This subtext becomes even more obvious by comparison with two other German films of the period: Hans Held's 1940 Der Störenfried (The Troublemaker) (in which the fox is a simplistic villain, and the farm animals drive him away in specifically militaristic fashion) and Frank Leberecht's 1943 Armer Hansi (Poor Hansi) (where the gratuitous violence that drives Hansi the canary back home rivals the worst of Warner Bros., truly supporting a "blood and soil" ideal). Very much to the contrary, The Silly Goose warns against being seduced by the glamor of fascism, and encourages us to think carefully about home and the city and responsibility--to realize what happens to victims and to do something about it.

So, in these three cartoon masterpieces, we see how Hans Fischerkoesen demonstrated that even at the darkest, most menacing hours of human depravity, men of principle may resist by subverting, with subtlety, the rules and prejudices of the tyrant.

A carrot showering. A potato "peels down" to get into the soup. Parsnips inspect and "correct" carrots. Detail from Hans Fischerkoesen's murals at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. © William Moritz.

The Postwar Years
At the end of the war, the invading Russian troops arrested Fischerkoesen as a possible Nazi collaborator. Although he could prove that he was not only never a Nazi sympathizer but actually a member of an underground resistance group of artists during the war years, he was kept in Sachsenhausen concentration camp for three years before he was exonerated. During that time, he worked in the kitchen, and painted ironic, allegorical wall murals using vegetable caricatures, which are now preserved as a national historical monument.

As in great animal fables, these murals play out the daily trials and terrors of prison living, yet provide an ironical perspective by enacting these traumas through items that we would eat without a second thought. A parsnip inspects a carrot for "vermin" (i.e., a worm), while another parsnip stands by, sharpening his knife (surgical or punitive?): is it not absurd that parsnips should be in control of carrots, when they're clearly relatives? Another carrot gratefully showers under a plain faucet spigot, while potatoes, eager for a swim, peel off their own skins and dive into the soup. A procession of happy cucumbers carry a pumpkin on a palanquin, yet they also help each other to slice themselves away on a "kitchen guillotine." These (and other) paintings of Fischerkoesen provide a glimpse of humanitarian warmth in the grim camp where so many suffered and lost their lives.

By the time Fischerkoesen was finally released, he had shown that he was not a Nazi, but also that he was no communist; thus, he was not allowed to work privately on his own films, but only as a functionary on assignments in the state-controlled DEFA studios. Later that year, 1948, he and his family made one of those daring nighttime escapes from East Germany, carrying only a camera; he then reestablished his animation studio near Bonn in West Germany.

I have viewed 30 or so of his post-war advertising films and have found most to be witty, lively, graphically interesting, and memorably clever. Certainly, he received critical acclaim: by 1956, he had won major prizes at commercial film festivals in Rome, Milan (three times), Venice, Monte Carlo, and Cannes. He also appeared on the cover of the prestigious Der Spiegel, Germany's equivalent of the American Time magazine. Fischerkoesen continued to make advertising films until 1969, and died in 1973.

William Moritz teaches film and animation history at the California Institute of the Arts.