Großes Haus

The first permanent theatre in Weimar, the "Komödienhaus", was built in 1779 by decision of Duke Carl August - at that time already at the location of the present theatre. During Goethe's directorship from 1791 to 1817, this house underwent a number of structural changes over the next few decades. At Goethe's instigation, the interior of the Komödienhaus was transformed into a "friendly, shining fairy castle" (Karoline Schlegel) with columns, galleries and balconies to offer the audience an all-round aesthetic theatre experience. In March 1825 the Komödienhaus burned down, but in the same year the gates of the new Hoftheater opened on the same site.

The theatre, as we know it today from the outside, was built between 1906 and 1907 under the architect Professor Max Littmann - the size and structure of the old court theatre no longer met the requirements. The newly designed neoclassical building corresponded to the ideas of a representative theatre building at that time. In 1945 the building was destroyed except for the façade during an air raid. Reconstruction began in the same year and in 1948 the theatre, characteristically the first of the German theatres to be destroyed in the war, was reopened with Goethe's "Faust I". Between 1973 and 1975 the original state was reconstructed, followed by a renovation phase between 1997 and 1999.

The modern interior of the neoclassical theatre building and its auditorium, in which the German National Assembly met in 1919 and the Weimar Constitution was passed, was given its present appearance in the 1970s.