Named after the Parliament building and the Volkstheater, the ‘people’s theatre’.
Theophil Hansen built the Parliament in 1874–1883 in Greek forms, explaining that the roots of democracy lay in the Greek polis; until 1918 it was the building of the Reichsrat, the imperial parliament. The Volkstheater opened on 14 September 1889 as an alternative to the Burgtheater; until 1945 it was called Deutsches Volkstheater.