The Weimar National Theater

Symbolic theater of German culture or political arena of the National Socialists? Probably both – and much more. The Weimar National Theater is not only a landmark of Weimar, but is also considered a symbol of Germany. In 1791, Duke Carl August of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach decided to found the Weimar Court Theater with none other than Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as its first artistic director, who opened the season on 7 May 1791 with Iffland’s ” Die Jäger” (“The Hunters”). Later, from 1799 until Friedrich Schiller’s death in 1805, Goethe and Schiller worked together at the Weimar theatre. Schiller staged all the plays himself, so all the plays were premiered in Weimar except for ” Die Jungfrau von Orleans” (The Maid of Orleans). From 1804, with the appointment of the Kapellmeister Johann Nepomuk Hummel, the era of literature was replaced by an era of music. But it was the court conductor Franz Liszt, appointed in 1848, who made Weimar known as the city of music.

With the proclamation of the Republic and the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II and Grand Duke Wilhelm Ernst in 1918, the Weimar Theater developed into a theater for political self-staging. Thus, not only was the Republican Constitution adopted here in 1919, but National Socialists held party meetings and the first Reich Party Congress of the NSDAP was held here after the ban was lifted.

In 1945, the building was destroyed in an air raid, except for the facade. Reconstruction began that same year, and in 1948 the theater reopened with Goethe’s “Faust I,” significantly the first of the German theaters destroyed in the war. After the end of World War II, eight definitive stamps and nine commemorative stamps were issued in the Soviet Occupation Zone starting in June 1945, with five commemorative stamps entering circulation as a stamp block. The souvenir sheet shown here was sold for RM 7.50 – with a nominal value of 84 Pfg, the buyers thus made a significant donation (or financial contribution) in favor of reconstruction.