a permanent theatre for the city’s western quarter. The building served as a private stage until 1939. Gevert Flathmann owned and directed the house from its start until his death in 1937. Emile Evrard took charge of artistic matters in 1909 and 1910, shaping its early programme. The theatre mattered because it gave the Neustadt a lively stage when others were scarce. In 1910 it ranked third in size, with 800 seats after a rebuild, behind the Stadttheater’s 1,400 and the Schauspielhaus’s 830. Johannes Wiegand, a local teacher and critic, worked with Evrard to bring modern plays to the stage. The Plattdeutsche Verein supplied 400 members as a loyal audience club. Guest troupes from Hamburg visited in 1922, enlivening the city’s cultural life. Visitors found a modest playhouse that staged everything from folk pieces like Hasemanns Töchter to Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well. Gustav Püttjer’s revenge drama had its first night there in 1917. Later years brought military farces such as Thetje, the Pearl of the Garrison, with music and dance inserts. Fritz Meyerhold’s Fischluzi opened in 1936 and ran for 100 performances. The final season began with Karl Bunje’s comedy De Voß in´e Fall in August 1938.