Hans Fischerkoesen

Hans Fischerkoesen, also known as Hans Fischerkösen or Hans Fischer (18 May 1896 – 23 April 1973) was a German commercial animator. Fischerkoesen is considered an animation pioneer, due to the inventions and innovations he applied to animation technology, especially the use of three-dimensional elements in his animations. Later he becomes Germany's most influential cartoonist, often nicknamed “Germany’s Walt Disney” alongside Rolf Kauka. He won both first and second prizes at a Dutch-sponsored international competition in 1937, for advertising films (the runners up included George Pal and Alexander Alexeieff ). By 1956 he had won major prizes at commercial film festivals in Rome, Milan (three times), Venice, Monte Carlo and Cannes.

Early life Hans Fischer was born on 18 May 1896 in the small town of Bad Kösen, near Naumburg, at the River Saale in the German state of Saxony. Because the name “Fischer” was a very common name in the film industry, he later created the alias of Fischerkoesen, by combining his name – Fischer and his birthplace - Kösen, in order to distinguish himself from others. He was a sensitive child, affected by asthma, which determined his parents to spoil both him and his sister Leni, by creating puppet shows and home entertainment, thus they developed a taste for fantasy and spectacle. Over the years, Leni was Fischerkoesen's closest collaborator on many animation film projects. In the same year he made another three animated advertising ads: Die Entführung and König Grogs Löwenabenteuer (both Transocean-Film) and Professor Sprit (Dux- Film). The success led to a two-year contract with Julius Pinschewer, owner of the leading Berlin advertising company Werbefilm G.m.b.H.-Pinschewer, who had pioneered the use of animated commercials in movie theatres back in 1911. Fischerkoesen worked for Pinschewer until 1928, when he temporarily worked for the propaganda film society “Epoche”, shortly after starting to work at Ufa's (Universum Film AG) propaganda department. After becoming chief draughtsman, he established his own studio in Potsdam. With no future in the advertising industry, Fischerkoesen saw his career taking an unexpected turn as both Hitler and Goebbels loved cinema in general and they had a great passion for animated cartoons, especially for Walt Disney’s productions, and dreamed to create a German animated film industry bigger and better than the one in the United States. Thus, on 25 June 1941 Goebbels founded a new animated film company Deutsche Zeichentrickfilme G.m.b.H (DZF), regarded as an important war facility which offered training for young cartoonists.

The German Animation Film Company (DZF) was aimed to start the production of feature-length animated films by 1947 and the successful animator Fischerkoesen was a natural choice to be involved in this strategic project. Fischerkoesen did not reject a collaboration with the Nazi propaganda machine, but he argued that he was not really talented to invent ideas for story films as he was experienced in the advertising industry. Consequently, he was assigned to work with Horst von Mollendorf, a popular Berlin newspaper cartoonist who was expected to help him with the scrips for the future animations. For the last short animation of the series, The Silly Goose, Fischerkoesen preferred to renounce his collaboration with Horst von Mollendorf, and produced the film on his own. The film tells the story of a vain goose who ventures beyond the borders of the farmhouse where she lived and nearly ended killed by a fox. In contrast to the first two short animations, in this last film can be noticed several antisemitic symbols, such as the fox who represents the “malicious Jew”, or the well-known Yiddish song Bei Mir Bistu Shein played in the background while the fox attempt to ambush the undisciplined goose.

The animations satisfied Goebbels’ expectations, thanks to their technical qualities and to the message transmitted, similar to the Nazi ideology of Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil), which glorified the simplicity and the virtue of the rural life, the return to the nature and required everyone to stay where they belong. On the other hand, elements which indicate a relative insubordination to the Nazi rhetoric can be found, such as the forbidden jazz music in Die verwitterte Melodie, the snowman’s anticipation of better days in Der Schneemann or the ambiguous narrative created in Das Dumme Ganslein.

Post Second World War Career When the Second World War ended, Fischerkösen was arrested by the Russian troops under the suspicion of Nazi collaboration and was kept for three years in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, until he proved not just that he was not a Nazi sympathizer, but that he was actually part of an underground resistance group of artists. During the imprisonment time he was detached to work in the kitchen and in order to survive captivity he occasionally drew portraits of the Soviet guards in exchange for a piece of bread, or to maintain a good morale he painted allegorical murals using vegetable caricatures, which are now preserved as a national historical monument. Released in 1948, Fischerkoesen fled with his wife and two children from the Soviet-controlled zone of Germany to the French-controlled sector, where he returned to his pre-Nazi career, founding Fischerkoesen-Studios in Mehlem. He became Germany’s leading producer of animated commercials and his notoriety and success was recognized by a cover story in Der Spiegel, on 29 August 1956. In 1958, he created Onkel Otto, a Harbor seal as the mascot for Hessischer Rundfunk. By the mid-1960s, due to the development of television and the request for shorter and snappier clips, Fischerkoesen found it more difficult to keep up with the modern times, thus his commercials became briefer. Fischerkoesen Studios were closed in 1972, just a year before his death, but his son reorganized it and developed it into a new company. Hans Fischerkösen died of a stroke at the age of 76, on 25 April 1973.

Filmography 1919: Das Loch im Westen (The Hole in the West) 1921: Bummel-Petrus (Strolling Peter) 1922: Seemansliebe (Sailors Love) 1923: Die Besteigung des Himalaja (Climbing of the Himalaya) 1924: Der Pfennig muß es bringen (The penny must bring it) 1925: Der Kluge Einfall (The Clever Idea) 1926: Die Geschichte vom Schokoladenkasper (The History of Chocolate Kasper) 1927: Auf der Skitour (On the Ski Tour) 1928: Zur gefälligen Beachtung (For Your Attention) 1929: Der möblierte Herr (The Furnished Mister) 1930: Tanztee (Tea Dance) 1933: Schall und Rauch (Smoke and Mirrors) 1934: Vertrag mit der Hölle (The Contract with the Hell) 1935: Das blaue Wunder (The Blue Wonder) 1936: Gesang des Kragenknopfes (Song of the Collar Button) 1937: Zwei Minuten von Bedeutung (Two Minutes of Importance) 1938: Dicke Luft (Thick Air) 1940: Im Glückshimmel (In Happiness Heaven) 1942: Verwitterte Melodie (Weather-Beaten Melody) 1944: Der Schneemann (The Snowman) 1944: Das dumme Gänslein (The Silly Goose) 1944: La Prairie Enchantée (French title for The Enchanted Meadow, projected in color in 1944 at Paris) 1951: Blick ins Paradies (Looking into Paradise) 1955: Durch Nacht zum Licht (Through Night to Light) 1964: Die Kleine Null (The Little Zero)