Michael Lahr von Leïtis is Program Director of the trans-Atlantic cultural exchange organization Elysium – between two continents. He studied philosophy and adult education at the College of Philosophy in Munich and at the Jesuit University Centre Sèvres in Paris. He is author and editor of the book The Erwin Piscator Award, and a co-author of the volume of essays Bilder des Menschen (Images of Man). At the beginning of 2020 his new book Erwin Piscator’s Legacy Lives On: Conversations about Theater, Music and Politics was published. In the Karl Jaspers Yearbook 2019/20, Offener Horizont, he published an essay on “Erwin Piscator and the Bauhaus. As a specialist in Erwin Piscator, the founder of the political and epic theater, he curated the exhibition Erwin Piscator: Political Theater in Exile, which so far has been seen in Bernried, New York, Catania, Salzburg, Munich, and Vienna.

As the program director of Elysium, he has unearthed numerous works by artists who had to flee their home country under the pressure of the Nazi regime, or who were murdered. Many of these compositions were performed for the first time in concerts in Europe and the U.S. He gives introductory lectures for all Elysium programs. At the same time, he lectures regularly on questions of general social and political significance. Among other places, he has lectured at St. Norbert's College in De Pere, WI, at the American Academy Berlin, at the Leo Baeck Institute New York, at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, at Deutsches Haus at NYU, at the university in Catania, at the Mozarteum University in Salzburg, at the Vytautas-Magnus University Kaunas, at the University of the State of Florida in Tallahassee, and at the State Institute for Science of Art in Moscow.

He has directed various Elysium productions, such as New Beginnings: Fragments of an Era, Found Pieces: Musical-Literary exploration through the Lahr von Leitis Archives, and Remember - For the Future, and conceived many programs, such as The Gospel according to Kafka, Defending Democracy, and Heinrich Heine: Tell me what does it mean to be human?

Michael Lahr von Leïtis is Executive Director of The Lahr von Leïtis Academy & Archive, Chairman of the Erwin Piscator Award Society, and an advisor to the Nietzsche Forum Munich e.V. He is a Fellow Researcher at the Exil.Arte Center of the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna.