The Max Reinhardt Seminar (Reinhardt Seminar) is the School of Drama at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, Austria. It is located in the Palais Cumberland, Penzingerstraße 9, in Vienna's 14th district (48°11′21"N 16°18′44"E)

History

A Lehrgang für Declamation und Mimik (Course in Declamation and Mimics) had been in existence in Vienna since 1852, when Max Reinhardt

Max Reinhardt (theatre director)

----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...

 received a call to the University of Music and Performing Arts in 1929 to create a drama seminar. Initially, this Seminar was taught at the Schönbrunner Schlosstheater, the imperial theatre in the Schönbrunn Palace

Schönbrunn Palace

Schönbrunn Palace is a former imperial 1,441-room Rococo summer residence in Vienna, Austria. One of the most important cultural monuments in the country, since the 1960s it has been one of the major tourist attractions in Vienna...

. After Reinhardt's emigration in 1937, the seminar moved to the nearby Palais Cumberland in 1940. From 1948 until 1954, Helene Thimig (Max Reinhardt's widow) directed the Seminar.

Curriculum

The Seminar offers a four-year course taught by some 40 professors, many of whom are themselves notable actors and directors, e.g. Karlheinz Hackl

Karlheinz Hackl

Karlheinz Hackl is an Austrian actor whose varied career has included theater, television, film and cabaret performances as well as directing....

, Heiner Müller

Heiner Müller

Heiner Müller was a German dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. Described as "the theatre's greatest living poet" since Samuel Beckett, Müller is arguably the most important German dramatist of the 20th century after Bertolt Brecht...

, Oleg Tabakov

Oleg Tabakov

Oleg Pavlovich Tabakov is a Soviet and Russian actor and the artistic director of the Moscow Art Theatre.-Theatre career:...

, Giorgio Strehler

Giorgio Strehler

Giorgio Strehler was an Italian opera and theatre director.-Biography:Strehler was born in Barcola, Trieste to an Austrian father and a Franco-Slovene mother; he grew up speaking Italian but spoke French well and his German was passable. He became suddenly fatherless at the age of three, his...

, István Szabó

István Szabó

István Szabó is a Hungarian film director, screenwriter, and opera director.Szabó is the most internationally famous Hungarian filmmaker since the late 1960s. Working in the tradition of European, auteurist art cinema, he has made films that represent many of the psychological and political...

, Klaus Maria Brandauer

Klaus Maria Brandauer

Klaus Maria Brandauer is an Austrian actor, film director, and professor at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna.-Personal life:...

). After the second semester, the students specialize into various branches of acting and directing. Student performances are staged at the Schlosstheater.

Alumni

Famous past students include noted actors and filmmakers:
Alfred Abel

Alfred Abel

Alfred Abel was a German film actor, director, and producer. He appeared in over 140 silent and sound films between 1913 and 1938...

,
Peter Alexander,
David Bennent

David Bennent

David Bennent is a Swiss actor.He was born in Lausanne, Switzerland. His parents are actor Heinz Bennent and former dancer Diane Mansart...

,
Senta Berger

Senta Berger

Senta Berger is an Austrian film, stage and television actress, producer and author.Regarded by critics as one of the greatest actresses of the post-war period, and frequently named as one of the leading German-speaking actresses in polls, Berger has received many award nominations for her acting...

,
Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich

Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...

,
Martin Esslin

Martin Esslin

Martin Julius Esslin OBE was a Hungarian-born English producer and playwright dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama best known for coining the term "Theatre of the Absurd" in his work of that name...

,
O. W. Fischer

O. W. Fischer

Otto Wilhelm Fischer was an Austrian actor. A leading man of German cinema, he began his career with Max Reinhardt's stage company....

,
Gustav Froehlich,
Karlheinz Hackl

Karlheinz Hackl

Karlheinz Hackl is an Austrian actor whose varied career has included theater, television, film and cabaret performances as well as directing....

,
Paul Henreid,
Christiane Hörbiger

Christiane Hörbiger

Christiane Hörbiger is an Austrian television and film actress.-Life and work:Christiane Hörbiger is one of the three actress daughters of Austrian actors Attila Hörbiger and Paula Wessely . Her sisters are Elisabeth Orth and Maresa Hörbiger.She has played roles in various German and Austrian TV...

,
Kurt Kasznar

Kurt Kasznar

-Early life:Kasznar was born in Vienna, Austria as Kurt Servischer. His father left when Kurt was very young, his mother married a Hungarian restaurateur named Ferdinand Kasznar, and Kurt assumed his surname. He emigrated to the United States in the mid-1930s for The Eternal Road in which he...

