This is my contribution to the The New Eye – Interwar Lens Cultures 1919–1939 research project – a cooperation with the Göteborgs universitet, the Hasselblad Foundation and the Akademin Valand (all Gothenburg, Sweden). The Publication and exhibition are scheduled for mid 2021 |

A Window of Opportunities: A Brief History of the German Technical Journal Die Filmtechnik between 1925 and 1932

by Martin Reinhart

Technical journals are notorious for being boring and are usually considered unreadable by the non-expert. They also age badly because their respective topics eventually – and in some cases almost immediately – become obsolete. So despite their high circulation, they disappear from historical awareness relatively soon and are only used as a source in exceptional cases. On closer inspection though, one of these journals, Die Filmtechnik, published by Wilhelm Knapp from 1925, proves to be a veritable treasure trove of primary sources on the media history of the interwar period. The fact that the journal extended the narrow field of technology to include aesthetic and political issues so soon after its first publication is at least partly due to the two influential personalities who were its editors. This article takes up the history of Die Filmtechnik until 1932 for the first time and hopefully helps to give it its rightful place in any historical assessment of this eventful epoch.

Forerunners

The first German film journal, Der Kinematograph, was founded in 1907 and dealt with artistic, economic, and more general film industry topics. Its commercial success had an immediate catalytic effect, leading to the foundation of the Erste Internationale Filmzeitung in the same year and, in 1908 a third paper, Die Licht-Bild-Bühne, began publication. However, there was no journal dedicated to the wide spectrum of ideas and questions that arose from the daily professional occupation with film production and which addressed the steadily growing group of highly specialised experts in this field exclusively. Shortly after the First World War however, in the summer of 1919, there was an attempt to achieve this goal by launching a corresponding journal called Die Kinotechnik. It was initiated by the then well-known cameraman Guido Seeber together with his former assistant Konrad Wolter and Willi Böcker, who wrote for the Licht-Bild-Bühne. Published by Guido Hackebeil in Berlin, Die Kinotechnik was initially released as a monthly, but soon turned into a bi-weekly. In the beginning the slim booklets on cheap paper only had some fifteen pages, half of which were advertisements for the cameras and cinema projectors that the articles reviewed. By the mid-1920s, however, as the page numbers increased, Die Kinotechnik was able to establish itself as a highly valued publication for a substantial group of cameramen, film technicians, and projectionists. It was during this time that film culture expanded dramatically in multiple ways and aspects, especially in the field of transnational moviemaking with its big studios, stars, and lavish corporate owned cinemas but also in its counterparts: the amateur filmmaker movement and the newly active film-club movement, which demanded the distribution of more, and better, non-commercial films. Soviet cinema became an important role model for them since it was inherently non-profit in orientation and – at least in the first years –encouraged young filmmakers like Sergei Eisenstein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, and Dziga Vertov to create never-before-seen and mind-altering film experiments. Of course, this kind of counter-culture hardly ever found resonance in the articles of the technical journal that Die Kinotechnik was.

Wilhelm Knapp Publishers

One German publishing house that understood the general shift towards a more diverse perception of photography and cinema very well was Wilhelm Knapp in Halle (Saale).[1] In the 1920s Knapp could already look back on a long and very successful publishing history of photography-related books and magazines. The founding father of the company, Georg Carl Knapp, printed the first pamphlet on photography in Germany as early as 1839. It was a report on the newly developed daguerreotype, released only four days after the process had been introduced in Paris. Later, Georg Carl’s son, Wilhelm Georg, went on to specialise in the ever-growing field of photography and soon made the name Knapp synonymous with the medium in the world of publishing. Knapp always was interested in engaging highly regarded experts and their list of authors reads like a who’s who of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century photography. Its publications covered technical and specialist books as well as periodicals and lavish volumes celebrating almost every new trend in artistic photography with state-of-the-art reproductions. A third strand in the publishing programme, which around the turn of the century, became more and more profitable for the company, were magazines and handbooks for amateurs. Some of these sold in runs of several hundred thousand copies. So it was only natural that when cinema attendance was setting new records every year and, after the First World War, amateur filmmaking was booming as a result of affordable cameras using small-gauge film stock, cinematography became an interesting field for Knapp’s portfolio too. The eagerness to expand traditional areas of expertise was also stimulated by the fact that in 1921 yet another new generation of entrepreneurs had taken over the company. Nevertheless, in contrast to other publishing houses in Germany, Karl Jr. and Wilhelm Jr. Knapp were initially sceptical about modernist movements and exhibited a tendency to continue to promote pictorialism and what they understood as artistic photography within their definition of proper craftsmanship.

The Founding of Die Filmtechnik and the Kipho Exhibition of 1925

Under circumstances which can no longer be fully reconstructed today, the two founding members of Die Kinotechnik – Guido Seeber and Konrad Wolter – moved to the newly launched Knapp journal Die Filmtechnik in July 1925. The first issue featured full-page portraits of the two editors-in-chief and one of Ernst Erwin Haberkorn, Wolter’s former student at Munich University, who was given editorial responsibility. From the way the bi-weekly journal was designed and promoted there is certainly no doubt that its initial purpose was to conquer the territory previously occupied by Die Kinotechnik. It remains unclear, however, as to when exactly the new staff changed offices. The last article Seeber ever published in Die Kinotechnik is dated May 1925. On the other hand, his name as a founder of Die Kinotechnik was only removed from the journal’s logo much later, in February 1926, though this can probably be explained by the recognition Seeber enjoyed at the time. In Germany at least, he was a celebrity with star-like status and an acknowledged expert in cinematography, having shot more than thirty films between 1909 and 1925. It must therefore have been a significant marketing coup for Knapp to win him over, while, at the same time, it was also seemingly of key interest to keep his name associated with Die Kinotechnik for as long as possible.

