Max Reinhardt’s passion for the beautiful and the noble motivated him to spend nearly twenty years of his life at Schloss Leopoldskron. It was his passion for theater-like staging on a grand scale that inspired him to use not only the palace, but the lake, the park facilities and the forest as perfect backdrops for his plays.

This artistic and magical world abruptly ended when the National Socialists seized power in 1938 and confiscated Schloss Leopoldskron as Jewish property. Max Reinhardt, who was working as a stage director in Hollywood/USA at that time, could therefore not return to Austria and died in 1943 in exile in New York. He never saw his beloved palace again.