director: Unknown
year: 1917
country: Germany
history notes: Unidentified Film No. 147
alternative titles: Fritz en Mädi spelen oorlogje

This film has been identified thanks to contributions from members of the Lost FIlms community.

The film starts with a parade of soldiers (scan 1). Then we are at a diner table in a relatively rich bourgeois house. A woman and a man with a little girl on his lap are sitting there. The little girl is called Mädi, The next day they are in the garden. The man has a lot of medals on his uniform. A boy, Fritz, comes along and he and Mädi boast about their fathers (scan 2). They start to fight until their mothers take them away. Mädi is reproached by her parents (scan 3a and 3b) and has to stay alone in the garden the rest of the day.
Meanwhile the father of Fritz comes home (scan 4) and his wife and neighbours welcome him. Mädi is reading in the garden (‘kriegsliteratur’). Fritz goes into the woods to build a defence line (scan 6). Mädi finds him and they play war (scan 5): she attacks him with a water hose, he defends himself with an umbrella (scan 7). Mädi throes flower pots at him and after a ‘sturmangriff’ she conquers his flag. He complains at his mother. Mädis mother also arrives and both their fathers and they start to fight
while the children make peace. On scans 6 and 7 you can also see the flags of Fritz.

The intertitels:
* Am Andern Morgen
* Aetsch – Aach mein Vating kommt auf Urlaub der hat noch viel mehr Orden
wie Deine
* …. das ist garnichts, mein papa hat mit Hindenburg kafee getrunken und
eine Kaiser Wilhelm Cigarre geraucht..
* Hab dich man nicht so, dumme Jöre, mein Vating ist ein Duzfreund vom
Gefreiter Lehmann
* Zur strafe bleibt du heute Nachmittag ganz allein zu Hause
* Mädi studiert kriegsliteratur
* Fritz legt um sein Festung Drahtverhaue
* Was Fritze macht Mobil!? Na warte
* Plänkelei
* Der Feind Rücht for
* Rückzug
* Sturmangriff
* Sie hat mir die Fahne genommen
* Mädi verzichtet auf Annexion
* Sonderfriede

No edgemarks. Images are tinted orange and yellow, the intertitels yellow and green (one colour at the time). Positive assembly (the images and the intertitels are spliced together, not printed in one piece). One act 185 mtr. German intertitles. No beginning or end titles

Source notes
EYE Film Institute Netherlands

There are no beginning or endtitles, but the film could be complete when looking at the story. I think the film is from around 1914-1916, but there are no edgemarks or other evidence to support this directly. This guess is based on the subject (references to the First World War) and content of the film (still quite an innocent depiction of the war) and the other films we received together with this film which were from this period.

The trade mark [OE and a stone] is that of Oskar Einstein, Berlin. The title of the film is MÄDI MACHT KRIEG (1917). Actors: Marion Kirchbach, Kurt Schulz. - Information retrieved from Herbert Birett (Verzeichnis in Deutschland gelaufener Filme). Synopsis there: "Kriegsspiele von Nachbarskindern". Information also available online at "Siegener Datenbank des Film-Angebots 1895 1920". There were some more films with "Mädi" as the main character.

The film was delivered to our Archive in Novenber 2013 from Mr. Leif Elmann Pedersen.
His grandfather had the film and it was screened in hus garage every summer where the grandchildren came to visit him.
The film (or rarter a part thereof) has now been preserved and can be watched on our website:
http://www.dfi.dk/faktaomfilm/film/da/87680.aspx?id=87680

There is no "Mädi"-film preserved neither at Deutsche Kinemathek nor at Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv.