German American theatre in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New York City became a model for both a national American theatre and other diasporic theatres in the US. This theatre aspired to an autonomous, class-free, universal culture, which was seen as the legacy of a German Enlightenment tradition epitomized by Schiller's national(izing) theatre. German Americans were thus exceptionally positioned to claim the ideology of a universal culture as a national characteristic. At the same time, however, the theatre was structured by market demands and the need to appeal to a diverse German American constituency. This oscillation between idealistic and commercial culture made the German American theatre attractive. In the end, the theatre not only helped legitimize New York City's cultural periphery, but became a model when a new American ‘national’ culture, the national theatre, was being imagined, which ultimately illustrates the importance of the concept of legitimacy for hybrid public cultures.