Biography of Reinhard Schwabenitzky
	Reinhard Schwabenitzky was born on April 23, 1947, as the son of the innkeeper's daughter, Else Schwab (now Else Karl), and the actor and director Gerhard Klingenberg (later director of the Vienna Burgtheater, Züricher Schauspielhaus, and Renaissance-Theater Berlin), in Bucheben/Rauris (Salzburg) in his grandmother's inn. Bucheben was a small, idyllic farming hamlet perched high up in the Hohen Tauern - in the wintertime only accessible by horse-drawn sleigh. It was in this idyllic, romantic wilderness that Reinhard spent the first three years of his life.  Then father, mother, and Reinhard moved to St. Pölten because Reinhard's father had received an engagement there. And as soon as little Reinhard got a taste of the Stadttheater in St. Pölten, he was hooked for life. It wasn't long before the "young actor" was onstage himself, playing his first roles as a 4-year-old under the direction of his father, in works like "Das Haus in Montevideo," "Wilhelm Tell," "Das weiße Rössl am Wolfgangsee," "Der Bauer als Millionär," etc. Among his acting colleagues at the time were Peter Minich, Kurt Weinzierl, Maria Englstorfer, Hedy Marek, and "his" director was the legendary "Knappl." At the age of five, Reinhard had to say good-bye to the theater - his parents got divorced and he was sent back to the mountains - to Mittersill - to live with Aunt Erna and Uncle Rudi, a forester couple, because his mother Else had to work in Zell am See as a waitress to earn a living.  After staying with his aunt and uncle for a year, Reinhardt found his way back to his grandmother's tutelage. He moved to Taxenbach to Uncle Erwin's farm up in the mountains. Reinhard's daily walk to school entailed a steep 3-km descent through the "Ederwald," and after school it was back up the mountain slope again. The first year he lived on the mountain farm there was no electricity - just petroleum lamps - and the whole time he was there he had to work very hard. There was no sitting around and twiddling your thumbs. If you were able-bodied and healthy, you were expected to help out. But Reinhard was in good hands here. Grandmother Magdalena and Uncle Erwin, the farmer, both liked him very much. One of the things he looked forward to most was helping his grandmother take the cattle up to their alpine pastures to graze all summer. His mother came to visit him as much as possible. And once a year he would spend his vacation in Carinthia with his father and his Viennese grandparents, and later they even went to Lake Garda. In hindsight, he wouldn't miss this time for the world because in the mountains nothing comes easy; you have to work hard for everything. Looking back now, there is no better preparation for show business. You didn't learn anything about money, but you learned plenty about nature and life. You might not have shown your feelings - but you felt them. The air was good, life was hard but exhilarating, honest, exciting, and in the evenings wonderfully relaxing. No television, just a card game every once in a while and folk music on the radio.  When Reinhard was 9 years old, his mother remarried. But it soon became apparent that his new stepfather was a complete dud, a war fanatic and military type who almost regretted that the war was over and whose view of marriage and childrearing was strongly influence by this attitude. Thus without being aware that the word existed, 10-year-old Reinhard soon became an ardent pacifist. The inn in Bucheben/Rauris that his grandmother had been leasing until now was sold and the money was used to buy another one in the city of Salzburg. Now Reinhard had to adjust from being a nature boy to a city boy. This was by no means easy - it took a while before Reinhard found friends in Salzburg, before his teachers and fellow students accepted him as an equal in the urban community. But Reinhard made good use of this - in a way very lonely time - by going to the movies as much as he could afford on his allowance. He pretended to be older so he could get in to see the films for 14 and older, and later the ones for 16 and older. There probably wasn't a single movie that played in a Salzburg theater that Reinhard didn't go see.  Just as he was starting to make his first real friends in Salzburg, Reinhard was sent off to boarding school. The headmaster was a priest. Reinhard was to spend the next two years here and they would turn out to be perhaps the worst years of his life. Here he found deceitfulness, injustice, phoniness, censorship, etc. around every corner. So from then on, the time that he had otherwise reserved - in peasant tradition - for celebrating mass now was also spent in movie theaters. Reinhard's father moved to East Berlin, to Köpenik, and began working as a director at the famous Babelsberger Filmstudios. Reinhard paid him long and frequent visits in Berlin, got to accompany him on shoots, was allowed to see the studios, the editing rooms, the camera, watched his father shoot and edit movies, and at the age of 11 met Wolfgang Staudte, who to this day he considers to be one of the best movie directors ever (much later when Reinhard was already a director himself, he got to know him and like him as well). Unbeknownst to Reinhard these Berlin visits would have a great influence on his future professional life. When he was 14, Reinhard started a band, he was the guitarist, but it was a short-lived undertaking for him because soon he was once again sent off to boarding school, this time in Mödling near Vienna. It was a polytechnic high school and he was in the electrical engineering department. His teacher was another man of the church - but Reinhard had learned a few things in the meantime and now knew how to defend himself. Nevertheless after a year he had had enough (and the head of the dormitory, a church man as well, no doubt had had his fill of Reinhard too), and with that Reinhard finally transferred to a boarding school that was really liberal.  