Vom Hirschkäfer zum Hakenkreuz

One of the leitmotifs in this special essay film, itself about special films, is the stag beetle (Hirschkäfer). This large beetle was a favourite object of study and a collector’s item in the early twentieth century. The development of the macro lens made the spectacular insect the protagonist in many a socalled Kulturfilm, a typically German film genre that largely flourished under the Third Reich. In these films, educational material and certainly also propaganda was brought to a mass audience. The makers show the bonds between the Kulturfilm phenomenon and the historic avantgarde movement. A famous avantgarde filmmaker like Walter Ruttmann made Kulturfilms for the Nazis in the 1930s. Also in style, the largely leftwing avantgarde films and the films made under the Hitler regime show striking similarities.The film has many associative side lines. Using a socalled historionaut they designed themselves, the makers find their way through a large amount of visual historical material. They also visited surviving filmmakers (such as Leni Riefenstahl) and focused on revivals of Nazi culture. The stag beetle may have become rare (in films and in nature), its history is still alive.