[5] As a child, she became fascinated with this Chinese art of paper cutting of silhouette puppetry, and even built her own puppet theatre so that she could put on shows for her family and friends.

Reiniger translated her love of acting to her silhouette puppetry in order to create her unique and fanciful recreations of her favorite plays and fairytales.

In 1915, her love of theater led Reiniger to her future mentor and colleague when she attended a lecture by Wegener that focused on the fantastic possibilities of animation.

[7] She started making silhouette portraits of her classmates and the actors around her, which intrigued Paul Wegener and led to her future collaborations with the director.

It was here that she met her future creative partner and husband (from 1921), Carl Koch, as well as other avant-garde artists including Hans Cürlis, Bertolt Brecht, and Berthold Bartosch.

[11] She made six short films over the next few years, all produced and photographed by her husband, including the fairytale animation Aschenputtel (1922), based on the Brothers Grimm telling of Cinderella.

During this time, she found herself at the centre of a large group of ambitious German animators, including Bartosch, Hans Richter, Walter Ruttmann and Oskar Fischinger.

[10] In 1923, she was approached by Louis Hagen, who had bought a large quantity of raw film stock as an investment to fight the spiraling inflation of the period.

Completed in 1926, The Adventures of Prince Achmed is believed to be the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, debuting over a decade prior to Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

[17] A year later, Reiniger co-directed her first live-action film with Rochus Gliese, Die Jagd nach dem Glück (The Pursuit of Happiness, 1929), a tale about a shadow-puppet troupe.

When Ravel died in 1937, the clearance became even more complex and Reiniger finally abandoned the project, although she had designed sequences and animated some scenes to convince potential backers and the rights-holders.

[18] With the rise of the Nazi Party, Reiniger and Koch decided to emigrate (both were involved in left-wing politics),[17][19] but found that no other country would give them permanent visas.

When World War II commenced they stayed with Visconti in Rome until 1944, then moved back to Berlin to take care of Reiniger's sick mother.

With this company, she made over a dozen short silhouette films based on Grimms’ Fairy Tales for the BBC and Telecasting America.

[citation needed] During this time, she became friends with Freddy Bloom, the chair of the National Deaf Children's Society and editor of quarterly magazine called TALK, for which she designed a logo that was used until the 1990s.

With Louis Hagen Jr. (the son of Reiniger's financier of Prince Achmed in Potsdam), they founded Primrose Productions in 1953 and, over the next two years, produced more than a dozen short silhouette films based on Grimms' Fairy Tales for the BBC and Telecasting America.

[22] Reiniger was awarded the Filmband in Gold of the Deutscher Filmpreis in 1972; in 1979 she received the Great Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Reiniger's cutout animations had a fluid quality that expressed characters' emotions and actions in a way that was not possible through traditional silent film.

Because paper animations were forced to rely on gestures and action due to the nature of the medium, Reiniger was able to convey emotion that facial expressions or sound film could not imitate.

The influence of Karagiozis can be seen in Reiniger’s work where the subject of many of her films are long established fairy tale stories that have been enjoyed by generations of children and adults alike.

Films and television shows such as Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events,[31] Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1,[32] Steven Universe,[33] and Bram Stoker's Dracula all make reference to Reiniger’s style with extended animated silhouette puppet sequences.

Ocelot’s films, such as Princes et princesses, The Three Inventors, and Kirikou and the Sorceress showcase character designs and layouts deeply inspired by Reiniger.

[34] Walt Disney Animation Studios used the multiplane camera extensively in films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and The Old Mill, based on the technology that Reiniger originally developed.

[9] Reiniger served to be one of the first filmmakers in the 20th century to attempt a portrayal of the queer experience with a pair of openly gay lovers in her film The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

[38] The Filmmuseum Düsseldorf also holds many materials of Lotte Reiniger's work, including her animation table, and a part of the permanent exhibition is dedicated to her.