In 1890, he gave his debut on a private stage in Vienna with the stage name
Max Reinhardt (possibly after the protagonist Reinhard Werner in
Theodor Storm's novella
Immensee). In 1893 he performed at the re-opened
Salzburg City Theatre. One year later, Reinhardt relocated to
Germany, joining the
Deutsches Theater ensemble under director
Otto Brahm in Berlin. Reinhardt was one of the contributors to the Swedish avant-garde theatre magazine
Thalia between 1910 and 1913. In 1918 Reinhardt purchased
Schloss Leopoldskron castle in Salzburg. In October 1922 Reinhardt was in the audience when
The Dybbuk was staged by the
Vilna Troupe at the Roland Theater in Vienna. Reinhardt rushed backstage and congratulated the actors. At the time he was already recognized in Austria as distinguished theater director. A couple of months before his endorsement for
The Dybbuk, Reinhardt had again successfully staged
Jedermann (Everyman) for the
Salzburg Festival.
Exile and
Julie Andrews on location in Salzburg, 1964 Reinhardt fled due to the Nazis' increasing anti-Semitic aggressions. The castle was seized following Germany's
Anschluss annexation of Austria in 1938. After the war, the castle was restored to Reinhardt's heirs, and subsequently the home and grounds became famous as the filming site for the early scenes of the Von Trapp family gardens in the movie
The Sound of Music.
Reinhardt theatres In 1901, Reinhardt together with
Friedrich Kayßler and several other theatre colleagues founded the
Schall und Rauch (Sound and Smoke)
Kabarett stage in Berlin. Re-opened as
Kleines Theater (Little Theatre) it was the first of numerous stages where Reinhardt worked as a director until the beginning of
Nazi rule in 1933. From 1903 to 1905, he managed the Neues Theater (present-day
Theater am Schiffbauerdamm) and in 1906 acquired the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. In 1911, he premiered with
Karl Vollmöller's
The Miracle in
Olympia, London, gaining an international reputation. According to Michael Paterson, "The genius of the 20-year old Sorge already showed the possibilities of abstract staging, and Reinhardt in 1917, simply by following Sorge's stage directions, was to become the first director to present a play in wholly Expressionist style." According to Michael Paterson, "The play opens with an ingenious inversion: the Poet and Friend converse in front of a closed curtain, behind which voices can be heard. It appears that we, the audience, are backstage and the voices are those of the imagined audience out front. It is a simple, but disorienting trick of stagecraft, whose imaginative spatial reversal is self-consciously theatrical. So the audience is alerted to the fact that they are about to see a play and not a 'slice of life'." According to Walter H. Sokel, "The lighting apparatus behaves like the mind. It drowns in darkness what it wishes to forget and bathes in light what it wishes to recall. Thus the entire stage becomes a universe of [the] mind, and the individual scenes are not replicas of three-dimensional physical reality, but visualizes stages of thought." Reinhardt's production of the play, which he had meticulously planned ever since he had purchased the rights from Sorge in 1913, proved enormously popular and productions immediately began to be staged in other German cities, such as
Cologne. After the 1918 Armistice, newspapers in the
German language in the United States also published articles highly praising Reinhardt's production of the play, which singlehandedly gave birth to Expressionism in the theatre. After the
November Revolution of 1918, Reinhardt re-opened the
Großes Schauspielhaus (after
World War II renamed into
Friedrichstadtpalast) in 1919, following its
expressionist conversion by
Hans Poelzig. By 1930, he ran eleven stages in Berlin and, in addition, managed the
Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna from 1924 to 1933. In 1920, Reinhardt established the
Salzburg Festival with
Richard Strauss and
Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Reinhardt followed that success by directing a
film version of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' in 1935 using a mostly different cast, that included
James Cagney,
Mickey Rooney,
Joe E. Brown and
Olivia de Havilland, amongst others. Rooney and de Havilland had also appeared in Reinhardt's 1934 stage production, which was staged at the
Hollywood Bowl. The Nazis banned At that time, he was married to his second wife, actress
Helene Thimig, daughter of actor
Hugo Thimig and sister of actors
Hans and
Hermann Thimig. By employing powerful
staging techniques, and integrating
stage design,
language,
music and
choreography, Reinhardt introduced new dimensions into German theatre. The
Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna, which is arguably the most important German-language acting school, was installed implementing his ideas.
Max Reinhardt and film Reinhardt took a greater interest in film than most of his contemporaries in the theater world. He made films as a director and from time to time also as a producer. His first staging was the film
Sumurûn in 1910. After that, Reinhardt founded his own film company. He sold the film rights for the
film adaptation of the play
Das Mirakel (
The Miracle) to
Joseph Menchen, whose full-colour 1912 film of
The Miracle gained world-wide success. Controversies around the staging of
Das Mirakel, which was shown in the Vienna
Rotunde in 1912, led to Reinhardt's retreat from the project. The author of the play, Reinhardt's friend and confidant
Karl Gustav Vollmoeller, had French director
Michel Carré finish the shooting. Reinhardt made two films,
Die Insel der Seligen (
Isle of the Blessed) and
Eine venezianische Nacht (
Venetian Nights), under a four-picture contract for the German film producer
Paul Davidson. Released in 1913 and 1914, respectively, both films received negative reviews from the press and public. The other two films called for in the contract were never made. Both films demanded much of cameraman Karl Freund because of Reinhardt's special shooting needs, such as filming a lagoon in moonlight.
Isle of the Blessed attracted attention due to its erotic nature. Its ancient mythical setting included sea gods, nymphs, and fauns, and the actors appeared naked. However, the film also fit in with the strict customs of the late German and Austrian empires. The actors had to live up to the demands of double roles.
Wilhelm Diegelmann and
Willy Prager played the bourgeois fathers as well as the sea gods, a bachelor and a faun,
Leopoldine Konstantin the
Circe. The shooting for
Eine venezianische Nacht by Karl Gustav Vollmoeller took place in Venice.
Maria Carmi played the bride,
Alfred Abel the young stranger, and Ernst Matray Anselmus and Pipistrello. The shooting was disturbed by a fanatic who incited the attendant Venetians against the German-speaking staff. In 1935, Reinhardt directed his first film in the US, ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream''. He founded the drama schools
Hochschule für Schauspielkunst "Ernst Busch" in Berlin,
Max Reinhardt Seminar, the Max Reinhardt Workshop (
Sunset Boulevard), and the Max Reinhardt Junior Workshop. ==Max Reinhardt Seminar==