Erich Kettelhut

In 1968 Kettelhut was awarded the 'Special Award for Outstanding Contributions to German Cinema' for his lifelong body of work at the annual German Film Awards (Deutscher Filmpreis).

Kettelhut's final outing on the big screen saw him reunited with Fritz Lang, in what would also be the director's final film, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960).

In 1954 he found work again with his former boss Erich Pommer who had returned from self-imposed exile in the United States. They made two final films together Eine Liebesgeschichte (1954) and Kinder, Mütter und ein General (Children, Mother, and the General) which became one of the five pictures selected as best foreign film at the 1955 Golden Globe Awards.

With the end of the Second World War, Kettelhut left the film industry for five years. The release of Erich Engel's rom-com Fahrt ins Glück in 1948, for which Kettelhut worked as the production designer, was postponed. It was actually shot in 1944 but needed to wait four years until its premiere, in East Germany.

He was a production designer and art director, known for Metropolis (1927), Die Herrin der Welt 5.

Kettelhut is considered as one of the most important artists in the history of early German cinema, mainly for his set direction for Die Nibelungen (1924) and his design and visual effects for Metropolis (1927).

Teil - Ophir, die Stadt der Vergangenheit (1920) and Die Herrin der Welt 4.

Teil - König Macombe (1919).

His role in theatre was interrupted when Kettelhut was called to serve at the Front in 1914.

From 1910 until 1912 Kettelhut studied at the College of Applied Arts in Berlin. This was followed by time spent as an apprentice in local theaters around Germany including a period as a scene painter at the Metropolitan Opera in Berlin and a role as the head of the design department in Mühlhausen.

Erich Kettelhut was born on November 1, 1893 in Berlin, Germany.