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Ferdinand Diehl was born on 20 May 1901 in Unterwössen near Traunstein (Upper Bavaria). His father was a painter. After graduating from secondary school in 1919, he first learned violin making. He then moved to Munich, where he attended the School of Arts and Crafts. In 1927, he got a job at the animation table in the cultural department of the Emelka film company in Munich-Geiselgasteig. He also brought in his younger brother Hermann (*1906) as an animator.
When the cultural department closed in 1928, the Diehl brothers started making their first own film, a silhouette film inspired by Lotte Reiniger's technique, "Kalif Storch", based on the fairy tale by Wilhelm Hauff. The studio of their father, who had died shortly before, now served as their studio, a storage room of just 32 square metres. From the Emelka production company, which was struggling financially, they bought an Ernemann camera, converted it to single-frame operation and built their own animation table: on it the silhouette figures were illuminated by light from above and animated with the stop-motion method. Ferdinand's and Hermann's eldest brother, Paul (*1886), was also involved in the production. The 20-minute film was completed in 1930, after two years of work. By this time, however, sound film was already established, so that the silent film "Kalif Storch" no longer received much attention.
After this silhouette film, the three brothers turned to puppet animation - and received a lot of attention, at least in professional circles. Ferdinand Diehl was the director and animator for the films, Paul acted as scriptwriter, while Herrmann created the elaborate and innovative puppets. Until then, most animated puppets had immobile faces and rigid limbs. The new Diehl puppets had interchangeable facial expressions (especially for the mouth parts) and an elaborate metal skeleton with ball joints and movable limbs.
The brothers initially produced supporting programmes for feature films, of which the adventures of the grotesque character Wupp (1931-33) were particularly popular. Following on from this apparent recipe for success, they created other films with what were seen as bizarre and whimsical characters. The Diehls also made small advertising films.
In 1933, the brothers founded Gebrüder Diehl-Filmproduktion in Gräfelfing near Munich. Although the Nazis classified the grotesque characters like Wupp as "alien to the people", the 'Reichsstelle für den Unterrichtsfilm' (RfdU, Reich Office for Teaching Films), founded in 1935, became a major client of the Diehls - albeit with different themes and characters: the brothers made a large number of fairy tale films for the RfdU. The first of these, "Von einem der auszog, das Gruseln zu lernen" (1935, Brother Grimm's "Story of the Youth Who Went Forth to Learn What Fear Was"), was popular with schoolchildren because of its idiosyncratic design and remarkably eerie atmosphere, but sparked sharp discussions among teachers for the same reason. At the 1937 World's Fair in Paris, the Diehls were awarded gold medals for this film and for "Tischlein deck' dich" (1936, Brothers Grimm's fairytale "The Wishing-Table, the Gold-Ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack"). In addition, they continued to make advertising films.
Probably the most ambitious Diehl production of these years was the 55-minute Brothers Grimm adaptation "Die sieben Raben" (1937, Grimm's "The Seven Ravens"), in which the puppets were created based on drawings by Moritz von Schwind. The fairly creepy film did not go down well with the audience, but received very good reviews. Paul Diehl (screenplay) thought that a reason for the more negative audience reviews was the classification of animated puppet films as children's entertainment. In 1941, he wrote in the film magazine Film und Bild: "Playing with puppets [is] regarded as something inferior to films made with humans, suitable at best for small children, but a quantité négligeable for adults (...)."
The Diehl brothers probably most famous animated film was also made in 1938 collaboration with the RfdU: "Hase und Igel" (based on the Brothers Grimm's "The Race between the Hare the Hedgehog"). Like most of their fairy tale films, it was produced as a silent film with intertitles for budget reasons. Hermann Diehl designed the hedgehog puppet using real hedgehog hair, Paul wrote pedagogical texts to accompany the film, while the brothers' mother sewed the costumes. As almost always, Ferdinand directed the film. The film was such a great success that the Diehls had postcards printed with the hedgehog figure.
The hedgehog did not have a name at that time. It was only after the war, when he became the mascot of the radio magazine Hörzu and was marketed as a play doll by the Steiff company, that he was given a name: Mecki. Later, Ferdinand Diehl summed up that of the thousand or so dolls he and his brother Herrmann had created, only this one was really successful. Decades later, the licence income from the hedgehog figure was still the financial basis of Diehl-Film und Verlag KG.
