Background of Study
Introduction
Thea Gabriele von Harbou was a German actress and author of Prussian aristocratic origin. She was born in Tauperlitz in the Kingdom of Bavaria. She is especially known for the 1927 science fiction film Metropolis directed by her husband Fritz Lang. She would often publish her screenplays as novels. In 1933, Lang fleed Nazi Germany as he was Jewish; whilst she made several Nazi propaganda films. She later married Ayi Tendulkar, a journalist of Indian origin – before dying in 1954.
Thea von Harbou was born into a financially unstable aristocratic family in 1888, the same year emotionally unstable Wilhelm II became kaiser of Germany. Her father worked as a chief forester, and young Thea grew up surrounded by woods and meadows. After finishing her secondary education at a girls’ academy in Dresden, the stagestruck young Thea embarked on an acting career in 1906 in Düsseldorf, but despite considerable exertions on her part she did not achieve any significant success over the next few years. Convinced that she had a talent for writing, von Harbou began to send manuscripts to publishers, and by 1910 one of her novels, Die nach uns kommen (The Next Generation), had appeared in print, earning both good reviews and healthy sales.
From 1910 to 1952, von Harbou published two dozen novels, many of which became bestsellers. A strongly conservative and nationalistic bias is detectable in virtually all these works: Der Krieg und die Frauen (War and Women, 1913); Deutsche Frauen (German Women, 1914); Der unsterbliche Acker (Immortal Soil, 1915); Der junge Wacht am Rhein (The Young Watch on the Rhine, 1915), and Die deutsche Frau im Weltkrieg (The German Woman in the World War, 1916). The fierce nationalism and racism found in von Harbou’s wartime writings, while hardly a unique point of view, was presented in popular and entertaining formats which made her a well-known personality on the extreme right of the political spectrum in the last years of imperial Germany. Her nationalistic fervor became if anything even more uncompromising in the books and articles she published after the collapse of the monarchy in November 1918. In these works, Germany was invariably depicted as the innocent victim in a world of evil foes. As they turned the pages of her books, von Harbou’s readers learned again and again of a Fatherland that had been wronged by its implacable traditional geopolitical and philosophical adversaries, France and Great Britain. Many of her books appeared under the Scherl Verlag imprint, a publishing firm that was part of the media empire of Alfred Hugenberg, a politically ambitious industrialist who despised the democratic republic that had emerged in 1918. Starting in the late 1920s, Hugenberg provided substantial subsidies to Adolf Hitler’s violently anti-democratic Nazi Party.
Married in 1914 to actor Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Thea divorced him soon after the war to marry Fritz Lang, a rising filmmaker. She was fascinated by the relatively new film medium. Endowed with a gift for understanding what mass audiences desired, von Harbou began writing screenplays for Lang. Beginning with his 1920 film Das wandernde Bild (Wandering Image), she wrote all Lang’s motion pictures—works of cinematic art that are now regarded as landmarks in the history of film and are studied in classrooms around the globe. Of the ten screenplays she wrote between 1920 and 1933, the best known are Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, 1922), Die Nibelungen (1922–24), Metropolis (1927), M (1931), and Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse). By the mid-1920s, Thea von Harbou was acknowledged to be the leading writer of the German cinema, equal in talent to Carl Mayer.
In her most successful screenplay, Metropolis, a technically impressive science-fiction film which Lang shot in 1927, von Harbou gave voice to the deeply felt fears of mechanization and urban life that embodied a significant aspect of conservative intellectuals’ cultural criticism of Weimar Germany. Skyscrapers in the film appear as tall, dark forms that make city streets little more than suffocatingly narrow canyons. The workers in Metropolis have completely lost all freedoms and human dignity, having been enticed and seduced by a robot that brings not social stability but profound dissatisfaction. Set in the year 2000, Metropolis is a cautionary tale of a city that has become totally polarized, with a hedonistic elite that seeks its pleasures above ground, their way of life made possible by the exploitation of a subterranean proletariat that has been ground down to a dehumanized state. The film remains visually impressive, in part because of the 35,000 extras used in its many crowd scenes. In production for 17 months, it cost what was then the vast sum of over 2 million reichsmarks, and presented such starkly memorable images as a Tower of Babel sequence in which a thousand men and women appear with their heads shaved.
