The following article is extracted from "Resistance And Subversion in Animated Films of The Nazi Era: the Case of Hans Fischerkoesen," that was first published the premiere isssue of Animation Journal (Fall 1992), which in turn was based on a paper presented by Moritz at the 1991 Society for Animation Studies Conference held at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York..
After World War II started, the trickle of cartoons produced by German studios was not enough to cover the loss of Disney and other American product. To
rectify the situation, in 1941 the Nazi government called for the establishment of a strong German animation industry capable of producing both color cartoons
and animated features. Thus, all able animators were commanded to step up production and focus on theatrically viable cartoons. Among the filmmakers
called into action was Hans Fischerkoesen, who was among the most distinguished animators remaining in Germany between 1933 and 1945, and whose work during the war years included a trio of remarkable films: Verwitterte Melodie (Weather-beaten Melody, 1942), Der Schneemann (The Snowman, 1943) and Das dumme Gänslein (The Silly Goose, 1944).
Hans Fischer was born May 18, 1896 in Bad Koesen, near Naumburg of the famous cathedral, on the road between Leipzig and Weimar. Because "Fischer" was such a common name in the film world, he would later add on the name of his birthplace in order to distinguish himself from the others. He was a delicate child, plagued by asthma, so his parents allowed him and his sister Leni to indulge their taste for fantasy and spectacle by creating puppet shows and home entertainments. The two attended the Leipzig Art Academy together and Leni later worked with Hans on many films.
Because of his asthma, Hans could not serve as a soldier during World War I, but he did work in army hospitals near the front lines, where he experienced
the grotesque inanity of trench warfare. He dreamed about making an animation film, Das Loch im Westen (The Hole in the West), which would expose the War Profiteer as the true cause of war--and the real manipulator of victory and defeat.
When the war ended, Fischerkoesen returned to his family home and spent months drawing about 1,600 sequential images that made concrete the dream
(or rather nightmare) vision he had experienced in the trenches. He took the drawings to a Leipzig movie company and paid them (a borrowed) 700 marks to photograph them; but, as it turned out, the company was near bankruptcy and had never shot single-frame material before. Hans lost that money, but he persevered to build his own animation stand out of a wooden margarine crate and shot it himself. Fischerkoesen described the film as a political cartoon brought to life, and it certainly suggests something of Bertold Bartosch's L'idée (The Idea), made a decade later. Fortunately, a local distributor bought Hole in the West for 3,000 marks, so he could continue to make more films.
The Darling of Audiences
Fischerkoesen made a successful advertising film, Bummel-Petrus (Strolling
Peter, 1921), for the Leipzig shoe factory Nordheimer, which led to
a two-year contract with Julius Pinschewer, who had pioneered the use of
animated commercials in movie theaters back in 1911. Afterwards, he established
his Fischerkoesen Studio in Leipzig to specialize in advertising films,
something Fischerkoesen seemed perfectly suited to. After all, he had an
irrepressible sense of humor, a good sense of rhythm, and a charming, flexible
cartoon style--as well as the obsessive concentration necessary to make
animated films perfect in every way. He also had the knack for seeing a
pun or twist in some old saying, common situation or popular song which
would fit right in with a product. He philosophized about advertising, proposing
the "if-then" formula (If you use this product, then this will
happen; if you have this problem, then this product will help) as the best
format for a succinct, cogent ad.
In 1931, a Leipzig newspaper celebrated Fischerkoesen, "the darling
of audiences," with a full-page article entitled "Watch out, Mickey
Mouse, Felix the Cat, and Co.!" which contains delightful images of
a cow with a lyre built into her horns, a bull in a tuxedo, and an enchanting
art deco-style kangaroo ballet--all popular cartoon figures from his ads.
By 1937, when he won both first and second prizes at a Dutch-sponsored international
competition for advertising films (the runners up included George Pal and
Alexander Alexeieff), Fischerkoesen had made around 1,000 publicity films.
Unfortunately, all but a few of these seem to be lost, or languish unidentified
in collections that do not consider commercials important.
