A Walk On The Weiler Side - The German Animated Films of Kurt Weiler

Kurt Weiler (a screen grab from the PAL only DVD release
Kurt Weiler-Die Kunst De Puppenanimationsfilms; 2012.)

Animation seems to hold an odd place in many cultures; it's ever-present, but generally regarded as children's fare, and hardly art. More like Bazooka Joe comics: fun to look at for a bit and then discard. When I was a kid in the 1980s and early 1990s, American cartoons were more or less a vehicle for advertising action figures and sugar-based breakfast cereals (oddly enough, today's animated commercials seem to be for food or anti-depression meds, however that's to be interpreted). Of course there were the oddly calming and sleep-inducing animations that ran on PBS programs like Sesame Street and The Electric Company, but those seemed more like some kind of alien folk art than the traditional Saturday Morning cartoons and were largely forgotten or unwatched by those who had transitioned from Big Bird to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. 

There is the stigma, of course, of enjoying such things after a certain age. In my family it was a crime against the family name to continue the "immature" practice of enjoying comic books and Vincent Price films once you'd breached the double digits, when there was football and firearms to "mature" into. But, for me, animation refused to die. It kept popping back up or sneakily creeping back in to remind me it was there; in the form of Terry Gilliam's humorous psychedelic cutout sequences in reruns of Monty Python's Flying Circus, the title sequences to favorite television shows like Batman and The Wild Wild West, in the newfound Japanese Anime I was inundated with on my first trip to a Wizard World Chicago Comic Con, in the educational films shown in classrooms. Not to mention, being a child whose most prominent parent was the television set in the era of the burgeoning basic cable market, I was a huge fan of Ray Harryhausen, Willis O'Brien and, while maybe tangential, the live action foam rubber cartooniness of Godzilla and the other creatures made by Eiji Tsuburaya, by the time I was twelve. 

Kurt Weiler working on Der Apfel short.

One of the inspiring things about this troubled world we live in, is that you can find something you've been inundated with all your life interpreted through the eyes of a different culture, and have that thing reinvigorated for you. Whether it's surf music from Turkey, graphic design from Poland, candy from Japan, or in this case animation from Germany, it's nice to know that different cultures can reveal a different, previously unseen facet of something that's otherwise become reduced to wallpaper in its familiar form. It happens all of the time, the fascination with some outer-cultural phenomenon. There's a reason there's a massive rockabilly following in Japan and Europe, a soccer stadium being built down the interstate here in Minnesota, and loads of Bollywood films on Netflix. The same old can get tedious for those with interests and horizons broader than what's readily available, and there's plenty to find if one has the willingness to dig for it. 

Could someone who grew up with Kurt Weiler's stop-motion shorts really lose interest in them? Undoubtedly. I grew up with the Rankin/Bass Productions and The Muppets, and with the exception of the amazing Mad Monster Party?, neither really hold any interest for me any longer (same with said 80s and 90s licensed property cartoon powerhouses that my generation has turned into a current nostalgia cash cow). I didn't even know about Fingerbobs until Trunk Records released the soundtrack a while back, and I'm not sure I'll ever understand the appeal.  

Ein Gewisser Agathopulus (A Certain Agathopulus) 1980.

Kurt Weiler was born in Lehrte, Germany, on August 6th, 1921. His family, being Jewish, fled Germany in 1939 to escape the rise of Naziism. They settled in England, where Kurt would establish his interest in the arts, studying at the Oxford School of Arts and Crafts. By 1947 he was working for the British W.M. Larkin Studio, who produced a lot of animation for industrial shorts and educational films. One such can be seen here. 

In 1950 Weiler returned to what was then East Germany, and worked for DEFA (Deutsche Film Aktiengeselleschaft), an animation studio that existed from 1946 through 1990 (though I've seen sources that state 1992; anything you could possibly want to know about the political aspects of pre-unification DEFA can be found here.) And it was here that Kurt Weiler grew bored with the same-old same-old. He wanted to create something new from something commonplace. He was working under DEFA stop-motion puppet animation writer/director Johannes Hempel, who was very much rooted in the naturalistic style utilized in those Rankin/Bass productions. People puppets, though very stylized, looked very much like people. Stage sets were detailed miniatures; excruciatingly, beautifully exact reproductions of actual living spaces (see image below). 

A scene from Johannes Hempel's Der verschwundene Helm (The Missing

Helmet) 1960, gives you a taste of his naturalistic style.

Weiler wanted to loosen things up. He'd become a devotee of playwright Bertold Brecht's verfremdungseffekt (alienation effect), distancing viewers from believing what they are seeing is a slice of real life. Weiler didn't necessarily want his viewers to have to believe the characters in his animated shorts were real people, he wanted abstraction. 

In an attempt to break from tradition and start establishing his own style, Weiler left DEFA and started splitting his time between Berlin and Dresden, creating his own pieces. He was eventually rehired by DEFA in 1977, where he worked until his retirement in 1989*.

A 1958 DEFA farm equipment short RS09 animated by Kurt Weiler

still utilizing the more naturalistic look under Johannes Hempel.

This isn't an exercise in choosing one over the other. The more traditional naturalistic animations are fabulous and, in my mind, are mini masterworks of craft and artistry; but imagine if Weiler hadn't strayed from the path! We wouldn't have the mind-boggling stream-of-consciousness wonder of shorts like Der Löwe Balthazar or Der Apfel (below). Beyond that, would we have the surreal oddness of Jan Swankmajer or the Brothers Quay?

Der Löwe Balthazar (The Lion Balthazar) 1970.

Der Apfel (The Apple) 1969.

Collected below are some later period Weiler animations. Of course there are too many for me to bother to link to on this page. The loading time alone for this post would become preposterous, so I've handpicked a few personal favorites. Many of the animations are interpretations of Grimm's Fairy Tales or Aesop's Fables, with a few originals thrown in, including the middle entry in the three episode Nörgal series. 

Enjoy!

Heldensage (translated roughly to "Hero Legend") 1985

an animated interpretation of an Aesop's Fable.

Nörgel & Schonne, Teil 2 (Norgel and Sons, Part 2) 1968.

Heinrich der Verhinderte (Heinrich Prevented) 1965.

Floh im Ohr (Flea In The Ear) 1970.

*Many of the biographical details about Kurt Weiler were gleaned from "Animation: A World History: Volume II: The Birth Of A Style – The Three Markets" by Giannalberto Bendazzi; Focal Press, Nov. 2015.