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In 1945 both Berlin’s large opera houses, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden and the Deutches Opernhaus in the Bismarckstrasse, lay in ruins. It is impossible for us now to realize what theater and music meant for the populace of the time.
The hunger for artistic stimulation, which, to a large degree surpassed the hunger for food and create comforts could not be better satisfied than in the theater and, best of all, in the Music Theater. The ensembles of both opera houses were, by and large, intact, and they found refuge in the few theaters that were only partially destroyed. These were rapidly repaired, if only provisionally, by the populace and even by the artists themselves. The Staatsoper installed itself in the Admiralspalast next to the Friedrichstrasse railway station (it is the present site of the Metropol Theater) in which both the Staatsoper and the Deutches Opernhaus had found an alternative stage during the war when it was impossible to perform in their own houses. But the city was now divided into four sectors and there was a city commandant who had to put his seal of approval on everything.
The Deutches Opernhaus in the British sector was able to house its ensemble in the Theater des Westens which had – during the war – housed the Volksoper, an almost completely Nazy organization propagating the principle of “Strength through Joy” (Kraft durch Freude). Plans for the reconstruction of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (known as the “Lindenoper” were given priority and the house, so rich in its traditions, could be reopened in 1955, two months before the Vienna Staatsoper. In the meantime the division of Berlin into East and West sectors had been aggravated to the point where the rebuilding of the opera in the Bismarckstrasse took on national importance. Conceived from the first as a second, equally important opera houses for the entire area surrounding Berlin, it became the only opera house for the now established Federal State of Berlin (West).
A reconstruction of the Deutches Opernhaus built in 1912 as an historical monument was out of the question. It may have been that the controversial acoustical characteristics of the house, modeled on the Bayreuth Festival Theater, led to the decision to tear down the ruins of the auditorium. The winning design submitted to the jury was one which successfully integrated the partially stage house and the administrative and technical buildings with a completely new auditorium designed by Fritz Borneman. The “democratic seating arrangement without boxes (the so-called “Fuhrer-Loge” had not been added to the old auditorium until 1934) retained the generous proportions of the orchestra stalls with two balconies, rounding these out with the fixed seating of 16 sled-like loges which channeled the viewer’s attention toward the stage without any hint of social function. The foyers, with their vast window areas, suggested an opera house open to the city itself in complete contrast to the former castle-like appearance of the old auditorium facade.
