Der Kientopp (1907) - Reconstructed Text and Translation
A Dubious English Translation
Editorial note
The following translation was performed by AI (i.e., chatbotapp.ai). AI is prone to mistakes and hallucinations.
This translation is based on a reconstructed transcription of Hanns Heinz Ewers's "Der Kientopp," published in Morgen: Wochenschrift für deutsche Kultur, vol. 1, no. 18 (11 October 1907), pp. 578–579.
The original pages are missing from the digitized copy available to the editor, so this transcription has been reconstructed from published scholarly quotations, later German reprints, OCR/textual evidence, and a published English translation by . It should therefore be regarded as a working transcription rather than a verified diplomatic transcription of the 1907 pages. Historical spelling and punctuation have been retained where they can be established with reasonable confidence.
The wording of the cigarette, reverse-projection, noodle, childbirth, and Kopisch passages follows the sequence and details preserved in the published English translation; the German phrasing is reconstructed rather than claimed as a scan transcription.
The reconstructed transcription in German is included at the bottom of this page.
The Kientopp!
I heard this word for the first time when I returned to Berlin recently, and I fell in love with it at once. For four years, on three continents,[01] I went into the most godforsaken holes called “cinematograph theaters” (horrible!), but from now on I shall go only to Kientöppe. And I love the Berliners for having found this word: a popular expression that strikingly proves their love of the good cause.[02]
There is no point of view from which the Kientopp would not deserve to be greeted with loud applause.
Educationally: where else do you learn so easily, so effortlessly, a thousand things that lie far, far beyond your horizon? What very best book can give you such an idea of foreign countries? Father, send your children to the Kientopp! It is better than Sunday school! And go in yourself!
For amusement: these are the circenses of the twentieth century! Admission to the Kientopp costs ten pfennigs; no disreputable music hall is so cheap. And in none of the best is it so much fun. What philistine is so utterly philistine, down to his bones, that he could not enjoy the delightful Parisian burlesques?[03]
Hygienically: no one smokes or drinks there. And even the bad air is still far better than that in beer cellars and schnapps shops. The Kientopp is economical both for the lungs and for the pocketbook.
And so on!
But what good does it do if I beat the advertising drum for the Kientopp in this journal and address myself to classes of people who do not read it anyway? So I shall put aside my soft felt hat, put on my top hat, and now preach to the intellectuals: Go to the Kientopp!
It is not as though the intellectual could not learn a great deal in the Kientopp as well—something new every week. But here he could also experience, as an added attraction, some exceedingly strange pleasures. One especially remarkable pleasure, for example, is “the pleasure of suspended causality.”[04]
It is not entirely easy to think one's way into this pleasure, for our stupid intellect is always subject to the tyranny of cause and effect. Then along comes Herr Kientopp and puts his film into the apparatus backward. A small artistic trick—and he turns the history of the world upside down: the effect becomes the cause, and the cause the effect.
Let us take a simple example. I take a cigarette, put it in my mouth, light it with a match, and smoke. The cigarette glows and grows smaller, the ash falls down, the paper burns, and finally I throw away the stub.
Now let the film run backward. A burning cigarette stub flies up from the ground into my mouth. I smoke; the cigarette grows longer and longer, and the ash flies back out of the ashtray into the cigarette, changing back into paper until my cigarette is whole again. Then I am holding a match that has already been burned, which likewise becomes whole again, and whose flame goes out at the very instant I strike it against the matchbox.
Michel eats, and the noodles come out of his mouth; his child crawls out of the midwife’s arms and back into its mother’s womb![05]
Who says that all the prophets are dead? Was not the splendid August Kopisch a great prophet when he wrote his poem about the great crayfish?[06]
And if we want to let our imaginations run a little wild: take any situations, actions, or events and mix them up according to inductive and deductive methods. With a little practice, one would become the greatest sophist ever to have been turned upside down.
Like every young art, the art of the Kientopp is for the time being still chiefly copying nature. For now, that is the best thing it has to offer.
What people have created for it so far is partly hideous, like those silly magic scenes, and partly lively and amusing, like the Parisian burlesques—but highly unsatisfying to more refined tastes.
Where are the poets and painters who will create for the Kientopp?
Many have already done so unconsciously. The greatest among them is Shakespeare; his Richard III would receive better and more intelligible treatment in the Kientopp than it does on many a theater stage.[07]
Or take Hogarth: arrange several of his scenes in sequence and let them whir through the cinematograph, and you will see how this artist comes to life.[08]
Today, however, we know the Kientopp and can create consciously for it. Here lies a new territory for art, an as-yet uncultivated field. Who will help cultivate it?
And you, esteemed Mr. Censor, who have committed—and continue to commit—so many stupidities, do something for once for which people may thank you.[09]
You now possess absolute power. Appoint an artistic adviser—and a good one, at that—for no one expects you yourself to understand anything about art!
And when the artists then come and submit their Kientopp pieces to you—and they will come!—let the chaff be separated from the wheat, suppress kitsch, and help art![10]
If you do that, I shall write the first Kientopp piece for you and make you the hero.
Footnotes
Researched and edited with the assistance of AI. I have fact-checked the additional material, but AI is prone to mistakes and hallucinations. Nothing in the footnotes section are suitable references for a research project. I encourage scholars to confirm the facts themselves.
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For four years, on three continents
Ewers and his wife had spent time on the island of Capri, in Spain, in Central America, and in the Caribbean in the four years prior to this article.
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Kientopp / Kientöppe
Berlin colloquialism (early 20th century) for cinema, derived from “Kinematograph.” The spelling with ie was common; modern German usually prefers Kintopp. Ewers later claimed (incorrectly) to have invented the word; his 1907 essay itself presents it as a popular Berlin expression he had just encountered.
Sources:
Anton Kaes, Nicholas Baer, and Michael Cowan, eds., The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 (2016).
DWDS entry “Kintopp.” -
circenses of the twentieth century
Allusion to Juvenal’s famous phrase panem et circenses (“bread and circuses”) from Satires X, criticizing the Roman populace for trading political engagement for free grain and public spectacles. Ewers repurposes the term positively for cheap, popular film entertainment.
Sources:
Juvenal, Satires X.77–81.
Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Bread and circuses.” -
the pleasure of suspended causality
Ewers’s most original theoretical contribution in the essay: the aesthetic delight produced by running film backward so that effect precedes cause. This early reflection on cinema’s power to disrupt linear time anticipates later film theory on montage and temporal manipulation. The motif of reversed or suspended causality also resonates with the disorienting, dream-like logic of Ewers's horror tales (e.g., the inexplicable suicides in The Spider and the occult causality of the Frank Braun novels).
Source:
Anton Kaes et al., eds., The Promise of Cinema (2016). -
Michel eats… back into its mother’s womb
Comic examples of reverse projection: noodles returning to the eater’s mouth and a newborn crawling back into the womb. Such tricks were common attractions in early actuality and trick films (e.g., by Méliès and Pathé).
Sources:
Contemporary accounts of reverse-motion films in early cinema literature.
Kaes et al., The Promise of Cinema. -
August Kopisch… poem about the great crayfish
August Kopisch (1799–1853), German poet and painter, author of the humorous folk-style ballad “Der große Krebs im See” (The Great Crab in the Lake). In the poem a gigantic crab, when freed, forces the entire world to move backward: food returns from mouth to plate, bread becomes flour, houses become trees, and so on. Ewers cites it as a prophetic anticipation of cinematic reverse motion. The playful, almost surreal humor is characteristic of Kopisch and of Ewers's own lighter journalistic pieces.
Sources:
August Kopisch, “Der große Krebs im See,” in various 19th-century anthologies (e.g., Wolff’s Poetischer Hausschatz).
Deutsche Biographie entry on Kopisch. -
Shakespeare; his Richard III
Ewers argues that Shakespeare's history plays, especially the visual and sequential drama of Richard III, are naturally suited to the new medium. This is one of the earliest published calls by a major German writer for literary artists to write specifically for the cinema. Ewers himself later became an important early screenwriter (Der Student von Prag, 1913). The same interest in adapting high literary material to popular or sensational forms appears throughout his fiction.
Sources:
Kaes et al., The Promise of Cinema.
Contemporary reviews of Ewers’s film work. -
Hogarth
William Hogarth (1697-1764), English painter and engraver famous for sequential narrative series such as A Rake’s Progress and Marriage A-la-Mode. Ewers sees these pictorial sequences as proto-cinematic. The idea of arranging still images into temporal narrative is a recurring theme in early film theory.
Sources:
Standard art-historical accounts of Hogarth’s narrative series.
Early 20th-century comparisons of Hogarth and cinema. -
Mr. Censor
Reference to the Prussian/German film censorship authorities of the period, who already exercised considerable power over public exhibitions. Ewers’s half-serious plea that the censor appoint an artistic adviser and foster quality film anticipates later debates about state involvement in cinema. The same mixture of provocation, aesthetic ambition, and engagement with authority runs through Ewers's career, including his later political and film work.
Sources:
Histories of early German film censorship.
Kaes et al., The Promise of Cinema. -
Thematic overview across the Ewers pages
The call for artists to create consciously for the new medium also prefigures in Ewers's own later work as screenwriter (e.g., The Student of Prague (1913 & 1926), The Ideal Wife (1913), Evinrude (1913), Hans Westmar (1933)) and the broader modernist interest in intermedial experiment.
Sources:
Comparative reading of the EvilMonk Ewers corpus.
