Rittner, Rudolf

(1869-1943)

   Actor. Rittner began his career in the German-language theaters of Bratislava and Timisoara, but by his mid-20s he was playing French comedies at Berlin's Residenz Theater under Sigmund Lautenberg. He played scores of roles for Sigmund Lautenberg, most notably Hans in the world premiere of Max Halbe's Jugend (Youth). Otto Brahm hired Rittner in 1894 to play Naturalist roles, mostly in plays by Gerhart Hauptmann and Henrik Ibsen. He created the title role of Fuhrmann HenscheJ (Teamster Henschel) for Brahm in 1898 and critics praised his portrayal of Oswald in Ibsen's Ghosts for his unprecedented "naturalness" and lack of affectation. They also praised his work as the eponymous hero in Hauptmann's Florian Geyer for Brahm at the Lessing in 1905, but for different reasons; he played the "black knight" caught in the intrigues of the Reformation as a melancholic idealist fighting mightily for a doomed cause. A 1906 portrait of him in the role by Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) captures much of the energy Rittner invested in the part; it hangs in the Von der Heydt Museum in Wuppertal. He enjoyed other successes in a series of Hauptmann roles, often playing opposite Else Lehmann, leading many critics to extol him as the German theater's foremost Naturalist actor—yet he retired at age 38 in 1907 and returned to his ancestral estate in Silesia to take up farming fulltime. He returned to acting for brief periods, but in most cases for small roles in films or on radio.