Documentary filmmaker Martin Rikli & the German film industry, 1923-1945:
A brief annotated bibliography.
Compiled by Daniel A. Reboussin, Ph.D. April 15, 2005.
Archiv deutscher Wochenschauen (German newsreel archives). Electronic resource available via the web
at: http://www.wochenschau-archiv.de Viewed April 12, 2005.
Streaming video for over 6,000 newsreels is available with registration. Useful film and German
archives related links are included on the site.
Brandt, Hans-Jiirgen. 1983. "Portrit Martin Rikli." Filmfaust 36 (Oct No1 ) 45-55.
Biographical article on the career and films of Martin Rikli.
Deutsche Filminstitut. Electronic resource available via the web at: http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/
Viewed April 14, 2005.
Includes a biography of Martin Rikli, a brief bibliography of his writing with a useful
filmography.
Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau 'v, im, i (Friedrich Wilhelm Mumau Foundation). Electronic resource available
via the web at: http://www.mumau-stiftung.de/ Viewed April 12, 2005.
Includes English language information on World War Two era films and a searchable database
that includes more than fifty (documentary, cultural and expedition or adventure) films directed or
scripted by Martin Rikli.
Giesen, Rolf. Nazi propaganda films: a history andj/, i. ,~-h. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Co., 2003.
Rikli's Luftwaffe documentary film Flieger, Funker und Kanoniere is mentioned on page 77.
Hoffmann, Hilmar. The triumph of propaganda: film and national socialism, 1933-1945; transl. John A.
Broadwin and V.R. Berghahn. Providence: Berghahn Books, 1996.
Chapter 5: "The nonfictional genres of Nazi film propaganda," pp. 115-134 includes a section on
Universum-F. li-,. -, i..i, i. .. i-/, .it (Ufa) and cultural film and mentions Rikli'sX-Rays, Infinite
Outer Space and Invisible Clouds pointing out (p. 115) that more than 100 German cultural films
circulated through US cinemas in thousands of prints during 1926-1929.
Hoffmann, Kay. 2004. "Propagandistic problems of German newsreels in World War II." Historical Journal
of Film, Radio and Television 24(1): 133-140.
Questions the propaganda value of newsreels with the German public during the war, due in part
to technical problems and political disputes among the propaganda, military and political annrms of
the Third Reich authorities.
Kreimeier, Klaus. The Ufa story: A history of Germany's greatest film company, 1918-1945; transl. Robert
and Rita Kimber. New York: Hill & Wang, 1996.
Privy Councillor Dr. Alfred Hugenberg headed Germany's largest and most prestigious film
company, Ufa from March 1927 until his ownership was transferred to the National Socialist Party
government with the March 18, 1937 nationalization of the company via purchase of his stock (pp.
158, 259-260).
Leopold, John A. Alfred Hugenberg: The radical nationalist campaign against the Weimar Republic. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1977.
Nelson, Richard A. 1977. "Germany and the German Film, 1930-1945: An Annotated Research
Bibliography. Part I: Books, Dissertations and Pamphlets." Journal of the University Film Association
29(1):45-66.
Cites Rikli's 1942 Ich Filmte fir Millionen on page 61.
O'Brien, Mary-Elizabeth. Nazi cinema as enchantment: the politics of entertainment in the Third Reich.
Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004.
Includes a section on adventure and expedition films as parts of the cultural film genre.
Rikli_bibliography.doc (MS Word 2000)
Rikli bibliography
Rikli, Martin. Abhaengigkeit der Entflammbarkeit photographischer Zelluloidfilms vom chemischen Alter.
[Maschinenschrift, 156 S.] Dresden Ti H., v. 27 Maerz 1923 (1926). U26.7234.
Rikli's dissertation on the chemical deterioration and inflammability of celluloid film, conducted
at the Technical University of Dresden. Included in Uricchio (1987), below.
-----. Ichfilmte flr Millionen;Fahrten, Abenteuer und Erinnerungen eines Filmberichters. Berlin:
Schiitzen-Verlag, 1942.
412 p. illus. (map) plates, ports. 21 cm. "Mit 154 Aufnahmen des Verfassers." Includes
photographs from Africa.
--.--- Seltsames Abessinien, als Filmberichterstatter am Hofdes Negus, Zurich: Interverlag, 1947.
207 p. plates, ports. 23 cm. ["mit Originalaufnahmen des Verfassers und einem Beitrag,
Abessinien von Heute, Aufschwung seit des Kaisers Riickkehr, von P. Hall-Boller."]
Schoeps, Karl-Heinz. Literature andfilm in the Third Reich; transl. Kathleen M. Dell'Orto. Rochester,
N.Y.: Camden House, 2004.
After 1933 all members of the film industry had to be individual members of the Reich Film
Chamber (RFK, Reichsfilmkammer) under the propaganda minister Josef Goebbels (pp. 206-207).
Uricchio, William. 1987. "German University Dissertations with Motion Picture Related Topics: 1910-
1945." Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 7(2):175-190.
Welch, David. Propaganda and the German cinema, 1933-1945. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2001.
Chapter 1: "The history and organization of the Nazi cinema" (pp. 5-32) is useful for
understanding how the technically independent film production studios were made to comply with
the agenda of the National Socialist Party under the Third Reich with a system of negative
taxation via "distinction marks" (Priifstelle Pradikat) for tax reductions or exemptions, even prior
to complete nationalization in 1937-1938. See also Zonal Film Archives (1996), below.
Winkel, Roel Vande. 2004. "Nazi newsreels in Europe, 1939-1945: the many faces of Ufa's foreign weekly
newsreel (Auslandstonwoche) versus German's weekly newsreel (Deutsche Wochenschau)."
Historical Journal of Film. Radio and Television 24(1):5-34.
Film historians have paid less attention to newsreels during the Third Reich than to feature films,
though newsreel footage is the source of an overwhelming majority of images used by television
documentaries about the Second World War and therefore determines much of the popular image
of the war. Despite a powerful interest in controlling the medium, no high-ranking National
Socialist Party official ever attempted to introduce a state or party-produced newsreel, other than
some films of party rallies shot by amateurs (p. 6). Disputes among the propaganda, military and
political arms of the Third Reich illustrate that Goebbels sometimes failed to have footage
included in newsreels that he deemed of utmost importance (p. 10).
Zglinicki, Friedrich Pruss von. Der Weg des Films; die Geschichte der Kinematographie und ihrer
Vorlaufer. Berlin: Rembrandt, 1956.
A brief discussion of Kulturfilm in the 1920s and '30s mentions Rikli, among others (p. 579).
Zonal Film Archives (Hamburg, Germany). Catalogue of forbidden German feature and short film
productions held in Zonal Film Archives of Film Section, Information Services Division, Control
Commission for Germany, (BE). Original text by John F. Kelson. [Note: "This edition edited with a
new introduction and material selected by K.R.M. Short in association with the Imperial War
Museum."] Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1996.
The Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle der deutschen Filmwirtschaft or FSK (see entry forAls man anfing
zu filmen in the accompanying Rikli filmography) was a voluntary self-censorship film board
created in 1949 in West Germany under the SPIO (Nt':.,. '.',, ''i'... der Filmwirtschaft e. V.,
successor to the Arbeitsausschuf3 der I, n .l ,, i ih). FSK worked in conjunction with the Allied
film censorship authority, the Tripartite Advisory and Coordinating Film Committee (pp. xii, xvi-
xvii), to identify films that would not be shown to the German public.
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