Max Reinhardt was born Max Goldmann on September 9th, 1873 in Baden, near Vienna. He was the oldest of the seven children born to Wilhelm and Rose Goldmann, an Orthodox Jewish couple. With his only brother, Edmund, young Max played long hours with puppets and from their balcony watched the real puppets in the streets. "He was educated at the Untergymnasium, and was in a banking business till seventeen" (Carter 33).

"Though his parents were remote from theatrical life, they were sympathetic to his fascination with the actors of the Vienna Burgtheater, and, at the urging of one of these, they allowed their son to exchange his boredom as a bank clerk for the excitement of drama school" (Britannica). Although he proved to be an inhibited actor,

major producer to use this combination of large and small theater, and it was he who virtually instituted experimentation" (Brockett 213).

On January 1, 1903 he left Brahm and his ensemble for good in order to begin concentrating on his directorship and own personal style. Later that year he took over the Neues and Kleines Theaters. By the end of 1904, he had directed 42 plays. "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" (Binghamton). The young director became famous overnight. In the same year, upon Brahm's retirement, Reinhardt was chosen to succeed his former mentor as head of the Deutsches Theater. He completely rebuilt the theater, introducing the latest technological innovations in scenic design, and started a school. Purchasing a tavern next door, Reinhardt remodeled it into a small theater for plays that needed intimacy with the audience. He summarized his new concept in theater with the word Kammerspiele, "chamber plays." "Reinhardt was the first!

Under Brahm Reinhardt learned much about naturalism. " It was just about the time of his joining the Deutsches Theater company that naturalism was making itself strongly felt in German acting. Brahm had promoted it in the Deutsches Theater, and the distinguished work of some of its exponents... served to fire Reinhardts talent in this direction, and to give him rich impressions which he has never forgotten" (Carter 38). He would soon direct his first production Ibsen's "Love's Comedy" in 1900.

Aside from his performances, one of his most distinguished characteristics was that of his relationship with the actors or actresses in his plays. "Although his reforms in stage settings, mechanisms and lighting and his revolutionary experiments in the general technique and theory of the theater, have absorbed the major part of the attention devoted to Reinhardt... there is little doubt that his talent for discovering and training actors for his ensemble is an even more important factor in his substantial and continuing success" (Sayler 98). His relationship and ability to influence and shape his performers and his acknowledgement of the unknown or understudy actor made his pr

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