Walter Ruttmann (28 December 1887 – 15 July 1941) was a German film director and along with Hans Richter, Viking Eggeling and Oskar Fischinger was an early German practitioner of experimental film. Ruttmann was born in Frankfurt am Main; His film career began in the early 1920s. His first abstract short films, Lichtspiel: Opus I (1921) and Opus II (1923), were experiments with new forms of film expression. Ruttmann and his colleagues of the avant garde movement enriched the language of film as a medium with new formal techniques.