Hebbel Theater, Theatre in Kreuzberg, Germany
The Hebbel-Theater is a playhouse at Stresemannstraße 29 in Kreuzberg, built in 1907/08 by Oskar Kaufmann in Jugendstil style and set into the corner of an existing residential block. Its curving facade of rough-cut grey stone carries the blue-and-red lettering "HEBBEL THEATER" and the white "HAU EINS" signs of its present operator. The auditorium held about 800 seats at opening; under Eugen Klöpfer in 1934 the seating was cut to 672.
Eugen Robert commissioned Oskar Kaufmann in 1906 to build a playhouse; construction began in February 1907 and the theatre opened on 29 January 1908 with Friedrich Hebbel's Maria Magdalena. Renamed Theater in der Königgrätzer Straße in 1911, it was placed under Eugen Klöpfer's directorship in 1934 and reduced to 672 seats. A 1943/44 bomb damaged the foyer and stage roof, and it reopened on 15 August 1945 with Brecht and Weill's Dreigroschenoper.
The theatre is named after Friedrich Hebbel, who died in 1863; his bourgeois tragedy Maria Magdalena opened the house on 29 January 1908. Since 2003 the building has been one of the three venues of Hebbel am Ufer (HAU), alongside the Schaubühne am Halleschen Ufer and the Theater am Ufer. The blue lettering "HEBBEL THEATER" and the white "HAU EINS" banner mark the entrance on Stresemannstraße.
The theatre stands at Stresemannstraße 29, a corner building set into the block between Belle-Alliance-Platz and Askanischer Platz, in the southern Friedrichstadt. The entrance is reached through the front house; the hall itself lies behind it. The building is a listed Berlin monument, and the 1946/47 restoration by Karl-Friedrich Demmer replaced the oak entrance doors with plain wooden portals.
The theatre is named after Friedrich Hebbel, who died in 1863; his bourgeois tragedy Maria Magdalena opened the house on 29 January 1908. In 1945 it was the only working theatre building in Berlin, and its reopening on 15 August 1945 staged Brecht and Weill's Dreigroschenoper with Hubert von Meyerinck as Mackie.
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