1. Vienna’s dramatists have a long, brilliant
and turbulent history. But no year was
quite so momentous as 1929, the year
modernity was born
BY BRIAN HATFIELD
COVER STORY
Reimagining
The Self12 july | august 2016 july | august 2016 13
H
edwigKieslerwasde-
termined to act. She
had traveled all the
way to Berlin to
studyunderthegreat
Viennese director
Max Reinhardt. But
it seemed impossible to get an audition. So
during a rehearsal, she slipped into the emp-
ty theater and sat in the back to watch. Then
he spotted her, irritated, and called her up
onto the stage. She was very young – only 17
– with raven hair and penetrating green
eyes.“Ijustwantedtoseeyoudirect,”shelat-
er remembered saying.
“Do you speak English?” he barked. “Y...
yes,” she managed, thus winning herself the
partof“2ndAmericangirl”inReinhardt’sDas
schwächereGeschlecht(TheWeakerSex).
The young actress’s only notion of Ameri-
ca then was of a flotilla of states encircling
an island of magic called Hollywood. But
then, she came from Vienna, a city where
theater was part of life – a glasshouse of di-
rectors, actors, writers, teachers and psy-
chologists,spinningtalesofthehumanexpe-
rience out of logic, myth and madness. Act-
ing was almost second nature.
“I acted all the time,” she told an interview-
er in 1938. She copied the gestures and man-
nerisms of her mother, their dinner guests,
theservantsandpeopleonthestreet.“Iwasa
livingcopybook;Iwrotepeopledownonme.”
Still agonizing over the loss of an empire,
recovering from the upheavals of the war,
and torn apart by increasing hostility be-
tween the Socialists and Christian-Demo-
crats, Vienna was also the place where the-
atercouldanddidblossom,wildlyandvigor-
ously. Theatrical creativity, inspiration and
innovationseemedtosweepawayallthesor-
rows of the present. At least for some.
In this hotchpotch of misery and ambi-
tion, the ingenue Hedwig Kiesler was on her
way to Hollywood to become Hedy Lamarr,
her trajectory set, navigating the zeitgeist
that would carry the German-speaking
worldoutofonewarandintoanother,where
she herself would play an important role.
The young Viennese actress
Hedwig Kiesler was groomed by
Max Reinhardt to eventually
become the Hollywood superstar
known as Hedy Lamarr.

2. july | august 2016 15
FREUD AND THE THEATER
But perhaps they were not so far apart.
“What’s important to understand about
Freud is his classical, humanistic educa-
tion,” says Prof. Monika Meister of the
University of Vienna, “including the im-
portance of ancient Greek tragedy.” Mid-
way through The Interpretation of
Dreams, for example, he brings in Oedi-
pus, and refers to Sophocles’ recognition
of the unconscious back in the 5th centu-
ry B.C. “And Hofmannsthal’s Elektra was
seen as a study of Hysteria,” she con-
cludes. But theater in ancient times was
more than just diagnosis and observa-
tion; it was also medicine and therapy.
“Sophocles and Aristotle had discovered
theaterforcatharsis,purgingthecommu-
nity,”shesays,playingthesamepurifying
role as medicine.
After the Great War, Hofmannsthal’s
world fell apart. Unable to overcome the
dissolution of the monarchy, he became
more conservative, and while his produc-
tivity never slowed, he felt increasingly
out of step with his time. Still, he was
adored by the public. At the time of his
death in 1929, his most famous play,
Jedermann (Everyman), had just played
in the Salzburg Festival for its ninth con-
secutive year.
Schnitzler, on the other hand, was at
home in the new age, delving ever deeper
into psychology that was already basic to
his work. His most famous play, Reigen,
premiered in both Vienna and Berlin in
1920,unravelingaseriesofsexualencoun-
ters that shocked even liberal Vienna. The
ensuing scandal, including a lawsuit in
Berlin, culminated in Schnitzler with-
drawing the play for some eight years.
THE END OFAN ERA
But by then, Schnitzler, like Hofmanns-
thal, had lost a child to suicide, his be-
loved daughter Lilli. “On that July day,”
he wrote in his diary, “my life, too, came
to an end.”
In hindsight, Hofmannstal’s and
Schnitzler’s deaths so close together ap-
pear like an omen for the horrors that fol-
lowed, for a society whose creative glue
was coming unstuck, unhinging the city,
propelling artists and psychologists out
into the diaspora. By the end of World
War II, says Meister, “Jewish theater was
tabula rasa.”
It’s unlikely that Lamarr, at the age of
15, would have seen Reigen, but she was
no stranger to censorship. At 19, she
made love to her then boyfriend in the
Czech film Extase, the director had stuck
a safety pin into her buttocks to make the
love scenes look more passionate. The
film ruffled some feathers in both Europe
and America; but at least everyone knew
her name.
“I went to Prague because I was in love
withsomebody,”shetoldareporterin1970.
Sheneverregrettedit.
