Fembio Special: Women Artists - an Exhibition by Almut Nitzsche and FemBio e.V
Lotte Reiniger
(Charlotte Reiniger [real name])
born on June 2, 1899 in Berlin, Germany
died on June 19, 1981 in Dettenhausen, Germany
German-British silhouette artist, silhouette filmmaker and animation pioneer
125th birthday on June 2, 2024
Biography
Lotte Reiniger’s initial aim was to become an actress – an inconceivable career choice for the daughter of a Berlin banker. Yet she did indeed succeed in entering into the film industry, albeit through the back door and in work that was quite different to what she had first aspired to.
She began as a student of acting at Max Reinhardt's school at the Deutsches Theater. Although the training only landed her bit parts, it was the start of a lifelong interest in film and theater and proved a formative influence on all of her future work. She trained alongside outstanding set designers, set decorators, actors and directors, thereby developing a sense for set designs and three-dimensional representation, expressive gestures, and intricate stage sets.
She secretly attended rehearsals and then created portrait silhouettes of the great artists at home in scenes characteristic for them – “not only significant ... works of art, but ... also important documents of theater history” – especially of Paul Wegener. He soon became aware of the special talent this “crazy silhouette girl” had and commissioned her to produce the titles and intertitles for two of his films. He also encouraged her to make her - the! - first animated film, The Ornament of the Lovestruck Heart, with moving silhouettes (1919).
After commercials, a stage set for Heinz Hilpert and her first adaptations of fairy tales, she worked from 1923 to 1926 on what was her first feature-length animated film and probably her most famous: the enchanting The Adventures of Prince Achmed. This in turn brought her to the attention of Bela Balacs, Bert Brecht, Willy Haas and Jean Renoir. Further films based on fairy tales (Grimm, Andersen, etc.), a magnificent Carmen parody and a first interpretation of her beloved Mozart (Zehn Minuten Mozart/Ten Minutes of Mozart 1931) followed. In addition to a silhouette series on Mozart’s operas, she made Papageno as the first color silhouette film in 1936 and Seraglio in 1958. She was particularly fond of The Magic Flute she created for a large shadow puppetry stage (London 1973).
Right at the beginning of the Nazi dictatorship, Lotte Reiniger left Germany because she “did not like this Hitler business and because I had many Jewish friends whom I was no longer allowed to call friends” and ended up working in England. She returned to Germany in 1980, and died there, highly honored, in 1981. She created a total of 40 silhouette films of which only 30 are available today; the others have been lost.
(Text from 1998; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2024)
Please consult the German version for additional information (pictures, sources, videos, bibliography).
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