Breaks – A narrative in dialogue with the Jewish Museum in Vienna

Neue Residenz – First floor

Stage set with view from Schloss Leopoldskron towards the Untersberg, diverse objects from the estate of Max Reinhardt, posters and historical photographs, glass window of Reinhardt’s burial place in New York, photo series by Andrew Phelps

A spatial installation illustrates the breaks in the life of Max Reinhardt and in his relationship to Salzburg, forced on him by the Nazi regime. The Salzburg Festival would be inconceivable without the stage director and theatre man Max Reinhardt. He succeeded in awakening the unique sites of the city to theatrical life – besides the Domplatz / Cathedral Square especially the Felsenreitschule / Summer Riding School. He directed Jedermann / Everyman between 1920 and 1937 and together with Hugo von Hofmannsthal conceived the programmatic policy of the Festival, which is still binding today. Moreover, because of his acquiring Schloss Leopoldskron in 1918, Max Reinhardt’s personal life was also closely connected to Salzburg. For two decades, the palace
gave him a most beautiful home, where he forged plans for the theatre and entertained guests from the worlds of culture, industry and politics. Adolf Hitler’s seizure of power in the German Reich in 1933 and Austria’s ‘Anschluss’ (annexation) to Nazi Germany in 1938 caused Reinhardt to lose his cultural home and property. He fled to the USA, where he died in 1943 and was buried in New York. The Jewish Museum sensitively illustrates Max Reinhardt’s fate based on selected objects, representing the fates of many artists of Jewish heritage at the Salzburg Festival.

Glossary

The Jewish Museum in Vienna in Vienna focusses on the Jewish history, culture and religion in Austria. The turbulent history of the museum – founded in 1895 – includes its dissolution through the ‘Anschluss’ (annexation of Austria to the Reich) in 1938 and the protracted process of its re-establishment in the post-war years. The Jewish Museum explores the contribution of Austrians of Jewish heritage to cultural, social and political life. Because of the great significance of the Salzburg Festival for Austrian
identity, a separate exhibition by the Jewish Museum titled Everyman’s Jews: 100 Years Salzburg Festival is also dedicated to this topic.