[Accepted manuscript for: 
Joachim Schätz: Parsing the Archive of Rudolf Mayer Film, Vienna, 1937–9, in: Bo Florin/Nico 
de Klerk/Patrick Vonderau (Hg.): Films That Sell. Moving Pictures and Advertising, London: 
BFI/Palgrave-McMillan 2016, S. 257-265.] 
 
Joachim Schätz: 
Parsing the Archive of Rudolf Mayer Film, Vienna, 1937-9 
 
When Kurt Mayer brought the surviving documents from his father‘s company to the 
Austrian Film Museum for deposit in March 2011, the materials easily fitted into two 
bags: one well-filled thick binder, two folders (one bulky, the other slim), an envelope, 
one duplicating book for delivery notes and a couple of photographs curled by age. 
Despite this slender volume, those documents, put together with the films that Kurt 
Mayer had already deposited at the Austrian Film Museum before, form one of the most 
revealing windows on the lively period of professionalisation in Austrian advertising film 
that were the 1930s: the archive of Rudolf Mayer Film. The binder proved especially 
instructive and is the main source of the following observations. 
It contains, in alphabetical order of the client companies, film proposals developed by 
Rudolf Mayer and his collaborators, as well as occasional business correspondence - 
papers lost without a trace in the case of most other contemporaneous producers of 
short films in Austria. They give some clues as to the everyday procedures and networks 
of advertising film production that neither contemporaneous trade papers and academic 
studies nor the surviving films provide. To better outline the epistemic value of those 
papers, I will briefly chart Rudolf Mayers career and the efforts at professionalising short 
film production in Austria during the 1930s as known via other sources. 
 
Context (I): Rudolf Mayer 
 
Since his youth, Rudolf Mayer (1903-1962) had been working in his father Gustav 
Mayer’s company, Mayer’s Filmbüro. Founded in the early 1920s, the company first 
specialised in actualities and newsreels, but would be one of the most successful 
producers of advertising films in Vienna from 1934 onwards. When Gustav Mayer died in 
1936, Rudolf‘s younger brother Adi took over the family enterprise, prompting him to start 
his own company, Rudolf Mayer Film, in October 1937.1 The new company’s output of 
both advertising films and state-sponsored educational films (Kulturfilme) was fairly 
constant before Rudolf was drafted as a frontline cameraman at the end of 1939. While 
the family enterprise, renamed Adi Mayer Film, would go on to be one of the most 
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successful and long-living manufacturers of advertising films and TV commercials in 
post-war Austria, Rudolf Mayer’s business would never recover from the forced hiatus 
during World War II. After the war, he would only produce the occasional commercial and 
campaign film and specialise (with limited success) in manufacturing special effects in 
his garage studio. 
The written documents in the archive of Rudolf Mayer Film mostly cover the early 
successful period, from the company’s formation in October 1937 to the end of 1939. 
They also encompass occasional projects dating back to his time at Mayer’s Filmbüro, as 
well as occasional projects taken on by Rudolf for another local producer of advertising 
films, Hans Ludwig Böhm. The business correspondence in the binder is scarce, but 
informative. The collection of film proposals for the period until the end of 1939, although 
large, is not complete, as can be measured by the absence of several surviving Rudolf 
Mayer films. It contains proposals and notes on some seventy proposed films, often in 
three evolving versions (typescript with handwritten notes). Reflecting the different 
formats of promotional films produced at the time, the proposals’ lengths vary from half a 
page (usually for Sprechstreifen, i.e. film strips containing recorded sound only that were 
combined with slide presentation) to ten pages (for longer narrative promotional films). 
 
