When: 19 January 1919

The theatre is renamed, 19 January 1919

On the day Germans voted for the assembly that would write them a constitution, the theatre that assembly was about to sit in took the name »Deutsches Nationaltheater«.

The house announced on 19 January 1919 that it would henceforth be called "Deutsches Nationaltheater in Weimar". Its own history fixes the date by what else happened that day: it was the day of the elections to the constituent National Assembly.

The date is the point

A theatre changing its name is ordinarily a small administrative fact. This one is dated to the day the country voted for a constituent assembly, and the house's history makes that connection itself rather than leaving it to a reader.^[1] Eighteen days later the elected assembly sat down in this theatre's auditorium and began work on a constitution. A building calling itself national on the morning of the vote, and hosting the nation's constituent parliament by February, is a coincidence of timing only if you insist on it being one.

Renamed again, not named

The word the house uses is a renewed renaming — this was not the theatre's first change of name.^[1] Nor is the 1919 name quite the one on the building today: the company's full title now runs "Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar", the orchestra written into the name alongside the stage.