Like many other theatres, the stage shut down because of the world economic crisis in the early 1930s. Barely a year later, Ostau’s plan to establish a culturally relevant theatre had already failed. In 1929 Joachim von Ostau took over the stage and renamed it the Deutsches Volkstheater. The theatre experienced a rapid succession of sensational successes, bankruptcies and management changes. From the Neues Theater am Zoo to the Deutsches Volkstheater 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. 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. Gustav Charlé opened the Neues Theater am Zoo there in August 1921. 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. The Landwehrkasino was built in 1909 as a meeting place and dining club for the reserve officers’ corps. The exhibition uses theatre photos, programmes, cast lists, postcards and posters to introduce its eventful history. A century ago, a theatre was established in the Kaisersaal (Imperial Hall), the museum’s largest exhibition space ‒ located on the 2nd storey. 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).

Kafka 1927