Theodor Reuss - Early Years

Early Years

Reuss was the son of an innkeeper at Augsburg. He was a professional singer in his youth, and was introduced to Ludwig II of Bavaria, in 1873. He took part in the first performance of Wagner's Parsifal at Bayreuth in 1882. Reuss later became a newspaper correspondent, and travelled frequently as such to England, where he became a Mason in 1876. He also spent some time there as a journalist and as a music-hall singer under the stage name "Charles Theodore."

In 1876 Reuss married Delphina Garbois from Dublin, and moved to München in 1878. Their marriage was annulled, due to bigamy (Hergemöller, 1998). They had a son, Albert Franz Theodor Reuss (1879–1958), a self-educated zoologist who lived in Berlin (Krecsák and Bohle 2008).