Have you ever wondered about how Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was brought to Germany?

After all, the film is based on a German fairy tale, and it was released on the cusp of World War II. Surely, there would have been a German version. Well, it turns out there was a German dub that was intended to release in Germany in 1939. Unbeknownst to many, including the good folks at Disney, the cast they hired for the German dub had consisted entirely of Jewish exiles living in Amsterdam. Not only that, but these actors had been some of the biggest names in the German film industry before the rise of the Nazis.

After Snow White and the Seven Dwarves premiered in the United States in 1937, Disney quickly moved to create 12 international versions of the film. It wasn’t difficult to secure distribution deals in most countries, but Germany proved to be a tough nut to crack. By 1938, all of the American owned studios had pulled up stakes and left the country due to rising political tensions. American movies could still be released in Germany, but they had to go through UFA, which was the German state-owned film distributor.

Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, who directly controlled the movie industry in Germany, worked with Disney through UFA to try and secure a deal for Snow White. Hitler was a big fan of Disney, and Snow White was based on a German fairy tale, so he knew they had to show the movie in Germany. To Hitler, having the great Walt Disney adapt a German fairy tale as a feature length animated film was a great national honor. For Disney, going through the government of Germany took a lot more time than negotiating a deal with a traditional, privately owned studio. While they worked out a deal, Roy Disney flew to Amsterdam to oversee the production of the Dutch version of Snow White.

In Amsterdam, Roy Disney worked with local Dutch producer Max Tak, who hired director, actor, and comedian Kurt Gerron to direct the Dutch dub of Snow White. Since Gerron was fluent in German, he was asked if he could also direct a German dub of the film. Gerron was more than happy to take the job offer, as he was part of a community of German speaking actors who had recently moved to Amsterdam. There was one little detail that likely went unnoticed, however. Gerron and his community of actors were Jews from Germany who had fled to Amsterdam after Jews were banned from working in the German film industry.

From May 1938 to July 1938, Gerron directed both the Dutch and German dubs of the film. Featured in the cast for the German version were Dora Gerson as the Queen, Otto Wallburg as Doc, Kurt Lillien as Grumpy and Sneezy, Siegfried Arno as Happy, and Gerron himself played the Magic Mirror and Bashful. Each of these actors had been prominent in both film and live performances.

Dora Gerson was a German-Jewish actress who appeared in films alongside Bela Lugosi during the silent era. She had been married to film director Veit Harlan briefly in the 1920s, he would later go on to direct the antisemitic propaganda film Jud Süss in 1940. Gerson fled Germany for the Netherlands in 1936, and would eventually be caught and sent to Auschwitz with her husband and two children. The family was murdered at Auschwitz on February 14th, 1943.

Otto Wallburg was a prominent comedian and actor who performed in dozens of movies in the 1920s and 1930s. He appeared alongside Kurt Gerron in the 1931 comedy Bombs on Monte Carlo, also in 1931 he appeared in The Congress Dances, which was an international sensation. He escaped Germany for Austria in 1933, where he continued working in film until fleeing to France, and then finally the Netherlands. After the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940, Wallburg was arrested and sent to the Westerbork transit camp, before he was killed at Auschwitz on October 29th, 1944.

Kurt Lilien was an actor who was most active between 1927 and 1933. During this time he appeared in a number of films, including Two Hearts Beat as One starring Lilian Harvey. Lilien also performed in the 1927 silent film The Most Beautiful Legs of Berlin alongside Kurt Gerron. He was killed at the Sobibor Concentration Camp in Poland on May 28th, 1943.

Of those who performed in Snow White, there is no one more historically significant than Kurt Gerron, himself. Unbeknownst to Disney at the time, Gerron had a reputation with the regime. To international audiences, Gerron was Marlene Dietrich’s manager in The Blue Angel, an UFA produced film about a professor who falls in love with a burlesque dancer. To the Nazis, Gerron represented the personification of Jewish excess. In his films, Gerron commonly played the part of the Jewish banker, lawyer, or any sort of greedy businessman. His appearance inspired many of the anti-semitic cartoons published in right-wing newspapers of the 1930s, and in 1940 his image would be used disparagingly in the propaganda film The Eternal Jew. Gerron was the image most German people had in their heads of what a Jew looked like.

The final film directed by Kurt Gerron, long after his work on Snow White was behind him, was a propaganda film “praising” the conditions of the concentration camps. The film was called Thereseinstadt, and it was finished but never released. The Reich had intended to use his international fame to show the world that Jews weren’t being mistreated in concentration camps. Gerron believed producing the film would save him and his wife, but after the film was finished, the two were sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered on October 28th, 1944.

