CONTENTS -- Preface and Acknowledgements -- Early German Cinema: A Second Life? -- SECTION I: AUDIENCES AND THE CINEMA INDUSTRY -- The Kaiser's Cinema: An Archeology of Attitudes and Audiences -- Oskar Messter, Film Pioneer: Early Cinema between Science, Spectacle, and Commerce -- The French Connection: Franco-German Film Relations before World War I -- The Danish Influence: David Oliver and Nordisk in Germany -- Paul Davidson, the Frankfurt Film Scene and AFGRUNDEN in Germany -- Munich's First Fiction Feature: DIE WAHRHEIT -- Moving Images of America in Early German Cinema -- SECTION II: POPULAR STARS AND GENRES -- Early German Film Comedy, 1895-1917 -- The Spectator as Accomplice in Ernst Lubitsch's SCHUHPALAST PINKUS -- Asta Nielsen and Female Narration: The Early Films -- Melodrama and Narrative Space: Franz Hofer's HEIDENRÖSLEIN -- Cinema from the Writing Desk: Detective Films in Imperial Germany -- Ernst Reicher alias Stuart Webbs: King of the German Film Detectives -- The Faces of Stellan Rye -- HOMUNCULUS: A Project for a Modern Cinema -- Julius Pinschewer: A Trade-mark Cinema -- Newsreel Images of the Military and War, 1914-1918 -- Learning from the Enemy: German Film Propaganda in World War I -- The Reason and Magic of Steel: Industrial and Urban Discourses in DIE POLDIHÜTTE -- SECTION III: FILM STYLE AND INTERTEXTS: AUTHORS, FILMS, AND AUTHORS' FILMS -- Max Mack: The Invisible Author -- From Peripetia to Plot Point: Heinrich Lautensack and ZWEIMAL GELEBT -- Giuseppe Becce and RICHARD WAGNER: Paradoxes of the First German Film Score -- Early German Film: The Stylistics in Comparative Context -- Self-Referentiality in Early German Cinema -- Of Artists and Tourists: 'Locating' Holland in Two Early German Films -- Stylistic Expressivity in DIE LANDSTRASSE -- Two 'Stylists' of the Teens: Franz Hofer and Yevgenii Bauer.

The Voyeur at Wilhelm's Court: Franz Hofer -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Publication Acknowledgements -- List of Contributors.