Max Reinhardt

The talent and accomplishments of Max Reinhardt (1873-1943) contributed to the modern idea of the director as creative artist. He was an innovator and experimentor with both space and stage techniques and was one of the first directors to develop repertory companies.

Max Reinhardt was born Max Goldman in Baden, near Vienna, on September 9, 1873. His family moved to Vienna in 1877, and it was there he began acting under the name of Max Reinhardt in 1890. For the next ten years he played many roles, first in Vienna, then in Berlin under Otto Brahm at the Deutsches Theatre, and gradually established himself as a performer.

His first production as a director occurred in 1900 when he directed Ibsen's Love's Comedy. Shortly thereafter he opened his own cabaret in Berlin. He left Brahm and the Deutsches Theatre and became director of the Kleines Theatre and the Neues Theatre in 1903. During the next two years he would direct Midsummer Night's Dream, open an acting school, and purchase the Deutsches Theatre. These actions marked the beginning of a long career in which Reinhardt owned or managed many theaters, directed or produced over 500 plays in a variety of settings; toured Germany, Europe, and the United States; and established himself as a most versatile and innovative director.

As a director Reinhardt was always in search of the "right" theater for each play he worked on. He used small cabaret and chamber theaters for intimate productions and arena theaters for his more spectacular ones. In the smaller spaces he presented such works as Salome and The Lower Depths because of the strong actor-audience proximity. The Neues and the Deutsches theaters were larger and better suited for such works as The Merchant of Venice or King Lear. In his famous playhouse, Kammerspiel, he directed Ghosts, Man and Superman, and Lysistra. But in his arena theater the Circus Schumann, which was later to become the Grosses Schauspielhaus, Reinhardt tried to realize his dream of a "Theatre of Five Thousand." He hoped to have a playhouse on the scale of the Greek and Roman theaters, one in which spectacle and ritual reached a large number of spectators who would be part of the communal-like event. The Grosses Schauspielhaus, which he built in 1919, was a vast domed arena that seated 3,000 people and had a giant thrust stage and a large revolve. There were no curtains, and behind the stage there was a permanent cyclorama. Such spaces were ideal for his productions of classics such as Aeschylus' Oresteia.

Among his other experiments with space were his spectacles such as The Miracle, a play for which he converted the interior of the Olympia theater in New York into a gothic cathedral; his outdoor productions such as Faust, for which a Faust City was built and added to each year when the play was produced; and his famous presentation of Hofmannsthal's Everyman at the annual Salzburg festival. The play was staged in front of the cathedral and utilized buildings in the town as part of the production. Another spectacular work of Hofmannsthal's that Reinhardt directed at the festival was The Salzburg Great Theatre of the World. He also directed a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at Oxford and used the natural outdoor setting to enhance the play.

Reinhardt was not only an innovator and experimentor with space, he was also an innovator and experimentor with stage techniques. An eclectic as a director, Reinhardt broke with those who favored realism and tried his hand at symbolic drama, impressionism, and naturalism. He also rejected the limitations of the proscenium stage. He favored more the freedom of the Elizabethan stage where actor and audience were in close contact with one another and where the stage could be used with great flexibility. He believed in the fluid use of set and symbolic use of lighting and was among the first to use the revolve for quick scene changes. He experimented repeatedly with the concept that a dramatic work was a total work of art, one that depended upon a mixing of the arts—of the visual, aural, scenic, and musical elements in drama.

Reinhardt also believed that the most important factor in the play was the actor. He was at the center of the art of the theater. Theater was at its best when the director, writer, designer, and composer had all imaginatively assumed the actor's part. While it is the case that Reinhardt held the actor in high regard and was one of the first directors to develop repertory companies, he was such a formidable force in the theater that he greatly enhanced the role of the director. His talent and accomplishments contributed to the modern idea of the director as a creative artist, a person capable of making aesthetic decisions. Reinhardt represented a controlling intelligence that guided the entire production in a vital and peculiarly identifiable manner.

In the early 1930s the Nazi regime forced Reinhardt to give up his theaters. In 1934 he signed a contract with Warner Brothers. He also directed A Midsummer Night's Dream in California and Chicago. Then in 1935 he made a film version of the play for Warner Brothers. He emigrated to the United States in 1937 and later opened the Max Reinhardt Actors Workshop for Stage, Screen, and Radio in Hollywood. He suffered a stroke in 1943 and died in New York City.

Further Reading

A critical biography is J. L. Styan, Max Reinhardt (1982). Other useful works include Huntley Carter, The Theatre of Max Reinhardt (1969) and Oliver M. Sayler, Max Reinhardt and His Theatre (1968).

Additional Sources

Reinhardt, Gottfried, The genius: a memoir of Max Reinhardt, New York: Knopf: distributed by Random House, 1979.

Styan, J. L., Max Reinhardt, Cambridge Cambridgeshire; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. □

Reinhardt, Max [ Max Goldmann] (1873–1943), Austrian actor, director, and impresario, who dominated the stage in Berlin between 1905 and 1918, and remained an influential figure in the German-speaking theatre until he left for the United States in 1938. He regarded the script of a play as a score to be interpreted, and his integrated productions, with their careful harmonization of voice, movement, music, and setting, established for many years the preeminence of the director, more especially in the Symbolism and Impressionism which superseded the earlier naturalism of Brahm and was, after the First World War, itself superseded by the Expressionism of Jessner and Piscator.

