these color-corrected screengrabs are from the 1942 WEATHER-BEATEN MELODY and the 1943 THE SNOWMAN short films, both produced during the wartime in germany by HANS FISCHERKOESEN and his studio. considering the circumstances and the very limited resources I think these films are masterpieces. in the late seventies I met fischerkoesen’s son. he was still running his father’s animation studio near bonn right next to the river rhine, where some of the best animated commercials were produced in the fifties and sixties. he remembered the difficult war time when they produced the 3-dimensional settings for DIE VERWITTERTE MELODIE ( weather-beaten melody ) in an animation studio in prague with mostly tchech. animators. if you are interested you can see the shorts on YOU TUBE and there are several articles about this german animation pioneer as well on the internet.
© fischerkoesen
my name is hans bacher, – I work as production designer in the animation film industry. for the last 40 years I lived and worked in duesseldorf, london, paris, los angeles, manila and tokyo. now I am professor for film-design at the nanyang techn. university in singapore.
HI Hans,
I run THE WEATHERBEATEN MELODY for students in CGI programs and they cannot believe this man’s technique. It’s a little slow but very well made. Is there any place where I can get a print on DVD? The YouTube version is all I have for now.
Nancy:
I remember that the the German/French TV channel arte made a special programm on Fischerkoesen’s work a couple of years ago. I know that they do sell “custom made” DVDs if you ask them.
from hans
well, before the DVD era a special VHS edition with all the major fischerkoesen
films came out. of course I saved it on DVD myself…
I’m curious about the song at the end of The Snowman, what is it about?
These stills look in much better condition than the version I’ve seen on the Cartoons for Victory DVD.
This were my grandfather’s films … I’m trying to get these pictures into Wikipedia articles about the films, without success. Perhpas you can do it?
While he wasimprisoned by the Russians after the war (having been accused of being a Nazi) they asked his workers to provide the secrets of his techniques. They made a duplicate copy of all information, which I inherited, being the lone “techie” among many artistic heirs.
from hans -
I have sent you an e-mail about this
MY mother Johanna de Kleijn worked on these films about 1942-43 and she has some originals from the cartoon films she worked on…
from hans -
amazing!! could you e-mail me some reproductions of the original artwork, I will post in on my blog. thank you…
Hans – can you provide an email address for me to send them to ?
from hans -
center.for.visualarts@gmail.com