Since Seeber was still an active and much sought-after professional who obviously had no intention of moving back and forth between Berlin and Halle in provincial Saxony-Anhalt, the publishers rented a small editorial office for Die Filmtechnik in Berlin, just across from the famous Mokka Efti café at Friedrichstrasse 46. This would soon become a hub for producers, directors, and many others involved in the film industries.[2]

(Fig. 1) The founding members of Die Filmtechnik as featured in the first issue of the journal published on 5 July 1925. From left to right: Ernst Erwin Haberkorn, Guido Seeber, Konrad Wolter. Photographer unknown

In 1925 Seeber was at the peak of his career. Born as the son of a photographer in 1879, he witnessed the rise of cinematography from the very beginning and bought his first cinema projector in 1897. From then on he produced and showed movies together with his father and in 1903 they even built and released their own handy cine camera, the ‘Seeberograph’. With yet another invention, the ‘Seeberophon’, the Seebers were also actively involved in the first wave of sound film, though this engagement ended abruptly on Clemens Seeber’s death in 1907. After his father’s demise, Guido sold the family studio in Chemnitz and started to work as a lab technician and cameraman for Deutsche Bioskop AG in Berlin. This was where, in 1910, he met film star Asta Nielsen and her husband, the Danish director Urban Gad. From this time on he was commissioned to shoot almost every Asta Nielsen film that was subsequently released and soon became one of Germany’s busiest cameramen. He was praised by colleagues and cinemagoers for the distinctive and expressionistic style he gave to box office hits like The Student of Prague (Stellan Rye, 1913), The Golem (Paul Wegener, Henrik Galeen, 1915) and Joyless Street (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1925). Apart from his striking photographic style Seeber was also known for his highly specialised and innovative trick photography, which he constantly upgraded and refined. By introducing unseen illusions and special effects, he almost single-handedly changed the way movies looked in the 1920s – a skill that was later to make him head of the animation department at Ufa. Seeber not only had a broad and deep understanding of almost every technical aspect of cinematography but was also one of the first authors to publish articles about film history.

(Fig. 2) ‘The Kipho Is at the Door’. Printed full-page advertisement in Die Filmtechnik in September 1925

(Fig. 3) The official Kipho advertisement poster by Theo Matejko as reproduced in Die Filmtechnik in September 1925

(Fig. 4) Full-page advertisement for the Kipho promotional movie in the September 1925 issue of Die Filmtechnik

When Kipho (Kino und Photo), the biggest national trade fair for cinematography in Germany so far took place in parallel to the launch of Die Filmtechnik in 1925 it was as if all of Seeber’s interests and abilities had coalesced into one big event.[3] The fair, perfectly synchronised with the first issue of the new journal, took place between 25 September and 4 October at the Haus der Funkindustrie,[4] a wooden exhibition hall in the Berlin district of Charlottenburg. Since the building was not big enough for all the exhibiting companies and attractions, the trade show was expanded to take over a second venue, the neighbouring Ausstellungshallen am Kaiserdamm. Although the event, which lasted for only ten days, was widely advertised on billboards and printed ads, a promotional film was ordered from the prestigious Werbefilm GmbH as well. This company, founded by Julius Pinschewer as early as in 1912, was the first in Germany to be dedicated solely to advertising films. Pinschewer, himself a pioneer of animated films, commissioned Seeber as the director and maker of a film that eventually would become the most experimental work the company ever produced. The so-called ‘Kipho film’ was an instant sensation and Die Filmtechnik even used fifteen still frames from it for a one-page advertisement. In return, Seeber built the journal’s title into his film montage in an admirably inventive way.

(Fig. 5) Two frames from Guido Seeber’s »Kipho«-F film showing superimposed images of a hand-cranked camera, a turning roll of cine-film with Seeber’s name on it and the written slogan »‘Die Filmtechnik«’

Seeber’s concept for the 5 five-minute silent film built on the very successful advertisement campaign for the 1920 expressionistic movie The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, transforming the mad scientist’s intriguing phrase “‘Du musst Caligari werden!” (!’ (‘You have to become Caligari!’) into ‘Du musst zur »Kipho«!’ ( (‘You must go to Kipho!’).[5] Although Robert Wiene’s Caligari had been released five years before, many still considered it a miracle of German filmmaking. Produced with almost no budget during the post-war depression, it became a huge international success and soon was synonymous with a young and self-confident German cinema. For some unknown reason the film was re-released in Germany in 1925, something that was quite unusual at the time.[6] Perhaps it was this reprise that inspired Seeber to choose the well-known slogan and to even integrate some scenes from the original feature film. The style he invented for his Kipho- film, however, was very different to – but no less hypnotic than – the proverbial madness of Caligari: Seeber used up to five super-imposed shots, creating an ever-changing visual swirl through the universe of film and photography which covered almost every aspect of both media. He later explained this special technique in great detail in a chapter of his 1927 book Der Trickfilm titled ‘Der Trickfilm von morgen’ (‘The Trick-Film of Tomorrow’)[7]. In one contemporary interview,[8] Seeber referred to the film as ‘expressionistic simultaneity and ‘absolute’, but it is still not clear how familiar he was with the formal language of a so-called avant-garde that was just beginning to articulate itself in the form of cinematic experiments scattered throughout Europe and the US.[9]

