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Walter Ruttmann «Tri-Ergon optical sound recording»
Walter Ruttmann, «Tri-Ergon optical sound recording», 1922
Photography | © Walter Ruttmann
1930 saw the first attempts to produce radio plays with the Tri-Ergon-Technology (Walter Ruttmann's collage «Weekend» and Friedrich Bischoff's «Hörsymphonie»: «Hallo! Hier Welle Erdball». The bureaucrats, however, condemmned this technology for being influenced by Bolshevist ideas. Thus the attempt was a failure, the patents sold abroad and radio art had to wait for many more years to be able to use the Tri-Ergon technology. (Hermann Naber)
 


 Walter Ruttmann

«Ruttmann was born in Frankfurt am Main on December 28, 1897. He studied architecture in Zurich and then painting in Munich. [...] In ‹Berlin. Die Sinfonie einer Großstadt› he applied the principles of his abstract studies and film montage to realistic photographs from the city of Berlin. [...] After ‹Berlin› he turned to sound experiments and was eventually able to make ‹Melodie der Welt›, a Tobis film commissioned by Hapag-Lloyd and the first fulllength German sound film. [...] Ruttmann did not emigrate. He collaborated on a film for a ‹Reichsparteitag› but withdrew from the team for unknown reasons. Beginning in 1934 he was employed as a director by UFA and made cultural, industrial, commercial, and propaganda films. On July 15, 1941, he died in Berlin after an operation.»

(source: Goethe-Institut (ed.), The German Avant-Garde Film of the 1920’s, exhib. cat., München, 1989, p. 78.)