In late 1938, German filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl made a now-infamous trip to Hollywood to promote her documentary Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Riefenstahl was notorious for producing propaganda films for the Nazi party, so you could imagine her presence in Hollywood was about as welcome as a joke in an article about the Holocaust. Walt Disney was the only person in town willing to see her. He even gave her a tour of the Disney studios, showing her concept art and production materials from Fantasia, which was in production at the time. Riefenstahl had hoped to show Disney Olympia, but Disney’s projectionist had refused to screen it, as the projectionist union had taken a vocal stance against Riefenstahl.

It must be noted that Disney only welcomed her as part of negotiations for Snow White, and not because he had any positive feelings toward the Nazi regime. This didn’t matter to the rest of Hollywood, who decided that Walt Disney was an antisemite as a result. Whatever beliefs Disney privately held, this incident was purely business. Germany had the second biggest film market in the world at the time, so when you’re gambling your fortune on a film project, you want to make sure it gets seen in Germany.

This was the absolute last chance Walt Disney had to sell Snow White to the Germans, but after Riefenstahl returned to Germany having felt slighted by Hollywood, the German government banned American films entirely. Goebbels was willing to make an exception for Snow White, but unfortunately, Kristallnacht, a nationwide pogrom against Jewish people, had occurred at the same time as Riefenstahl’s trip. Disney felt it better to abandon the sale altogether. Tensions in Europe were at a boiling point, and it just wasn’t worth the trouble.

While the German dub of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves wouldn’t see release in Germany, it would premiere in Switzerland in December 1938, as well as Hungary. It wouldn’t be shown publicly anywhere else until after the war, but when the Soviets raided the Reich’s film archive, they found four copies of Snow White. The English version was present, along with the French and Dutch versions, but curiously enough, they also had the German version. It’s been said that Hitler was a fan of the movie, even if they couldn’t show it in Germany, he certainly enjoyed watching it privately. There is no evidence that Hitler knew who starred in the German version, but as Hitler and Goebbels were both avid movie buffs, it wouldn’t be hard for them to pick out Gerron’s voice specifically.

After the war, the film would premiere in Austria in 1948, and finally make its way to Germany in 1950. Through the 1950s and 1960s, German audiences would become familiar with the 1938 version of Snow White, however, in 1966 Disney decided to create a new dub for Germany. This dub would then be replaced by another one in 1992 for the film’s home video release. Both the 1938 and 1966 versions would be sealed away in the Disney vault, not for any reason other than practicality. The latest dub in each language is typically the default version, and there’s no point in giving attention to earlier versions, unless there’s substantial fan outcry to see them.

Disney isn’t necessarily hiding some dark secret, in all likelihood they probably weren’t aware at the time. Had Roy Disney realized the cast he hired was made up of Jews, he most likely would have pulled the plug on the project. Not due to any antisemitism on his part, but because he was trying to sell this movie directly to Hitler. It’s not likely the Disney company were even aware of who dubbed the film in the years following the war when it started to be screened publicly. It was a one and done job where a group of actors were plucked off the streets and paid for a few days’ work.

So, how do we know who starred in the German dub? German-Jewish journalist Paul Marcus, otherwise known as PEM, had fled Germany early on in the 1930s and had started a personal newsletter reporting on Jewish actors and entertainers living in exile. One of these newsletters from 1938 detailed the production of both the Dutch and German dubs of Snow White. This newsletter is backed up by articles from local Amsterdam-based newspapers. It’s because of the underground resistance movement that we have this information today.

Sources

• “Walt Disney’s European Tour in 1935: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.” The German Way, 4 May 2020, www.german-way.com/walt-disneys-european-tour-in-1935-germany-austria-and-switzerland.
• Giesen, Rolf, and J. P. Storm. Animation Under the Swastika. Jefferson, North Carolina, McFarland, 2012.
• Prisoner of Paradise. Directed by Malcolm Clarke and Stuart Sender. Menemsha Entertainment, 2002.
• “De Nederlandsche Versie van Walt Disney’s Sneeuwwitje.” Nieuwsblad van Het Noorden, 7 May 1938. ·“Hollands Sneeuwwitje Vóór de Zomer Klaar.” Zaans Volksbad, 19 May 1938, p. 14.
• Snow White Archive. “1938 German Dub of Snow White.” Filmic Light, 19 Nov. 2017, filmic-light.blogspot.com/2017/11/1938-german-dub-of-snow-white.html.
• Doherty, Thomas. “When Leni Riefenstahl Came to Hollywood.” The Hollywood Reporter, 23 Aug. 2021, www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/leni-riefenstahl-hollywood-1235001606.