Fritz Rotstadt, an enigmatic artist

Next year it will be a whole century since The cabinet of Doctor Caligari had its premier at the Marmorhaus theatre in Berlin. The film is today considered a masterwork by director Robert Wiene, starring glories of the German silent film as Lil Dagover, Conrad Veidt and Werner Krauss.

Less known is that the film was also Fritz Rotstadt’s claim to fame. Fritz Rotstadt held no role in the film, he was not part of the production team and had nothing to do with the shooting.

But one he did : he designed one of the film’s posters, the one I personally like the most.

It is hard to know much about this gifted artist. What I could gather are his dates of birth and death (1898 and 1976). He was born at Adler-Kosteletz, today Czech Republic, and after a period in France, he emigrated to the U.S in 1939, where he was known as Feodor Rimsky.

Apparently Rimsky was his real name and according to a web page by his son, he was born in Russia, and moved to Berlin in 1910, when he started using Rotstadt as his artist name. There, he designed, besides posters for theatres, also book covers. Unfortunately, I am unable to find any of this on the web.