Ernst-Barlach-Theater

The oldest surviving theatre building in Mecklenburg opened on 12 October 1828, with the Schwerin court company giving the first performance. Friedrich Piper and Carl Daniel Lönnies had pressed for it; Georg Adolph Demmler, later the architect of Schwerin's castle, designed it. Its fortunes since have been uneven — barracks between 1886 and 1888, a cinema in the mid-1920s — yet it was among the first theatres in northern Germany to raise its curtain again after 1945. A renovation completed in 1957 was followed by the council's decision to name the house for Ernst Barlach, the sculptor who had made Güstrow his home. Since January 1976 it has kept no company of its own: the district maintains it as a receiving theatre, and orchestras, opera and drama come to it from across Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, including the summer festival that criss-crosses the region.