Robert Reinagl: Remembering an OS Pioneer | 2025

2. November 2025, 14:05

On Thursday afternoon, October 30th, the news came of the death of castle actor Robert Reinagl. In this “human picture”, taken a few weeks ago, he talks about his illness and impending death, but also about a fulfilling professional life and a successful partnership with the singer Monika Schwabegger, who also appears on the show.

Three years ago, Robert Reinagl received a diagnosis that turned his life upside down: lung cancer. The actor decided not to let this devastating finding get him down. He did all the therapies that were recommended to him by the doctors, while at the same time he continued to act in the theater, appeared in front of the camera in various film and television productions and, as always, did radio on the side.

But in September 2025 it will no longer be possible: “I’m struggling with attacks of dizziness, which come from an inoperable tumor in the cerebellum. I will die of this tumor in the foreseeable future. But it will be an easy death, as the doctor in the hospital assured me, an ‘elegant’ death, as he said. Doctors often have a special sense of humor.”

Robert Reinagl and his wife, the mezzo-soprano Monika Schwabegger, are sitting at the kitchen table in their apartment near Vienna’s Augarten. It’s a bright late summer day, the afternoon light casts slanting shadows on the tablecloth. Reinagl appears to be in a cheerful mood: “In the beginning the shock was great, but over time the fears that such a diagnosis brings with it have diminished. I have noticed that you don’t know yourself before you have such an experience, you have no idea what kind of energies you can mobilize in such a situation.”

Robert Reinagl, the son of a culture-loving family from Vienna-Favoriten, came to acting by chance. It was the director Karl Welunschek who hired him straight from the coffee house to the Vienna Schauspielhaus in the early 1990s. This was followed by engagements in the Rabenhof and the Klagenfurt ensemble. Robert Reinagl has been a permanent member of the ensemble at the Burgtheater since 2000. “I now even consider myself an actor,” smiles the 57-year-old, who is appreciated by friends for his casual, always a bit self-deprecating insults.

Robert Reinagl has of course also thought a lot in these weeks, not least about existential questions. “What’s life about?” asks the visitor. “We should be supporters of one another,” replies Reinagl. “You should try to be a decent person.”

The actor describes his mental state in the fall of 2025 as “resolved”: “I am reconciled with what is happening to me. However, if another miracle should happen now, I won’t have anything against it.”

The program “Writing to understand. The writer Susanne Gregor” planned for today will be rescheduled for November 9th.

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