Between Success and Exile

Special exhibition from January 22, till March 20, 2022, extended till March 27, 2022

Experience Lotte Reiniger’s classic film “The Adventures of Prince Achmed” from 1926, the first feature-length animated film in film history, in our museum cinema. The young animation pioneer created the silhouette film with a small team in three years of work. About 250,000 frames were exposed on the animation table, of which about 96,000 were finally used. The countless filigree silhouettes were brought to life in a stop-motion process.

Film composer Wolfgang Zeller, in close contact with Lotte Reiniger, wrote a symphonic score for the film, which was performed live at the time. The first screening took place on May 2, 1926 as a matinee screening (mainly for invited guests such as directors, producers and colleagues from the film and theater industry) at the Berlin Volksbühne on Bülowplatz (today: Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz). A glittering premiere of the film took place – through the mediation of the French film director Jean Renoir – in July 1926 at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées in Paris – and via this detour “Prinz Achmed” came to Berlin again, where it was shown on September 3, 1926 at the Gloria-Palast at the Gedächtniskirche.

To this day, Lotte Reiniger’s masterpiece, based on motifs from the Arabian Nights story collection, has lost none of its fascination.

As part of its last special exhibition at its current location, the Käthe Kollwitz Museum is dedicated to the work of two outstanding female artists of the Weimar Republic. Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990), whose world revolved around photography, and Lotte Reiniger (1899-1981), who devoted herself to silhouettes.

With curiosity, talent and business acumen, the photographer and the animation pioneer made their way in the male-dominated art scene and moved in the same circles as our house artist. The special exhibition shows how their careers began in the up-and-coming, vibrant cultural scene of 1920s Berlin and flourished until their emigration in 1935.

Lotte Jacobi came from a family of photographers steeped in tradition and, in addition to portrait photography, turned with preference to theater and dance photography. While shooting portraits for the cover of a newly founded women’s magazine, the young photographer met Käthe Kollwitz in 1929.

Jacobi’s father’s portrait studio in the heart of Berlin’s New West, which she took over in 1927 after completing her training in Munich, had a prestigious clientele. However, she always preferred working on location, in the theaters of the metropolis and also in the studios of artists, to studio work.

She created unique portraits such as that of Lotte Lenya at the premiere of the “Dreigroschenoper” in the summer of 1928, but her photographic repertoire also included unconventional double portraits such as that of the comedian duo Karl Valentin and Liesl Karlstadt. Her photographs were widely published in newspapers and magazines. With the onset of National Socialist rule, however, the successful photographer was forced to emigrate with her family to the USA in 1935.