Wilhelm-Theater

The Wilhelm-Theater once stood in Lübeck’s St. Jürgen quarter beside the Mühlentor gate. Built in 1867 by Johann Carl Heinrich Hoffmann, it opened as the Viktoria-Theater with a 700-seat auditorium and a restaurant whose concert garden welcomed guests. The stage specialised in light fare—operettas, farces and comedies—until the 1870s, when new directors added operas and Goethe’s Faust in 1879. Under Emil Feldhusen, who took charge in 1889, the house gained a reputation for serious drama. Henrik Ibsen’s plays shared the bill with Hauptmann’s Fuhrmann Henschel and Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe, while Kapellmeister Leon Jessel led the orchestra from 1899. The theatre’s final season opened in 1901 with Reinhold Lütjohann’s debut, but the building closed three years later and the auditorium became a ballroom. After the theatre’s 1904 farewell performance, the site remained a restaurant ballroom until 1970. That year the old structures were demolished to make way for a modern apartment block on Am Brink. Today only the address recalls the theatre where Lübeck’s audiences once gathered for plays and music.