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Stuart Webbs is a fictional detective who appeared in a series of German films and serials during the silent era. Webbs was one of a number of detectives with English-sounding names to appear in German cinema of the era. Like his contemporaries, such as Joe Deebs, he was modelled on Sherlock Holmes.^[1] Webbs was the most popular of the group. His original film series ran from 1914 to 1926,^[2] and he continued to appear in other later films such as The Green Monocle (1929).

Webbs was played by Ernst Reicher until 1926. A number of figures directed entries in the series including Joe May, Johannes Guter and Robert Wiene. The series was originally made by Continental-Kunstfilm, but following a dispute May and Reicher left to form their own production company, Stuart Webbs-Film.^[3]

The role of Stuart Webbs was played by Ernst Reicher, and once each by Fritz Greiner, Ralph Clancy, and Karl Ludwig Diehl. Joe May directed the films, but directors Adolf Gärtner, Johannes Guter, Max Obal, Robert Wiene, Franz Seitz Sr., Lupu Pick, Rudolf Meinert, and Ernst Reicher himself also contributed. The directors of some films are unknown.

Stuart Webbs was a gentleman detective modelled after Sherlock Holmes, who solved even the most difficult cases with intelligence and elegance.^[4] Throughout the First World War, this fictional character was popular with German cinema audiences. Webbs’s adventures were filmed regularly until 1921; after that, the individual episodes of the series, now produced by Emelka, also based in Munich, were produced at irregular intervals. In 1926, a remake of The Armoured Vault (German: Das Panzergewölbe), again with Reicher in the title role, was produced; it was his last appearance as the suave detective. Two late additions to the series were the silent films The Green Monocle (German: Das grüne Monokel) with Ralph Clancy and Masks (German: Masken) with Karl Ludwig Diehl, both in 1929.

In 1935, film historian Oskar Kalbus [de] described the origins of the series:

In 1913, director Joe May made a film featuring a number of up-and-coming actors. One of them was Ernst Reicher. Reicher, who had studied the Whitechapel crime district in England and met a detective there whose sharp intellect he constantly admired, suggested one day that an adventure of this private detective should be filmed. He named the film’s hero Stuart Webbs, and thus the first detective film, The Mysterious Villa, was born. What no one expected was that this film was the biggest box office success imaginable. Everywhere it was released, at home and abroad, audiences lined up at the cinema box office. It wasn’t long before the second Stuart Webbs film was made, then the third, the fourth, the twentieth. Ernst Reicher probably made 40–50 films in which he played “Stuart Webbs”, that amiable, chivalrous, highly intellectual, athletic detective who saw his noblest duty as the tireless service of justice.^[5]

Exact counts vary due to lost or incomplete records. Many entries are now considered lost.

• 
  Panic in the House of Ardon (1920)
• 
  The Rat Hole (1921)
• 
  The Pagoda (1923)
• 
  The Green Monocle (1929)
• 
  Masks (1929)

• The German Early Cinema Database