Context (II): Professionalisation of Advertising in 1930s Austria  
 
Before Rudolf Mayer was drafted into service as a cameraman his business seems to 
have benefited from the National Socialist annexation of Austria, in March 1938. 
In the period from March 1938 to the end of 1939, there were hardly any advertising films 
produced in Vienna by anyone other than Rudolf (fourteen films) and Adi Mayer 
(nineteen films).2 The decrease in competition was in no small part due to National 
Socialist persecution, which led, for instance, to the deportation and eventual death of 
influential Austrian advertising film producer Robert Reich. 
But Rudolf Mayer Film’s relatively steady production until the end of 1939 was also 
shaped by enduring creative and business contacts and rooted in long-running efforts at 
professionalisation undertaken by the Austrian producers of advertising films and 
supported by the previous Austro-Fascist government’s Ministry of Trade. 
In the summer of 1935, the established makers of advertising films and other short 
subjects founded the Verband der Kurzfilmhersteller (Association of Producers of Short 
Films) to better assert their interests and organise production and distribution.3 In March 
1936, they managed to have the profession of producer of short films changed to a 
protected profession requiring a licence, thus shielding the market from new competitors. 
 2 
Later in 1936, they also succeeded in having protective measures imposed against 
foreign film producers making advertising films for domestic companies.4 The same year, 
sixty-one advertising sound films were produced in Austria (including state-sponsored 
promotional films) - a modest number considering the German output of over 650 
advertising films in 1935,5 but still impressive in comparison with the twenty-one films 
made in Austria in 1932.6 (Twenty-four - more than a third - of those 1936 films were 
registered as Mayer’s Filmbüro productions in the censorship lists.) 
With their steady output and institutional ties, the handful of established producers of 
advertising and industrial films like Gustav Mayer, Karl Köfinger, or Hans Ludwig Böhm7 
fitted well with the agenda of the Austrian Reklamewissenschaftliche Vereinigung 
(Association for the Science of Advertising), which prominently included promotional 
films as a topic in its vocational training course in 1935.8 Like other Austrian and 
international advertising trade organisations at the time, the Association for the Science 
of Advertising stressed a programme of professionalisation that aimed to rid advertising 
of dubious or ill-informed market participants and thus improve the business’s overall 
reputation.9 The practice of those established advertising film producers might seem 
distinctly different from the specific ideas about professionalisation heralded in the trade 
publications Kontakt and Österreichische Reklame: it hinged on broad, craftsman-like 
know-how rather than on creative and scientific specialisation; on tight-knit family 
enterprises and loose networks of freelancers rather than clear-cut organisational 
hierarchies and divisions of labour. But, then again, that was mostly the state of affairs in 
advertising in 1930s Vienna as well, with ambitious small Reklamebüros (advertising 
companies) fulfilling a variety of functions.10 
This mode of production in the field of advertising films, markedly distinct from the 
differentiation of tasks under the supervision of ad agencies that would finally prevail in 
Austria circa 1960, is partly elucidated by the written documents of the archive of Rudolf 
Mayer Film. The papers are revealing regarding both advertising films’ commissioning 
and their conception. 
 
Material (I): Commissioning Films 
 
The producers of short films in 1930s Austria were generalists. According to all available 
evidence and accounts by descendants, this does not just go for their output - which 
ranged from advertising films and Kulturfilme to newsreel segments and film interludes 
for live performances - but also for the division of labour within the companies. Diverse 
creative (camera, editing, title cards, directing) and business (contacting possible clients, 
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distributing films) tasks had to be performed by the producer and his staff which often (as 
in Gustav Mayer‘s and Karl Köfinger’s case) consisted largely of family members.11 The 
producers’ informal way of keeping contact with both freelance creatives and clients 
makes it difficult to trace standard modes of procedure - for instance, the way films were 
commissioned. 
Concerning this matter, the papers of the Rudolf Mayer Film archive offer some 
insight. They reveal, for instance, that differentation of tasks in advertising had evolved to 
the extent that small advertising offices sometimes worked as intermediaries between 
clients and film producers and developed film concepts. In a letter, advertising 
professional Fritz Engelhart informs a perfume manufacturer of his idea for the subject of 
an advertising film it had commissioned, as well as the film’s probable length and 
production cost. Engelhart claims that he can’t be more specific, as he hasn’t yet chosen 
a film company to commission with this film.12 The existence of a copy of this letter 
among Rudolf Mayer’s company papers suggests otherwise - censorship lists reveal that 
Engelhart had collaborated with Mayer’s Filmbüro for a long time.13 Another document 
that points to the intermediary role of advertising agencies is an envelope containing 
detailed guidelines on a planned advertising film and PR materials from the textile 
company Ganahl in Feldkirch. It is adressed, not to Rudolf Mayer, but to professional 
Viennese sales representative Hans Glass, who likely contacted Mayer.14 
It is impossible to gauge from the surviving materials the ratio of films commissioned 
via an advertising intermediary versus films commissioned in direct contact between 
Mayer and clients - an option that, according to practitioners, was still in practice until the 
1950s in the small Austrian market.15 But the documents prove that, by 1937, this mode 
of doing business already co-existed with a more streamlined divison of labour. 
 