For many years, Hans Fischerkoesen managed to keep his production confined
to the kind of advertising films he did so well. But after the 1941 edict,
the Propaganda Minister demanded that he move his staff and studio to Potsdam,
near UFA's Neubabelsberg studios, to be available for consultations and
special effects on features and documentaries. When the 45-year-old Fischerkoesen,
loathe to become any more closely involved with Goebbels than necessary,
protested that he didn't really have the talent to invent ideas for story
films, he was assigned to work with 35-year-old Horst von Möllendorf,
a popular Berlin newspaper cartoonist who had just been "drafted"
to work as a gag man for animated cartoons. (Although Möllendorff received
story credit on several of Fischerkoesen's wartime films, his contribution
was negligible: the credit for these films rests solely with Hans and Leni
Fischerkoesen.)
Among the specific things that Goebbels mandated for the new German cartoon
industry was the development of "three-dimensional" effects which
could be competitive with the Fleischers' Stereo-Optical process (which
combined model sets with cel animation) or Disney's multiplane camera (which
filmed several layers of cels). Fischerkoesen had already been using a simple
multiplane effect derived from the multilayered glass animations that Lotte
Reiniger used in the 1926 animated feature Die Abenteuer des Prinzen
Achmed (The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 1926). Fischerkoesen
had also been working with puppet and model animation, and could hardly
have been ignorant of Oskar Fischinger's brilliant simulation of a deep-space
traveling boom shot around the Muratti cigarettes parading towards the Olympic
stadium in his classic 1934 ad film Muratti Gets in the Act.
Weather-beaten Melody
The opening sequence of Weather-beaten Melody (1942), his first film
made under the government edict, demonstrates a bravura mastery of both
the multiplane and stereo-optical processes--and a meaningful use of depth,
following the flight of a bee down from the sky, through 12 layers of grass
and flowers in a meadow, and circling around an abandoned phonograph which
lies, puzzlingly for the bee, in the middle of the meadow. Behind this long
point of view sequence is the assumption that the bee is a personage worthy
of following, and in fact she turns out to be adventurous, resourceful,
perceptive, talented, witty, and friendly, among other admirable, even noble
"human" characteristics. Fischerkoesen demonstrates these traits
in little episodes characteristic of his style: she uses dandelion seeds
as parachutes for a joyous free ride; her game of tossing a blueberry ends
in disaster (the overripe fruit bursts over her head), but she meticulously
wipes herself clean on a daisy petal. He also delineates her personality
with unexpected complexities. For example, is she jealous of the hedgehog
who takes over her place as "phonograph needle" when she is away
sharpening her stinger--or is she merely exasperated at the confusing quality
of his multi-needle pickup? The very idea of ambiguity was anathema to the
Nazis, who could only hope to maintain their fascist program by enforcing
strict, unbending codes of behavior, and absolute, inviolable "ideals
and truths." Precisely because of its technical brilliance, Weather-beaten
Melody could get away with quite a bit of forbidden information.
Ironically, inherent in the "stereo" animation techniques, as
Fischerkoesen uses them, lies the most subversive metaphor: a sense of freedom
of movement, an affirmation of the multi-layered nature of reality--of ambiguity
and change--which demands (even subconsciously) that the viewer think for
herself and consider other things as valid as the subjective self--something
truly forbidden by Nazi doctrine as the most dangerous action of all.
To fully appreciate Fischerkoesen's daring, one must remember that the Nazis
had forbidden jazz and swing as an Afro-Judaic plot to undermine traditional
German culture. The catalogue of the 1937 "Degenerate Film" exhibition
contained an anti-jazz spread entitled "Africa Speaks...?," which
stigmatized "Al Jolson-Rosenblatt" among other black and black-face
jazz musicians, and the 1938 "Degenerate Music" catalogue featured
the image of a black saxophone player wearing a Star of David. Detlev Peukert
chronicles how the "swing movement" became a key symbolic rebellion,
while the British film Swing Under the Swastika documents the sad
and ironic fates of jazz musicians during this period.
