Deichmann, Friedrich Wilhelm

(1821-1879)

   Manager. Deichmann built the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater in Berlin, the venue that subsequently became the Deutsches Theater. As a reward for his diplomatic services in Paris during the 1840s, the Prussian royal court granted Deichmann a performance license in 1848, permitting him to run an outdoor theater in Berlin's Schumann Strasse. Deichmann later enclosed the space and sought to imitate the vaudeville theaters he had seen in Paris. He began to feature Lokalpossen, comedies which dealt farcically with local themes and characters, featuring a liberal admixture of local references and topical allusions. The "local comedy" at Deichmann's theater became what Gottfried Keller called "an anti-elitist dramatic form," contradicting the "experts" who at the time maintained that there was no lasting worth in treating the daily activities of ordinary people on the stage. Such fare became so successful for Deichmann that he renamed his theater for himself and in 1858 purchased the German-language rights to Jacques Offenbach's operettas. The operettas made Deichmann wealthy, and in 1872 he sold the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtisches Theater for the then unheard-of sum of RM1.6 million. From the proceeds, he bought himself a large estate in Swinemünde and lived out his days taking walks along the Baltic seacoast.