As a young actor Reinhardt appeared in Vienna and Salzburg and in 1894 joined the company at the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin, where he profited from the tuition of Brahm. Some experience of directing plays by Strindberg, Wedekind, and Wilde at the Kleines Theatre in 1902, and above all the success of his production in 1903 of Gorky's The Lower Depths, in which he played Luka, led him to abandon acting and devote himself entirely to directing. At the Neues Theater am Schiffbauerdamm he produced Hofmannsthal's Elektra (1903) against a primitive Mycenaean façade, the action taking place at night by the light of flickering torches. He went on to direct Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm and Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, and in 1905 the first of his 12 versions of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

By this time Reinhardt had succeeded Brahm as Director of the Deutsches Theater and had bought the theatre outright, erecting next door to it the Kammerspiele for intimate productions. At the Deutsches Theater there was always a play by Shakespeare or a German classic—Schiller's Die Räuber in 1908 and Don Carlos in 1909; and Goethe's Clavigo in 1908 and both parts of Faust in 1908 and 1911 respectively. Meanwhile at the Kammerspiele he concentrated on modern plays, including Ibsen's Ghosts, the first production of Wedekind's Frühlings Erwachen (both 1906), and the chamber plays of Strindberg. From 1915 to 1920 he sponsored at the Berlin Volksbühne matinée performances of new plays by young authors, while elsewhere he was exploring the potential of vast acting areas. In 1910 he produced Sophocles' Oedipus the King in the Zirkus Schumann in Berlin; in 1911 he directed Vollmöller's The Miracle in London, converting Olympia into a vast flamboyant Gothic cathedral embracing both actors and audience; and in 1919 he opened the conversion of the Zirkus Schumann, the Groβes Schauspielhaus, with Aeschylus' Oresteia and Romain Rolland's Danton, in which, as in previous productions, his superb handling of crowd scenes was seen at its best. Since 1917 he had also been involved in the founding and running of the Salzburg Festival, where in 1920 he directed Hofmannsthal's morality play Jedermann in an open space in front of the Cathedral. In 1924 he returned to Vienna and took over the Theater in der Josefstadt, and there and at the Komödie am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin he directed nearly 30 plays, paying particular attention to the schooling and directing of the actor, who was now his main concern. His repertory in both theatres was predominantly modern, and included not only Shaw and Pirandello but Cocteau and Molnár. In 1938 he left Austria for the United States, married Helene Thimig, who with Gertrud Eysoldt had been one of his leading ladies for many years, and settled in Hollywood where he died.

Max Reinhardt 1873–1943, Austrian theatrical producer and director, originally named Max Goldmann. After acting under Otto Brahm at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, he managed (1902–5) his own theater, where he produced more than 50 plays. He was director of the Deutsches Theater after 1905 and of the smaller Kammerspiele, which he built in 1906. Reinhardt often used the entire auditorium for a production, seeking to bridge the gap between actor and audience by placing the spectator within the action. He staged gigantic productions, full of pageantry and color, and was especially noted for his direction of mob scenes. His settings, which incorporated the ideas of Appia and Craig, were masterfully executed. Among his world-famous productions were The Lower Depths,A Midsummer Night's Dream,Faust,Oedipus Rex, and The Miracle. He was also one of the first to stage the plays of the expressionists after World War I. In 1919 he opened an enormous arena theater, the Grosses Schauspielhaus ( "Theatre of the Five Thousand" ), and in 1920 he was among the founders of the Salzburg Festival , where he annually staged Everyman with the Austrian Alps as his backdrop. In 1933 he was forced by the Nazis to flee Germany. In the United States he directed a movie version of A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and a stage pageant with music by Kurt Weill , The Eternal Road (1934, produced 1937). He became a U.S. citizen in 1940.

Bibliography: See H. Carter, The Theatre of Max Reinhardt (1914, repr. 1964); J. L. Styan, Max Reinhardt (1982).

Reinhardt, Max [né Goldmann] (1873–1943), director and producer. The famed Austro‐German showman first came to the attention of most American playgoers in 1912 when Winthrop Ames imported his mounting of the Oriental pantomime Sumurun. In 1924 Reinhardt visited New York to re‐create his production of The Miracle, and then in 1927 brought over his German company for a season of repertory. Following the rise of the Nazis, he moved permanently to America where he staged his version of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Hollywood in 1934 and The Eternal Road in New York in 1937. Other Broadway directorial credits included Thornton Wilder's The Merchant of Yonkers (1938) and Irwin Shaw's Sons and Soldiers (1943). Reinhardt's version of Die Fledermaus was offered to Broadway as Rosalinda (1942) by his son Gottfried shortly before the elder's death.

Reinhardt [Goldmann], Max (b Baden, Austria, 1873; d NY, 1943). Austrian theatre director. Began career as actor in Volktheater, Rudolfsheim, 1892. Worked in Berlin from 1898 and became dir. of Neues Th., creating sensation with his prods. of Maeterlinck's Pelleas und Melisande, Wilde's Salome, and Hofmannsthal's Elektra. First opera prod. was Orphée aux enfers, with designs by Ernst Stern, 1906. Prod. (anonymously) f.p. of Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier (Dresden, 1911), followed by La belle Hélène (Venice, 1911), and Ariadne auf Naxos (Stuttgart, 1912). One of founders of Salzburg Fest. 1920, where he prod. Hofmannsthal's Jedermann and Goethe's Faust. Last major opera prod. was of Die Fledermaus (San Remo, 1934), although after emigrating to USA in 1937 he prod. The Eternal Road, with mus. by Weill (1937).