Living and working in Berlin in the beginning of the 20th century, he was one of the pioneers of cinema.
Koffler was born on June 7, 1879, in Zurawno, near Lemberg, now Lviv, Ukraine, when the city was in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire.
In 1911 he became the director of a theatre in Colmar, Alsace which was then in the German Empire (now in France).
He sang in a number of musicals and operas including Das Dreimäderlhaus, and Hänsel and Gretel at the Theater des Westens.
At the end World War I, Koffler moved back to Berlin in 1918, and started working in movies again, including work with a small Hungarian film company called Viktor Klein.