Der Erfinder (1911)

An engineer approaches a manufacturer with plans for a new type of machine, but is cheated out of the patent by the manufacturer. While his invention helps the company achieve brilliant results, the engineer becomes impoverished and has to sell his household goods. He finds support among the workers, to whom he laments his fate. The men storm the factory owner's office, threaten him and attack him violently. The engineer throws himself between the attackers and the factory owner to prevent things from getting worse, and gets hit with a hammer. Out of gratitude for his intervention, the factory owner finally gives him a decent wage.

In an unusually clear way, the short film deals with class conflicts on the eve of the First World War. The explicit portrayal of violence against a member of the upper class is astonishing. So is the use of intertitles, which are not used to explain scenes in progress, but to announce scenes to come. In this way, dialogue and plot elements are introduced before we see them. The version digitized here from the archive of the Deutsches Filminstitut is probably the only surviving version of the film in the world.