- Distinguished German art director and production designer, a graduate of the Berlin Kunstgewerbeschule. He was first active as a stage-set painter. Following military service during World War I, Kettelhut joined the production team of Otto Hunte and Karl Vollbrecht, importantly translating Hunte's designs into tangible film architecture. His most famous collaboration was on Fritz Lang's spectacular Metropolis (1927). Kettelhut was a pioneering specialist in architectural models and visual trick effects.
- Shortly before his death, Kettelhut was persuaded to sell his original production drawings from Die Nibelungen to the Deutsche Kinemathek, and subsequently they have been shown as part of exhibitions in the museum of cinema in Berlin and the Centre Georges Pompidou in France.[.
- From 1910 until 1912 Kettelhut studied at the College of Applied Arts in Berlin. This was followed by time spent as an apprentice in local theaters around Germany including a period as a scene painter at the Metropolitan Opera in Berlin and a role as the head of the design department in Mühlhausen.
- Kettelhut is considered as one of the most important artists in the history of early German cinema, mainly for his set direction for Die Nibelungen (1924) and his design and visual effects for Metropolis (1927).
- His role in theatre was interrupted when Kettelhut was called to serve at the Front in 1914.
- With the end of the Second World War, Kettelhut left the film industry for five years. The release of Erich Engel's rom-com Fahrt ins Glück in 1948, for which Kettelhut worked as the production designer, was postponed. It was actually shot in 1944 but needed to wait four years until its premiere, in East Germany.
- One of Kettelhut's first solo projects was an uncredited role as art director for Walter Ruttmann's documentary Berlin: Die Sinfonie der Großstadt (Berlin: Symphony of a Metropolis). To maintain the integrity of the documentary, Kettelhut hid and sheltered the cameras around the city to allow them to capture the citizens of Berlin without interruption.
- Kettelhut was first employed in cinema for May Film's 1919 production Die Herrin der Welt (The Mistress of the World), an eight-part epic of German cinema. Kettelhut was employed as a production designer on all eight parts and is also credited as a set decorator on the first part. It is on this film that he was re-united with Otto Hunte, to whom he worked as an assistant, and Karl Vollbrecht. Both of whom would work on many films with Kettelhut in the future. Also employed on The Mistress of the World, but as a writer, was Fritz Lang.
- Die Nibelungen brought Kettelhut into a working relationship with cameraman Günther Rittau. The two worked together several times in the future, but their most impressive collaboration was on their next Fritz Lang film, Metropolis (1927). Lang kept faith with his old team and with Hunte as lead, Vollbrecht and Kettelhut were brought in to design the cityscape central to the sci-fi dystopia of the film.Kettelhut's drawing's originally featured a large Gothic cathedral style building amongst the skyscrapers, but this was rejected by Lang who had visions of a city which had rejected religion and instead had built a 'Tower of Babel'. Rittau and Kettelhut worked closely, not only to realise Lang's vision, but also on early special effects to bring the enormity of the city to life.
- With his career in film behind him, Kettelhut found work in the emerging television industry.
- Kettelhut's final outing on the big screen saw him reunited with Fritz Lang, in what would also be the director's final film, The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960).
- Kettelhut is credited with the positions of Art Direction and Art Department on Metropolis, but also undertook several uncredited roles, including special effects, visual effects and technical consultant.
- In 1968 Kettelhut was awarded the 'Special Award for Outstanding Contributions to German Cinema' for his lifelong body of work at the annual German Film Awards (Deutscher Filmpreis).
- Kettelhut continued to find employment in Germany after the Nazis came to power. He found himself working with German directors such as Paul Martin, Reinhold Schunzel and Arthur Robison, producing mainly comedies for home-grown talent like Willy Fritsch. During this period Kettelhut was more often listed in his films as the production designer rather than art director.
- His early career was defined by a working relationship with fellow designers Otto Hunte and Karl Vollbrecht, the trio working on many of Fritz Lang's early German films.
- Kettelhut worked as an assistant to Jacoby-Boy on two further pictures in 1920, the first being Das wandernde Bild (The Moving Image), in which Kettelhut was first introduced to Lang who was directing the film. After producing designs on both parts of 1921's The Indian Tomb, Kettelhut was hired to work on Lang's Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (1922), he was again teamed with Hunte and Vollbrecht.
- Despite being best known for his iconic visuals on several of the most important films of German Expressionist cinema, he is also noted for a career spanning into the 1960s and his work on more light-hearted films and musicals.
- After being discharged at the end of the First World War his old colleagues, Hunte and Karl Vollbrecht, found Kettelhut employment at Martin Jacoby-Boy's design agency in Berlin. One of the firm's clients was MayFilms, the production company for film maker Joe May and was through these ties that Kettelhut first began his work within cinema.
- In 1954 he found work again with his former boss Erich Pommer who had returned from self-imposed exile in the United States. They made two final films together Eine Liebesgeschichte (1954) and Kinder, Mütter und ein General (Children, Mother, and the General) which became one of the five pictures selected as best foreign film at the 1955 Golden Globe Awards.
- In 1924, Kettelhut worked on one of his most important films, Die Nibelungen. With Lang again as director, he reassembled the team of Hunte, Vollbrecht and Kettelhut, charged with designing the mythical world of Siegfried and the Nibelungen. Hunte was placed in charge of set design and construction, while Kettelhut and Vollbrecht assisted as set collaborators, though Kettelhut's speciality was in architectural designs and models. Kettelhut not only created the architectural feel of the film, designing the buildings such as the Icelandic castle surrounded by fire from Part I, but he was also heavily involved in designing more mechanical elements, most notably the life-sized dragon slayed by Siegfried.
- Kettelhut was born in Berlin in 1893. After leaving school, he received training at a craft school as a theatre artist. In 1909 he first met Otto Hunte, when they were placed in charge of art direction at the Aachen's Stadttheater. The two became long-time collaborators during their early cinema careers.
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