Lotte Reiniger

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Lore & Background

Lotte Reiniger was born in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin on 2 June 1899 to Carl Reiniger and Eleonore Lina Wilhelmine Rakette. As a child, she became fascinated with Scherenschnitte. She studied at Fontane-Schule in Berlin and put on shows with her schoolmates. Throughout this time in her life is when she began to develop a love of theater and cultivated her then dreams of becoming a play actress. As a teenager, Reiniger developed a love of cinema, first with the films of Georges Méliès for their special effects, then the films of Paul Wegener. In 1916, her love of theater led Reiniger to her future mentor and colleague when she attended a lecture by Wegener that focused on the fantastic possibilities of animation. Reiniger eventually convinced her parents to allow her to enroll in the acting group to which Wegener belonged, the Theatre of Max Reinhardt. She began by making costumes and props and working backstage for Wegener's play productions. She started making silhouette portraits of her classmates and the actors around her, which intrigued Paul Wegener and led to her future collaborations with the director. Soon enough she was making elaborate title cards for Wegener's films, many of which featured her silhouette animations. In 1918, Reiniger animated wooden rats and created the animated intertitles for Wegener's Der Rattenfänger von Hameln. The success of this work got her admitted into the Institut für Kulturforschung, an experimental animation and short-film studio. It was here that she met her future creative partner and husband (from 1921), Carl Koch, as well as other avant-garde artists including Hans Cürlis, Bertolt Brecht, and Berthold Bartosch. The first film Reiniger directed was Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens (1919), a five-minute piece involving two lovers and an ornament that reflects their moods. The film was very well received, and its success opened up many new connections for Reiniger in the animation industry, not just in Germany but internationally as well. In 1923, she was approached by Louis Hagen, who had bought a large quantity of raw film stock as an investment to fight the spiraling inflation of the period. He asked her to make a feature-length animated film. Reiniger later recalled, "We had to think twice. This was a never heard of thing. Animated films were supposed to make people roar with laughter, and nobody had dared to entertain an audience with them for more than ten minutes. Everybody to whom we talked in the industry about the proposition was horrified." The resulting film was The Adventures of Prince Achmed, based on One Thousand and One Nights. Completed in 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed is believed to be the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, debuting over a decade prior to Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Reiniger developed a predecessor to the multiplane camera for certain effects. As described in Reiniger's book Shadow Puppets, Shadow Theatres, and Shadow Films, she placed backlit planes of glass in front of a camera with a manual shutter to achieve a layered effect. Following the success of Prince Achmed, Reiniger was able to make a next film. Doktor Dolittle und seine Tiere (1928) was based on the first of the English children's books by Hugh Lofting. She released Der scheintote Chinese (1928), the first animated film with a queer happy end. A year later, Reiniger co-directed her first live-action film with Rochus Gliese, Die Jagd nach dem Glück (1929), a tale about a shadow-puppet troupe. With the rise of the Nazi Party, Reiniger and Koch had difficulties to work in Germany and took the chance to move to London, without ever gaining permanent visas. As a result, the couple spent the years 1933–1944 moving from country to country, staying as long as visas would allow. They worked with film-makers Jean Renoir in Paris and Luchino Visconti in Rome. They managed to make 12 films during this period, the best-known being Carmen (1933) and Papageno (1935), both based on popular operas. When World War II commenced they stayed with Visconti in Rome until 1943. When the SS invaded Rome, they fled to Venice, where they tried in vain to make a living from illustrations and essays. Due to the lack of funds they had to return to Berlin, where at least they could stay with Reiniger's mother. Reiniger startet to work on a fairy-tale film for schools, Die Goldene Gans, which she did not complete until 1948. In 1949, Reiniger and Koch moved to London, where she made a few short advertising films for John Grierson and his General Post Office Film Unit. By 1953, Reiniger had founded Primrose Production with Louis Hagen Jr., the son of the financier of Prince Achmed. With this company, she made over a dozen short silhouette films based on Grimms’ Fairy Tales for the BBC and Telecasting America. Reiniger continued to work on and off over the years, her last film being 'The Rose and the Ring,' released in 1979.

Reader's Guide

Lotte Reiniger's significance lies in her pioneering role in silhouette animation and her technical innovation. Her film The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) is the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, debuting over a decade prior to Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. She devised an early form of the multiplane camera from 1923 to 1926, a crucial device in pre-digital animation that Disney and Ub Iwerks later developed in the 1930s. Reiniger worked on more than 40 films throughout her career, blending her love of theater and cinema into intricate silhouette puppetry. Her work influenced animation internationally, and her films, such as Papageno (1935), remain notable for their artistic expression. Despite political upheaval and forced migration, she continued producing films, leaving a legacy as a key figure in early animation history.