As modern as the Kipho film may have appeared at the time, Seeber was simultaneously preoccupied with film’s past and so with his own media-specific roots. He was not only responsible for advertising the show but was also the curator of the accompanying special exhibition called Zur Geschichte des lebenden Lichtbildes (On the History of the Living Photograph). For this event he made a second promotional film, Aus vergangener Zeit (From Bygone Times, 1925), which unfortunately seems not to have survived. Up until 1925 this aspect of media history was not regarded as relevant, nor were there any reliable publications or collections documenting the early history of cinematography. The exhibition committee sent out an open letter prior to the show, asking the public to contribute interesting historical documents and objects.[10] Nevertheless, in the end the heart of the exhibition, which took up three rooms on the first floor of the main exhibition building, was certainly Seeber’s own collection of historic film exhibits. And to give yet another, more immersive impression of early cinema, there was also the so-called ‘Ur-Kino’ (‘Proto Cinema’) during the exhibition period. It was a colourful cinema tent in the open air where, at the suggestion of Seeber, films from the turn of the century were shown using a contemporary projector.

Die Kinotechnik, as well as Die Filmtechnik, featured the full extent of the exhibition over a period of several months. Seeber started to write a series of very detailed articles about the Lumière brothers’ pioneering work for Die Kinotechnik well before the event. The fifth in the series was published in late April as one of the last articles Seeber ever wrote for the journal before changing to its competitor. A special issue of Die Filmtechnik, more than forty pages long, was published prior to the exhibition in September 1925 and entirely dedicated to Kipho. It featured an illustrated alphabetical line-up of the most important exhibitors and, as a special feature, two colour prints of Walter Reimann’s expressionistic sketches for the Caligari movie.[11] From September until the end of the year Die Kinotechnik published a series of six wide-ranging and fully illustrated exhibition reports describing the different sections of the show in retrospect.

(Fig. 6) Different views of the Kipho trade show as featured in Die Kinotechnik. Photographer unknown

Kipho was a big national success, both commercially and as a clearly visible sign of the vitality of an increasingly muscular German film industry. The exhibition’s focus on technology and its programmatic structure can almost be taken as a blueprint for the range of topics featured in the first year of Die Filmtechnik, which still was very much under the influence of its editor-in-chief, Seeber. In the years to follow, however, the orientation of the journal was to undergo a significant change in an unexpected direction. The driving force behind this shift was Andor Kraszna-Krausz, a 21-year-old intern who had joined the magazine at the very beginning.

Die Filmtechnik Becomes a Journal for International Film Art

Kraszna-Krausz, Austro-Hungarian by birth, had studied photography and cinematography at Munich University under Konrad Wolter before he moved to Berlin in 1925. It is not known whether his professor helped introduce him to publisher Wilhelm Knapp, or whether this contact was otherwise established. However, Knapp used the opportunity to offer the ambitious student a position as a journalist in the film magazine that his company currently was planning. Still it is surprising how quickly Kraszna-Krausz rose within the editorial staff and how soon he wrote his first editorials once Die Filmtechnik had been launched. His journalistic style was precise, to the point, and trenchant, and thus stood out pleasantly from the technical articles of his colleagues. His first longer report was on the shooting of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis in the Ufa Studios. It was so well received that he was not only employed full time, but six months later he replaced Ernst Erwin Haberkorn as chief editor. Extremely self-confident, Kraszna-Krausz wrote a personal manifesto in an early issue of Die Filmtechnik pleading for mandatory film education for young people and concluding that this would be the only realistic chance to take artistic film production in Germany to another level.[12]

In her autobiography, author Elfriede Brünning, who worked as a secretary for Die Filmtechnik as a young woman, paints a very true-to-life picture of Kraszna-Krausz, describing her former boss as an extremely disciplined editor but at the same time as a very energetic and enthusiastic film lover, who knew neither work hours nor weekends.[13] Between 1925 and 1928, no other author wrote nearly as many editorials and film and book reviews for Die Filmtechnik and, during the time he was working for Knapp, nobody else initiated and edited more film-related publications for the publishing house.

