REINHARDT, MAX ), Austrian theatrical ducer, was born in Raden, near Vienna, Austria, on Sept. 9, 1873. He was educated at the Untergymnasium, and then entered a bank, where he remained until 17 years of age. He studied for the stage under Emil Burde, and in 1890 at the School of Acting of the Vienna Conservatorium. He began his professional career in 1893 at the Stadt theatre in Salzburg, where his characterization of elderly roles attracted the attention of Otto Brahm, who engaged him for the Deutsches theater, Berlin, in 1894. There he met with notable success, creating such roles as Baumert in Hauptmann's The Weavers; Akim in Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness; Eng strand in Ibsen's Ghosts; and many others. In 1903 he left the Brahm ensemble to begin his career as a director at the Neues theater, Berlin, with the production of Shakespeare's A Midsum mer Night's Dream, in which he assumed leadership of the neo romantic movement against the prevailing school of naturalism.
He soon transferred his activities to the Deutsches theater, where, during the following years, he produced practically all the plays of Shakespeare, Moliere, Goethe, Strindberg, Wedekind, Ibsen, Shaw and others, as well as musical comedies and operas, turning from the purely literary and historical conception of stage manage ment to one essentially dramatic. In 1902, he opened his Kleines theater, and in 1906 his Kammerspielhaus. He was the first Ger man producer to be invited to produce plays in foreign countries. Since 1909 he has given many productions in European cities, and in 1927-28 several notable ones in New York city. See Huntly Carter, The Theatre of Max Reinhardt (1914); Max Reinhardt and His Theatre, ed. Oliver M. Sayler (1924).