WhilethereisnorecordthatLamarrmet
either Hofmannsthal or Richard Strauss,
she did know the other of the Salzburg
greats – director Max Reinhardt, who pio-
neeredathirdpathofelaboratestagingand
setdesign,influencedbyRichardWagner’s
idea of a Gesamtkunstwerk. The doyen of
Austrian theater, he launched his still re-
nownedMaxReinhardtSeminarinVienna
in 1929, furthering a vision that found its
fullest expression in the director’s film
workinHollywood.
Reinhardt was against realism and the
declamatory style of the past, cultivating
inhisstudentsathoroughknowledgeand
deep respect for all aspects of stagecraft.
His innovations included special lighting
effects, revolving stages and sky-domed
ceilings, which he exploited to the hilt
and earned him the reputation as a mas-
ter of stage direction. After Lamarr ap-
peared in the lead as Sybil in Reinhardt’s
1931 production of Noel Coward’s Private
Lives at Theater in der Josefstadt, he pro-
claimed her “the most beautiful woman
in Europe.”
FINDING STANISLAVSKI
The year 1929 was also a seminal one in
philosophy, with the publication of the
manifestooftheViennaCircle.Theselog-
ical positivists were the antithesis of the
JungWienartists:Schnitzler,Hofmanns-
thal,ZweigandKarlKraus,“themasterof
venomous ridicule.”
Theater’s strongest new impulse, how-
ever, may have come from refugee Mi-
chael Chekhov, nephew of the Russian
playwright and former star of the famous
Moscow Arts Theatre. Chekhov had
sought out Reinhardt, hoping to play
Hamlet, but was instead offered a charac-
ter role in Artisten, at Theater in der Jo-
sefstadt in 1928. During the play, Chek-
hov had an experience of “double con-
sciousness” – of acting and watching one-
selfactatthesametime,leadinghismen-
tor Konstantin Stanislavski to fear for his
sanity – and reconsider his technique for
drawing out his actors. Artistic success,
he believed, could be found by working
from the insideout, or alternatively, from
the outside in, echoing Carl Jung’s theo-
ries on introverts and extroverts. Stan-
islavski’s insight led to his “Method of
PhysicalAction”,hisrelianceonthe“mag-
ic if” of reimagining the self.
Vienna’s passion for theater also
touched the young Adolf Hitler, who took
lessons from the stage hypnotist Erik Jan
Hanussen, a “clairvoyant” and charlatan.
Hitler’s talent was oratory, which he used
14 july | august 2016
ALLTHE WORLD’S A STAGE
The great names of that time have long
sincemadetheirexitsfromViennastreets.
But theater itself, suspending disbelief,
continues to lift the stories of our age, the
facts, figures and maps of our world, off the
page into reincarnate life.
“We’ve always had broad support,” says
RobertDressler,directorofthetheaterpro-
gram at the Deparment of Culture for the
City of Vienna. In the late 19th and early
20th century, Vienna’s theaters were pri-
vately sponsored by the nobility and the
newindustrialfortunesaspiringtobecome
a part of high society. Before that, Dressler
explained, theater was mostly confined to
the court and, to some extent, the church.
After three decades working in support
of the arts here, most notably at Vienna’s
venerableEnglishTheatre,hecaresdeeply
about keeping the tradition alive. “In the
late 1920s, along the Praterstraße, there
were quite a number of theaters,” he says,
“many for operetta, including Jewish the-
aters,” that had just begun to prosper by
1929. They would only have their brief but-
terfly day in the sun.
ECCE HOMO
The year 1929 also brought
heavylossesandunlikelyrec-
onciliations. Just two days af-
ter his son’s suicide, drama-
tist Hugo von Hofmannstal,
giant of the German-lan-
guage fin-de-siècle poetry and the Wiener
Moderne, himself succumbed, dying of a
broken heart.
And it was the irrepressible Stefan
Zweig who, despite years of petty jealou-
sies,deliveredtheeulogyatHofmannstal’s
funeral, before joining a procession that
led from the Burgtheater, past the Volks-
garten, and over Rudolf Geschwind’s fa-
mous roses, now petals strewn yellow,
damask and red.
Hofmannsthalhadbeenaphenomenon,
a prodigy already published by the age of
17,andfamousby25,oneofagroupofbohe-
mians who called themselves Jung Wien,
communing at around writer Hermann
BahratCaféGriensteidl.Outof“multiplic-
ity and indeterminacy [where] everything
fell into parts,” Hofmannsthal evolved his
theatrical “ceremony of the whole.” His
plays were brimming with
choruses, musicians, dancers
andevenanimals,unitingthe
audience in a “mystical
union” with the performers
onstage,principlesheusedin
his many librettos to the op-
eras of Richard Strauss.
