Iltz built his skills and his reputation as a youthful character actor, while a member of a theatre company that also included Maria Fein and Theodor Becker (who shortly afterwards became a husband and wife partnership).

[8] During his years at the State Playhouse, Iltz was also increasingly involved as a producer-director, but there was never any abrupt switch from acting to directing: his public reputation, even when he moved on from Dresden in 1924, was still principally as an actor.

[8] In 1920 Iltz appeared in the world premiere production of Walter Hasenclever's expressionist drama "Jenseits" ("Beyond"),[11] under the direction of Berthold Viertel and co-starring with Emanuel Raul and Alice Verden.

Max Brod dedicated his one-act drama "Die Höhe des Gefühls" ("The Height of Feeling")[14] – written in 1911 and published in 1913 but premiered only in 1918, at Dresden – to Iltz, whom the playwright described as "the outstanding presenter of [the star role of] Orosmin".

[8][22][23] It was also on one of his talent scouting trips that he came across Dorothea Neff, whom many years later he engaged to work for him in a succession of leading roles at the People's Theatre in Vienna, and who would later pay tribute to Iltz's courage and steadfastness during a murderous time (after 1938).

During Iltz's final four years at Düsseldorf, between 1933 and 1937, the shrill racism and antisemitism which the populist leaders had used to stir up hatred and anxieties on the streets emerged as a core underpinning of government strategy.

Among set designers employed in theatres operating under Iltz's direction were Caspar Neher (a long-standing professional associate of the high-profile left-wing socialist Bertolt Brecht), Hein Heckroth (who displeased Germany's new political masters by refusing to divorce his Jewish wife) and Traugott Müller.

To these can be added Wolfgang Langhoff (who also spent many of the Hitler years in Swiss exile) and the Jewish actor Leon Askin who following the murder of his parents and himself suffering serious torture at the hands of government paramilitaries, was able to escape to the United States in 1940.

The two of them developed a superb working partnership, which enabled the City Theatre to present, with its musical productions, its own unique profile comparable in its impact to that of the Kroll Opera in Berlin under Klemperer.

That was followed in 1930 by German premiers of Ernst Krenek's burlesque operetta "Schwergewicht" and Ibert's Angélique, along with a spectacular production of Alban Berg's "Wozzeck", performed in the presence of the composer.

The works featured were Janáček's "From the House of the Dead" (in a production which Iltz directed himself), "The Lindbergh Flight" by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, Stravinsky's "Soldier's story" and another performance of "Wozzeck".

Another, in a production which Iltz directed personally, with Horesntein in charge of the music, was of the newly released opera "The Pledge", authored and composed by the formidable twosome, Kurt Weill of Caspar Neher.

That year's productions included Hermann Reutter's "Prodigal's return" (based on the short story originally written by André Gide in 1907), along with the world premiere of "Der Rossknecht" (based on Richard Billinger's 1931 stage drama, and featuring the dramatic soprano Erna Schlüter) by Winfried Zillig, whose work had been personally recommended to Iltz a couple of years earlier by no lesser authority than Zillig's teacher, Arnold Schoenberg.

It is nevertheless apparent that by this time, even in Berlin, there was a widespread appreciation among the culturally aware that under the leadership of Iltz and Horenstein Düsseldorf had become a torch bearer for progressive stage productions in Germany.

[40] Other (subsequently forgotten) overtly political Düsseldorf stage productions from this time includes world premieres of "Das Gastmahl der Götter" by Paul Joseph Cremers and the so-called "Goya" drama, "Genie ohne Volk", written by Viktor Warsitz for inclusion in the "Fourth National Theatre Week" on 15 June 1937, with Werner Krauss in the lead role.

[42] In March 1932 Iltz had a serious disagreement with local leaders of the "Fighters for German Culture" ("Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur") when they called for the production of Kurt Weill's "The Pledge" at the City Theatre to be abruptly closed.

[48] Ernst Josef Aufricht – a Berlin theatre director who would emigrate to Switzerland in 1933, and later to France and then America – was among the first to congratulate Iltz: "I marvel at your incredibly clever and clean reply".

In February 1933, just a couple of weeks after the Hitler government took power in Berlin, he was the target of a deeply menacing and personalised press attack in "Volksparole", the Düsseldorf region daily newspaper of the NSDAP in connection with the fiftieth anniversary of the Wagner's death.

Necessary relocation permits were provided to enable him to leave Düsseldorf legally,[51] and by the end of March 1933 he had fled to Paris (where on account of previous tours under happier circumstances he already had an established professional reputation).

[55][d] In a subsequent telephone conversation Goebbels obtained confirmation that the reason for the non-renewal of Iltz's contract by the authorities was that he had "given preferential treatment to Jews and Communists", [which was] contrary to National Socialism.

[55] Actors whom he engaged in Vienna included O. W. Fischer, Curd Jürgens, Gert Fröbe, Paul Hubschmid and, a little later, Judith Holzmeister, Inge Konradi, Dorothea Neff, Annie Rosar, Lotte Lang, Karl Skraup and Robert Lindner.

[8][30][60] Somehow Iltz managed to create programmes which were steeped in Viennese tradition, while at the same time avoiding annoyance to the country's political leaders, who expected theatre to function as a faithful propaganda medium.

After Erhard Siedel left the company he recruited Haenel, who soon became the centre of a group of artistes hostile to the government and were prepared, very cautiously, to express their political attitudes from the stage.

[62] For attentive audience members Haenel's productions of Shaw's "Saint Joan" (1943) and of Ferdinand Raimund's magical fantasy piece "Diamond of the Spirit King" (1944), both using stage sets by Gustav Manker, were unmistakable invitations to political resistance, both of them tolerated by Iltz.

Spirit King", Haenel and Manker created a savage parody of various stylistic features favoured by the authorities in Nazi Germany for the play's "Land of Truthfulness and Strict Customs", in which only liars are to be found.

[8][63][64] The significance of Iltz's instinctively liberal approach as Theater Director at the Vienna People's Theatre after 1938, and the ways in which – apparently through nothing more mysterious than the sheer force of his powerful personality and wide-ranging talent, political sensibilities, reputation and connections – he was able to look after the actors and other members of the company, was recalled appreciatively by the actress Inge Konradi long after Iltz himself had retired and died: After 1942 the inevitability of German victory in the war was no longer assured, and by 1944 military defeat had appeared on the eastern horizon, discernible even to many of the government's most fervent adherents.

In August 1944 Joseph Goebbels, whose portfolio of job titles by now included "Reichsbevollmächtiger für den totalen Kriegseinsatz", proclaimed the "Total wartime deployment of the cultural workers".

Records indicate that the military authorities determined at an early stage that the denunciation had been traced to the "machinations of professionally interested and politically implicated persons", but the dismissal stood.

Other highlights were the world premiere of the ballet-comedy Das Goldfischglas by Jurriaan Andriessen (1952) and an evening double bill comprising "Bluebeard's Castle" by Bartók and Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", again featuring choreography by Yvonne Georgi.

[75] Walter Bruno Iltz died a couple of weeks short of what would have been his seventy-ninth birthday on 5 November 1965 at "Iltzenhof", his country home in Tegernsee, a small town set in the mountains east of Garmisch.