Silence & Silver 24: The Golem: How He Came Into The World (1920)
The Medieval Prometheus (Halloween 2024)
Prague. The Late Middle Ages.
Rabbi Loew (Albert Steinrück), the great magician, alchemist, kabbalist, and astrologer, sees the doom of the Jewish ghetto written in the stars, and gathers the people to mourn and pray for deliverance. The next day, Florian (Lothar Müthel1), the foppish agent of the Holy Roman Emperor,2 arrives at the ghetto with an order of expulsion for the Jewish community. Even as he treats Rabbi Loew with contempt, Florian is enchanted by his daughter Miriam (Lyda Salmonova), and she returns his attentions. Hoping to save his people, Loew sends a message back to emperor, reminding him of all the times the rabbi has aided him with his magic. The emperor agrees to an audience, and Rabbi Loew sets out to create his most impressive miracle yet: a Golem. A living being made from clay.
The fantastical sets, claustrophobic interiors, tilting camera angles, and dramatic play of light and darkness will quickly tell what you probably already knew: we’re really back in Weimar Germany, in the year 1920. The Second Reich has fallen, the Kaiser is in exile, fascists and communists are brawling in the streets, and German Expressionist cinema is being born. Like the bizarre dystopian psychological thriller The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Paul Wegener’s The Golem asks unsettling questions about human nature for an age when everything was in flux. Where is the line between courage—the willingness to do what is necessary—and hubris? Can the same powers that bring us salvation—be they science or magic—also bring destruction? Is power—represented by the supernatural might of the Golem—really the only safeguard for a people as despised as the Jews? In good expressionist fashion, The Golem offers feelings and images, not answers.
The nature of magic is especially ambigious in the film. Rabbi Loew is the hero, certainly—and a man of great learning and extraordinary magical powers. But in creating the Golem, he’s also getting in over his head. He’s forced to parley with the dark spirits of the air to bring the Golem to life, and almost too late, he discovers that the creature he created is beyond the control even of the greatest magician. “Beware your own creation,” he reads in his grimoire. Even as he saves the Jewish community from destruction by showing the Holy Roman Emperor the true extent of his power, he unleashes a force into the world which nearly destroys everything he loves.
It’s hard to know exactly what audiences would have made of The Golem in 1920. The positive—yet still thoroughly human—portrayal of its Jewish characters was a radical political statement at a time when Jews symbolized all that the German right hated about modernity—pluralism, secularism, tolerance, finance capitalism, communism, even democracy itself.3 And its depiction of the Jews as the innocent victims of prejudice—as a religious minority persecuted by a decadent and capricious German emperor, no less—leaves the movie’s philosemitism beyond any doubt. (The movie ends with a Star of David emblazoned across the screen). But the Golem himself remains a mysterious figure. What did he represent to filmgoers in the earliest days of Weimar democracy? Is he a symbol of science, and of man’s quest to dominate nature? Or does he represent violence, and the way that, no matter how necessary it may be, it tends naturally to rebound upon the very people who wield it? I’m not sure. Critics often point to this film as a spiritual forerunner to the many Frankenstein films Hollywood would produce throughout the 20th century—making it, in essence, a foundational work of modern cinematic science fiction. That’s fine as far as it goes, but I wonder if there might be something else at work here—something radically contrary to the dreary scientific spirit of the Modern Prometheus.
The film continually emphasizes the piety of the Jewish community—their fervent prayers when calamity is approaching, and their jubilant gratitude when they are delivered from destruction.4 Rabbi Loew, despite his heroism, accepts no credit for saving the ghetto. “Give thanks to Jehova,” he says, raising his arms to heaven, “He has saved his people for the third time today.” Loew is not simply being modest. His creation, though it saved the people from destruction, nearly brought destruction upon them as well. It was sheer chance—or, Loew would say, divine providence—that set everything right in the end. Would everything have turned out alright if Loew hadn’t made his Golem—if he had simply trusted that the prayers for deliverance being offered at the synagogue would be answered? It’s hard to say.
I know actual Jewish fiction tends to be more pessimistic about everything turning out alright in the end, but let’s assume for a second that this movie is a kind of parable, and the Germans who saw the film were supposed to see themselves as the Jews. Perhaps the Holy Roman Emperor’s edict of expulsion was meant to evoke the outrage at the Treaty of Versailles, which even liberal Germans felt was unjust and slanderous.5 Is writer-director Paul Wegener urging his fellow Germans to reject violence and turn to God in the face of persecution? It sounds odd, but… well, it’s an odd movie, from an odd period of cinematic history. And Germans aren’t exactly known for their moderation when it comes to existential longing for national redemption (thanks, Hegel). But, as with any piece of German Expressionist weirdness, you don’t have to buy into this or any other interpretation to enjoy The Golem. You can absolutely watch it just for the magic and the monster and the kabbalpunk aesthetic (and yes, I just made that word up). And if you’re looking for a more obscure Halloween pick this year, it may be just the thing. It’s not scary, but neither, really, is Frankenstein. It’s the idea that unsettles us—the fear that we might, in our hubris, unleash something into the world that’s beyond our control. We’re just as vulnerable to playing God today as in 19th-century Ingolstadt or 17th-century Prague.
And maybe the Postmodern Prometheus will be even more horrifying than his Modern or Medieval counterparts.
Postscript: It’s actually been a while—probably 10 years—since I’ve read Frankenstein, and this post is making me want to do it again. Outside of my obsession with 1920s and 1930s culture, I’m also devoted to 19th-century literature. I mean, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Herman Melville, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe—all in one hundred-year period? That’s a literary debt we can never repay. So, I guess that’s my other recommendation for this October: read Frankenstein, or Dracula, or Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, or “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Those stories are good. Seriously, find an audiobook on Youtube, turn down the lights, and just enjoy a damn book.
That’s a far more useful way of celebrating spooky season than putting a giant skeleton in your yard or dressing up as Harley Quinn.
Müthel seems to have returned to the stage of the end of the silent era, appearing in only one talkie (1931’s Yorck). He later became a director, and was cozy with the Nazi Regime during the Second World War. His 1943 production of The Merchant of Venice at the Burgtheater—starring the vicious antisemite Werner Krauss (aka Dr. Caligari) as Shylock—was notorious for its unapologetic Jew-baiting.
In the original legend, this is Rudolf II, a Habsburg ruler known for his interest in science, the arts, and the occult. The real Rudolf II was a patron of Rabbi Loew and tolerant towards the Jewish community, although he was also certainly interested in magic.
If want to get a sense of the political zeitgeist of the Weimar Republic, check out Richard J. Evans’s The Coming of the Third Reich, which may be my favorite history book of all time.
Like Douglas Fairbanks’s The Thief of Bagdad, this movie is unique (even by 21st century standards) for its positive depiction of a non-Christian religion.
Eric D. Weitz’s book Weimar Germany does an excellent job of explaining why Germans of all political stripes—not just the far right—found the Treaty of Versailles so intolerable.