HISTORY

Theater im Zimmer was founded in 1948 by Helmuth Gmelin as a “room stage” with a performance of Friedrich Hebbel’s Maria Magdalena. The first performances took place in his own flat in the attic of an apartment building in Harvestehude, opposite today’s theatre. The actors often came from Gmelin’s own drama school.

The cramped rooms were unsuitable for many plays, so a move to separate premises became necessary. The new venue was a classicist villa at Alsterchaussee 30, built in 1829 by Christian Diederich Gerhard Schwieger and a listed building since 1947. In the mid-19th century, the captain and shipowner Victor von Graefe bought the villa and lived there. He was the brother of Professor Albrecht von Graefe.

After Helmuth Gmelin’s death in 1959, his daughter Gerda Gmelin took over the theatre. She was artistic director, stage director and actress all at once. Numerous socially critical and avant-garde plays were staged, earning the theatre an excellent reputation. The small ensemble could always be supplemented by engaging other actors who worked at Hamburg’s stages. On Sundays, musical brunches were held on the theatre’s premises.

After its annual subsidy was cut, the theatre ceased performances in 1999. The building was also in considerable need of renovation, and Gerda Gmelin was by then 80 years old and no longer in the best of health. The programme and the theatre’s operation had been strongly shaped by her personality. No successor as artistic director could be found.

In 2002 the building was sold to VAP GmbH. The new owner carried out extensive conversion work and built extensions for the technical facilities. In 2004 there was a brief reopening with the play “Tamara”, in which the audience wanders through the house with its many rooms to follow the action. From 2009 to 2015, Theater Im Zimmer was used by the neighbouring Hamburg University of Music and Theatre for rehearsals, seminars, performances and concerts.

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Text based on the Wikipedia article “Theater im Zimmer”, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.