Material (II): Writing Films 
 
Most of the film proposals in the Rudolf Mayer Film archive are unsigned, except for the 
stamp of ‘Rudolf Mayer, Kurzfilmhersteller [producer of short films], Neubaugasse 25’. 
Usually, the texts are followed by the blanket statement, ‘Non-binding proposal. All rights 
reserved.’ Of course, Rudolf Mayer’s company signature doesn’t mean that he wrote 
those texts - ranging from short film descriptions to more fleshed-out screenplays - on his 
own. First of all, as discussed, both advertising professionals and the clients themselves 
were active in conceiving of film plots. The aforementioned correspondence with Ganahl 
highlights the striking level of detail in which a client of middling size would instruct a film 
producer. A letter titled ‘Guidelines for a manuscript’ specifies the range of products to be 
 4 
advertised, as well as ideas for the structure of the film (both of which Mayer’s 
subsequent proposal closely adheres to).16 It also offers this elaborate objective 
regarding the company’s corporate image: 
 
The film aims to popularize our trademark and company name. Find the enclosed 
trademark but mind that in the new edition the term ‘Montforta’ [a former quality 
description] will take a backseat to the company name ‘Ganahl‘ So ‘Ganahl’ is to 
be advertised first and foremost, and ‘Montforta‘ only in connection, to accustom 
the viewer to the other name. Yet, this transformation is not to be specifically 
depicted, but only to be imprinted in passing.17 
 
Another letter concerning Ganahl, this time addressed to Mayer’s Filmbüro and most 
likely written either by a company employee or a sales intermediary (the author refers to 
‘our goods’), contains another set of tasks for the film (‘review of products and plea to the 
consumer, suitable for following a salesman’s pitch’) and a matching plot outline.18 
Apart from such detailed writing on the part of the client, Mayer frequently employed 
freelance authors. While the surviving films’ credits are sparse, mentioning little else 
beyond featured prominent actors and singers and the promoted company, the papers 
allow for a little more insight into Rudolf Mayers network of collaborators. The authors 
credited in the proposals include, for instance, journalist Josef Szekely and successful 
Wienerlied songwriter Erich Meder, who contributed specially written lyrics for two film 
proposals. 
The use of popular songs, which is also evident in Mayers surviving advertising films, 
was fairly typical of 1930s advertising. Mayer productions often announce their singer- 
stars in the film title (Franz Schier singt ‘Das Lied von Sooß’ [Franz Schier sings ‘The 
Song of Sooß’], Das Boheme-Quartett in: ‘Die Vier von der Tegetthoffstraße’ [The 
Boheme Quartet in: ‘The Four from Tegetthoff Street']). But beyond the pervasive 
popularity of Schlager and Wienerlied music and their interpreters, building an 
advertising film around a song had pragmatic advantages made evident by the 
proposals: songs composed for one proposal could be applied to another if the film 
wasn’t made after all; even songs written specifically for the occasion allowed for 
flexibility in planning a budget. A proposal for Persil based on new lyrics by Erich Meder, 
Wien steht Kopf (Vienna on its Head), is prefaced by an explanation about two possible 
versions of the film, one significantly shorter than the other.19 Likewise, a screenplay built 
around Erich Meder’s song ‘Qualität bleibt Qualität’ (‘Quality will be Quality’) is introduced 
by the note that single shots in the film (and the verses they are connected to) could be 
 5 
swapped and cut as desired. The song as a whole, originally written for Abadie 
cigarettes, would be reused for proposals for the textile shop Sandera and the shoe 
retailer Delka.20 
This practice of recycling cannot only be traced across the film proposals and short 
screenplays in the Rudolf Mayer film archive.21 It also pertains to the surviving Mayer 
films which often reapply existing footage, making the best of the broad range of films 
produced. Here, the film-makers show genuine imagination: with material he very likely 
had just shot for a Kulturfilm about professional raftsmen (Flößer/Raftsmen, 1941), Adi 
Mayer made the advertising short Nimm das Steuer in die Hand (Take the Steering 
Wheel) (1941), which promoted insurance by likening life to the navigation of wild waters. 
Despite the practical necessities and frugal calculations behind such practices of 
recycling, there is also a playful, occasionally even baroque streak to some of Rudolf 
Mayer’s screenplays for advertising films. Fully in keeping with his later career as a 
special effects craftsman who made spaceships fly in the state-sponsored sci-fi oddity 1. 
April 2000 (1952), the proposal for Wien steht Kopf calls for trick photography showing a 
flooded inner-city Vienna and St Stephen’s Cathedral transposed on a nearby 
mountaintop.22 The most formally adventurous of those proposals, named Das 
Geheimnis der Zehn? (The Secret of the Ten?), commissioned by the Delka chain of 
shoe stores, was actually filmed. As no copy of the film has been found, it is impossible 
to say how many of the screenplay’s sophisticated superimpositions made it into the 
actual film.23 But - to switch from historical analysis to art appreciation for one final 
moment - the proposal itself has its own special attraction. The ‘ten’ in the title refers to 
the number of branch stores Delka ran in Vienna, which Rudi Mayer planned to visualise 
with a photo-montage of the different shops forming a ‘10’. This is anticipated by a sketch 
of the ten, overlapped by a paper clip demonstrating the ‘revue of shoes and stockings’ 
to appear out of the zero. The paper clip can be folded, concealing and revealing parts of 
the sketch behind it. Both functional and somewhat improvised, this image-object might 
be an emblem for Rudolf Mayer’s mode of production. It’s movement brought onto paper, 
a flourish directed at Mayer’s clients rather than at the audiences in the cinema.  
 6 
Images 
 
