Lotte Reiniger

In an NDR 3 interview in 1982, Lotte Reiniger gave an account looking back over the path that brought her to film. At first she was merely a youthful fan: She cut out silhouette images of the actors she idolized in their respective roles so that she could deliver them in person and use them as a way to establish contact. One of the recipients was actor and director Paul Wegener, who she also saw give a lecture on film as art. “Ich war unverschämt wie sonst was, ich plagte ihn zu Tode.” (I was impertinent as I could be; I tormented him to death.) He gave Reiniger her first job in film. Reiniger designed the title silhouettes for two films he directed, ‘Rübezahls Hochzeit (GER, 1916)’ and ‘Der Rattenfänger’ (GER, 1918), which allowed her to discover a new cinematic art form that she made her own. Reiniger’s extraordinary talent for (animated) silhouettes, to which countless films she made belong, can be traced in the archive at the Deutsche Kinemathek. Among the holdings acquired in 1976 are numerous contour drawings, graphics and poster designs, which are impressive especially because of their richness of detail. A cinematic perspective can be discerned from them: the figures represented are predominantly shown in movement. To the viewer it seems as though they might start to move at any moment. Reiniger’s motifs are expressive and enchanting at the same time. This set of holdings are enhanced by individual records in the Personal Papers and Company Archives at the Deutsche Kinemathek, two letters, and the silhouette cutout of one of the most famous characters in the history of cinema: Cesare from ‘Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari’ (GER, 1920, directed by Robert Wiene). Reiniger could also be scary when she wanted to be. (Text: Annika Haupts)