Das dumme Gänslein (1944)

Directed by

Hans Fischerkoesen

Genre

animation

Country

German Reich

Runtime

14 min

Rating

7.1 of 10 from 7 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

The cartoon tells the story of a young goose who dreams of an exciting city life instead of staying on her farm. She gets into trouble with a clever fox, and her family and friends must rescue her. The film pushes the idea that adventure and independence are wrong, and that obeying traditional family roles is the only safe way to live.

whimsicalmoralisticdidacticpropagandisticdarkly cautionarydatedmanipulativesimplistic

What happens

Das dumme Gänslein (The Silly Goose) is one in a trio of German animated short films produced in 1944 by Hans Fischerkoesen, who was the chief animator and author. It is a tale of a female goose consumed by adventure and urban glamour in her countryside life, who has to be saved from a cunning fox by her friends and family. The overt moral of the cartoon is to avoid an extravagant and adventurous life due to its possible unexpected consequences, but rather to lead a 'normal' (German) family life. Though this "There's no place like home" theme was a commonplace of 1930s and '40s animation, in this cartoon there is special emphasis, typical of Nazi propaganda, on the Völkisch ideology of conformity and conventionality, portraying individualism and sexual freedom (seeking pleasure rather than to be the mother of 'true' German children) as inherently both alien and dangerous. The cartoon suggests that divergence from traditional German life could be dire, even possibly lethal, in line with National Socialist characterizations of opponents of the regime as asocial, disloyal, and self-destructive. The film also hints at antisemitism through the character of the cunning fox. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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