Schauspielhaus (Konzerthaus Berlin)
Schinkel’s theatre on the Gendarmenmarkt stands on a high base with an Ionic temple front facing the square. The façades have a grid of pilasters and large windows that points ahead to a more modern way of building. After the war it was rebuilt as a concert hall.
The older theatre on the Gendarmenmarkt burned in 1817. Karl Friedrich Schinkel was commissioned to build a new one and was allowed to reuse parts of the old foundations and some columns. The theatre was built in 1818–1821 and opened with Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischütz. Schinkel was then Prussia’s leading architect and also active as a painter and stage designer.
The building consists of a tall central block with a pediment and two lower wings. Facing the square stands an Ionic portico with six columns on a high flight of steps. The rest of the façades are divided into a close grid of slender pilasters and mouldings, with large rectangular windows in between. Schinkel combined classical models with a rational, almost modern order, in which structure and openings become the pattern of the façade. The building lies between two domed churches and together with them forms one of the most beautiful squares in Berlin.
The theatre was gutted during the Second World War. It was rebuilt in the GDR and opened in 1984 as a concert hall, with an auditorium in a neoclassical style inspired by Schinkel. The exterior was reconstructed to the original design. The Schauspielhaus is one of Schinkel’s most important works and shows how he combined Greek classicism with a new kind of rational clarity. It was studied by architects such as Mies van der Rohe, who saw Schinkel’s grid as a model.