Tri-Ergon

Process to unite film and sound

The Tri Ergon sound on film system was developed from around 1919 by three German inventors, Josef Engl (1893–1942), Joseph Massolle (1889–1957), and Hans Vogt (1890–1979). The system used a photoelectric recording method and a non standard film size (42mm) which incorporated the sound track with stock 35mm film. With a Swiss backer, the inventors formed Tri Ergon AG in Zurich, and tried to interest the market with their invention. Ufa acquired the German sound film rights for the Tri Ergon process in 1925, but dropped the system when the public showing of their first sound film suffered technical failures. The Tri Ergon system appeared at a time when a number of other sound film processes were arriving on the market, and the company soon merged with a number of competitors to form the Tobis syndicate in 1928, joined by the Klangfilm AG syndicate in 1929 and renamed as Tobis Klangfilm by 1930. While Tri Ergon became the dominant sound film process in Germany and much of Europe through its use by Tobis Klangfilm, American film companies were still squabbling over their respective patents. For a time Tri Ergon successfully blocked all American attempts to show their sound films in Germany and other European countries, until a loose cartel was formed under an agreement in Paris in 1930. However, William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation acquired the US rights for the Tri Ergon system and, backed by Tri Ergon AG, began a patent infringement battle in the courts in 1929 against much of the American film industry. The dispute wasn't settled until 1935, when Fox lost his final appeal in the US Supreme Court. A new Paris accord was signed in March 1936, which held until the start of the Second World War. The Tri Ergon system continued in use in Germany and the continent during the war. There were a number of companies which used the Tri Ergon name:
Tri Ergon AG (Zurich, Switzerland), acquired the rights to the original 1919 patents from the inventors in 1923
Tri Ergon Musik AG (St. Gallen, Switzerland), founded c1926, held the patents for the rest of the world outside Germany
Tri Ergon Musik AG (Berlin), which made phonograph records and owned the patents for Germany, formed in 1927: a subsidiary or branch of the St. Gallen company
Tri Ergon Photo Electro Records (Berlin), a record label subsidiary of Tri Ergon Musik AG (Berlin)

The name Tri Ergon means "the work of three", and is derived from τρία, meaning three, and ἔργον, , meaning 'deed, action, work, labour, or task'; cognate with (English work). The erg also derives from the same word ἔργον.

The Tri Ergon process involved recording sound onto film using the "variable density" method, used by Movietone and Lee De Forest's Phonofilm, rather than the "variable area" method later used by RCA Photophone. Tri Ergon used a special form of microphone without mechanical moving parts (Cathodophone) for sound pickup and a special electric discharge tube for variable density film recording. For reproduction of sound, the system used an electrostatic loudspeaker. Two specific patents in the Tri Ergon system would later cause controversy. The Tri Ergon film used an extra 7mm sound strip attached to the edge of a standard 35mm film, resulting in a new film 42mm wide. This was achieved by a "double printing" method by which the film and sound tracks were recorded and developed separately, then printed together onto a common positive. This required special adjustments on the standard projectors, which was not well received by the industry. The other patent was a "flywheel" which allowed the film to flow smoothly through sound reproducing equipment. An original Tri Ergon sound movie projector (dated to 1923) is in the collection of the Deutsches Museum in München, Germany.

Massolle, Engl and Vogt secured patents from 1919 in Germany, and applied for a US patent on 20 March 1922. The first public showing of Tri Ergon sound films took place in the de at 68 Kurfürstendamm, Berlin on 17 September 1922. One of the sound films shown was titled Der Brandstifter ('The Arsonist' in English). It was an adaptation for the screen of a 1903 one act play nl by Dutch author Herman Heijermans who lived in Berlin from 1907 to 1911. The peculiarity of this play rests in the fact that all the parts were played by the same actor. No known copies of this film remain. In order to continue developing their process, the inventors sold their patent to Swiss financial backers in St. Gallen who formed Tri Ergon AG in Zürich, Switzerland. In 1924 Universum Film AG (Ufa) produced three hours' worth of vaudeville shorts with sound, similar to those produced by Warner Brothers, using a sound on disc system. Tri Ergon AG licensed the recording film rights to Ufa in January 1925 and Masolle briefly became technical director of Ufa's first sound film division. However, the non standard film format was not popular: even a well publicized tour of Germany in 1925 failed to generate much interest. Ufa's first sound film using the Tri Ergon system, the 20 minute short de ('The Match Girl'), was directed by Guido Bagier. Bagier (who worked at Ufa between 1922 and 1927 as producer and musical advisor) also wrote the music for the film; the screenplay was by Hans Kyser. It premièred at the Mozartsaal in December 1925, but was a total flop in terms of technical sound quality. According to Bagier, the fiasco was due to technical problems with the playback equipment.