Did You Know?

• Reiniger devised the first form of a multiplane camera from 1923 to 1926, using backlit planes of glass in front of a camera with a manual shutter.
• The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) is the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, debuting over a decade before Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
• Reiniger's first directed film, Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens (1919), was a five-minute piece involving two lovers and an ornament that reflects their moods.
• She released Der scheintote Chinese (1928), the first animated film with a queer happy end.
• Reiniger worked on more than 40 films throughout her career.

A Pioneer in Shadow and Light

Charlotte Reiniger, born in Berlin in 1899 and active until her death in 1981, established herself as the leading figure in silhouette animation, a medium she helped define and elevate to cinematic art. Over the course of her career she directed more than forty films, ranging from brief experimental shorts to ambitious feature-length narratives. Her two most celebrated works—The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) and Papageno (1935)—remain touchstones of the animated form. Prince Achmed holds the distinction of being the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, debuting more than a decade before Disney's Snow White. Reiniger's signature approach centered on expressing emotion and narrative through the fluid, expressive movement of cut-out figures rather than through facial detail. Her earliest directed work, The Ornament of the Enamoured Heart (1919), already demonstrated this philosophy: two lovers and a mood-reflecting ornament told a complete emotional story in just five minutes. That film's reception opened doors across the German and international animation worlds, setting the trajectory for everything that followed.

From Theater Dreams to Animated Worlds

Reiniger's path to animation was shaped by a deep childhood attachment to performance and visual craft. Growing up in Berlin's Charlottenburg district, she became captivated by Scherenschnitte—cut-paper art—and by the stage. At Fontane-Schule she staged shows with classmates and nurtured a dream of becoming a stage actress. As a teenager her interests expanded to cinema, first through the fantastical special effects of Georges Méliès and then through the expressionist work of Paul Wegener, whose 1920 film The Golem left a lasting impression. The pivotal moment came in 1916 when she attended a Wegener lecture on the possibilities of animation. She persuaded her parents to let her join the acting troupe of Max Reinhardt's theater, where Wegener was active. There she began by crafting costumes and props backstage, but her real talent revealed itself when she started producing silhouette portraits of fellow actors and classmates. Those portraits caught Wegener's eye, and before long she was designing elaborate title cards for his films, many of which incorporated her own animated silhouette sequences.

The Making of Prince Achmed

In 1923, Louis Hagen, a businessman who had bought large quantities of raw film stock as a hedge against Germany's hyperinflation, approached Reiniger with a radical proposition: a full feature-length animated film. She later recalled that the idea horrified nearly everyone in the industry, where animation was regarded as a novelty for children's laughter and no one had dared to hold an audience beyond ten minutes. The resulting project, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, drew its story from One Thousand and One Nights and took three years to finish, premiering in 1926. Technically, Reiniger devised a forerunner of the multiplane camera by positioning backlit planes of glass at varying distances before a camera with a manual shutter, creating a layered depth effect that would not be matched in mainstream animation until Disney and Ub Iwerks developed their version in the 1930s. The film also featured dreamlike backgrounds by Walter Ruttmann and Walter Türck, a symphonic score by Wolfgang Zeller, and additional effects by Carl Koch and Berthold Bartosch. After nearly a year without a distributor, Jean Renoir championed the work and it premiered in Paris to critical and popular acclaim.

A Creative Ecosystem in Weimar Berlin

Reiniger's artistic development was inseparable from the vibrant collaborative culture of Weimar-era Berlin. In 1918, after animating wooden rats and intertitles for Wegener's The Pied Piper of Hamelin, she gained admission to the Institut für Kulturforschung, an experimental studio for animation and short films. There she met Carl Koch, who would become both her creative partner and, from 1921, her husband. Koch produced and photographed the six short films she made over the following years, including the Brothers Grimm–based Aschenputtel (1922). The studio also connected her with avant-garde figures such as Bertolt Brecht, Hans Cürlis, and Berthold Bartosch. Beyond the studio walls, Reiniger found herself at the center of a wider circle of ambitious German animators including Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann, and Oskar Fischinger. Her work extended into advertising, sponsored by the Julius Pinschewer agency, and into special effects for major features, notably a silhouette falcon in a dream sequence from Fritz Lang's Part One of Die Nibelungen. She also co-directed her first live-action film, Die Jagd nach dem Glück, with Rochus Gliese, and released Der scheintote Chinese (1928), recognized as the first animated film with a queer happy ending.