The actor, theater director, and manager Max Reinhardt (real name Max Goldmann) was born on September 9, 1873, into a Jewish family in Lower Austria. He first trained in banking before deciding to devote himself to acting.
In 1894, he moved to Berlin to start working as an actor at the Deutsches Theater. Soon after, he founded the association Die Brille and the famous cabaret Schall und Rauch. Between 1900 and 1933, he directed several theaters in Berlin, including the Deutsches Theater, the Großes Schauspielhaus, and Volksbühne, which he shaped with his visionary ideas. He also worked in Vienna for a while and co-founded the Salzburg Festival, where he staged well-known performances until 1937.
After the Nazis came to power, he initially fled to Austria. After the Anschluss in 1938, he was forced to emigrate to the USA, where he opened an acting school in Hollywood.
Sources/Literature:
- Knut Boeser und Renata Vatková (Hrsg.): Max Reinhardt in Berlin. Frölich & Kaufmann, Berlin 1984.
- Sibylle Zehle: Max Reinhardt. Ein Leben als Festspiel. Brandstätter, Wien 2020.