One might think that Seeber, who was more than twice his age, would be tempted to regard the young hothead as an opponent, but this was obviously not the case. In his obituary on Seeber, [14] Kraszna-Krausz refers to him as ‘my old friend’ and in retrospect it almost looks as he, Seeber, was quite happy for the youngster to relieve him of the tiresome daily editorial work and allowing him to concentrate on the things that were important to him: contemplating technical camera details and describing a cameraman’s on-set work. For Kraszna-Krausz writing was truly a mission in life, while for Seeber it was – in some respects at least – a necessity. In his revealing article about the German cameramen of the interwar period, Helmut Herbst comes to an interesting conclusion in this context, pointing out that for Seeber the publication of special film tricks was one valid way to protect his intellectual property, since patenting them would have been far too expensive.[15]

For Kraszna-Krausz such pragmatic considerations were completely irrelevant, since he was not a filmmaker and had a completely different agenda. In his early Berlin years he soon became engaged in the leftist film movement and later accepted the task of monitoring the Volksverband für Filmkunst (People’s Committee for Film Art), an association founded in 1928 by communist and other left-wing groups on the theatre model viz. the Volksbühne. Heinrich Mann headed the board of management and artistic committee and was supported by G.W. Pabst. The board and committee also contained other well-known filmmakers and numerous prominent left-wing intellectuals such as Käthe Kollwitz, Béla Balázs, Erwin Piscator, Leo Lania, and Edmund Meisel. The idea of the Volksverband was to promote film as a medium of criticism and reflection through the work of the association, as well as to counteract reactionary films and combat repressive censorship.[16] Initially the association even commissioned films such as the unemployment drama Um’s tägliche Brot by Phil Jutzi and Leo Lania (The Shadow of a Mine, 1928–1929), the two programmatic compilations Was wir wollen – was wir nicht wollen (What We Want – What We Do Not Want, 1927–1928) by Albrecht Viktor Blum and Zeitbericht – Zeitgesicht (Report on Our Time – Face of Our Time, 1928) by Blum and Béla Balázs or the montage film Im Schatten der Maschine (In the Shadow of the Machine, 1928) by Blum and Leo Lania. However, the circle of supporters soon broke up because of increasing instrumentalisation by the KPD, the Communist Party of Germany.

But Kraszna-Krausz was certainly not the only writer for Die Filmtechnik who sympathised with left-wing ideology. One prominent colleague who shared his political position was his countryman Béla Balázs, who published articles in the journal as a freelance journalist at irregular intervals between 1925 and 1931. Balázs became a member of the Hungarian Communist Party in 1918 and after the suppression of the short-lived Hungarian Republic of Councils he fled to Vienna in adventurous circumstances in 1919. It was more by chance that he got involved with the new medium of film, writing regular reviews for the left-wing liberal morning paper Der Tag (The Day) while at the same time making a name for himself as a screenwriter. His first theoretical work published in Vienna, Der sichtbare Mensch (Visible Man, 1924) is still today regarded as a milestone of modern film theory. Shortly afterwards the book was translated into Russian and two quite different and abridged versions were printed in 1925, one in Moscow and one in Leningrad.[17]

When Balázs moved from Vienna to Berlin in 1926, a second German edition of the book was published by Knapp, using the eye-catching cover design of the Moscow edition – three crossed filmstrips on an orange background. In his enthusiastic review of the new issue of Visible Man Kraszna-Krausz writes: ‘After two dozen lines you have been disarmed, put under the spell of an intimate, subjective, and charming style where not one sentence is too long or empty; you listen as if to a very good friend confidentially talking to you through the whole evening.’[18] He concludes: ‘Everyone who cares about film should get this book. And those who already have it should read it again, as this writer will do now, for the third time.’[19]

(Fig. 7) Cover of the second edition of Béla Balázs’ The Visible Man, Wilhelm Knapp, 1926

(Fig. 8) Advertisement for Die Filmtechnik in the second edition of The Visible Man, Wilhelm Knapp, 1926

(Fig. 9) Advertisement for the same book in Bücher des Lichtspiel-Vorführers, 1929

Cross-Promotion

The campaign for The Visible Man also provides a good example of the intertwined and clever advertising strategy that the Knapp publishing house employed. In Balázs’s book there was a full-page advertisement for Die Filmtechnik, while the journal carried an effusive review of it. The book was still being promoted in Knapp publications as late as 1929. By this time Kraszna-Krausz already had established close contacts with foreign media and was a correspondent for the Swiss-based avant-garde film magazine Close Up, from 1927 to 1933. An anonymous book review of The Visible Man was published in Close Up in July 1928 (pp. 86–89), which was very likely either suggested to the editors by Kraszna-Krausz, or might even have been written by him. He also frequently used these channels to advertise Die Filmtechnik as the leading German-language journal worldwide dealing exhaustively with all the technical problems of film creation.[20] In return Close Up magazine was advertised in Die Filmtechnik. This was the way in which, in less than two years, a formerly sedate specialist journal evolved into a dynamic and internationally recognised modern platform that was not afraid to show its ideological and political orientation. This state of affairs is certainly not only due to the commitment of the young editor, but also to the strengthening of the German left-wing film industry trade unions, which soon regarded the journal as their official voice.

(Fig. 10) Full page advertisement for Film für Alle and Die Filmtechnik in Close Up, April 1929

(Fig. 11) Advertisement for Close Up in the FiFo special issue of Die Filmtechnik, May 1929

In this context it is also interesting to see how in just a few years the publication’s interest categories and the selection of the reviewed films altered. Before 1927, Die Filmtechnik was structured into sub-sections such as ‘The Raw Film’, ‘Technical Issues’, and ‘The Cinema Theatre’, while from 1928 on one would find articles indexed as ‘Russia’, ‘Trade Unions’, and ‘Film Work around the World’ (‘Weltarbeit am Film’). In addition, from 1926 onwards the journal had a Russian correspondent, Oleg Woinoff, who until 1929 contributed some thirty articles with titles like ‘Kino-Eye’ (Filmtechnik 4/1927, p. 60), ‘Short and Experimental Film’ (Filmtechnik 6/1928, p. 94) and ‘Ideology and Practice of Soviet Film’ (Filmtechnik 1/1929, p. 2). However, this new orientation was most visible in the constructivist logo that appeared on the front page from April 1926 until the end of 1929. It then was changed back to a much more conventional design, a typographic signal that the days of left-wing film culture in Germany were numbered.