In the meantime, Ufa, having ducked the whole issue of sound films, had still fallen into severe financial difficulties with productions of vastly expensive silent films accompanied by a live symphony orchestra playing a specially composed score, such as F. W. Murnau's Der Letzte Mann (1924), with Emil Jannings and Faust (1926 film); and both parts of Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen, with a score by Gottfried Huppertz. Paramount Pictures and Metro Goldwyn Mayer stepped into the financial breach with the highly restrictive Parufamet agreement of December 1925, whereby the American firms took control (and revenue) of all Ufa's first run theatres to show American films. Only one significant German film was shown in Ufa first run cinemas in Berlin during this whole time the agreement was in effect: Joe May's silent The Farmer from Texas. The film received no publicity build up and was dropped after only one week at the Ufa Palast am Zoo. Almost no German films were shown in US cinemas: and Ufa made no new films in Germany at all while the Parufamet contract was in force. Although this injection of foreign capital allowed the construction in 1926 of Ufa's enormous new Große Halle studios at Neubabelsberg (designed by Carl Stach Urach, who had re built the Ufa Palast am Zoo the previous year), the Ufa management with Erich Pommer in charge of production continued to over spend by enormous amounts. Lang's Metropolis cost over an (estimated) Yet the only venue where Metropolis could be seen in the whole of Germany was at a single, small—yet exquisitely decorated—cinema showing second rate films, the Ufa Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz. The box office receipts amounted to approximately , slightly over 0.01% of the budget.

Competing American sound film companies such as RKO (formed by RCA) were becoming more organised in Germany. To protect the market from American domination the German government lobbied for a cartelization of all important German sound film patents, and on 30 August 1928 the Tobis Tonbild Syndicate A. G. was formed to consolidate the Tri Ergon patents and several hundred more. The four original main companies who made up the Tobis syndicate were:
Messter Ton Film, founded in Berlin by Oskar Messter, the founder of the German film industry who had been making and showing sound on disc films since 1903. He merged his companies with Ufa at its founding in 1917, and owned a number of significant sound film patents. Tri Ergon Musik AG (St. Gallen) formed c1926 by Tri Ergon AG (Zurich), which since 1923 had owned the patents registered by the original inventors in 1919. This was the parent company of Tri Ergon Musik AG (Berlin), formed by Masolle on 12 May 1927, which made both sound films, and also phonograph records with the same photo electric method used in the film soundtracks. The records were sold under the name Tri Ergon Photo Records. Deutsche Tonfilm AG (Hannover), which in 1925 acquired the Petersen Poulsen patents for German speaking countries, signed a monopoly contract with Phoebus Film (Berlin) to produce sound films. Deutsche Tonfilm, Phoebus Film and Lignose Hörfilm (see Jules Greenbaum) were all affiliated with the chemical industrial giant IG Farben, also formed in 1925. The Dutch firm of H. J. Küchenmeister, who had started making 'Meisterton' sound films in 1925 with his own Ultraphone sound on disc system, which used two gramophone pick up needles to give a stereo like sound. He formed a holding company Küchenmeisters Internationale Ultraphoon Maatschappij NV (Ultraphone) which launched on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange in October 1928 It swiftly combined with German interests to form H. J. Küchenmeister Kommanditgesellschaft (Berlin). In this deal, Tobis acquired the option to purchase outright Tri Ergon Musik AG (Berlin), and made an agreement with Tri Ergon Musik AG (St. Gallen) to use the Tri Ergon sound film patents. Tobis was almost completely controlled by Küchenmeister by 1929. I Kiss Your Hand, Madame ('Ich küsse ihre Hand, Madame') was the first Tobis film with sound. Starring Harry Liedtke and Marlene Dietrich it premièred on January 16, 1929. Free of dialogue, the film's only sound segment occurs when the tenor Richard Tauber sings the title song on the soundtrack (00:32). Although Tauber appears with Liedtke and Dietrich in publicity shots for the film, he didn't appear on screen himself. a chain of 800 cinemas which had installed Küchenmeister's 'Meisterton' sound system in 1928. The main competitor of Tobis was the Klangfilm syndicate, a partnership formed in early 1929 between the electrical manufacturers Siemens & Halske, AEG, and Polyphon Werke A. G. (who sold Polydor records). By March 1929 Tobis merged with Klangfilm, and the resulting syndicate was renamed Tobis Klangfilm in 1930. Tobis Klangfilm made a deal with the British and French Phototone companies, and British Talking Pictures, Ltd. This made the patents of Lee de Forest available to Tobis Klangfilm. Tobis Klangfilm now had branches for production, distribution and equipment throughout Europe (including Tobis Portuguesa) and the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, also in 1929, Ufa and Klangfilm planned a separate contract to develop their own sound film production. Tobis (possibly because its earlier failure with Ufa in 1925) stood in direct competition with the giant Ufa as a producer of film. The premiere in March 1929 at the Baden Baden Festival of Walther Ruttmann's Tobis film Melodie der Welt (Melody of the World), introduced the longest German sound film at the time with some 40 minutes running time. Tobis Klangfilm sued both Warner Bros. and Electrical Research Products, Inc. (ERPI)—Western Electric's subsidiary for distributing its sound motion picture equipment—for patent infringement. After a number of court cases, on 22 July 1929 the German appeals court upheld Tobis Klangfilm's exclusive rights to sound on film recording in Germany: the company was victorious in all subsequent appeals. Tobis Klangfilm won further injunctions in Switzerland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Holland, and Austria. Even William Fox, owner of Tri Ergon's American rights, was prevented from presenting films in Berlin. No American films were shown at all in Berlin, and Tobis Klang refused an offer from ERPI, Will H. Hays organised an American boycott through his company Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA). The première of Carmine Gallone's Tobis production, Das Land ohne Frauen ('The Land Without Women') almost two hours long on September 30, 1929, was hailed by reviews in the press as "the first feature length German sound film". Although this brought a swift end to the sound film wars between various competing US and European (Dutch, German, and Swiss) interests, it also meant that the original Tri Ergon system was never formally adopted in the United States. As a result, William Fox's own American Tri Ergon Corporation failed to collect an estimated $100 million in licensing fees.

