Deutsches Künstlertheater

The Deutsches Künstlertheater once stood in Berlin’s Tiergarten district, a private playhouse that opened in 1911 as the Kurfürstenoper. Designed in neoclassical style by Hildenbrand & Nicolaus, it seated 1,045 people behind a tuff-stone façade. The first director was Maximilian Moris, followed swiftly by Viktor Palfi, while Gerhart Hauptmann soon took the stage as director. The house quickly became a meeting place for leading actors, singers and composers like Franz Lehár, Richard Tauber and Oscar Straus. Its early years saw both opera and spoken drama, though critics noted the building’s awkward proportions and chilly foyers. By 1913 Max Epstein had remodelled the interior under Oskar Kaufmann, removing the orchestra pit and widening escape routes. In 1915 Victor Barnowsky renamed it Deutsches Künstlertheater and mounted Curt Goetz’s comedies alongside operettas by Hugo Hirsch. Financial troubles soon forced another change of direction, and Heinz Saltenburg turned it into a dedicated operetta house. Under Eugen Robert in the early 1930s it belonged to the Robertbühnen until he fled to England. After Max Epstein’s exile in 1935 the Nazis seized the building, installed a Führerloge and made it a state theatre under Gustaf Gründgens. The theatre finally perished in a 1943 air raid, leaving only ruins that were cleared in 1963. A bank headquarters rose on the site in 1983, itself demolished thirty years later. Today the corner of Nürnberger Straße and Budapester Straße carries no trace of the once lively stage where Emil Jannings and Heinz Rühmann played to packed houses.