The postcard shows the Theatre Square in the time between the wars, when it was named Piata Vasile Alexandri. Theatre preformances took place in restaurants and hotels until a first theatre was built in Chernivtsi in 1877 in the lower parts of town. In 1905 a new theatre was opened in the city center on Elisabethplatz (also known as Fischplatz), designed by the Viennese architects Ferdinand Fellner and Hermann Helmer. It was a house for stage plays and operas for 800 visitors, famous actors and singers from all over Europe performed here. Until 1922 the performances took place mainly in German, then the theatre was violently taken over by a Romanian administration. In 1907 a statue of the poet Friedrich Schiller was erected right in front of the theatre. In 1922 the monument was transfered to the courtyard of the Deutsches Haus (German People’s House) and later disappeared. Today the place is occupied by a statue of the Ukrainian writter Olga Kobyljanska. The square was first mentioned in 1777 and until the beginning of the 20th c. occupied by a military warehouse. It was always used as market square and later named after the Austrian Empress Elizabeth. In 1936 the middle of the square was lowered. The house with the gable left of the theatre is the office ot the newspaper Czernowitzer Allgemeines Tagblatt, in the front a part of the Handelskammer (chamber of commerce, 1909) can be seen. On the other side, at the right edge of the postcard stands the Jewish National House, finished in 1908. Helmut Kusdat
