In 1854, the city of Munich had arranged for the “First General German Industrial Exhibition” to promote German industry to the world and invited a global audienceto the event. At the same time, Franz Dingelstedt, director of the National Theater, organized a festival displaying the finest actors from Germany. Right after the opening of thefestival, cholera started raging in the city and leaving 3,000 deathsin the final count. The author sketches out the role of the theatre in this crisis, when Dingelstedt was ordered by the king to keep the theatre open at any cost. This appears awkward, in regard to the current global pandemic crisis where theaters have been identified as risk zones for infectionand consequently closed down. Why was the theatre at the time considered a safe and ap-propriate place even helping to counter the disease?