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Born in Mehren. Had a calling as an upholsterer. Later
he abandoned his trade and became a restaurateur in
Vienna.
E. had partnered with Moshe
Sobel (owner of a hat business), and in 1901 brought
over from Lemberg to Vienna a Yiddish troupe (Yonah
Reyzman, Moshe Herman and Saltshe Veynberg, Sholom
Podzamtshe, Leopold and Sara Kaner, wife and husband
Klug), where the troupe performed for one-and-a-half
years, known as "Di polinishe".
This took away the best
powers from Lemberg's Yiddish theatre director Yakov Ber
Gimpel who had furthermore directed, that he also
arrived in Vienna to compete with E.'s troupe. In the
end Gimpel withdrew and E. continued to perform, but
already with not the same success as earlier.
The productions of Yiddish
theatre in Vienna were there in 1901 after a break of
twenty-two years. But now also the police didn't permit
the theatre productions, only variety productions, and
therefore they had to had to perform each play as a
special one-acter. The situation had been encouraged
until around 1912, when Moritz Ziegler received in
Vienna the first concession in Yiddish theatre.
An interesting description
of E.'s theatre, according to Dr. I. Marmorek, in "Jüdischer
Volkskalender", Brün, 1902/3, pp. 99-100.
In the later years, E.
became a usher/ticket-taker in a Yiddish theatre and
sold programs.
According to Jacob Mestel,
who thought of E. as a chief ticket-taker in the Yiddish
Stefanie Theatre in Vienna (from around 1907 until
1911), and E. was a lover of his profession, had treated
his guest with genuine Viennese courtesy (who always
seemed strange in Yiddish theatre), and although he was
an assimilated Jew, and he had a great love for his
"Polish" actors, who were at times engaged with him.
They used to shetsn him due to his good
treatment, and also used to give him the title of "Herr
director".
From E.'s "Di polnishe" put
out a large number of actors for the later strongly
popular Viennese "Di budapester" (a variety, which
performed in a "fareydlt(?)" German dialect),
from which several actors (Eisenbach, M. Rott, et al)
were later to become prominent German variety players.
M. E. from Yonah Reyzman, Sh. Urich and Sh. E. from
Jacob Mestel.
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