Among Hofmannsthal’s Jung Wien co-
hortswasthegreatnovelistandplaywright
Arthur Schnitzler, who had about-faced
from medicine to literature. Medicine had
“sharpenedmyeyeandenlightenedmyin-
tellect,” he wrote in 1920, equipping him
brilliantly for diagnosing society and hu-
man relationships. A pioneer of the tech-
nique of the inner monologue long before
James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922), his novella
Lieutenant Gustl (1900) was written the
same year as Freud’s Interpretation of
Dreams. Freud himself was in awe of
Schnitzler,whomhewasreluctanttomeet
for fear of encountering a doppelgänger.
“I have often wondered,” Freud wrote
Schnitzler in 1906, “how it is you possess
this or that piece of secret knowledge, that
for me has come only with years of study?”
COVER STORY
Max Reinhardt launched his Seminar
in Vienna in 1929, furthering a
vision that found its fullest expression
in his Hollywood films.
PHOTOS,APAPICTUREDESK:PREVIOUSPAGE:RONALDGRANTARCHIVE/MARYEVANS;LEFT:FOTOWILHELM/INTERFOTO;
RIGHT:FRIEDRICH/INTERFOTO
Before his death in
1929, Hugo von
Hoffmansthal's most
famous work,
Jedermann, played for
nine years at the
Salzburg Festival and
annually ever since.

3. 16 july | august 2016
tooptimumeffect.Herequired
a long warm-up, practicing his
gestures to perfection in a mir-
ror. He had a sonorous voice,
not always evident in the hys-
terical tone of his public re-
cordings. And like Reinhardt, his knowl-
edgeofstagingwasthoroughandconvinc-
ing–aconsummateperformer.
THEWORLD,ANIGHTMARE
By the spring of 1932 the young republics
in Germany and Austria were both fall-
ing apart. On January 30, 1933, Hitler
was appointed Chancellor of Germany,
and five years later, annexed Austria.
Overnight,halfofVienna’stheaterswere
closed; the cabarets and the Jews were
gone, most never to return.
The exodus gutted Viennese theater.
Hedy Lamarr herself was saved by Max
Reinhardt, with an introduction to Louis
B.MayerofMGM,escapingasuffocating
marriage to a wealthy armaments manu-
facturer and getting her out of Austria.
Vienna’s theatrical genius blossomed
anew in the lush garden of Hollywood, the
new medium, cinema. Directors Billy
Wilder, Otto Preminger, Fred Zinneman,
Fritz Lang and Michael Curtiz, actors
Peter Lorre, Paul Henried
and of course Hedy Lamarr,
as well as nearly 400 others
who left their stamp on Hol-
lywood, winning no fewer
than33AcademyAwardsin
thedecadesthatfollowed.
PSYCHOLOGY IS BACK
Today in 2016, times are uncertain; the
economyisturningaspopulationsareon
the move and technology is reshuffling
the cards. We are again in a time of ideas,
disturbing but also challenging. This is,
on the whole, good for theater.
In Vienna, says Dressler, new work is
again tackling political and social
themes,oftenwithpost-modern,concep-
tualapproachesthataremutable,thatre-
fusetomakefixedclaims,andwithmany
new aesthetics, often crossing or mixing
disciplines, materials and settings. It
mightbemultilingual,withouttradition-
al storytelling, with little text or none.
Playwrights are turning back to psy-
chology, terrain where Vienna has a long
tradition. “There’s very interesting work
being done on catharsis and theater as
therapy,” says Meister, particularly
through“thepsycho-physicalconnection,
as in dance, in movement that digs deep
into the psyche.”
Theater, now as ever, is a child of
change; it thrives on experiment, but it
also needs continuity and context as a
frame for meaning. Both are essential.
“Funding is split,” Dressler confirms,
“between an aging, more literary audi-
ence and a younger one [at home] with
new technology, who certainly won’t
watch Hamlet for five hours and aren’t
studying classical literature.” To serve
them, “there are new forms emerging.”
Launched in 1929, it was Hedy Lamarr
fromViennawhoanticipatedthedirection
oftheaterinthe21stcentury:themarriage
of art and technology. In 1942, in partner-
shipwithmodernistcomposerGeorgeAn-
theil,sheinventedaradioguidancesystem
for Allied torpedoes, using a frequency
hoppingprinciplethatlaterbecametheba-
sis for modern wireless and broadband
communicationstechnologies.
Thus the “most beautiful woman in Eu-
rope” made it to the big stage, the big
screen and the universe of big ideas – a
bridge from of the artists’ world of Jung
Wien, to that of the scientists, the Vienna
Circle–andhelpedlaythefoundationsfor
the modern world.
PHOTOS:LEFT:ARTURANDRZEJ/WIKIPEDIA;RIGHT:ROGERVIOLLET/PICTUREDESK.COM
COVER STORY
Billy Wilder (here
with Gloria Swanson
ca. 1950) was part of
the mass exodus of
Viennese talent to
Hollywood.
Otto Preminger fled to Hollywood,
here he directs John Wayne during the
shooting of In Harm’s Way in 1965.
“Funding is split between an aging, more literary audience
and a younger one with new technology, who certainly won’t
watch Hamlet for five hours.”
Robert Dressler, Director of the theater program at the Department of Culture for the City of Vienna