The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin
One of 1918's great American propaganda hits once turned Kaiser Wilhelm II into a screen villain; today not one complete reel is known to survive.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A formally released seven-reel American silent war drama directed by and starring Rupert Julian.
The film dramatised German aggression and imagined the Kaiser's defeat and imprisonment during the First World War.
Existence timeline
Rupert Julian stages a wartime propaganda drama.
The film begins its public commercial run.
Jewel releases the seven-reel feature across the United States.
Exhibitors screen the popular anti-Kaiser story.
No archive secures a complete copy.
The Library of Congress includes it in the national lost-feature inventory.
Why it ended
Distributed prints disappeared before systematic film preservation could secure the feature.
Last confirmed trace
Posters, stills, reviews, copyright records and plot descriptions survive in place of the moving image.
What it left behind
AFI has treated it as a particularly wanted lost film, reflecting both its contemporary popularity and historical propaganda value.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.