The theatre reopens with Faust, 1948
A house bombed down to its façade and its foyer was the first German theatre rebuilt after the war — and it opened again with Goethe.
An American air raid on 9 February 1945 left the Weimar theatre as a façade and a foyer with rubble behind them. Three years later it was open again, and its own history records two things about that: it was the first German theatre to be rebuilt after the war, and it reopened in 1948 with Goethe's "Faust".
First of all of them
The claim the house makes is a comparative one: not that Weimar rebuilt quickly, but that it was the first German theatre rebuilt after the war.[1] In a country where most stages were rubble and most cities had more urgent things to raise, a small residence town put its theatre back before anyone else put theirs back. The DNT's own history calls that bezeichnend — telling — and does not spell out what it tells.
Reopening with Faust
The work chosen for the reopening was Goethe's "Faust".[1] The house does not say why, but the choice is legible enough without one: the theatre that Goethe had directed, in the town he had spent most of his life in, came back with the play he worked at for sixty years. What a visitor can take from it is that the building on the Theaterplatz has been destroyed and restarted, and that the restart was made with the most local thing available.
Sources
- Geschichte des Deutschen Nationaltheaters — Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar, retrieved 29 August 2026
Historical figures
Historical figures
1749–1832 • writer • statesman • naturalist
His "Faust" was the work the house chose to open with, in the town where he wrote most of it.
Historic sites
Historic sites
Theaterplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
This is the building's own restart: bombed in February 1945, standing and playing again by 1948.
Stages and venues
Theaterplatz 2, 99423 Weimar
The company reopened here in 1948, and tells the rebuilding as its own history rather than the building's alone.
In Weimar's history
In Weimar's history
A US Air Force raid aimed at the Gustloff armaments works north of Weimar. Eight of ten bombs fell in one tight cluster, killing concentration camp prisoners at their machines, and the Nationaltheater was destroyed the same day.
The raid this reopening answers — it left the theatre as a façade and a foyer.