Kaes et al., The Promise of Cinema.
Bibliography and Further Reading
Researched and edited with the assistance of AI. I have not personally referenced a majority of the books or articles listed below.
Primary sources
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Ewers, Hanns Heinz. “Der Kientopp.” Morgen: Wochenschrift für deutsche Kultur 1, no. 18 (11 October 1907): 578 - 579.
The original German text of "Der Kientopp" (1907) by Hanns Heinz Ewers-a seminal early essay on film theory where he famously popularized the word Kintopp-is not widely available as a free, standalone text online due to its niche nature, but it can be accessed through specific historical archives and print collections:
• "Kino-Debatte: Texte zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Film 1909–1929" (edited by Anton Kaes, published by Niemeyer/Tübingen). This is the standard German scholarly sourcebook for early film essays and contains Ewers' original text.,br> • "Kein Tag ohne Kino: Schriftsteller über den Film" (edited by Fritz Güttinger). This collection explicitly features "Der Kientopp" on pages 12–14. -
Ewers, Hanns Heinz. "Der Kientopp." translation by Eric Ames in The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933., Kaes, Anton, Nicholas Baer, and Michael Cowan, editors. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016
The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933 is an authoritative collection of primary source documents and essays, including the seminal text by Hanns Heinz Ewers (translated here by Eric Ames).
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Kopisch, August. “Der große Krebs im See.” In various 19th-century anthologies (e.g., Wolff, Poetischer Hausschatz des deutschen Volkes).
The humorous ballad of the gigantic crab that forces the world to run backward.
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Juvenal. Satires, especially Satire X.
Source of the phrase panem et circenses.
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Shakespeare, William. Richard III.
Cited by Ewers as especially suited to cinematic treatment.
Modern scholarly sources
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Kaes, Anton, Nicholas Baer, and Michael Cowan, eds. The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933. University of California Press, 2016.
An authoritative collection of primary source documents and essays, including the seminal text by Hanns Heinz Ewers, providing essential context for early German film theory.
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Seelinger, Christoph. Studies referencing early reception of cinema and Ewers (various articles and the 2022 PDF Tod im Kino: Indexikalisches Sterben in ikonisch.).
A scholarly examination of the cinematic medium. It examines early film aesthetics and receptions with reference to Ewers.
Reference Texts
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DWDS (Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache). Entry “Kintopp.”
Etymology and usage history of the Berlin colloquialism.
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Encyclopaedia Britannica. Entries on “Bread and circuses,” Hogarth, and early cinema.
Concise background on classical allusion and visual narrative.
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Deutsche Biographie. Entry on August Kopisch.
Biographical and literary context for the crayfish poem.
Reconstructed Transcript of the German Text
Editorial note
The following German text is a reconstructed transcription of Hanns Heinz Ewers's "Der Kientopp," published in Morgen: Wochenschrift für deutsche Kultur, vol. 1, no. 18 (11 October 1907), pp. 578–579. The original pages are missing from the digitized copy available on line, so this transcription has been reconstructed from published scholarly quotations, later German reprints, OCR/textual evidence, and the published English translation. It should therefore be regarded as a working transcription rather than a verified authentic transcription of the 1907 pages. Historical spelling and punctuation have been retained where they can be established with reasonable confidence.
The wording of the cigarette, reverse-projection, noodle, childbirth, and Kopisch passages follows the sequence and details preserved in the published English translation; the German phrasing is reconstructed rather than claimed as a scan transcription.
It is not suitable for citation or academic research. I encourage scholars to locate the article in the orginal German published in periodicals or books.
Der Kientopp!
Ich hörte dies Wort zum erstenmal, als ich jetzt wieder nach Berlin zurückkam, und habe mich sofort darin verliebt. Vier Jahre lang bin ich auf drei Kontinenten in die verlassensten Löcher „Kinematographen-Theater“ (greulich!) gegangen, von jetzt ab gehe ich nur noch in „Kientöppe“. Und ich liebe die Berliner, daß sie dies Wort gefunden haben: ein Volkswort, das schlagend ihre Liebe zu der guten Sache beweist.
Es gibt keinen Punkt, von dem betrachtet der Kientopp nicht mit lautem Beifall zu begrüßen wäre.
Erzieherisch: wo anders lernst du so leicht, so spielend tausend Dinge, die weit, weitab von deinem Horizont liegen? Welches beste Buch ist imstande, dir einen solchen Begriff von fremden Ländern zu geben? Vater, schicke deine Kinder in den Kientopp! Er ist besser wie die Sonntagsschule! Und gehe selbst hinein!
Amüsierend: das sind die circenses des 20. Jahrhunderts! Der Kientopp kostet 10 Pf. Eintritt, kein schlechtes Tingel-Tangel ist so billig. Und in keinem besten ist es so lustig. Welcher Banause ist so bis auf die Knochen verphilistert, um sich nicht über die köstlichen Pariser Burlesken zu freuen.
