Max Reinhardt: The Man and His Work
The celebrated theater director Max Reinhardt, recognized in America primarily
for his elaborate productions of Shakespeare's A Midsummer
Night's Dream, Werfel's The Eternal Road,
and Vollmoeller's Miracle, was born in 1873
at Baden near Vienna, Austria and died in New York City in 1943. Reinhardt's
illustrious career takes on added significance because it coincides with a major
shift in the evolution of the modern theater: the ascendancy of the director
as the key figure in theatrical production. Reinhardt's reputation in international
theater history is secured by the leading role he played in this transformation,
as well as by his innovative use of new theater technology and his endless experimentation
with theater spaces and locales, which together redefined traditional relationships
between actor and audience.
Reinhardt was born into modest circumstances and began his career as an struggling
actor in Vienna and Salzburg. In 1894 he was invited to Berlin by Otto Brahm,
director of the Deutsches Theater, where the young actor gained critical acclaim
for his convincing portrayals of old men. Eager to escape the gloom and doom
of naturalism, Reinhardt in 1901 co-founded an avant-garde cabaret called "Schall
und Rauch" (after an allusion by Goethe), which perceptively satirized
the fads and fashions of current literary and theatrical practice and came to
function as an experimental laboratory for the future director. Soon renamed
the Kleines Theater, this house featured contemporary productions such as Gorky's
Lower Depths, Wilde's Salome,
and Hofmannsthal's Electra. Reinhardt's
reputation as a director was firmly established by 1905, with his epoch-making
production of Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream,
a play which became his perennial favorite.
In the same year Reinhardt was chosen to succeed his former mentor as head
of the Deutsches Theater, which Reinhardt soon built into Germany's most celebrated
stage. He also opened an adjacent theater, the Kammerspiele, for more intimate
chamber productions. Utilizing the multi-faceted talents of his theater ensemble,
he started an acting school which for decades trained many of Germany's leading
actors and actresses in the practice of modern stagecraft. In addition to his
resident theaters, all private ventures, Reinhardt also maintained a touring
company that spread his fame from St. Petersburg to London. Within little more
than a decade, this Viennese-Jewish immigrant had come to occupy a position
of preeminence in Imperial Berlin's cultural renaissance. During the war years
the Reinhardt stages maintained a feverish pace of theatrical activity, including
an ambitious Shakespeare cycle and several guest tours in neutral countries.
The opening of Poelzig's Grosses Schauspielhaus in 1919 allowed Reinhardt's
instinct for the monumental free reign, particularly in Shakespearean and classic
Greek productions.
The social upheaval that resulted from a lost war deprived Reinhardt of his
pre-war stature and much of his former audience, and he soon left Berlin for
Salzburg where, together with Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal, he
established the Salzburg Festival in 1920. From his recently acquired chateau
Leopoldskron, on which he lavished inordinate time and resources, Reinhardt
reestablished ties with the Austrian baroque and folk theater traditions by
presenting the medieval morality play Everyman
on the steps of the Salzburg Cathedral, Calderon/Hofmannsthal's Das
Salzburger Grosse Welttheater inside the splendid baroque Kollegienkirche,
and (later) Goethe's Faust in the old summer
riding academy that had been transformed into a medieval village. Reinhardt's
American debut came in 1924 with The Miracle,
a pantomime whose great success led three years later to a triumphant guest
tour featuring a medley of new and old theater classics. "The Professor"
also refurbished his reputation at home with memorable performances of Goldoni's
The Servant of Two Masters in his lavishly
restored Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna and the newly built Komoedie playhouse
in Berlin.
Forced by the Nazi government to relinquish all his German theaters in 1933,
Reinhardt traveled to England, then America the following year to stage A
Midsummer Night's Dream at the Hollywood Bowl and direct a film version
(with unlimited budget) for Warner Brothers. Schloss Leopoldskron and his remaining
property in Austria was seized during the Anschluss in 1938. After emigrating
to the United States, Max Reinhardt and his actress-wife Helene Thimig divided
their time between east and west coasts. American theatrical activities included
a workshop for stage, screen and radio in Hollywood, a California Festival on
the Salzburg model, several film projects (never carried out), and the beginnings
of a promising repertory theater in New York, which fostered collaboration with
up-and-coming playwrights like Thornton Wilder and Irwin Shaw. Shortly after
his seventieth birthday - he was working on the Meilhac/Halevy/Offenbach operetta
Helen Goes to Troy at the time - Max Reinhardt
died of a stroke in New York's Gladstone Hotel. His passing was commemorated
by a memorial concert at Carnegie Hall and
a death mask. His cremated
remains are interred in nearby Hastings-on-Hudson.
Max Reinhardt's prestige in theater history largely rests on his transformation of the role of modern theater director from general manager to aesthetic experimenter and coordinator. His genius and importance as a director is further illustrated by collaborations with some of the leading actors, playwrights, designers, and composers of his time. During a distinguished and productive career, Max Reinhardt amply demonstrated his commitment to artistic experimentation and the revelry of imagination and creation.