How the Akademietheater Slipped Away from the mdw
“Why exactly is the Akademietheater called the Akademietheater?” Is its name just an inexplicable relic of bygone times? Is it a former training facility of the Burgtheater? Or perhaps a one-time modernist refuge from the court theatres of the monarchy?
A spontaneous survey conducted on the mdw Campus showed that while there are lots of original ideas about how the Akademietheater—now the Burgtheater’s second venue—got its name, hardly anyone can put their finger on the actual reason why.
A True Thriller
The history of this “enchanting little theatre”, as it was welcomingly described by the press upon its opening in 1914,1 reads like a veritable thriller—a suspenseful tale about a desperate tug-of-war over the architectural core of the building on Lothringerstraße that the mdw still occupies today. After all, the original purpose of this theatre—erected between 1911 and 1914 after plans by the renowned architects Ludwig Baumann, Ferdinand Fellner, and Hermann Helmer—had been to serve what was then the Imperial-Royal Academy of Music and Performing Arts (today’s mdw) as a training and rehearsal stage, hence embodying a central element of its educational activities.
Even prior to its construction, however, the Academy’s then-president Karl von Wiener wondered how the theatre might be profitably rented out. In a letter of 29 March 1910, he stated:
[I cannot] avoid pointing out that the rehearsal hall for dramatic and musical performances foreseen by the submitted project in the Academy Wing—a space of which the Imperial-Royal Academy will not, after all, be making daily use—shall represent a not unrewarding source of income for the state. [..] It is […] to be hoped that the Court Theatres, which have long been in urgent need of a small stage conceived for presentations of an intimate character, will rent this rehearsal hall for all or at least the lion’s share of the evenings on which it is available.2
His suggestion met with no interest—and a 1912 offer to make it available as a rehearsal stage was likewise refused: this, as the Court Chamberlain’s Office communicated “upon consultation with the two Court Theatre directors and due deliberation”, seemed “inopportune”, and the office regretted that it would “be unable to further explore this most graciously made proposition.”3 In the early 1920s, however, the Burgtheater did indeed ascertain a need to make use of the Akademietheater—use that would successively increase over the decades that followed.
A Theatrical Reshuffling and its Consequences
With that, a theatrical reshuffling began that saw performance venues exchanged between the Burgtheater and the Academy: among other things, the Max Reinhardt Seminar was ultimately accommodated at Schlosstheater Schönbrunn, the theatre at Schönbrunn Palace. This, however, failed to compensate for the lack of a rehearsal stage for instruction in operatic drama. All of the objections and complaints in this regard voiced repeatedly by the Academy’s leadership ended up proving just as fruitless as did the search for replacement venues. And when the Akademietheater was officially handed over to the Austrian Federal Theatres for their exclusive use in 1979, it was simply the ultimate consequence of a history of loss that was tragic above all for teaching, for teachers and their students—a history that we have now researched for this season’s first episode of the mdw podcast series Klingende Zeitgeschichte im Ohr.
Incidentally, today’s Akademietheater—as the Burgtheater’s successful and innovative second venue—can boast more than just intriguing stories about its institutional associations: its iron curtain, an onstage fire protection measure in use to this day, is a relic from the National Socialist period that we likewise address and put up for renewed discussion in our podcast.
