Emanuel Reicher

Emanuel Reicher was a German actor born on June 18, 1849, in Bochnia, Poland, who died on May 15, 1924. He was the father of actors Ernst Reicher, Frank Reicher, and actress Hedwiga Reicher.

Reicher made his acting debut in Munich in 1873, after which he secured a contract with the Residenz Theater in Berlin. There he built a reputation as one of the foremost German interpreters of Shakespeare. He subsequently took on the management of a theatre school. On January 12, 1895, he appeared at the Deutsches Theatre in Berlin as Alfred Allmers in the world premiere of Henrik Ibsen's Little Eyolf. In 1889, he was among the founding members of the theatre society known as the Freie Bühne, or Free Stage. Reicher was also an Esperantist, and in 1908 he performed alongside his daughter Hedwig in Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris at the Esperanto World Congress in Dresden. The actor Curt Goetz studied under him in 1907.

Reicher later traveled to the United States, where he was residing when World War I began. He served as Director of the New York Theatre Guild, where he advanced the new style of German theatre. His Broadway appearances took place between 1915 and 1916 and included Caliban of the Yellow Sands, The Weavers, When the Young Vine Blooms, and John Gabriel Borkman. He returned to Germany in 1923, a year before his death in 1924. His film credits include the 1923 production I.N.R.I.

Reicher married twice. His first wife was opera singer Hedwig Reicher-Kindermann, born July 15, 1853, and died June 2, 1883, with whom he had a son, Frank Reicher. Following her death, he married Lina Harf, and together they had children Hedwiga Reicher, Ernst Reicher, and Elly, born in Berlin in 1893, all of whom pursued careers as actors.