(Fig. 12) The three basic designs of the Filmtechnik logo: July 1925 – April 1926 (top), April 1926 – December 1929 (middle) and December 1929 – December 1942 (bottom). The logos were adapted to the ever-changing subtitles and slogans of the journal, which in turn were frequently adapted to the target audience

Die Filmtechnik and the FiFo Exhibition of 1929

Looking at the index of articles published in Die Filmtechnik over the years, it is interesting to see that Kraszna-Krausz’s work as an active writer for the journal ended abruptly in 1929. Whilst he contributed some 320 editorials and film reviews in 1928, the number shrunk to just a handful in the years thereafter. No explanation for this sudden change is given in any of the editorials, so one can only speculate about the background to this decision. The political orientation of the journal did not really change until after 1931, so it doesn’t seem that his ideological stance was the reason. Furthermore, Kraszna-Krausz’s rare editorials after 1928 sound just as combative as ever; there are no discernible undertones that would suggest disagreement with the publishers. At the same time Kraszna-Krausz started to supervise more and more film-related books for Knapp, so it is conceivable that he simply delegated the daily editorial work and the routine writing of reviews to his co-workers and colleagues. Also we know that in 1929 Kraszna-Krausz was deeply involved in the founding of the DACHO, the umbrella organisation of German filmmakers. It was envisaged as a trade union to bring the individual associations of scriptwriters, cameramen, film architects, composers, actors, and directors together. In connection with this newly founded organisation, Kraszna-Krausz planned a magazine exclusively dedicated to film art, Die Filmkunst, a project which, at least to my knowledge, was never realised.

Retrospectively, the interwar years of 1928 and 1929 were perhaps the most productive and exciting years for the international art film movement in the world. The dark years of post-war depression were almost forgotten and the nightmares to come still unimaginable – a magic moment of equilibrium between the possibilities of a social utopia and a disturbing, but exciting metropolitan reality that fuelled creativity in almost every field of culture and industry. For a short time anything seemed possible and one could already adumbrate the emerging marvels of the new media being predicted in science magazines and science fiction films. Electro-acoustic instruments like the theremin fascinated millions, turning the artificial sounds out of nowhere, amplified by radio, into a virtual concert hall. Suddenly every instant of a personal life could be recorded with the help of mass-produced cameras, just as everyone could participate in a never-ending stream of real-time world news endlessly reproduced in magazines, newsreels, and radio reports. In just a few years image production had accelerated in an unforeseen way while at the same time images depicted things and spurred ideas that were unthinkable just a short time ago: aerial, microscopic, and X-ray photography; time lapse and high-speed film recordings; fast-cutting film experiments at the limits of human perception; colour, 3D and sound film; education via design; nourishment via radio, communication with the dead; space travel. The future seemed glorious and without limits.

A lot of the more fantastic ideas were discussed in magazines like Hugo Gernsback’s Science and Invention, while others even found their way into technical publications like Die Filmtechnik, where television pioneers such as Manfred von Ardenne and Dénes von Mihály published their insights. More importantly, the utopian hype inspired a younger generation of artists like László Moholy-Nagy who, together with Edward Weston and Hans Richter, was one of the curators of the legendary FiFo (short for Film und Foto) exhibition in Stuttgart.[21] The show was initiated and organised by the Deutscher Werkbund (German Association of Craftsmen), which was an important and progressive factor in the development of modern architecture and industrial design in Germany. The approximately 1,200 exhibits by 200 authors provided the first overview of historical and current developments in the various fields of work and uses of film and photography: art, advertising, propaganda, and the press. In the accompanying film programme curated by experimental filmmaker Hans Richter, fifty-eight international feature-length and short films were compiled and bundled into fifteen events, which were shown in a Stuttgart cinema accompanied by two film lectures.

(Fig. 13) Cover of the FiFo special edition of Die Filmtechnik

(Fig. 14) Poster for the Film und Foto exhibition Stuttgart 1929. The poster was designed by German photojournalist Willi Ruge and used a 1927 photograph of his friend, photographer Arno Böttcher

For the first time, this international show assessed the status of film and photography according to their actual impact on the cultural processes of the time. The photo exhibition showed classical genres like portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, alongside reportages from various contexts, science-related photographs, experimental light studies, photo collages, montages, and typographies. Unconventionally presented in a display system designed by László Moholy-Nagy for the German section, anonymous works were shown together with those by renowned artists, individual exhibitors, and specialist university classes such as those of the Bauhaus Dessau and the Folkwang School in Essen. The visual language of the works shown in the exhibition and on screen emphasised their media-specific character and broke radically with traditional art photography and narrative commercial cinema.

