The Lost Einstein Film, 1922

JF Pak Science Books   Quick Post

[Source: http://www.kinematographie.de/EINSTEIN.JPG]

Here's a movie that no longer exists and that may not be such a great achievement but would also be something I'd like to see just because it suddenly existed again.  It was a movie called “The Basic Principles of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity” which premiered  at the Frankfurt  Trade Fair on April 2, 1922 and made by Walter Kornblum--it was about Einstein and relativity, and was about the first of its kind; it was a successful film, but with varying reviews, and then managed not to survive them. No copy survives, nothing left of it to speak of save descriptions of the film and the reviews that appeared in newspapers. There is however a terrific piece of research by Milena Wazeck¹ that reconstructs the film from a number of different sources--it is really a very impressive piece of work, a wonderful thing to read, watching the lost history unfold.  (Full text here; and see the abstract² below.)

Notes:

1. "The 1922 Einstein Film: Cinematic Innovation and Public Controversy", by Milena Wazeck,  (2010), Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Boltzmannstrasse 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00016-009-0008-7/fulltext.html And also this link for Wazeck http://www.milenawazeck.com/einstein-film.html

•  Also see the website Quellen zur Filmgeschichte 1922; Daten zum Einstein-Film//Einstein for film reviews:  http://www.kinematographie.de/EINSTEIN.HTML

• And see this 1923 film "The Einstein Theory of Relativity" by Max and Dave Fleischer,  http://vimeo.com/9832926 with mor eabout the film at  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Einstein_Theory_of_Relativity

2. "Abstract

In 1922 Hanns Walter Kornblum produced a long and comprehensive educational film on Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity that made extensive use of trick shots. His film was considered to be a milestone in the history of film and also in the popularization of science. Although the original film has been lost, I have reconstructed its content and its reception by members of the German film industry and cultural sector, laymen, scientists and academics, and politically motivated opponents based upon the large collection of newspaper clippings that was assembled by the antirelativist physicist Ernst Gehrcke."--Milena Wazeck