Emerging from a brief chemistry course at the Technical University of Karlsruhe, he launched his acting career in his native Mannheim in 1887 and soon joined the Meiningen Court Theatre for four seasons before moving to Berlin. There he worked under Otto Brahm from 1899, became a staple of the Deutsches Theater in 1904, and collaborated with Max Reinhardt between 1909 and 1915, taking on leading r…
