Lotte Reiniger (1899–1981)

Lotte Reiniger was born in Berlin to cultured parents. She showed artistic ability from an early age and created her own shadow-theatre at home with paper and cardboard. Originally, she planned to become an actress and studied with Max Reinhardt. Her skill at silhouette portraiture attracted the attention of film director Paul Wegener, who invited her to make silhouettes for the intertitles for two of his silent movies. He also introduced her to a group of avant-garde artists who were setting up an experimental animation studio, the Berliner Institut für Kulturforschung. In 1919, she made her first film for the institute, Das Ornament des verliebten Herzens (The Ornament of a Loving Heart). In 1921, she married Carl Koch, who also served as her creative partner and producer. She became a pioneer of silhouette animation, anticipating the work of Walt Disney by more than 10 years. Lotte Reiniger made her most famous work, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), considered the first full-length animated film, while still in her twenties. For the rest of her 60-year career she made mostly short films, commercials, and sequences to be inserted in films. She also created book illustrations. When the Nazi regime rose to power in Germany, she and her husband, both politically left-wing, went into exile, moving from country to country for years, and managed to continue making films. During World War II, the couple lived in Rome with Luchino Visconti until 1944. After the war, they moved to London, where they co-founded Primrose Productions with writer-journalist Louis Hagen and made children's films for the BBC and others. After her husband's death in 1963, she returned to live in Germany.