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Theatre at the Museum für Fotografie
 
Press-Photo-Dienst Schmidt
"Das unsichtbare Mädchen", von Hans Kafka, Allan Gray (Musik)
Neues Theater am Zoo 1927
Regie: Karl Horbach
Bühne: Demosthenes Matsoukis
Szenenfotografie mit Rudolf Koch, Wolfgang Dohnberg und Friedel Ehrlich
© bpk / Press-Photo-Dienst Schmidt
 

Theatre at the Museum für Fotografie

 
Looking Back at the 1920s
 
8 October 2021 – 13 February 2022
 
 

Museum für Fotografie

Jebensstr. 2, 10623 Berlin
Tel: +49 (0)30   3186 4825
mf@smb.spk-berlin.de
www.smb.museum/mf
www.facebook.com/staatlichemuseenzuberlin
Tue-Sun 11am-7pm, Thu 11am-8pm
 
 
 
Like a detective sifting through clues, the presentation elucidates a previously little known chapter in the history of the former Landwehrkasino, now the Museum für Fotografie (Museum of Photography). A century ago, a theatre was established in the Kaisersaal (Imperial Hall), the museum’s largest exhibition space ‒ located on the 2nd storey. The exhibition uses theatre photos, programmes, cast lists, postcards and posters to introduce its eventful history.
 
 
Theatre at the Museum für Fotografie
 
Press-Photo-Dienst Schmidt
"Das öffentliche Ärgernis", von Franz Arnold
Neues Theater am Zoo um 1928
Regie: Franz Arnold
Bühne: Walter Bornemann
Szenenfotografie mit Guido Thielscher und Jessie Vihrog
© bpk / Press-Photo-Dienst Schmidt
 
 
The Landwehrkasino was built in 1909 as a meeting place and dining club for the reserve officers’ corps. After the First World War, the German military was in dire financial straits, so it was decided that the prestigious heart of the Kasino building, the Kaisersaal, would have to be rented out. Gustav Charlé opened the Neues Theater am Zoo there in August 1921. The stage was located in Berlin’s "New West", the hub of "Golden Twenties" entertainment culture around the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church) and the Kurfürstendamm. It offered a broad and varied programme, with the spectrum of works ranging from Shakespeare to Wedekind to Roda Roda, and including operettas, dance theatre, piano evenings and comedy drama.

From the Neues Theater am Zoo to the Deutsches Volkstheater
The theatre experienced a rapid succession of sensational successes, bankruptcies and management changes. In 1929 Joachim von Ostau took over the stage and renamed it the Deutsches Volkstheater. Barely a year later, Ostau’s plan to establish a culturally relevant theatre had already failed. Like many other theatres, the stage shut down because of the world economic crisis in the early 1930s. Thus, the theatre experiment at the Landwehrkasino can be seen as an example of Berlin‘s theatre life during the Weimar Republic.
 
 
Theatre at the Museum für Fotografie
 
Press-Photo-Dienst Schmidt
"Menschen wie Du und Ich", von Alfred Hermann Unger
Deutsches Volkstheater Berlin 1929
Regie: Joachim von Ostau
Bühne: Traugott Müller
Szenenfotografie mit Ruth Albu, Frigga Braut, Tony van Eyck, Annemarie Hase, Ernst Guggenheimer, Franz Schafheitlein und Paul Pruegel
© bpk / Press-Photo-Dienst Schmidt
 
 
Insights into Theatres in Berlin during the Weimar Republic
Theatre photographs by Lotte Jacobi and Joseph Schmidt document productions at the Neues Theater am Zoo / Deutsches Volkstheater. They provide insight into the works performed, stage designs and costumes from the period. Dance photography is also represented with Suse Byk’s photographs of pieces by the well-known choreographer and dance theoretician Rudolph von Laban and Martin Badekow’s images of the nude dancer Celly de Rheidt.

The presentation assembles objects from the collections at the Kunstbibliothek (Art Library), the bpk-Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (State Library), the Akademie der Künste, the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin, the Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf at the Villa Oppenheim, the picture library akg-images and the Universitätsbibliothek (University Library) in Leipzig. It is presented together with the exhibition "Ruth Walz. Theatre Photography" in the Kaisersaal at the Museum für Fotografie.
 
 
Theatre at the Museum für Fotografie
 
Atelier Michaelis
Neues Theater am Zoo, aus: "Mascottchen" Operette in 3 Akten von Georg Okonkowski
Programmheft Neues Theater am Zoo, Berlin 1928
© Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin / Repro: Dorin Alexandru Ionita, Berlin
 
 
Exhibition Catalogue
A publication by Justine Tutmann accompanies the exhibition, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 112 pages, 74 illustrations, ISBN 978-3-422-98696-1, price €19.

A special exhibition of the Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
 
 
Theatre at the Museum für Fotografie
 
Neues Theater am Zoo, 1932, Postkarte
Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf in der Villa Oppenheim
© Museum Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf
 
 
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