Max Epstein (writer)
Max Epstein (born March 9, 1874 in Königshütte , † May 9, 1948 in London ) was a German theater attorney, writer and theater director .
Life
Max Epstein was a son of the businessman Jacob Epstein and Selma Friedmann. In 1896 he converted from Judaism to Protestantism. Epstein was married to a daughter of the respected bespoke tailor Hermann Hoffmann. He attended the Gymnasium zum Grauen Kloster in Berlin, studied law in Berlin from 1893 to 1896 and passed the second state examination in 1897. In the same year he received his doctorate with the dissertation Der Landesverrat in historical, dogmatic and comparative law and worked as a court assessor .
The doctor of law and university professor had a law office in Berlin . He took over a cloakroom leasing business for almost all Berlin theaters from his father. Epstein was the founder and since 1913 owner and director of the German Art Theater in Berlin-Tiergarten . He was also financially involved in other stages and their productions. He was fascinated by the theater and interested in the economic aspects of theater productions. His revelations of financial theatrical scandals earned him many enemies.
Epstein wrote poetry, novels and a number of stage works; some of the plays are lost. He also worked as an author for Die Weltbühne and was editor of the weekly literary magazine Das Blaue Heft (previously: Freie Deutsche Bühne ) from 1919 to 1921 and 1925 to 1930 . Max Epstein had the Villa Epstein at Douglasstrasse 15 in Berlin-Grunewald built by the architect Oskar Kaufmann in 1922-25 . Epstein was friends with Herbert Eulenberg , Giacomo Puccini Claire Waldoff , Käthe Dorsch , Elisabeth Bergner and Siegfried Jacobsohn , among others .
In 1935 he was expropriated, was banned from working and was forced to emigrate to London. There he wrote his memoirs.
Works (selection)
- With love for song and sound . Poems. Dresden: Pierson, 1893
- Auxiliary book for the 1st legal examination based on the new curriculum , Breslau: Schletter, 1898
- The theater as a business , Charlottenburg 1911 (new edition Berlin 1996). Digitized by: Central and State Library Berlin, 2018 urn: nbn: de: kobv: 109-1-15334653
- Theater and Economics , Berlin 1914
- Max Reinhardt , Berlin 1918
- Critique of Pure Reason. Immanuel Kant - In German Stanzen , Berlin 1923
- The business as a theater , Berlin 1927
- You play theater. Novel behind the scenes , Vienna 1932
- Is stupidity curable? London, 1945
literature
- Epstein, Max. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 6: Dore – Fein. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-598-22686-1 , pp. 408-414.
- Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945. Volume 2.1. Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 268.
- Epstein, Max , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 82
Individual evidence
- ↑ Karin Ploog: ... When the notes learned to run ... History and stories of popular music up to 1945 - Part two. Norderstedt 2015, ISBN 978-3-7347-4718-2 , p. 149
- ↑ http://www.weltbuehne-lesen.de/epstein.html
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Epstein, Max |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German writer and theater director |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 9, 1874 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Koenigshütte |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 9, 1948 |
| Place of death | London |