Hamburger Kammerspiele

The Hamburg Kammerspiele are a tradition-rich theatre — formerly municipal, now private — in Hamburg-Rotherbaum in the Hamburg-Eimsbüttel district. Founded by Erich Ziegel in 1918, the Hamburg Kammerspiele were ceremonially opened on 30 August 1918 in Hamburg at the Besenbinderhof. The first week was entirely devoted to the writer and dramaturge Frank Wedekind, who had died on 9 March 1918. After the end of the First World War the venue developed in the 1920s into a centre of modern, Expressionist theatre. Works by Arthur Schnitzler, Frank Wedekind, Bertolt Brecht and Hans Henny Jahnn were staged here. The classical building on the Hartungstraße in the Rotherbaum quarter was built in 1863 by the merchant Otto Eduard Ferdinand Pfennig and housed, among others, from 1904 the Jewish B'nai B'rith lodge, which held its meetings in the lodge hall until 1937. Although the Kammerspiele could pay only low fees during the Weimar Republic, the best ensembles and artists were on the programme, including Elisabeth Bergner, Ernst Deutsch, Käthe Dorsch, Heinrich George and Asta Nielsen. For five years Gustaf Gründgens was a member of the ensemble.