Dates: 1874-1951
Max Emil Karl Hasait was born in Charlottenburg (near Berlin) and studied civil and mechanical engineering at the local Technische Hochschule in Charlottenburg. However family poverty prevented him attending full courses with examinations and was mostly self-taught. After an apprenticeship he finally become machinery director of the Royal Theatre in Berlin under Fritz Brandt, then spent four years as technical manager of the newly built City Theatre in Graz. In 1903 Count Graf von Seebach entrusted the Dresden Opera House (aka Semper Oper) to him where he served as Chief Technical Inspector for 25 years.
He invented and filed 23 patents from 1912-1935, mostly on stage machinery but was also an innovator in lighting, developing shadow projection systems similar to those now named after Linnebach. He was in charge of the major reconstruction of the Dresden Opera stage from 1909-13 and developed and installed a novel rolled cloth Rundhorizont (cyclorama) system 22 m high and 60-70 m long in a horseshoe shape which maintained a clear floor for the seven stage lifts and flying system. Even today, Hasait’s technique for a wrinkle-free cyclorama surface is in standard use.
From 1928 he became a freelance theatre consultant advising prestigious venues such as New York Metropolitan Opera, London Covent Garden and Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires. For many years he also worked for the Deutsche Theatertechnische Gesellschaft (DTHG), writing and teaching, finally becoming a honorary Professor in 1944. After WW2 he was commissioned for a year as technical Director of the destroyed Dresden theatres to prepare a theatre recovery plan, but did not live to see his Opera house rebuilt (finished in 1985).
In the GDR Hasait lost his home and work after 1945 and died lonely and embittered in an East German nursing home in November 1951. Walter Unruh writes in his obituary of Max Hasait: ‘ln the history of stage technology, the name of Max Hasait will be inscribed in golden letters as one of the great masters of the past generation, one of the tireless designers and inventors, one of the most zealous workers in the technical and social construction of a profession.’
Biography written by David Bertenshaw, 2025
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