Designed by the architects Fellner & Hellmer and Ludwig Baumann and built between 1911 and 1913, the Akademietheater has been the Burgtheater’s second venue since 1922. After many years of requests from ensemble members of the Burgtheater who wanted a second stage of more intimate dimensions, Max Paulsen succeeded in affiliating the “Theatre of the Academy of Music and the Performing Arts”, for brevity 's sake called Akademietheater, to the Burgtheater as a smaller, second venue. It was inaugurated on September 8, 1922, with a performance of Goethe’s Iphigenia in Tauris. After the Second World War, which the building survived intact, the theatre was re-opened on May 19, 1945, under the direction of Raoul Aslan with Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler. The Akademietheater was refurbished and technically upgraded in 1974 and in 1999.