If the Kipho of 1925 represented the quintessence of Guido Seeber’s knowledge and creed, then the FiFo summarised everything that Andor Kraszna-Krausz stood for. So it comes as no surprise that he dedicated an entire issue of Die Filmtechnik to this tradition-shattering event.[22] Oddly enough, and just as if the publishers were afraid of their own courage, the editorial by László Moholy-Nagy was accompanied with an anonymous distancing note, reading:

This issue takes the film and photo exhibition of the German Association of Craftsmen as an opportunity to commemorate the field of film work that more or less voluntarily separated itself economically and artistically from the usual arenas. We do not wish to be counted among those who like to overestimate the importance of the avant-garde, but we certainly recognize the merits of those individuals who have stimulated and prepared the great battles for the more traditional forces of cinematic art. [23]

It is no secret that Karl Jr. and Wilhelm Jr. Knapp were not in sympathy with these modernist tendencies and it is a fact that in almost every one of their dedicated photography periodicals, the exhibition was dismissed as an accumulation of unprofessionalism.[24] Furthermore, the competing magazine, Die Kinotechnik, only published two short and tight-lipped accounts of the exhibition in 1929. One can only presume that Kraszna-Krausz had an in-house struggle to master for the opportunity to put together an issue on a topic that was so greatly distanced from the official publishing line it was in danger of alienating regular readers.

Still, the FiFo special issue is an early and remarkable collection of first-hand documents on the perception of film art contributed by filmmakers and theorists like Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann, Fred Zinneman, and Kenneth Macpherson, the co-founder of Close Up magazine, all of whom are now so well-known. The subjects range from Lotte Reiniger’s shadow films and the beginnings of abstract film to detailed depictions of the Dutch, English, and Russian avant-garde film movements. This effort underlines Hans Richter’s concept of canonising avant-garde film works which, prior to the show, were ascribed various designations such as ‘absolute film’, ‘abstract film’, ‘cinéma pur’, ‘futurist cinema’, and ‘surrealist film’ and which, due their ambiguous formats and styles, had been seen as isolated individual experiments rather than associated with a specific genre or artistic movement. Today this ground-breaking programme is not only considered the forefather of all film festivals, but also the starting point of an identity-generating tradition of experimental film.

Inspired by Richter’s programme, private and political film clubs were formed all over the world. This movement was driven by cineaste enthusiasm for the non-commercial art film and made possible by the introduction of affordable 16mm amateur-format film material made by companies like Kodak and Pathé. The new film stock helped create new and independent distribution networks and led to the development of easy-to-use still and movie cameras. The very powerful amateur filmmakers’ movement was a matter to which Die Filmtechnik had been committed since its founding, perhaps an additional reason why the FiFo could be covered in such detail.

Of course it is wrong to give the impression that Die Filmtechnik was exclusively devoted to left-wing film culture and experimental filmmaking – quite the contrary, as contributions of this nature were rather the exception. The reason I have emphasised these aspects is because they are clearly highly unusual for a technical journal of the period. Unfortunately, other important topics connected to the specifics of interwar film culture featured in Die Filmtechnik can only be given insufficient mention in the context of this article – namely the protracted discussion about the shift to sound film and the field of amateur cinematography, both of which also peaked around 1929. With regard to sound film, from 1925 onwards, Die Filmtechnik illuminated the ongoing debate intensively from every conceivable perspective. Moreover, questions concerning small-gauge cameras and film stock were frequently treated in a separate section of the journal so it would be worth conducting further studies to contextualise and comment on the respective fields. At this point, however, I would like to go into this but only far enough so as to briefly illustrate Kraszna-Krausz’s work as an editor for film-related literature within the Knapp company.

Film for All: Other Film-Related Publications of the 1920s and ’30s

Film für Alle (Film for All) was published from 1926 onwards. It was a monthly periodical conceived as an introduction to amateur cinematography and seems to have been continued until 1944 though it was only edited by Kraszna-Krausz until the mid-1930s.[25] A book, a more theoretical monograph on film technology also addressed to amateurs, was written by the veteran authors of Die Filmtechnik, Guido Seeber, Konrad Wolter, and Curt Emmermann. Titled Kurble! Ein Lehrbuch des Filmsports (Crank! A Textbook on Amateur Filmmaking), it was released in March 1929. In the preface Kraszna-Krausz summarised the intended purpose of the publication:

Anyone can film today. A growing number of simple and inexpensive devices are available that offer a wide range of different applications. However, as simple as these devices may seem, there are certain guidelines that must be known and understood. This book deals with these rules. In spite of its informal approach deliberately deviating from the usual form of technical textbooks, it aims to teach its readers the details of everything they need to know.

In this same spirit of educational literature Kraszna-Krausz initiated a series of hardbound books with the collective title Filmbücher für Alle (Film Books for All). The first one, published in 1931, was titled Schmalfilm als Schulfilm (Small-Gauge Film as Educational Film) and already featured the distinctive title design by graphic artist Lothar Molkenthin. It was to be retained for the series published by Kraszna-Krausz with two exceptions. All in all, six books had been edited by him until 1933, but he was no longer listed as the editor in the seventh that was released in 1937. The individual volumes covered topics such as film editing, script writing, film tricks, animation, title making, and projection and were written by various authors, only a few of whom, like Alex Strasser, had worked for Die Filmtechnik before.

