Königsstädtisches Theater

The Koenigsstaedtisches Theater on Alexanderplatz was, from 1824 to 1851, Berlin's first bourgeois theatre. It was built after pressure from Berlin citizens who wanted a house of their own beyond the court stages, on what was then the city's edge at the still undeveloped Alexanderplatz. The repertoire ran to farce, comic opera and local plays - a mix that became a launchpad for Friedrich Ludwig Schmidt, Henriette Sontag and especially the Adolf Glassbrenner comedy circle. Berlin dialect theatre was effectively born here and laid the ground for what Doeblin would later capture in Berlin Alexanderplatz. Financial pressure and competition forced the house to close in 1851; the building was demolished in 1932 and the square completely destroyed in the war. Nothing now marks the spot, which lies roughly beneath today's transit junction.