The Theatre on Schiffbauerdamm

The Berliner Ensemble was originally founded in 1949 without a venue of its own. At the invitation of Wolfgang Langhoff, it was housed at the Deutsches Theater. In 1954, the Berliner Ensemble took over the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and renamed it. The Theater am Schiffbauerdamm became the Berliner Ensemble. Helene Weigel was the artistic director from the outset, with Bertolt Brecht as artistic director.
The illuminated sign was installed on the theatre's roof, based on an idea by Peter Palitzsch. As had been the case at the Deutsches Theater, Picasso's dove of peace hung in front of the curtain here too. It became a symbol of the theatre.

The enlarged revolving stage runs on 32 wheels from a Soviet T-34 tank. Helene Weigel had managed to obtain these from the Soviet occupying forces.
The Berliner Ensemble opened with Brecht's adaptation of Molière's "Don Juan", starring Erwin Geschonneck and Ekkehard Schall. The production was directed by Benno Besson.
The play "Mother Courage and Her Children" by Bertolt Brecht, directed by Erich Engel and featuring music by Paul Dessau, continued to run successfully at the theatre – from its 100th performance in 1951, starring Erwin Geschonneck and Ernst Busch. The play had already been staged by the Berliner Ensemble at the Deutsches Theater in 1949.

The first tour to Paris in 1954 with "Mother Courage and Her Children" proved a huge international success. The company won first prize for best play and best production at the 'Theatre Festival of Nations' held there.
In 1954, Brecht staged his play "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" with set design by Karl von Appen and music by Paul Dessau, starring Helene Weigel and Ernst Busch.
At the premiere, the company received 52 curtain calls and four before the Iron Curtain.

Brecht and Weigel managed to persuade many of their prominent friends to collaborate with them. Caspar Neher, with whom Brecht had been working since his youth, was responsible for the set designs alongside Karl von Appen. The photographer Ruth Berlau documented the theatre performances in hundreds of photographs. Composers such as Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau were part of the company. John Heartfield, as a poster artist, shapes the public image of the Berliner Ensemble, whilst Karl-Heinz Drescher is responsible for the theatre's graphic design for decades.
In 1956, Brecht dies and is buried at the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof, as he had wished during his lifetime.
Following Brecht's death, Erich Engel takes over as artistic director of the theatre. The joint production by Brecht and Erich Engel of Brecht's play "The Life of Galileo", starring Ernst Busch, does not premiere until 1957, after Brecht's death.
In 1963, just under seven years after Brecht's death, the square in front of the Berliner Ensemble is renamed Bertolt-Brecht-Platz to mark what would have been his 65th birthday.
In 1959, the production of Brecht's "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui", directed by Peter Palitzsch and Manfred Wekwerth, succeeded in building on the theatre's earlier great successes. Ekkehard Schall, playing Arturo Ui, performed the play 532 times before it was taken off the programme in 1974.
In 1960, Erich Engel staged Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's "The Threepenny Opera" to great acclaim – just as he had done at the world premiere in 1928 – with set design by Karl von Appen.
In April 1961, after 405 performances, Helene Weigel appeared on stage as Mother Courage for the last time in her life. Doctors had advised her, on health grounds, not to continue pulling Mother Courage's heavy cart.
The Shakespeare play "Coriolanus", adapted by Brecht and staged in 1964 by Manfred Wekwerth and Joachim Tenschert, proved another great success. Ruth Berghaus attracted attention with her extraordinary choreography of the two battle scenes.
Following political disputes over her production of Aeschylus' play "Seven Against Thebes", Matthias Langhoff and Manfred Karge left the theatre in 1969.
Although Helene Weigel came to their defence and the premiere went ahead, they saw no future for themselves at the Berliner Ensemble.
Helene Weigel died in 1971. She was buried alongside Brecht.
Ruth Berghaus took over as artistic director of the theatre, having already served as Helene Weigel's deputy from 1970 onwards.

Ruth Berghaus ushers in a new direction at the Berliner Ensemble. She brings B.K. Tragelehn and Einar Schleef on board as directors and focuses on new GDR drama: by Peter Hacks, Karl Mickel and Heiner Müller. In 1973, the world premiere of Heiner Müller's play "Zement", directed by Ruth Berghaus, takes place. Following Müller's expulsion from the Writers' Union in 1961, this is the first time one of his plays has been performed on a stage in the GDR.
In 1971, Ruth Berghaus stages the GDR premiere of Brecht's early play "In the Thicket of Cities". Her greatest achievement – and at the same time the end of her tenure as artistic director – was her experimental new production in 1974 of Brecht's first version of "Die Mutter" (based on Gorky), starring Felicitas Ritsch in the lead role. Rejected by Brecht's heirs, her theatrical approach was generally called into question from that moment onwards.
Her position was further weakened in 1975 by the production of August Strindberg's "Miss Julie", directed by B.K. Tragelehn and Einar Schleef, with Jutta Hoffmann in the lead role. After ten sold-out performances and a cultural-political scandal, the production was taken off the programme.
With the support of Brecht's heirs and the Central Committee of the SED, Manfred Wekwerth succeeded in ousting Ruth Berghaus and installing himself as artistic director.

