Galeen and Golems: Central Images of Expressionist Cinema created by a Jew from Lviv region.
Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer. Photographer unknown, 1929 / Wikimedia
World War I was at its end. In a desperate attempt to bolster the people's morale, General Erich Ludendorff urged the Defence Ministry of the German Empire to start a film company. In December 1917, the UFA (Universum Film AG) film company was born, funded by the German government, the Defence Ministry and the Deutsche Bank. UFA's mission was to make propaganda films aimed at "forming a common world view for the masses in the public interest 
", but it chose to follow the well-trodden path of commerce instead: making films that make the box office. This is hardly surprising, given that UFA emerged from the country's three leading film companies. The first was Messter Film and its leading German star of the 1910s, Henny Porten. The second was Nordische Film GmbH, the German subsidiary of the Danish Nordisk film company. And lastly, the PAGU film company, where Ernst Lubitsch had just started working in the war years. In the early 1920s, other companies also joined the UFA. Some became part of the conglomerate, while others continued cooperating but retained their independence. In any event, UFA shaped the film industry of the Weimar Republic, spanning the period between 1918 and 1933.
In 1921, the most important “merger" took place, with Decla-Bioskop and its managing director Erich Pommer becoming part of UFA. Pommer was a German Jew who had been involved in film before the war and founded his own film company, Decla, in 1915 while still serving on the Western Front. In 1920 Decla and Bioskop merged and became UFA's chief competitors for a whole year before merging with it. Not only did Pommer continue to run Decla-Bioskop, but he also became UFA's lead producer. Throughout the 1920s, he would go on to produce a dozen masterpieces (including Friedrich Murnau's The Last Man and Faust, Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel) while also launching the major trend of 1920s German cinema, Expressionism.
Film Expressionism
Frame from the film"The study of Dr Caligari" directed by Erich Pommer, 1920 / Wikimedia
Pommer produced The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in 1920, which was to go down in film history as the first Expressionist film. In the film, Dr Caligari arrives in a small town to perform his strange and uncanny act at the local fair: he revives a somnambulist, Cesare, who predicts the hapless onlookers' future. Cesare predicts the death of one of them, and at the same time, news of murder is heard in the town's streets.
But these are not your typical streets! All their lines are twisted, and the streetlights look like Guernica's electric Sun. The Sturm artists Hermann Warm, Walter Röhrig and Walter Reimann certainly didn't try to hide that the sets are cardboard. Instead, they highlighted their conventionality and expressiveness.
Contrasting shadows, sharp angles, grotesque interiors and the monsters that populate them - somnambulists (as in Caligari), vampires (Nosferatu) or mere shadows (Warning Shadows) - all this creates a general feeling of unease verging on obsession that is the hallmark of expressionist films.
The film was directed by Robert Wiene (a Jew from Breslau, today's Wroclaw in Poland), and the screenplay was written by Carl Mayer (a Jew from Graz) and Hans Janowitz (a Jew from Poděbrady, today's Czech Republic). Except they were not the first to introduce such a wretched and terrifying creature, born from a mystical plot and resembling Cesare, the somnambulist, to the screen. This had occurred earlier when the war had just begun.
The First Golem
Paul Wegener and Lida Salmonova in the film The Golem,
directed by Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen, 1915 / Wikimedia, culture.pl
On January 14, 1915, The Golem premiered in Berlin. The screenplay was by Henrik Galeen.
Galeen (born Wiesenberg) began working as a reporter, struggling to make a living at provincial theaters until he moved from his hometown of Stryi (now Lviv Region) to Berlin. In 1906, he was employed by the renowned theater director Max Reinhardt as his assistant. And in 1914, he embarked with Paul Wegener on The Golem and made his successful debut in the film, not just as a screenwriter: Galeen also co-directed the film and even played one of the main roles - the antique dealer. Paul Wegener plays the Golem, and Guido Seeber, the leading cameraman of the 1920s, was in charge of the photography.
The film was based on the legend of the Prague rabbi Loew and his clay golem, whom the rabbi made and animated to protect the Jewish people from persecution. The Golem was mute, docile and animated by a particular word placed in its chest. Galeen maintained the legend unchanged, except that the film was set in modern times. Now the golem, motionless, was found and taken to an antique dealer, who decided to bring it back to life and use it in his household. Although the film's complete version was lost, occasional footage and the screenplay enable us to reconstruct the meanings that Galeen put into the story.
The protagonist, an antique dealer, was depicted as a typical Eastern European Jew, with his black yarmulke, peyes and seated behind his books. Except that the books were not Torah or Talmud but accounting books. The antique dealer, replaced by the Rabbi in the legend, was a completely different type - a profit-seeking merchant. The Torah was put up in his shop window, and the golem served his private needs. Galeen's attitude seemed critical, calling for integration and leaving the traditions behind. The line with the golem was particularly revealing: the effigy falls in love with the antiques dealer's daughter, but she, naturally, could not reciprocate; moreover, her affections were directed towards a non-Jew, the town baron. And if, at first, the father found this unacceptable, later, when the golem got out of control and smashed everything around it, his daughter's association with the non-Jew no longer strikes the deal as tragic. In the film, the golem is frightening and primarily appears as a force for destruction. In the finale, it falls from the tower and shatters into pieces, as if (self) destroyed by its inappropriateness. But by 1920, this all changed when the second film by Galeen and Wegener, The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920), was released.