Other Diehl films until 1945 included "Tapferes Schneiderlein" (1938, Grimm's "The Brave Little Tailor"), "Max und Moritz" (1941) and "Dornröschen" (1941, Grimm's "Sleeping Beauty"). With their work for the RfdU, the brothers were not subject to the Ministry of Propaganda, but to the Ministry of Education, nevertheless their films were politically instrumentalised by the Nazis. The trade journal Kinder- und Jugendfilm Korrespondenz wrote in 2010: "Schools had also long since begun to reinterpret fairy tales - and thus also the Diehl brothers' fairy tale films - in a National Socialist way. 'Die Stadtmaus und die Feldmaus', for example, was perfectly suited to strengthen the sense of belonging to the homeland and at the same time to propagate against the rural exodus (...) The National Socialist teaching system had robbed the ideology-free films of the Diehl brothers of their innocence". It is noteworthy to mention that Paul Diehl had already taken a very critical look at Nazi ideology in his book "Wohin führt uns der Nationalsozialismus?" in 1931.
Some Diehl fairy tale films were used to entertain the troops in the front-line cinemas and counted as film adaptations of "German cultural treasures" that needed to be defended. In this context, the very elaborate "Die Erstürmung einer mittelalterlichen Stadt um das Jahr 1350" (1944) can be seen as an attempt by the brothers to escape the demand for regime-strengthening works through the purely historical-didactic treatment of a war theme.
After the end of the war and the Nazi era, the Diehls initially kept their heads above water with the HofBühne, a travelling hand puppet theatre. In November 1948, their company was finally granted a production licence. The following year, Paul, who had embarked on a career in politics, finally withdrew from the film business.
In the following years, Ferdinand and Hermann Diehl mainly made numerous advertising films. In 1952, Mecki also came to the attention of the Allies: on the initiative of the Americans, Ferdinand Diehl made further hedgehog films for the German newsreel Neue deutsche Wochenschau from 1950 to 1958 in which the cute character was intended to convey democratic values to the Germans.
Besides Mecki, only one other Diehl character achieved a certain popularity: Kasperl Larifari. He was the hero of the second feature-length Diehl production (after "Die sieben Raben") in 1950, "Immer wieder Glück". In it, Kasper searches for a magic flower on a distant island to cure the sick princess. The elaborately designed film was a success, so that another Kasperl Larifari adventure soon followed: "Der Flaschenteufel" (1952, based on Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Bottle Imp"), which was not made with animated puppets, but (to shorten the production time) with rod and hand puppets. Since Ferdinand Diehl was not satisfied with the result despite the innovative puppet design, "Der Flaschenteufel" remained their only work with rod and hand puppets. In 1956, the short films "Kasperl und die Wunderschachtel" and "Kasperl im Wilden Westen" followed.
In the course of the 1950s, however, the children's film market lost its appeal for many producers. In addition to competition from children's programmes on television, the new law for the protection of minors proved to be an obstacle, as it contained a general ban on cinema for children under the age of six. As a result, the Diehls stopped producing for the cinema. They still produced individual advertising films as well as short films, which were also released in 8mm cine film format.
In 1960, the elaborate animated film "Gutenberg" was produced in cooperation with the Institut für Film und Bild in Wissenschaft und Unterricht (Institute for Film and Image in Science and Education) and the Cultural Film Fund of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia: it shows late Gothic rooms, parlours, churches, workshops, the marketplace in front of Mainz Cathedral as well as a model of the first book printer's press including a typesetting box in lifelike reproduction. The costumes and faces were designed according to old engravings and picture plates. Alongside "Die sieben Raben" and "Die Erstürmung einer mittelalterlichen Stadt um das Jahr 1350", "Gutenberg" was the highlight of the naturalistic Diehl puppet show.
This did not change the fact that the Diehls were facing an increasingly precarious economic situation, and Hermann finally withdrew. To keep the studio running, Ferdinand Diehl had to rent it out regularly to other filmmakers and companies. At the end of the 1960s, he made two short fairy tale films in colour: "Die Wichtelmänner" (1968, Brothers Grimm's "The Elves and the Shoemaker") and "Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten" (1970, Brothers Grimm's "Town Musicians of Bremen"), for which his son Anton designed the puppets. He moved away from the aesthetics of the typical, naturalistic Diehl puppets and designed them more reduced and "modern", but no less expressive. These were the last two films made by Gebrüder Diehl Filmproduktion. The company ceased operations in 1970. The Mecki licences secured Diehl's livelihood.
Ferdinand Diehl died on 27 August 1992 in Gräfelfing. The Diehl brothers' estate is administered by the DFF - Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum in Frankfurt am Main.