Manfred Wekwerth gets off to a promising start by bringing Volker Braun on board with the theatre's work. Heiner Müller also remains on the programme. In 1978, Heiner Müller's "Lohndrücker", directed by Matthias Renner and Axel Richter, is staged. The production of Volker Braun's play "Großer Frieden", directed by Manfred Wekwerth and Joachim Tenschert and starring Ekkehard Schall and Hermann Beyer, is also a great success in 1979.
In 1984, Horst Sagert made a name for himself with his production of Goethe's "Faust Szenen (Urfaust)" (Scenes from Faust (Primitive Faust)).
In 1989, the Berliner Ensemble attracted attention with Heiner Müller's play "Germania Tod in Berlin" (Germania: Death in Berlin), directed by Fritz Marquardt.
In 1991, Manfred Wekwerth was asked to resign by Berlin's Senator for Culture, Ulrich Roloff-Momin. He complied shortly afterwards, after the ensemble had failed to express its confidence in him.
As a compromise following various interim arrangements, a five-member executive board took over the management of the Berliner Ensemble in 1992.

Heiner Müller became artistic director as part of a joint artistic leadership with Matthias Langhoff, Fritz Marquardt, Peter Palitzsch and Peter Zadek, and remained in this role even after the group gradually fell apart, until his death in 1995.
From the outset, the five prominent directors had difficulties communicating with one another. In 1993, Matthias Langhoff left. In the same year, the confrontation between Heiner Müller and Peter Zadek came to a head. Their conflicting views on Einar Schleef's production of Rolf Hochhuth's "Wessis in Weimar", starring Martin Wuttke and Margarita Broich, led to a scandal. Peter Zadek left the theatre. After numerous power struggles, Heiner Müller became the sole artistic director of the Berliner Ensemble in 1995.

By this point, Müller had already succeeded in building on old Brechtian traditions with his innovative productions and in shaping a new era at the Berliner Ensemble. In 1993, he staged his own play "Duell Traktor Fatzer" – a collage of texts drawn from Brecht's "Fatzer" fragment and texts by Heiner Müller – featuring Eva Mattes, Jaecki Schwarz, Ekkehard Schall and Hermann Beyer. With his final production in June 1995 of Brecht's play "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui", starring Martin Wuttke, Heiner Müller achieved a theatrical success that continues to this day.
Heiner Müller died in December 1995. Martin Wuttke succeeded him; from 1997 to 1999, Stephan Suschke headed the theatre.
In February 1996, Einar Schleef staged a highly acclaimed production of Brecht's "Mr Puntila and His Man Matti", starring himself in the lead role.
Heiner Müller's final play, "Germania 3: Ghosts Around a Dead Man", directed by Martin Wuttke and starring Volker Spengler, premiered six months after Müller's death.
From 1996, the Ilse Holzapfel Foundation, founded by Rolf Hochhuth, became the owner of the land and the building housing the Berliner Ensemble. Hochhuth reached an agreement with the heirs of Saloschin and Wertheim and was able to purchase both from them. In 1998, the State of Berlin and Berliner Ensemble GmbH signed a 30-year lease.
Robert Wilson, a friend of Heiner Müller's since the late 1970s, did not direct a production at the Berliner Ensemble until after Müller's death. In 1998, he staged a collage drawn from Bertolt Brecht's "Der Ozeanflug", Heiner Müller's "Landschaft mit Argonauten" and Fyodor M. Dostoevsky's "Notes from a Dead Angle", featuring Stefan Kurt and Bernhard Minetti.

In 1999, Claus Peymann took over as artistic director. In 2000, following a radical reorganisation, he opened the season with George Tabori's "Die Brecht-Akte", starring Peter Fitz.
Claus Peymann's production of Shakespeare's "Richard II", newly translated by Thomas Brasch and starring Michael Maertens, was voted the best foreign-language theatre production of the year by the French Critics' Association in 2000.
In his theatre work, Peymann focuses on playwrights such as William Shakespeare, Thomas Bernhard, Peter Handke and Bertolt Brecht.
In 2005, he staged Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children" with Carmen-Maja Antoni.
In 2007, Robert Wilson directed Brecht and Weill's "The Threepenny Opera".
In 2015 – twenty years after Heiner Müller's death – the 400th performance of "The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui", starring Martin Wuttke, took place.

Under the artistic direction of Oliver Reese, the season begins on 21 September 2017 with Albert Camus's "Caligula", directed by Antú Romero Nunes and starring Constanze Becker, and Michael Thalheimer's production of Brecht's "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", with Stefanie Reinsperger as Grusche.

This overview was compiled by Dr Asja Braune, a cultural and theatre studies scholar.