Hygienisch: Es wird nicht geraucht noch getrunken. Und die schlechte Luft ist noch immer viel besser als in den Bierkellern und Schnapsboutiquen. Der Kientopp ist ökonomisch für die Lunge wie für den Geldbeutel.
Und so weiter!
Aber was nutzt es, wenn ich in diesem Blatte für den Kientopp Reklame trompete und mich an Schichten wende, die es doch nicht lesen? Ich will also den Schlapphut ablegen und den Zylinder aufsetzen und nun den Intellektuellen predigen: Geht in den Kientopp!
Es ist ja nicht so, als ob der Intellektuelle im Kientopp nicht auch viel lernen könnte, jede Woche etwas Neues. Aber er könnte hier auch als Zugabe ganz merkwürdige Genüsse erleben. Ein ganz besonderer ist zum Beispiel der „Genuß der aufgehobenen Kausalität“.
Es ist nicht ganz leicht, sich in diesen Genuß hineinzudenken, denn unser dummer Verstand steht immer unter der Tyrannei von Ursache und Wirkung. Da kommt nun der Herr Kientopp und steckt seinen Film rückwärts in den Apparat. Ein kleiner Kunstgriff – und er stellt die Geschichte der Welt auf den Kopf: die Wirkung wird zur Ursache, die Ursache zur Wirkung.
Nehmen wir ein einfaches Beispiel. Ich nehme eine Zigarette, stecke sie in den Mund, zünde sie mit einem Streichholz an und rauche. Die Zigarette glimmt und wird kleiner, die Asche fällt herab, das Papier verbrennt, und schließlich werfe ich den Stummel fort.
Nun lasse man den Film rückwärts laufen. Vom Erdboden fliegt ein brennender Zigarettenstummel in meinen Mund. Ich rauche, die Zigarette wird länger und länger, und die Asche fliegt aus dem Aschenbecher zurück in die Zigarette, verwandelt sich wieder in Papier, bis meine Zigarette wieder ganz ist. Dann halte ich ein schon abgebranntes Streichholz in der Hand, das ebenfalls wieder ganz wird, und dessen Flamme im Augenblick erlischt, in dem ich es an der Schachtel entzünde.
Michel ißt, und die Nudeln kommen aus seinem Munde; sein Kind kriecht aus den Armen der Hebamme wieder zurück in den Leib der Mutter!
Wer sagt, daß die Propheten alle tot sind? War nicht der prächtige August Kopisch ein großer Prophet, als er sein Gedicht von dem großen Krebs schrieb?
Und wenn wir ein wenig phantasieren wollen: Man nehme beliebige Situationen, Handlungen oder Ereignisse und mische sie nach induktiven und deduktiven Methoden durcheinander. Mit ein wenig übung würde man der größte Sophist werden, der je auf den Kopf gestellt worden ist.
Wie jede junge Kunst, so schreibt auch die Kientoppkunst einstweilen in der Hauptsache noch von der Natur ab. Das ist vorläufig das Beste, was sie zu bieten hat.
Was die Menschen bisher für sie geschaffen haben, ist zum Teil scheußlich, wie jene albernen Zauberszenen, zum Teil lustig und amüsant, wie die Pariser Burlesken, aber für den feineren Geschmack höchst unbefriedigend.
Wo bleiben die Dichter und Maler, die für den Kientopp schaffen?
Viele haben es schon unbewußt getan. Der größte unter ihnen ist Shakespeare; sein Richard III. würde im Kientopp eine bessere und verständlichere Behandlung erfahren als auf mancher Theaterbühne.
Oder nehmen wir Hogarth; man reihe einige seiner Szenen aneinander und lasse sie durch den Kinematographen surren, und man wird sehen, wie dieser Künstler lebendig wird.
Heute aber kennen wir den Kientopp und können bewußt für ihn schaffen. Hier liegt ein neues Gebiet für die Kunst, ein noch unbebautes Feld. Wer wird helfen, es zu bebauen?
Und du, verehrter Herr Zensor, der du so viele Dummheiten gemacht hast und noch machst, tu einmal etwas, wofür man dir danken darf.
Du hast jetzt die absolute Gewalt. Nimm dir einen künstlerischen Beirat, und zwar einen guten – denn daß du selbst etwas von Kunst verstehst, erwartet ja niemand von dir!
Und wenn die Künstler dann kommen und dir ihre Kientoppstücke einreichen – und sie werden kommen! – dann laß die Spreu vom Weizen scheiden und unterdrücke den Kitsch und hilf der Kunst!
Wenn du das tust, dann schreibe ich dir das erste Kientoppstück und mache dich zum Helden.