Second Golem
Frame from the film 'The Golem: How He Came into the World,'
directed by Paul Wegener and Carl Boese, 1920 / IMDb
This 1920 film can be considered a prequel to the earlier one - the story was set in 16th-century Prague, and Rabbi Loew was still present. There was also the daughter who fell in love with the King's messenger, a character not mentioned in the legend. And also the golem, who, despite playing the part of the savior of the Jewish people, at some reverted to a path of destruction. What was different, however, was that now it was the stars, and not unrequited love, to blame for his untamed behavior. The Golem spiraled out of control and walked into town. The Golem killed people. He couldn’t seem to find a place for himself. Stepping outside the gates of the Jewish quarter, suddenly he smiled at the sunlight, the meadow, and the children. Everyone was afraid of the golem, but then a little girl came up to him, went to his arms, started playing with the star on his chest ( the star contained the secret word inside it) - and she took it off. The golem dropped dead.
What killed the golem was not rage, revenge, or a curse, but rather his ability to feel, to love - to be "like everyone else" while being different. Rather than a sense of the shattered past from the first film, the second Golem unexpectedly tells us a story about that very Other. And over the 1920s, this story repeated itself more than once, because every expressionist filmmaker could be called an Other, incomprehensible, misunderstood, and different. Certainly, this sense of otherness was directly linked to the post-war depression and the overall identity crisis. Yet it is precisely this image of the Other that is key to finding the Jewish identity in the films written and directed by Jews. Although, on the surface, German society was geared towards integration, especially in large cities, Jews seldom got to "belong". Especially Eastern European Jews, the Ostjude. They were what most often emerged in expressionist characters. Henrik Galeen played an instrumental role in the making of such an interpretation. Not only incorporated a Jewish legend into the expressionist imagery, but he also continued to do so beyond the Golem. He went on to create the decade's most striking characters.
Nosferatu and Knock
Max Schreck in the film 'Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,' directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922 / Wikimedia
German town of Wisborg. In Nosferatu, there were no sidelines, as there wasn’t Professor Van Helsing, the vampire specialist. Otherwise, the stories were quite similar - Nosferatu traveled from Transylvania to Wisborg, bringing death to this European town. But, as in the case of the golem, the fundamentally important thing was the ending.Galeen and Murnau, the film's directors, portrayed Nosferatu almost like an insect, with its unique way of life and needs. Although Nosferatu was an antagonist, it seemed hardly appropriate to blame him for being a vampire. What complicated things was that Nosferatu fell in love. And, as one might expect, love brought him to his death: failing to keep track of the time, Nosferatu went to see his beloved and ended up being out at dawn, which burned the vampire to ashes.
Nosferatu also suggests an Eastern European outsider. Of course, Galeen did not intend for him to be seen as a Jew. Instead, he conjures up an extreme version of some abstract other, even more terrifying than the golem, yet still capable of love. Being the central character, the antagonist seems to push for a tragic ending. The happy ending, as it is in the film, appears to be merely a subplot denouement. But the reflection on otherness did not stop here. Another very important, albeit supporting character in the film was Nosferatu's servant, waiting for his master to bestow eternal life upon him. His name was Knock, and he was played by Alexander Granach.
From his native village of Verbivtsy, Granach first moved to Lviv, then to Berlin. The writer Arnold Zweig referred to Granach as "the strongest temperament of his generation ", and his friends called him " the king of Eastern Jewry ". In the theater, Granach did not hide his Jewish identity or otherness but rather accentuated it in every possible way. He did the same in Nosferatu. If the film took pity on anyone even more than on Nosferatu, it was on him - Knock. As film historian Margrit Frölich writes about this role: "... it neither excites nor reinforces anti-Semitic sentiments; on the contrary, it reveals their anxiety-ridden nature and critically dismisses them ".
Alraune and Waxworks
E.A. Dupont, Paul Leni, Fritz Morishat, John Gottowt, Lore Sello, and
on the white horse to the right, Leo Birinski. Photographer unknown, 1923 / Wikimedia
Galeen himself will direct the next adaptation of the literary work - Hans Heinz Ewers' novel 'Alraune. Alraune, too, was a perfect fit for the character of the other. This was a strange creature, made by Prof. Jakob ten Brinken from a hanged man's seed in a prostitute's womb. It possesd amazing properties, attracting men, good luck and was seemingly impervious. Naturally, just like the golem, Alraune rebelled and, like Nosferatu, fell in love at some point. Galeen invited Paul Wegener to play the role of the Professor; the part of Alraune was performed by Brigitte Helm, who, only a year earlier, had played Maria and her mechanical and evil doppelganger in Lang's Metropolis. Although Alraune and the tall, fair-haired Helm were very far from the Jewish legends and the image of an Eastern European Jewess, nevertheless, by once incorporating the golem into the expressionist imagery, Galeen had irrevocably made Jewish history a part of it. Much like Lubitsch, whose 1910s Jewish lads morphed into the 1920-30s emancipated young women, Alraune was, for Galeen, represented for Galeen a shift in focus rather than a complete departure from the subject.
Alraune was released in 1928, during the twilight of the expressionist movement. By then expressionism had long since shifted from flat sets to multidimensional and much more sophisticated lighting and angles. By the late 1920s, it had definitively left its leading positions behind. However, here, too, Galeen was quicker than the rest. As early as 1924, he wrote the screenplay for Paul Leni's film Waxworks, which was not so much a parody but rather an anthology of the existing film genres, drawing their bottom line. Presented as an almanac, it was divided into three novellas linked by the Waxworks cabinet. Each novella featured a wax figure: the first was about the Arab Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd, the second was about the Russian Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and the third was about serial killer Jack the Ripper. Galeen and Leni brought together historical-costume films, adventure, horror and expressionist aesthetics. There was no otherness here; on the contrary, all characters and genres were easily recognisable to the viewer.
After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Galeen fled Germany: first to Sweden, then to the UK, then to the States. He tried to make a sound version of The Golem, but nothing came out of it. Had he succeeded, Golem might have learned to speak, but the clay effigy was to remain silent forever.