(Fig. 15) Undated folder for Kurble! and Film für Alle illustrating how closely the two publications were advertised together

 (Fig. 16) Kurble! Ein Lehrbuch des Filmsports, 1929. Cover design by Lothar Molkenthin

(Fig. 17) Film-Bücher für Alle no. 3 by Alex Strasser, 1933. Cover design by Lothar Molkenthin

Questions related to sound film were treated in a similar way too. Many uncertainties arose for studios, directors, cameramen, technicians, and cinemas when talking movies became a reality. In the beginning of the move to sound film, around 1928, it was not at all clear which of the rival systems would succeed. What did become quickly clear was that the acquisition of the expensive equipment would be an overwhelming burden for many cinema owners and that only large studios would survive the switch to sound film production. A consequence of this development would eventually lead to a thinning out of independent cinemas and smaller production companies, thereby accelerating the already-advanced monopolisation by large studios. On the other hand, specialists such as projectionists, cameramen, studio managers, and directors had to be constantly briefed in order to keep up with the ever-changing requirements. This progressive specialisation also led to the creation of ever more skill-specific trade unions, such as the cinema projectionists. Kraszna-Krausz reacted to this situation with a new format titled Bücher des Lichtspiel-Vorführers (Books for the Cinema Projectionist), with its first issue, Mein Vorführungsraum (My Projection Room), appearing in March 1929. It was even reviewed in Close Up (vol. 4, April 1929, p. 80) as follows:

Mein Vorfuhrungsraum (My Projection Room) is the first in a series of books in an extremely practical format to be edited by Mr. Kraszna-Krausz. They will deal with different issues of interest to cinema technicians and be published by Wilhelm Knapp (Halle/Saale, Germany), who considers this form of small separate booklets, each dealing with a single issue, to be preferable to a large technical volume in which special interest chapters are often separated from each other, making referring to the work inconvenient. This certainly seems to be an excellent idea and My Projection Room by Reinhold Dahlgreen gives us many useful facts. Instead of falling into the error of dealing with technical questions in a language incomprehensible to the uninitiated, the author uses simple and clear language to explain each matter so that amateurs without much technical knowledge can find much of profit in this little book.

(Fig. 18) Undated folder for Bücher des Lichtspiel-Vorführers

(Fig. 19) Das Kofferkino (Portable Cine-Projectors) by Reinhold Dahlgreen, 1929

The booklets were advertised as a supplementary series (Zweigausgabe) of Die Filmtechnik and shared the same dyed-through green sleeve as well as some of the journal’s technical authors specialised in the field. The cover design closely resembled that of the magazine in both its limited printing in signal red and black and the illustration of a stylised film projector which corresponded to the modernist aesthetics of the Filmtechnik logo and was to be used unchanged for the entire series of fifteen booklets. The booklets soon became increasingly focussed on the field of sound film technology, discussing the projectors, loudspeakers, and amplifiers for use in commercial cinemas. With few exceptions, almost all of the issues were reprinted multiple times, some until the mid-1940s and others even after the Second World War.  

One Story Ends, A New One Begins

The January issue of 1932 starts with an anonymous and ominous announcement that is a complete rejection of everything that Kraszna-Krausz had hoped to achieve:

In particular, the attempt to grant, within the existing framework, considerable scope to art policy issues related to technology has proved to be disadvantageous in two respects. The artistic problems could not unfold, as they would ultimately need to when still tied to a technical body. On the other hand, the technological issues had to tolerate many a significant restriction and change. We therefore recognized the necessity of separating the purely aesthetic-critical and, in a broader sense, politically based subject matter from Die Filmtechnik, and of directing the journal’s attention all the more thoroughly to the narrower field of technology.

It is as if this aspect of the journal was presciently erased to avoid rubbing shoulders with the new regime that would take the helm in Germany after January 1933. This procedure corresponds to the synchronisation of the other publications of the Knapp company, which, after the National Socialist takeover, switched effortlessly to the new ideology and aesthetic dictates. Although Die Filmtechnik was published until December 1942 and even took over its former competitor Die Kinotechnik, this is where my story ends. But there are still some loose ends.

While Guido Seeber continued to contribute articles to Die Filmtechnik until 1937, dying in 1940 at the age of 61, Andor Kraszna-Krausz left Germany in 1937 at the age of 33 and began a whole new career in British exile. As if unaffected by the political upheavals and his flight, he continued his work as an editor of film and photo related publications seamlessly in London. As a refugee, he founded his own publishing house, Focal Press, in 1938. It specialised in practical guides to photography and film at affordable prices for a general public. Focal Press publications were both accessible and informative, providing expert information in the fields of professional photography, cinematography, and image technology science. During his lifetime and over five decades 1,200 titles were published. In 1982 he set up the prestigious Kraszna-Krausz Foundation, which continues to award prizes for outstanding books on photography and the moving image in the present. In recognition of this, and his outstanding contributions to the medium, Kraszna-Krausz was awarded the prestigious Kulturpreis by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (German Photographic Association) in 1979 and an honorary doctorate from Bradford University ten years later. As ‘a fighter under a common flag’ – as Béla Balázs had put it – he died in 1989.

[1] For details of the Knapp company history see: Halwani, M. (2008) Fotografie Lesen. Zur Geschichte des Wilhelm Knapp Verlags, pp. 23–24, in Fotogeschichte. Beiträge zur Geschichte und Ästhetik der Fotografie, 28 (110).

[2] See: Brüning, E. (1998) Und außerdem war es mein Leben. Munich: DTV.

