Die Weber (1927)

One of the classics of the Weimar cinema is Die Weber/The Weavers (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927). During the 1840s, a group of Silesian weavers stages an uprising due to their concerns about the Industrial Revolution's impact on their lives. Die Weber is based on the 1892 play of the same title by Gerhart Hauptmann based on a historical event. The silent historical drama film starred Wilhelm Dieterle, Theodor Loos, and Hermann Picha, as the starving weavers, and Paul Wegener as their antagonist, the factory owner. It was director Friedrich Zelnik's most ambitious project and he created a film in the style of Eisenstein's revolutionary epics.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin. Photo: Zelnik-Film. Wilhelm Dieterle in Die Weber/The Weavers (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 77/2. Photo: Zelnik-Film. Wilhelm Dieterle and Hermann Picha in Die Weber (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 77/3. Photo: Zelnik-Film. Hermann Picha, Wilhelm Dieterle and Hertha von Walther in Die Weber (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 77/4. Photo: Zelnik-Film. Wilhelm Dieterle and Paul Wegener in Die Weber (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927).


Friedrich Zelnik. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 341/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Becker & Maass Phot.

Sources: Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.