[6] 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.
[3] During the First World War, Fischerkoesen could not serve as a soldier because of his asthma, but he worked in army hospitals near to the front line where he witnessed the shocking horrors of trench warfare.
[6] In 1921, Fischerkoesen launched a highly successful advertising career with an ad for the Leipzig shoe factory Nordheimer, Bummel –Petrus (Strolling Peter).
[8] 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).
[5] Although the installation of the Nazi regime in 1933 did not affect too much of Fischerkoesen’s activity, the outbreak of the Second World War pushed his career on the verge of collapse, as the products that he had promoted so successfully were increasingly becoming luxury items.
[12] 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.
[14] 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.
[2] All three films respected Goebbels’ directives, as they were made without spoken dialogue, so it was easy to be played internationally without costly subtitles synchronisation, and used the “three dimensional” effects (especially The Snowman was highly appreciated during the rule of the National Socialists).
[14] Weather-Beaten Melody or Scherzo tells the story of a wasp who discovers an abandoned gramophone in a meadow and, with its stinger manages to make it play the Foxtrott Wenn die Woche keinen Sonntag hätt (If the Week had no Sunday).
[1] The animations satisfied Goebbels’ expectations, thanks to their technical qualities and to the message transmitted, similar to the Nazi ideology of Blut und Boden (Blood and Soil), which glorified the simplicity and the virtue of the rural life, the return to the nature and required everyone to stay where they belong.