Lautenschläger, Karl

(1843-1906)

   Stage technician. Lautenschläger is best known for his adaptation of Japanese designs for the Drehbühne, a stage revolve mechanism, for the Munich Residence Theater in 1896. The stage revolve he developed was a turntable 16 meters (52.5 feet) in diameter, installed on an even plane with the floor surface of the stage and driven by a gearing device beneath the stage floor under electric power. His design was used in dozens of other German theaters; Max Reinhardt's production at the Deutsches Theater of A Midsummer Night's Dream was among the first fully to exploit Lautenschläger's technology, though several other directors and designers, both at the Deutsches and elsewhere throughout the German theater, made wide use of it thereafter.