In this context, the discovery of an abandoned phonograph takes on new meaning,
especially when the record on the turntable is a swing number with lyrics
that say, "The week wouldn't be worthwhile without a weekend when we
can get away to enjoy nature." Near the phonograph lies an "abandoned"
clasp from a woman's garter belt (with a lucky four-leafed clover growing
out of it!), which suggests that the interrupted picnic that left behind
the musical instrument had also involved erotic play--something also strictly
forbidden by the puritanical Nazi codes. So from beneath the charming surface
of this cartoon emerges a subversive message: women, far from the unnatural
Nazi-designated stereotype of "children, church and kitchen,"
can escape into Nature to be self-reliant and adventurous, erotic and free--they
can rediscover or revitalize a suppressed world of forbidden joy in music
and friendship between diverse creatures who may be brown or white, frog
or caterpillar--or even a pair of ladybug beetles who may be a same-sex
couple. Especially compared to the American cartoons of this same period
(profligate with gratuitous violence and racist/sexist stereotype victims),
the entire community of animals depicted in Weather-beaten Melody
is peaceful, friendly, fun-loving, imaginative and altruistic--quite the
opposite of the Nazi requirements for a dedicated Aryan citizen.
The Snowman
The same spirit of ambiguity and subversive subtext pervades Fischerkoesen's
next film, 1943's The Snowman. The opening sequence, as in Weather-beaten
Melody, establishes the filmmaker's bravura mastery of creating the illusion
of three-dimensional space. Behind the credits, we see layers of snowflakes,
with their elaborate abstract patterns (including pure geometrical circles--all
of which justify "degenerate" abstract art as a natural phenomenon!),
falling down through the frame. As the credits finish, the viewer flies
down over a snow-covered twilight village, around the steeple of a church
(a stereo-optical model), down to a snowman in an open space--just as if
seen from a snowflake's point of view. This point of view is confirmed when
snowflakes alight on the snowman in the pattern of a heart--suggesting that
he is a creature of feelings, rather than a military/political figure (who
would wear medals or insignia), or an ostracized victim (such as the Jews
or gays who wore yellow stars and pink triangles). Unlike the opening of
Weather-beaten Melody, which establishes the point of view as that
of the protagonist bee, The Snowman's opening sets us up as a visitor/observer.
The snowman is a more complex and "humanly" equivocal character
than the bee, and thereby makes us question the meanings behind the actions
he is involved in--and ultimately the social context from which he comes.
In his Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster discusses two principles
of narrative organization which are particularly relevant to The Snowman.
He points out that pattern, the audience's slow perception of an overall
shape or direction to the story, can heighten our awareness of the inexorable
conditions that produce the narrative "destiny," whether it be,
for example, the traits of personality that cause a protagonist to succeed
or fail, or the nexus of social conditions that bring together a diverse
group of people to a particular time, place and incident. Forster also observes
that rhythm, the regular recurrence of certain details, events or persons
in a story, can cause us to reevaluate the meaning of both the repeating
item and the narrative as a whole. Fischerkoesen employs both pattern and
rhythm to make us consider seriously the plight and destiny of the snowman.
In the film's first episode, the snowman begins to play by juggling snowballs--a
curiously appropriate pastime. His game angers a watchdog, and in his attempts
to get away, squashes the dog into the snow and then laughs at its distress.
When the dog then bites a chunk out of his rump, the snowman finally get
rid of it by pelting it with snowballs.
The snowman tries to have fun again by skating on an icy pond (using icicles
for skates), but finds the three snowballs of his body beginning to bounce
apart. Soon, the ice breaks and the snowman is melted down to a skeleton
of his former self, but restores himself by rolling down hill until he regains
his former bulk, only to have his torso and head get mixed up again. A crow
helps reassemble his body. A tree laughs at him as he had laughed at the
dog, so the crow shakes its coat of snow away as revenge. While the snowman
tries to nap, a rabbit attempts to steal his carrot-nose. He decides to
go inside to sleep where it will be safer.
As he walks into a cottage, the viewer is treated to a spectacular 180-degree
stroll around the building, which recalls the brilliant opening shot of
the city square. Once inside, he disturbs a grumpy cat in order to sleep
on its couch, and the cat's huffy hiss reminds us of the petulant, territorial
dog's snappy barks. Increasingly, we become aware that (as the scoffing
tree had recalled the scoffing snowman) events are beginning to parallel
earlier ones-- in fact, a "pattern" which contrasts the events
in "Winterland" with those in "Summerland," and several
"rhythmic" recurrences heightens our perception of the differences
between these alternate worlds.