Reinhard was having a hard time in school - engineering wasn't his world - so he devoted every free minute to the performing arts; after all, he wanted to be an actor. But he was determined to finish school, too - a so-called "decent" profession couldn't hurt. School tormented him more and more, and since Reinhard wasn't a masochist he compensated by escaping to the theater: almost every day you could find him in the standing room of one of the Vienna theaters and soon he was more familiar with the programs of the Burgtheater, Vienna State Opera, etc. than even their managers. And then one day it suddenly occurred to Reinhard that he wasn't cut out to be an actor after all. Overnight his new career choice was as obvious as the nose on his face: he would become a director.  After three years at the polytechnic in Mödling, Reinhard realized that his views and attitude to the teachers and the curriculum and his disinterest in engineering in general were never going to let him "survive" another year at that school, so he went back to Salzburg, struggled through the last two years of high school, played in another band in his free time, started going to the movies again instead of the theater. During vacations he worked at the Salzburg Festival and thus had the opportunity to experience the stage, music and opera stars of the time (1967/68, Karajan, Böhm, Oscar Fritz Schuh, etc.) firsthand and to prepare himself intensively for the qualifying examination for the directing class at the Max Reinhard Seminar. If he had known how things would turn out, he surely wouldn't have gone through with it. The qualifying exam turned out to be a big joke and he reacted accordingly, responded aggressively to the provocations, and failed. Thank God because that wouldn't have been his world anyway. He learned from a fellow aspirant who didn't get accepted either that there was a School of Film and Television in Vienna, too. Reinhard had a hobby: photography, and he owned an 8 mm camera. He applied for the qualifying exam in Vienna, but just to be sure, he didn't sign up for the directing but for the cinematography department. And this strategy proved successful. He was accepted to the department of Film and Television at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. Later he learned that he would never have been accepted if he had applied for the directing program. But since the first two years are spent studying general subjects and you don't have to declare your concentration until after the fourth semester, switching majors posed no problem at all. After completing his second year, Reinhard registered to major in directing and cinematography and to minor in editing and screenwriting.  The University, however, wasn't able to offer Reinhard everything he believed was important, so he did odd jobs whenever he got the chance, took whatever came his way, and so became familiar with just about every aspect of the Vienna film and television industry - and when he wasn't working, you could be sure to find him in the Burgtheater, watching rehearsals from the dim recesses of the auditorium.  While still a student, Reinhard got married and a year later his son, Markus, was born, and two years later his daughter, Martina.  The young Reinhard Schwabenitzky was assistant director to Axel Corti, Franz Antel, Bernhard Wicki; as a cameraman he shot a TV series and several commercials. He wasn't on speaking terms with his stepfather - he refused to accept money from home - so it was a stroke of luck that - despite his studies - he was getting enough work to be able to support his family.  Reinhard shot his thesis project two years before his final exam. And the film "DIE LEBENSAUFGABE" was aired by the Austrian Broadcasting Station ORF. Subsequently, Reinhard received his first job offer as a director: "SCHWESTER MARTHA VERZICHTET AUF IHR GLÜCK" (NURSE MARTHA GIVES UP ON HAPPINESS). This satire was so successful that he received a second offer immediately afterwards: "DIE ENTFÜHRUNG EINER UNMÜNDIGEN PERSON" (ABDUCTION OF A MINOR), a 30-minute teleplay and "SALZ DER ERDE." In addition he also won a screenwriting contest. "SALZ DER ERDE" was such a great success that they made a sequel: "EIN ECHTER WIENER KANN NICHT UNTER GEHEN," and after the third and fourth installments a cult series was born, one that to this day remains unrivaled in Austrian television history: "EIN ECHTER WIENER GEHT NICHT UNTER" (YOU CAN'T BRING A GOOD VIENNESE MAN DOWN). And so it happened that one day in March of 1975 a star director (as the Austrian daily die Wiener Presse was already referring to Reinhard Schwabenitzky) went humbly forth just like anyone else to take his final exams in cinematography and directing - he passed both exams - not exactly with honors (a fact that didn't escape attention) but pass he did. Reinhard was awarded one of the most notable television prizes in the German-speaking world: the Gold Camera, and from then on - despite Reinhard's big successes - there were always people in the Austrian television scene who evidently had a problem with his skyrocketing career and who never tired of making life difficult for him. Finally, Reinhard had had enough. He left for Munich, and it would be ten years before he set foot in Vienna again.  In Germany he celebrated one success after another - professionally; His private life went the opposite route with his marriage going downhill and ending in divorce. Reinhard, however, maintained as intensive contact as possible to his children Markus and Martina. His bond to them was and continues to be a very special one.  Reinhard met the actress Elfi Eschke and a few years later they married and moved from Munich to the Austrian countryside near Salzburg. Not long afterwards Markus and Martina moved in, too, followed by five pets. Because of the children, extended absences from home were no longer possible so a film company was founded in Salzburg: SK-Film. Its first production "ILONA & KURTI" was a smash hit. A year later Reinhard left SK-Film and founded STAR FILM GmbH. In 1996 Lucas, his third child, was born. He needed, received and continues to receive much attention and time. Thus Reinhard refrains from working as a director as much as he can, devoting more time to story development and screenwriting - work that can be done at home.  In May 2000, STARFILMS ENTERTAINMENT AG was founded, which has since produced "SHE, me & HER," its first international film. Now only time will tell what else the future holds in store for Reinhard.