Saladin Schmitt
Saladin Schmitt (18 September 1883 – 14 March 1951), real name Joseph Anton Schmitt, also active under the pseudonym Harald Hoffmann) was a German theatre director. Life Born in Bingen am Rhein, Schmitt came from a family of wine merchants and mill owners who had lived on the lower Nahe for several generations. The eldest son was always called Saladin because, according to family legend, an ancestor had taken part in the Crusades. When his elder brother Saladin died, he took his first name. After graduating from high school in Darmstadt in 1901, he studied German in Bonn and Berlin. In 1905, he received his doctorate from the Bonn Germanist and theatre scholar Berthold Litzmann with a thesis on Friedrich Hebbel. In addition to his studies, he took lessons as an actor and director under the pseudonym Harald Hoffmann at the Cologne Drama School under Max Martersteig as an actor and director. In the 1906/1907 season, Schmitt worked as a dramaturge at the , after which he wrote mainly for the feuilleton of the Kölner Tageblatt. From 1913 to 1915, he was play director at the Stadttheater Freiburg, and during the First World War he directed the Deutsches Theater in