The snowman notices his own picture on the winter portion of the calendar,
but also sees (on later months) some unfamiliar flowers. So, he decides
to hide out in the refrigerator, so that he may reemerge when the flowers
are in bloom. When he attempts to leave in July, however, his rump has stuck
to the refrigerator shelf and he loses a chunk, which he regains by turning
down the temperature in the icebox (an intelligent, ecological choice--also
recalling his earlier ruse of throwing snowballs at the dog until the dog
retaliated by tossing back his lost rump-chunk as a weapon). He plays pranks
on the chicken and cows (just as he had teased the dog in Winterland), yet
when he finds that he is freezing a ladybug, he kindly becomes a ski run
for her by turning somersaults across a meadow--another dazzling animation
feat. After he melts, singing "How lovely summer is; my heart breaks
from happiness," the rabbit finally eats his carrot-nose (and her bunnies
frolic in his hat as if he had been a magician).
Parallel incidents reveal the complexities of the snowman's character and
assess the ambiguities of the action as a parable: the snowman, an average
person with some good and bad qualities, is trapped in a given environment,
Winterland. Although it is functional, it is cold and in some ways inhospitable.
He reads that there is another place, sunny and free, and arranges to escape
there for some thrilling moments of warmth and freedom, even at the cost
of his life, as we hear him gurgle in the death throes of song, twisting
and melting in the hot sun. The dog, crow, cat, ladybug, rabbit, and others
are characterized as parallel human-like creatures, which supports an open,
thoughtful humanitarian world view that was anathema to the Nazis. The
Snowman is also full of beautiful, touching, affirmative and spectacular
scenes, such as the long pan across unfolding spring.
The Silly Goose
Fischerkoesen's third wartime film, The Silly Goose (1944),
provides another thought-provoking parable. Through the bars of a wooden
cage on a cart going across town, a young goose glimpses the seemingly glamorous
allures of city life: an exotic parrot, silhouettes in a dance hall, an
elegant fox (stole) with feathers. Back at the farm, while her brothers
and sisters receive their schooling in swimming, marching, laying eggs and
such, she dreams narcissistically by a pond, swings on the gate like a parrot,
uses the plough as a mirror, and creates for herself a pseudo-sophisticated
costume by thieving and exploiting her neighbors: a caterpillar stole, a
straw bottle-cover hat, pollen powder, a spider-web veil, cork high-heels,
and pig-bristle eyelashes. Her sashay through the barnyard creates mixed
anger and astonishment. The gander, however, chooses to woo her instead
of her more modest sisters, although she rejects him and wanders off into
the woods, where she is seduced by a fox. The fox's sinister lair is run
by slave labor--a weasel cranking a spit, a cat on a treadmill that makes
xylophone music with dangling bones--and a cage full of geese waits for
slaughter. She manages to escape, and the barnyard animals cooperate to
drive the fox away and free his victims.
While Silly Goose seems to satisfy Goebbels' dictum for "blood
and soil" films that glorify German peasant life, Fischerkoesen creates
a complex and ambiguous narrative that confuses and contradicts Nazi policy.
The city is glamorous--especially as seen in a long stereo-optical, multiplane
sequence from the goose's point of view--while the barnyard activities are
quaint and confining. At the same time, the goose's exploitation of the
barnyard for her costume is mean and thoughtless. When the goose is seduced
by the fox, we momentarily hear a crypto version of the old (Yiddish) popular
song "Bei mir bist Du scheen," and could think at first that the
villain is being identified as a Jew. Quickly, however, we see that just
the opposite is true: the goose herself is being exploited. The fox is using
her as he does various other animals, which seems to allude to the Nazis'
exploitation of the Jews, as slave labor and prisoners doomed to execution.
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.
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.
Links:
[1] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3183
[2] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3184
[3] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3185
[4] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3186
[5] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3187
[6] http://www.awn.com/imagepicker/image/3188
