Max and Mine (ca. 1957)
Sometimes it's too warm in the apartment, sometimes too cold - that frustrates Max the bear. But thanks to the "regulator dwarves" he can solve his heating problem. The cheerful cartoon from 1957, with music by Bert Kaempfert and Karl-Heinz Reichel, advertised an automatically regulated coke central heating system.
Content
On a cold winter's day, Max and Mine Bear are visited by relatives. They complain that the room temperature of the new central heating is difficult to regulate: sometimes it is sweaty hot, then it is freezing cold. Max has to go down to the basement again and again to regulate the heating - without success. Frustrated, he finally seeks solace in a pub and in alcohol. Here a friendly badger recommends that he equip his heating with automatic controls. Back at home, Max dreams of the "regulator dwarves" who ensure a constant room temperature with military precision and a fuel-saving reduction in the temperature at night. Success is not long in coming: Max and Mine Bear finally sit relaxed in their comfortably heated living room.
Promotional films of the Ruhr mining industry
The narrative and core advertising message of "Max and Mine" are similar to those of the many other advertising films with which the sales organizations of the Ruhr mining industry have been promoting the use of Ruhr coal in so-called domestic heating since the 1930s and then especially since the second half of the 1950s in order to anchor Ruhr coal in the minds of consumers as a high-quality, versatile and modern fuel. The dominant information was factual information about the properties and possible uses of various fuels as well as about correct handling and the choice of furnace type, which was usually embedded in a feature film-like framework. With the mining crisis that began in 1958, coal and coke heating systems were touted as a modern, convenient, clean and economically sensible alternative to the emerging competing energy sources of oil and electricity. The actual product, coal, increasingly faded into the background.
Film and music
Nevertheless, "Max and Mine" stands out from the crowd of advertising films of the 1950s and 1960s in two ways. Firstly, because of its design as a colorful cartoon. Secondly, because of its music by Bert Kaempfert and Karl-Heinz Reichel, which is finely tuned to the images and acoustically underlines their message and effect. Bert Kaempfert, actually Berthold Heinrich Kämpfert, (1923-1980) was, alongside James Last, one of the most famous orchestra conductors, composers and music producers in the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1950s to 1970s and was also successful internationally with pieces such as "Strangers in the Night" and "Spanish Eyes". Like James Last, he is considered to have shaped the style of easy listening music. His participation in "Max and Mine" in the early years of his career was probably the first of his rather rare forays into the film genre. Karl-Heinz Reichel (born 1917) worked in a variety of roles in the entertainment sector from 1937 to the early 1970s, as an actor and director in film and theater, as a singer, but above all as a composer and lyricist of hits and for radio and television advertising. He also wrote the lyrics for some of Kaempfert's pieces, so the collaboration between the two was not limited to "Max and Mine".
Dr. Stefan Przigoda, Mining History Documentation Centre (montan.dok)
Filmographic information
Producer: Trickfilm GmbH, Hamburg, Hans Held
Client: Ruhrkohlen-Beratung GmbH, Essen
Year of production: approx. 1957
Music: Karl-Heinz Reichel, B[ert] Kaempfert
Director: Hans Held
Book: Hans Held
Camera: [Walter] Trinkies
Main artists: Willi Wiegers, Peter Tabert, Erik Rus and others
Language: German
Runtime: 12 minutes
Format: 16 mm light tone, color
Archive: Mining History Documentation Centre/Mining Archive Bochum of the German Mining Museum Bochum
Contact
Deutsches Bergbau-Museum Bochum
Mining History Documentation Centre (montan.dok)
Dr. Stefan Przigoda
At the Mining Museum 28
44791 Bochum
Stefan.przigoda@bergbaumuseum.de
Photo: Max the Bear and his new central heating (still from “Max and Mine”)
Tropical temperatures in the living room (still from “Max and Mine”)
The “regulator dwarves” are militarily tightly organized (still from “Max and Mine”)
“Please – heat as desired.” Advertising leaflet of the Ruhrkohle community organization, 1955 (montan.dok/BBA W 1403)