by the Wertheim company. This job put Kaufmann into contact with theater entrepreneur and director Eugen Robert. Robert commissioned Kaufmann to help him in the construction of a new theater he was planning, as Robert had been deeply impressed with the theater Kaufmann had built in Bielefeld. In connection with this and other works Kaufmann constructed while in Sehring's office, Kaufmann established his own architecture firm in 1908, on Luitpoldstraße in the Schöneberg section of Berlin. The firm later moved to Ansbacherstraße in Charlottenburg. The theater that Robert commissioned Kaufmann to build, the Hebbel Theater, gained Kaufmann his first widespread recognition. However, his perceived inexperience still counted against him, as he was not invited to make a bid on the renovation of the Stadttheater Bremerhaven. Only after one of the three architects invited to make a bid, Max Littmann, bowed out of the running, was Kaufmann invited to take his place. It was therefore significant when Kaufmann was selected, by a jury including such notable architects as Max Liebermann and Otto March, to design a new building for the Charlottenburg opera. However, for various reasons this never came to fruition. Nonetheless, his work on the Bremerhaven and Hebbel theaters, as well as his selection by the Charlottenburg jury, all served to give Kaufmann a strong reputation as a theater architect. When the decision to exclude Kaufmann from a competition to redesign the Berlin Royal Opera for the technical reason that he had not received German citizenship in his thirty years in Germany, was met with scorn and disagreement in the press and among architectural experts, his newfound reputation was only confirmed. Collaboration with Eugen Stolzer During construction of the new City Theater of Bremerhaven, Kaufmann met the young Hungarian architect Eugen Stolzer. Stolzer had studied at the Technical University of Munich from 1904 to 1908 and had won the Hungarian National Architecture award as well as a prize from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Stolzer made blueprints for Kaufmann, who was so impressed with him that in 1916 he made him chief partner in his architectural firm. Stolzer and Kaufmann designed many of their buildings together, and had extremely similar styles. World War I and the 20s Because he lacked German citizenship, Kaufmann was not drafted into the German military during World War I. He used this time to further his architectural firm. However, the war had a negative