National Theatre Mannheim

In the 18th century Mannheim was the capital of the Electoral Palatinate and the residence city of the reigning prince-electors. When Charles Theodore also became the Duke of Bavaria in 1777, he moved to Munich and brought the theatre company of Theobald Marchand with him from Mannheim. In 1778 he instructed the courtier Wolfgang Heribert von Dalberg—the brother of Prince-Elector and Grand Duke Karl Theodor von Dalberg—to establish a new theatre in Mannheim. At first Dalberg contracted Abel Seyler's theatre company with performing in Mannheim on an occasional basis from 1778 to 1779. Performances included Shakespeare plays such as Hamlet and Macbeth. In the autumn of 1779 Seyler moved permanently to Mannheim with the remaining members of his theatre company. Several actors who had been affiliated with the Gotha Court Theatre under Konrad Ekhof's direction—essentially an offshoot of the Seyler Theatre Company—also joined him; Ekhof himself had died the previous year. The Mannheim National Theatre opened in October 1779 with Seyler as its first artistic director (Direktor) and Dalberg as its general administrator (Intendant). Seyler remained as director until 1781.

In the past three hundred years, an important part of the history of German theatre and music history was written both in the original theatre and in Mannheim where new artistic styles were developed and refined in theatre, music and dance. Thus it reflects the tradition of many of the major names of the German arts such as Friedrich Schiller and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

In terms of the history of the company, Friedrich Schiller's first major drama, The Robbers (Die Räuber) was given its inaugural performance in 1782 in presence of the playwright at the National Theatre. The response was overwhelming: "the theatre resembled a lunatic asylum, rolling eyes, clenched fists, ramming feet, hoarse proclamations in the auditorium! Strange humans fell onto each other locked together…."

History since 1900

By the early 19th century, disagreements between the Grand-Duchy of Baden and the City of Mannheim over the financing of the theatre finally resulted in a ministerial order in April 1839 that the responsibility for running the theatre be handed over to the City of Mannheim, and thus it became the first locally-administered theatre in Germany.

Following the destruction of the theatre and parts of the city of Mannheim in September 1943, ten years were to pass before an architectural competition for a new theatre was proposed. The original design, while still considered a classic of modern theatre architecture, was not used. Instead, between 1955 and 1957 a new theatre building was constructed at Goethe Place (not in the same location as the original National Theatre) utilizing the designs of the architect Gerhard Weber. The new National Theatre building was inaugurated in 1957 with simultaneous productions of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz in the Opera House and (fitting for its reflection of the theatre's early history) Schiller's The Robbers in the Schauspielhaus. In 1979, the Youth and Children's Theatre ensemble (Schnawwl) was set up with its main theatre space being the converted from an old fire station on the Mannheimer Neckarstadt.