Max Reiner papers

Typescript autobiographical text, approximately 254 pages, by Max Reiner, originally of Czernowitz and Vienna, describing his experiences in Austria and Germany prior to emigration, written 1940. The text was written in response to a project at Harvard University in 1940, seeking autobiographical texts from German and Austrian emigres, titled "My Life in Germany." In his text, Reiner described his impressions of turn-of-the century Czernowitz, his move to Vienna to begin his career as a journalist, his move to Berlin at the age of 23, and his subsequent career with the Ullstein publishing house, his service in the army during World War I, and his return to Berlin. In his account, he provides detailed descriptions of key events and personalities of the Weimar Republic, both political and cultural, including political figures such as Stresemann, Ebert, Rathenau, and Wirth, as well as cultural figures such as Max Reinhardt and others in the musical and theatrical circles of Berlin. His account also describes the impact that the Nazi takeover of power had on him, the increasing antisemitic measures, his expulsion form the Ullstein Verlag, and Kristallnacht as he experienced it in Berlin in 1938. The memoir concludes with his emigration in 1939. The Reiner papers also contain the certificate of naturalization (1941) for Reiner had his wife, as well as his death certificate (1944), both from Palestine, and four photographs of Reiner and family members, circa 1930s-1940s. Max Reiner (1883-1944) was born in Czernowitz, Bukovina, where he was raised and lived until he moved to Vienna as a young man to pursue a career as a journalist. Initially he covered parliamentary politics, but tiring of the nationalist conflicts of the Habsburg Empire, he moved to Berlin in 1906, hoping to establish himself as a writer there. Employed by the Ullstein Verlag, he was mentored by the writer and editor Felix Salten, best known for his children's book "Bambi." He soon was assigned to cover various society and entertainment stories for Ullstein newspapers such as the "Vossische Zeitung," "Berliner Morgenpost," and "Berliner Zeitung am Mittag." He married in 1912, and at the outbreak of World War I, was conscripted into the army and sent to the Eastern Front, serving in his home region of Bukovina as well as eastern Galicia. At the conclusion of the war, he left Lemberg (Lwow) and returned to Berlin, but rather than covering entertainment, he returned to his first love, politics, which he covered for the Vossische Zeitung, gaining access to leading personalities of the Weimar Republic such as Gustav Stresemann, Friedrich Ebert, Walther Rathenau, and others, and reporting on key events of the day, including diplomatic negotiations, economic crises, and the eventual rise of the Nazi movement. Although he had become an editor and had worked for Ullstein for over a quarter century, after the Nazi rise to power in 1933, he was demoted, and a few years later, was forced into involuntary retirement. He sought work in Vienna, Prague, and Tel Aviv unsuccessfully, returning to Berlin. After Kristallnacht, however, he resolved to leave, and in January 1939 left for Palestine, where he obtained British citizenship in 1941, and lived until his death in 1944. Copyright Holder: Jane Blalock