,
Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr

Hedy Lamarr was an Austrian-American actress celebrated for her great beauty who was a major contract star of MGM's "Golden Age".Lamarr also co-invented – with composer George Antheil – an early technique for spread spectrum communications and frequency hopping, necessary to wireless...

,
Francis Lederer

Francis Lederer

Francis Lederer was a film and stage actor with a successful career, first in Europe, then in the United States.-Europe:...

,
Ute Lemper

Ute Lemper

Ute Lemper is a German chanteuse and actress renowned for her interpretation of the work of Kurt Weill.- Biography :Born in Münster, Germany, Ute Lemper was raised in a Roman Catholic family. She joined the punk music group known as the Panama Drive Band at the age of 16...

,
F.W. Murnau,
Pola Negri

Pola Negri

Pola Negri was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles from the 1910s through the 1940s during the Golden Era of Hollywood film. She was the first European film star to be invited to Hollywood, and became a great American star. She...

,
Hans Neuenfels

Hans Neuenfels

Hans Neuenfels is a German writer, poet, film producer, librettist, theatre director and opera director.- Biography :...

,
Susi Nicoletti

Susi Nicoletti

Susi Nicoletti was a Bavarian-born actress best remembered today for over 100 supporting roles mostly in comedy films....

,
Christine Ostermayer

Christine Ostermayer

Christine Ostermayer is an Austrian actress.-Selected filmography:* Derrick - Season 10, Episode 07: "Lohmanns innerer Frieden" -External links:*...

,
Erika Pluhar

Erika Pluhar

Erika Pluhar is an actress, singer and author from Austria and was born on 28 February 1939 in Vienna.Erika Pluhar is the daughter of Anna and Dr Josef Pluhar. One of her sisters, Ingeborg G...

,
Helmut Qualtinger

Helmut Qualtinger

Helmut Qualtinger was an Austrian actor, writer and cabaret performer.-Biography:Helmut Qualtinger was born in Vienna, Austria...

,
Leni Riefenstahl

Leni Riefenstahl

Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...

,
Otto Schenk

Otto Schenk

Otto Schenk is an Austrian actor, and theater and opera director.-Life and career:Schenk was born to Catholic parents. His father, a lawyer, had Jewish roots and therefore lost his job after the Anschluss in 1938...

,
Max Schreck

Max Schreck

Friedrich Gustav Max Schreck was a German actor. He is most often remembered today for his lead role in the film Nosferatu .-Early life:Max Schreck was born in Berlin-Friedenau, on 6 September 1879....

,
Walter Schmidinger

Walter Schmidinger

Walter Schmidinger is an Austrian actor.-Selected filmography:* The Pedestrian * Ice Age * Derrick - Season 3, Episode 10 "Das Bordfest" * The Serpent's Egg...

,
Otto Tausig,
Nadja Tiller

Nadja Tiller

Nadja Tiller is an Austrian actress. She was one of the most popular German actresses of the 1950s and 1960s.She won the Miss Austria competition in 1949, a national beauty pageant for unmarried women in Austria. She had her major film debut in 1952 in 'Märchen vom Glück .In 1955, she acted...

,
Conrad Veidt

Conrad Veidt

Conrad Veidt was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari , The Man Who Laughs , The Thief of Bagdad and Casablanca...

,
Christoph Waltz

Christoph Waltz

Christoph Waltz is an Austrian-German actor. He received international acclaim for his portrayal of SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa in the 2009 film Inglourious Basterds, for which he won the Best Actor Award at the Cannes Film Festival and the BAFTA, Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild Award and...

,
Gustav von Wangenheim

Gustav von Wangenheim

Gustav von Wangenheim was a German actor, screenwriter and director.- Life :Wangenheim was born Ingo Clemens Gustav Adolf Freiherr von Wangenheim in Wiesbaden, Hesse, to parents Eduard Clemens Freiherr von Wangenheim and Minna Mengers...

,
Ilse Werner

Ilse Werner

Ilse Werner was an actress and singer. She was born to a Dutch father and a German mother and was a Dutch citizen by birth...

,
Paula Wessely

Paula Wessely

Paula Anna Maria Wessely was an Austrian theatre and film actress. Die Wessely , as she was affectionately called by her admirers and fans, was Austria's foremost popular postwar actress....

,
Rudolf Wessely

Rudolf Wessely

Rudolf Wessely is an Austrian actor.-Selected filmography:* Wahnfried * Derrick - Season 11, Episode 7: "Ein Spiel mit dem Tod"...

,
and Peter Zinner

Peter Zinner

Peter Zinner was an Austrian-born American filmmaker who worked as a film editor, sound editor, and producer...

.