Robert Wiene and
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Wiene was from a theatrical family but was originally trained as a lawyer. He was a generation older than most of the other key figures of German film of this era. He was almost certainly from a Jewish background although he publicly denied this.

Wiene started his theater and film career as a writer, but by the late teens he had moved to directing. He is most remembered for Caligari but did many other films during the 1920s and was considered one of the era's most important filmmakers. After Hitler's rise, he fled to London, then Paris where he died in 1938.

Caligari was written by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz. However, the film they wrote was different than the the way it finally appeared. The Mayer-Janowitz script ended with Caligari in a strait jacket locked in a cell. The film has a different ending (we'll discuss it later).

Caligari might be best known for its set and costume design by Herman Warm, Walter Rohrig, and Walter Reimann. Warm, Rohrig, and Reimann were affiliated with the Sturm group, a group of authors and artists who created a magazine called Der Sturm (The Storm) in 1910. Der Sturm was on the cutting edge of avant garde literature and art, and published work by Anatole France (author), Max Brod (author and Kafka friend/biographer), Heinrich Mann (author, critic of fascism), Wassily Kandinsky (painter) and many others.

Next: Caligari Data