Biography:

Günter Rätz was born in Berlin on May 30, 1935. As a teenager, he played puppet theater for the children in his neighborhood using his own stories. He grew even more interested in puppeteering after he saw a performance by the famous animation film director Lotte Reiniger, who presented the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty at the Berlin Schattenbühne (shadow theater) after WWII. And Rätz was impressed by the Soviet puppet animation Novyy Gullivyer (1935, The New Gulliver) by Alexander Ptushko and the Czechoslovak production Poklad ptačího ostrova (1953, The Treasure of the Bird Island) a combination of hand-drawn backgrounds and puppet animation by Karel Zeman. 

Although Rätz apprenticed as a bricklayer from 1950 to 1952, puppet theater remained his passion. In 1954, he signed a contract with the Berlin DEFA Studio for Popular Science Films and worked as an animator. He also was involved in Artur Pohl’s feature film, a Theodor Storm adaptation, Pole Poppenspieler (1954). During this time, Rätz self-taught himself all elements of the art of animation.

In 1955, Rätz joined the newly founded DEFA Studio for Animation Films in Dresden and worked as an animator for several productions by Johannes Hempel. Finally, three years later, he debuted as a director with his puppet film Teddy Brumm. The short for children became an international success and screened at many international festivals in London, Mannheim, Bukarest and Montevideo. Günter Rätz became a thought-after puppet animation director at the studio and his name is credited to many animation film classics, including the children’s shorts Die Flucht zu den Pinguinen (1984) and Die Weihnachtsgans Auguste (1984-85).

At the beginning of the 1960s, Rätz created two simple characters made of wire and wood with contradictory attitudes, who tell daily life stories and make fun of human shortcomings. The film drew international attention and turned into the first international commission of the studio. While Rätz wrote, created, and directed the first 12 episodes of the Filopat & Patafil series himself, he was later joined by a large team who independently worked on the episodes. The production of the series ran from 1962-68, however, Rätz returned one more time to his two characters, whose movements were inspired by pantomime, and directed Das Problem (1976-77, The Problem) in collaboration with Vivienne Barry, a Chilean artist, who had emigrated to East Germany.

Rätz, who specialized in puppet animation, also experimented with other animation techniques and materials. For example, he used wires, shadows, and drawings in his 1964 Der kleine Tirili or experimented with objects and collage in Feine Spielwaren – Made in USA (1969), a Cold War propaganda film about the American toy company Aurora, which specialized in kits for making model vintage and modern military aircrafts.

In his almost four decades working for DEFA, Rätz was involved in nearly 100 films, including the full-length production Die fliegende Windmühle (1978-81), and the Western played by puppets, Die Spur führt zum Silbersee (1985-89), one of the last animation productions of the studio. But Rätz also had to deal with censorship during his career: His anti-racist satire Mister Twister (1962) was banned, and other projects were stopped even before production. 

Parallel to his busy film work, Rätz studied directing at the Potsdam-Babelsberg Academy of Film and Television from 1968 to 1975. He returned to the academy as a lecturer. He developed teaching materials, including a textbook, and founded a department for animation directing supporting young animation filmmakers. 

After the closure of the studio in 1991, Rätz took a class in computer design and created, among others, the short Eine winzig kleine Nachtmusik (1995) and many animation films for students of the Deaf and Speech Therapy School in Dresden.

Rätz never returned to directing a puppet film again, but he got involved in major puppet animation projects for the Manfred Durniok Produktion and Shanghai Animation Film Studio. From 1995 to 1996, Rätz co-wrote with director Hong Hu Zhao five scripts for full-length puppet films that were adapted from Jules Verne stories between 1996 and 2005.

Günter Rätz, who also wrote most of his films, died in Dresden on May 1, 2024.

Bibliography & More:

Petzold, Volker. Von der Hand zur Puppe. Ein Leben für den Animationsfilm. Im Gespräch mit Günter Rätz (Gesprächsband). Schriftenreihe der DEFA-Stiftung, Berlin 2022.

Rätz, Günter. Film Animation. Ein Handbuch. Self-published, 2013.