Die Seilerische Bühne in Dresden

The German-speaking theatre scene in the late eighteenth century appears as a field of tension between courtly and bourgeois self-representation during the transition from absolutism to the Enlightenment. Using a source-based hermeneutic approach, Charlotte Hennen examines how the Seilerische Bühne, the most popular theatre company of its time, operated in Dresden. Drawing on Ute Daniel’s concept of the multipolar ‘Verbürgerlichung’ of court theatres, she analyses whether the company and its members—Gustav Friedrich Wilhelm Großmann, Abel Seyler and Friederike Sophie Seyler—staged enlightened bourgeois or predominantly feudal performances.