In 1931 the effects of the Wall Street Crash eventually hit Küchenmeister's Sprekende Film NV, which owned Tobis. The Dutch firm had over extended itself with bank loans which were not renewed, and its Ultraphone business went bankrupt. The hugely complex chain of inter linked Tobis companies fell to pieces, necessitating a complete reorganisation of the whole business. Dutch bankers and creditors began re financing the profitable parts of the company, which emerged in 1932 as 'International Tobis NV' or Intertobis

The cartel rules began to irk foreign film companies, who had to pay ERPI a license fee (royalties) to shoot the film, and then had to pay Tobis Klang to show the film in the areas allotted to them under the 1930 accord. Another conference was held in Paris during February 1932, but Tobis Klangfilm demanded extra royalty fees, and American companies began withholding payments. Following the Reichstag fire, the NSDAP (Nazi Party) began to suspend civil liberties and eliminate political opposition. The Communists were excluded from the Reichstag. Adolf Hitler called on Reichstag members to vote for the Enabling Act on 24 March 1933, completing his rise to power from 1919 through the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 to Chancellor ('Reichskanzler') of the German Reich. During the nationalisation of the German film industry in 1935, the interests of Intertobis and Ufa were clandestinely transferred to Cautio GmbH. Cautio was personally set up in 1929 by Max Winkler, its sole owner and shareholder, as a front company for the secret transfer of funds from the NSDAP regime. In 1935 Winkler was named by Hitler as "Reich Plenipotentiary for the German Film Industry". He had links to Max Amann, Hitler's sergeant from 1915 to 1918, president of Eher Verlag since 1922, and president of the Reich Media Council and Reich Press Leader from c1933. The new head of Tobis Klang film, Dr. Hans Henkel, journeyed to New York for personal negotiations in March 1936 to effect a new agreement. After two weeks' discussion all parties signed the new 1932 Paris accord on 18 March 1936 which included payment of royalties in the local currency where the film was being shown. Most American companies had withdrawn anyway from the German market by 1936, since much of their revenues were frozen under strict currency laws under the NSDAP. Ufa continued to use the Tri Ergon system during WW2 until the collapse of Germany in 1945.

A subsidiary, Tri Ergon Musik AG of Berlin, made commercial phonograph records for the German, French, Swedish and Danish markets from about 1928 to 1932. The records were advertised and sold as "de". The company released records of popular jazz and dance bands, and classical music. The Hungarian dance band leader de made numerous records under both his own name and under the pseudonym of 'Harry Jackson'; other recording artists included Bernard Etté, and Friedrich Hollaender with the New Yorkers dance orchestra (e. g. "It's a Million to One You're in Love", TE 5137). Classical artists included the conductor and pianist Bruno Seidler Winkler (who later made arrangements for the Comedian Harmonists) and the Tri Ergon Trio consisting of the cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, the pianist Karol Szreter, and the violinist Max Rostal.

The Tri Ergon records were made by a partial reversal of the photoelectric process used to encode the sound track in the first place.