 
The surviving documents of Rudolf Mayer Film 
 
 
Guidelines for a Ganahl film 
 7 
 
 
The Secret of the Ten? (Das Geheimnis der Zehn?)  
 8 
Documents in the Archive of Rudolf Mayer Film 
(owned by Kurt Mayer, deposited in the Archive of the Austrian Film Museum, Vienna) 
 
‘Beilage zum Brief an Filmbüro Mayer, Wien’ 
‘Das Geheimnis der Zehn?’ 
‘Freude’ 
Prucha, Franz, ‘Richtlinien für das Manuskript’ 
‘Qualität bleibt Qualität. Ein Werbefilm für “Abadie” von Erich Meder’ 
‘Qualität bleibt Qualität. Sujet für einen Werbefilm’ 
Reklamebüro Fritz Engelhart, ‘Kopie. Titl. Fa. M.E.Mayer. Wien, 2. Sept. 1937’ ‘Schusterweisheit’ 
‘Wien steht Kopf. Ein Persil-Reklame-Film. Idee von Erich Meder’ 
 
Notes 
1 Information on the company’s concession obtained in an email from Walter Töttels, 
MA 63 Zentralgewerberegister Wien, on 6 November 2012. 
2 Information obtained researching the German censorship lists at the Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv 
on 13 November 2012. 
3 ‘Verband der Kurzfilmhersteller’, Das Kino-Journal no. 1305 (August 1935), p. 6. 
4 ‘Zum Schutz der heimischen Kurzfilmindustrie’, Das Kino-Journal no. 1355 (July 1936), p. 10. 
Subsequently, in January 1937, a travelling salesman for a company in Zagreb was sentenced to 
a fine of 800 Schillings for having shot advertising films in Austria without a concession. 
‘Unbefugte Kurzfilmherstellung’, Das Kino-Journal no. 1379 (January 1937), p. 4. 
5 Ralf Forster, Ufa und Nordmark. Zwei Firmengeschichten und der deutsche Werbefilm 1919-
1945 (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2005), p. 176. 
6 For the numbers, see Emil Guckes, ‘Der Tonfilm als Werbemittel in Deutschland’ 
(PhD dissertation, Leopold-Franzens-Universität Innsbruck, 1937), p. 145. 
7 Gustav Mayer was a member of the Viennese Industrial Cooperative’s film panel; Karl Köfinger 
was also the sworn official legal expert on the conditions of film copies. ‘Werbung durch den 
Film’, Österreichische Film-Zeitung vol. 8 no. 42 (1934), p. 5; Karl Köfinger, ‘Filmrollen und Film 
Wirtschaft’, Das Kino-Journal no. 1387 (March 1937), p. 5. 
8 ‘Filmvorführung’, Kontakt vol. 10 no. 6 (1935), p. 22; ‘Vortrag: “Wie entsteht ein Werbefilm”’, 
Kontakt vol. 10 no. 7/8 (1935), pp. 29-30; ‘Verband der Kurzfilmhersteller’, 
Das Kino-Journal no. 1305 (August 1935), p. 6. 
9 See, for instance, Erwin Paneth, ‘Der Aufstieg der Reklame vom Pfuschertum zur 
Wissenschaft’, Österreichische Reklame vol. 1 no. 1 (1926), p. 4; Hanns Kropff, ‘Die letzten 
Entwicklungen und die nächsten Aufgaben der Reklame’, Kontakt vol. 6 no. 1 (1931), pp. 3-9; 
Charles J. Angermayer, ‘Advertising Agency = Anzeigenexpedition +x’, Kontakt vol. 6 no. 6 
(1931), pp. 31-2. 
 9 
10 This even applies to the consulting jobs of August Lichal, chairman of the 
Reklamewissenschaftliche Vereinigung: ‘August Lichal R-W-V’, Kontakt vol. 6 no. 12 (1931), p. 
14. On advertising offices, see also ‘Hanns Kropff über aktuelle Rekalmefragen’, Kontakt vol. 6 
no. 12 (1931), p. 34. 
11 Interviews conducted by the author, Sema Colpan, and Lydia Nsiah with Rudi Mayers son Kurt 
Mayer (6 October 2010) and Adi Mayers son Peter Mayer (17 July 2011). Josef Navratil, Das 
Werk des österreichischen Kulturfilmproduzenten Ing. Karl Köfinger am Beispiel einer Serie von 
