ABSTRACT
Paul Wegener was a famous German stage and film actor. He joined Max Reinhardt’s acting troupe in 1906 and became interested in film before World War I. He understood that movies were more than a novelty, more than an amusement attraction. In 1913, it was cinematographer Guido Seeber’s trick photography that enabled Wegener to act in a dual role on screen with his own doppelganger in The Student of Prague (Der Student von Prag), but it was still Wegener’s vision. One year later, Wegener originated the Golem character on screen. In a 1916 lecture, Wegener was the first stage actor to foresee new developments, interestingly not concerning live actors but animation, dreaming up an entirely new universe of synthetically created images that would transform images into a visual symphony of movement. After his return from the battlefields of Europe, had decided to enter animation and 24 years before Fantasia was released.
