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.