Max Reinhardt (theatre director)

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Max Reinhardt (September 9, 1873 - October 30, 1943) was an influential Austrian-American director and actor.

He was born as Maximilian Goldmann, of Jewish ancestry, in Baden near Vienna. From 1902 until the beginning of Nazi rule in 1933, he worked as a director at various theaters in Berlin. From 1905 to 1930 he managed the Deutsches Theater ("German Theatre") in Berlin and, in addition, the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna from 1924 to 1933. By employing powerful staging techniques, and harmonising stage design, language, music and choreography, Reinhard introduced new dimensions into German theater.

Kurt Tucholsky, a poet of the Weimar era, described Reinhardt's spectacular production of Danton's Death, a Georg Büchner play that Reinhardt restaged in Berlin in 1921, in the following terms:

DANTONS TOD Bei Reinhardt wogte der dritte Akt. Es rasten sechshundert Statisten. Sieh an - wie das die Berliner packt! Es jubeln die Journalisten. Mir aber erschien das Ganze wie eine kleine Allegorie. Es tost ein Volk: "Die Revolution! Wir wollen die Freiheit gewinnen! Wir wollten es seit Jahrhunderten schon - laßt Herzblut strömen und rinnen!" Es dröhnt die Szene. Es dröhnt das Haus. Um Neune ist alles aus. Und ernüchtert seh ich den grauen Tag. Wo ist der November geblieben? Wo ist das Volk, das einst unten lag, von Sehnsucht nach oben getrieben? Stille. Vorbei. Es war nicht viel. Ein Spiel. Ein Spiel.

DANTON'S DEATH Act Three was great in Reinhardt's play — Six hundred extras milling. Listen to what the critics say! All Berlin finds it thrilling. But in the whole affair I see A parable, if you ask me. "Revolution!' the People howls and cries 'Freedom, that's what we're needing! We've needed it for centuries — Our arteries are bleeding.' The stage is shaking. The audience rock. The whole thing is over by nine o'clock. The day looks grey as I come to. Where are the People — remember? — That stormed the peaks from down below? What happened to November? Silence. All gone. Just that, in fact. An act. An act.

The Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna, which is arguably the most important German-language acting school, was installed implementing his ideas.

In 1920, Reinhardt established the Salzburg Festival with Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. After the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi-governed Germany in 1938, he emigrated first to England, then to the United States, where he had already successfully directed a popular stage version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Reinhardt followed that success by directing a film version using a mostly different cast in 1935, that included James Cagney, Mickey Rooney, Joe E. Brown and Olivia De Havilland, amongst others. Ms. De Havilland had also appeared in Reinhardt's stage production. The Nazis banned the film because of the Jewish ancestry of both Reinhardt and Felix Mendelssohn, whose music (arranged by Erich Korngold) was used throughout the film.

In 1940 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. At that time, he was married to his second wife, the actress Helene Thimig. He died in New York City in 1943. Reinhardt is interred at Westchester Hills Cemetery in Hastings-on-Hudson, Westchester County, New York.

His son, Gottfried Reinhardt, was a well-regarded film producer. His grandson, Stephen Reinhardt, is a labor lawyer who has been one of the most liberal judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit since his appointment by Jimmy Carter in 1980.

[edit] Work on Broadway

• Sumurun (pantomime) (1912) - leader of the Deutches Theater of Berlin on a New York tour
• The Miracle (play) (1924) - Co-playwright and Director
• A Midsummer Night's Dream (play, Revival (play)(1927) - Producer
• Jederman (play) (1927) - Co-producer
• Peripherie (play) (1928) - playwright
• Redemption (play, Revival (play)(1928) - Director
• The Eternal Road (musical Biblical pageant) (1937) - Director
• The Merchant of Yonkers (play (1938), Thornton Wilder's play, later rewritten as "The Matchmaker". (This play had nothing to do with "The Merchant of Venice".)
• Sons and Soldiers (play) (1943) - Producer and Director

[edit] Films

• A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935 film)
• Das Mirakel

[edit] External links

• Max Reinhardt at the Internet Broadway Database
• Ariadne auf Naxos Yahoo Group
• A hard-nosed Utopian By Esther Slevogt at signandsight.com