[3] From the German Kino (cinema) and Photo (photography).

[4] Also called Funkhalle, not to be confused with the Haus des Rundfunks which was built later.

[5] For details of the Caligari advertisement campaign see: Cowan, M. (2103) Taking It to the Street: Screening the Advertising Film in the Weimar Republic, pp. 463–467, in Screen 54. Glasgow: University of Glasgow.

[6] The re-release is mentioned in: Reimann, W. (1925) Ein Nachruf zum ‘Caligari’-Film, p. 192 in Die Filmtechnik 5, Halle (Saale): Wilhelm Knapp.  

[7] Seeber, G. (1927) Der Trickfilm in seinen grundsätzlichen Möglichkeiten. Eine praktische und theoretische Darstellung der photographischen Filmtricks. Berlin: Verlag der Lichtbildbühne, pp. 240–252.

[8] Berliner Tageblatt (24 September 1925).

[9] For the relationship of the Kipho film to the aesthetics of the avant-garde see: Cowan, M. (2010) Advertising, Rhythm, and the Filmic Avant-Garde in Weimar: Guido Seeber and Julius Pinschewer’s Kipho Film, pp. 25–30 in October Magazine 131. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[10] The complete call is reproduced in the editor’s article. Kraszna-Krausz, A. (1925) Die ‘Kipho’ marschiert, p. 139 in Die Filmtechnik 8.

[11] Reimann’s work as a set designer was also presented in the second special presentation at the Kipho called Filmkunst-Ausstellung (Film Art Exhibition), which showed sketches, models, and props from recent German productions.

[12] Kraszna-Krausz, A. (1925) Nachwuchs, p. 126 in Die Filmtechnik 7.  

[13] Brüning (1998).

[14] Kraszna-Krausz, A. (1976) Guido Seeber – Erinnerungen an einen alten Freund, in Das wandernde Bild. Der Filmpionier Guido Seeber. Exhibition catalogue Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek. Berlin (West): Elefanten Press.

[15] Herbst, H. (1990) Kameraarbeit in den zwanziger Jahren. Über das Selbstverständnis der Stummfilmkameramänner, pp. 20–36 in Augen-Blick. Marburger Hefte zur Medienwissenschaft 8: Der Stummfilm als Gesamtkunstwerk.

[16] Kraszna-Krausz, A. (1928) Volksverband, p. 33 in Die Filmtechnik 3.

[17] For a more detailed description of the different versions and the perception of the book, see: Frank, G. (2018) Béla Balázs. Online article as part of the Transdisciplinary Constellations in Austrian Literature, Art and Culture of the Interwar Period, University of Klagenfurt, July 2018, [https://litkult1920er.aau.at/portraets/balazs-bela].

[18] The German passage reads: “Nach zwei Dutzend Zeilen ist man entwaffnet, in den Bann eines vertraulich subjektiven, charmant könnenden, keinen Satz lang leerlaufenden Stils gezaubert und hört zu, wie einem sehr guten Freund, der „per Du“ erzählt durch einen ganzen Abend. […] Jeder – dem nur an dem Film etwas liegt – sollte sich diesen Band holen. Und der ihn schon hat, ihn noch einmal lesen. Wie auch der Schreiber dieses es zum dritten Mal tun wird.” In Kraszna-Krausz, A. (1926) Balazs, Bela. Der sichtbare Mensch, p. 425 in Die Filmtechnik 21.

[19] Although is not clear how well Béla Balázs and Kraszna-Krausz actually knew each other, some documents at the London based Kraszna-Krausz Foundation imply that they were actually friends during their time in Berlin. In the acknowledgments to her book, Erica Carter mentions a personal dedication from Balázs dating from 6 September 1930 that reads: ‘To A. Kraszna-Krausz, fighter under a common flag’. In: Carter, E. and R. Livingstone (2010) Béla Balázs: Early Film Theory: Visible Man and The Spirit of Film. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books. This book is the first translation of Visible Man into English.

[20] Close Up 4 (IV), April 1929. Pool: Territet, 1929, p. 101 (inside back cover).

[21] The exhibition was later shown in Zurich, Berlin, Gdansk, Vienna, Agram, Munich, Tokyo, and Osaka.

[22] Die Filmtechnik 11 (1929).

[23] Translated from German by the author. The original text reads: ‘Dieses Heft nimmt die Film- und Foto- Ausstellung des Deutschen Werkbundes zum Anlass, jenes Gebiet der Filmarbeit zu gedenken, das vom gewohnten Industriegebiet sich wirtschaftlich und künstlerisch mehr oder minder freiwillig absonderte. Wir möchten nicht zu jenen gezählt werden, die die Bedeutung der Avantgarde gerne überschätzen. Aber wir erkennen bestimmt die Verdienste an, die Vorpostengefechte Einzelner in Anregung und Vorbereitung großer Schlachten für die Standardkräfte der Filmkunst sich erworben haben.’ In Die Filmtechnik 11 (1929), p. 217.

[24] Halwani, M. (2008), p. 30.

[25] In both cases – for Film für Alle as well as for Filmbücher für Alle – it is difficult to trace the actual numbers of published issues, since the series was continued and at times reprinted under the same name even after 1945, when part of the publishing house was made a state-owned enterprise by the GDR.