Database for Diveristy and Inclusion in German Studies: Cultivating DIB in and beyond the canon

Lotte Reiniger's Fantastic Animations

The animator Lotte Reiniger’s The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1923–26) is the oldest surviving animated feature film and the first animated German animated film. Like many other modernists, Reiniger was inspired by the artistic traditions of the Near and Far East. In particular, her methods of working with silhouettes in her numerous animated films were modeled after the Chinese folk art of shadow puppetry, and Reiniger later traveled to Egypt and Greece in order to study the puppetry traditions of Aragoz and Karaghiozis (Καραγκιόζης) respectively. Reiniger is the originator of the multiplane camera, which Walt Disney later employed in his own films: multiple sheets of glass are arranged above each other in order to create the illusion of depth, while the camera is operated from above. With these puppets made of cardboard and pinned at the joints, Reiniger produced some sixty films which portrayed fanciful, orientalist visions of magical and mythical realms. Her works are fascinating today for the same reason that they struggled during the 1930s and 1940s: in portraying plots and themes intended for adults, Reiniger employed a medium more readily associated with children’s entertainment. This is clearly the case in her many parodies of operas, including Gaetano Donizetti’s L'elisir d'amore, which could only have been amusing to an audience already familiar with opera tradition. She also made significant contributions to other iconic pieces of German film, providing, for example, the animations for Kriemhild’s portentous dream in Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen adaptation.
Only few scholars have researched Reiniger’s techniques and practice, despite her significance for both German and American film history. This lack of a scholarly corpus notwithstanding, however, the colllections at the Lotte Reiniger Estate Collection in the Stadtmuseum Tübingen and the National Archives in Kensington offer rich opportunities for new research. Indeed, her works and life present multiple fascinating areas of enquiry including:
the role of the “New Woman” in the early German film industry
engagement with and imagination of the Orient in German art, especially film
questions of genre and the themes and audiences for which they are best fit, especially in dialogue with
contemporary discussions of adult consumption of children’s and popular media (comic books, cartoons, video games)
reactions to animated film in early media theory and the Frankfurt School
the confrontation between the classics and the new media of modernity

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