Barnowsky, Viktor

(Isidor Abrahamowsky, 1875-1952)

   Director, manager. Barnowsky became an important producer in Berlin during the 1920s. He was sometimes considered an alternative to Max Reinhardt because of his emphasis on modern plays. What made Barnowsky unique was his cultivation of an audience for both serious modernism along with an appreciation of the boulevard comedy. He began his career as an actor, playing bon vivant types in French comedies at the Residenz Theater in 1893. In 1905 he took over from Reinhardt the lease on the Kleines Theater, and there he established himself as a director and manager, doing not only popular fare but also staging plays by George Bernard Shaw. From 1913 to 1924 he ran the Lessing Theater, where his production of August Strindberg's To Damascus was much praised, and his staging of Georg Kaiser's From Morn to Midnight in 1921 was hailed by several critics as the best Kaiser production Berlin had yet seen. In addition to traditionally profitable comedies at the Lessing, Barnowsky staged As You Like It with Elisabeth Bergner, and Fritz Kortner in Strindberg's Playing with Fire. Barnowsky was also adept at discovering new talent. Among his most important discoveries were Max Adalbert, Curt Goetz, and Käthe Dorsch, whose careers blossomed under his tutelage. In 1933 he emigrated to New York, where he wrote screenplays and became a teacher of theater.