Fremdenverkehrswerbefilmen (Vienna: Österreichisches Filmarchiv, 1989), pp. 21, 25-6. 
12 Reklamebüro Fritz Engelhart, ‘Kopie. Titl. Fa. M.E.Mayer. Wien, 2. Sept. 1937’, company 
archive Rudolf Mayer Film, preserved by Kurt Mayer, deposited at the Austrian Film Museum. 
13 See ‘Der Schlüssel der Gesundheit’, ‘Das rassige Vollblut’, ‘Der schneidige Traber’ and ‘Die 
lieben Nachbarn’, in Thomas Ballhausen and Paolo Caneppele (eds), Entscheidungen der 
Wiener Filmzensur 1934-1938 (Vienna: Filmarchiv Austria, 2009), pp. 192, 212, 248. 
14 ‘Herrn Ing. Hans Glass’, company archive Rudolf Mayer Film. On Hans Glass, see Lehmann 
1936, vol. 2, 3rd section, 28, ‘Schikanederstraße 6’. 
http://www.digital.wienbibliothek.at/wbrobv/periodical/pageview/220605 
15 Interviews conducted by the author, Sema Colpan, and Lydia Nsiah with Kurt Mayer 
(6 October 2010), Peter Mayer (17 July 2011) and Harro Pfeiffer, former general manager of the 
ad agency Eggert (merged with Grey Austria in 2000) in Vienna (27 April 2011). Navratil, Das 
Werk des österreichischen Kulturfilmproduzenten Ing. Karl Köfinger, pp. 10-11. 
16 Franz Prucha, ‘Richtlinien für das Manuskript’, company archive Rudolf Mayer Film. 
17 Ibid., translation by J. S. 
18 ‘Beilage zum Brief an Filmbüro Mayer, Wien’, company archive Rudolf Mayer Film. 
Translation of Fig. 2 by J. S.: ‘Purpose of the film: a) Advertising the trademark, b) Advertising for 
all our wares that are used by housewives. Structure of the film: a) Creating a mood that is 
beneficial to the evaluation by women. Awakening intepst in the housewife, as central character 
in the film, b) Radical, footage-economic transition to the plot while already signalling towards 
advertising, first focused only on the trademark, c) Resolution of the plot, providing an opportunity 
for advertising, now with details of interest to the audience. d) Revue of wares and appeal to the 
consumer, suitable to follow a salesman’s pitch. e) In the end a scene that makes it clear that this 
is a distinguished, prestigious company.’ 
19 ‘Wien steht Kopf. Ein Persil-Reklame-Film. Idee von Erich Meder’, company archive Rudolf 
Mayer Film. 
20 ‘Qualität bleibt Qualität. Ein Werbefilm für “Abadie” von Erich Meder’, ‘Qualität bleibt Qualität. 
Sujet für einen Werbefilm’. Both: company archive Rudolf Mayer Film. 
21 Other proposals that are reused include ‘Schusterweisheit’ (for shoe businesses BB and Delka) 
and ‘Freude’ (used for Delka, coffee brand Imperial and the Aryanised department store 
Kaufhaus der Wiener, formerly Gerngross). All proposals are part of the company archive Rudolf 
Mayer Film. 
 10 
22 ‘Wien steht Kopf. Ein Persil-Reklame-Film. Idee von Erich Meder’, company archive Rudolf 
Mayer Film. 
23 ‘Das Geheimnis der Zehn?’, company archive Rudolf Mayer Film. Translation of Fig. 3 by J. S.: 
‘Image. The plate saying “Delka” appears prominently. The elevator stops. The plate is torn, and 
from the ruptures, there appears the number ten, formed from the ten Delka branch stores. 
Through the zero, a revue of shoes and stockings in close-up appears. Final shot. Delka wears 
well. Sound. Narrator: Delka with its ten branch stores. For every need the Delka shoe/and the 
matching stocking as well. The End. All rights reserved. Non-binding proposal.’ 
 11