Portrayed by von Harbou as essentially dull witted, the workers of Metropolis appear visually as drones laboring in their underground industrial complex. A ray of hope appears in the figure of Young Fredersen, scion of the master of the city, who is moved by the virginally pure woman Maria. She kindles in him a growing social conscience concerning the miseries of the workers. After a massive uprising of the workers is halted by Maria, who convinces them that their grievances will be addressed by a mediator who will unify and redeem the entire community, she is kidnapped by Young Fredersen’s father. An evil scientist clones Maria into a malevolent robot who now spreads a spirit of rebellion among the easily misled workers. Mindlessly they turn to mob violence, going on a Luddite rampage and destroying the city’s machines. A massive flood apparently drowns the city’s children, enraging the grief-stricken masses who burn Maria’s robot version as a witch. At the end, Young Fredersen and the real Maria are able to effect a heroic rescue of the children, thus destroying the scientist’s power as well as ending class hatred that had threatened to destroy the city. This goal of social reconciliation is achieved when Young Fredersen’s father, having experienced a moral awakening, joins with the liberated workers to become their leader as the wisely paternalistic “glorious father” they had always yearned for.
Although Metropolis was a smash hit both in Germany and abroad, its story line was harshly criticized from the start by liberal and leftist intellectuals. Although some writers merely dismissed her work as little more than forgettable, trashy entertainment, others detected more ominous ideas and ideals lurking in von Harbou’s screenplay. The critic Axel Eggebrecht condemned the film for extolling social mysticism and denying “the unshakable logic of the class struggle.” Both the novel Metropolis and the Fritz Lang film version of it have been the subject of criticism which has discerned conservative, reactionary and even proto-fascist tendencies in the story line. Metropolis’ depiction of the workers as brainless slaves who become destructive at a whim has been compared to neo-conservative ideals of the period that called for a return to a social order based on hierarchies which would bring the uncontrolled masses back in line.
Adolf Hitler regarded Metropolis as a splendid motion picture, emphasizing as it did a community’s triumph over class divisions through the appearance of a messianic leader. It is more than likely that Hitler identified himself with the film’s hero Young Fredersen, comparing the goals of his own Nazi movement to the pseudo-liberation achieved by the workers when they willingly bowed to accept Fredersen senior’s rule. The industrialist’s authoritarian benevolence paralleled Nazi ideology, which promised to banish class antagonisms in an organic Gemeinschaft. Where the film appeared to most of its viewers to contain a criticism of the dangers of enslavement posed by humanity’s growing dependence on technology, Hitler apparently could see only a celebration of a people’s embrace of subordination to authority and hierarchy.
After Metropolis, von Harbou continued to write popular novels and screenplays. Her successful 1928 novel Frau im Mond (The Girl in the Moon) was transformed by Lang the following year into a popular film. Her screenplay for the 1931 film M, starring Peter Lorre as the child murderer brought to justice by the underworld, remains a classic of the Weimar cinema. In 1922 and again in 1933, Lang filmed von Harbou screenplays about the character Dr. Mabuse, a pathological criminal. In the 1933 version, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of Dr. Mabuse), words closely resembling those of Hitler are put in madman Dr. Mabuse’s mouth, and the film has been described as an anti-Nazi allegory. Most likely this is not the case, given the fact that von Harbou had joined the Nazi Party in 1932 as a sign of her enthusiastic support of all that Hitler stood for. That same year, von Harbou and her husband separated, at least in part because of irreconcilable political as well as personal reasons; their divorce became final in 1934.
In early 1933, soon after the Nazis came to power, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels asked Lang to remain in Germany, promising that he could continue to make films and indeed could expect to become head of the entire German film industry. Given the fact that Lang’s mother was Jewish, this was a remarkable concession on the part of the Nazis. Goebbels also confided to Lang that after he had viewed Metropolis, Hitler made an announcement regarding Lang’s role in the coming Third Reich: “That’s the man to make National Socialist films.” Lang left Germany the same evening. Von Harbou, on the other hand, remained and went on to have a successful career in the Third Reich, continuing to write screenplays as well as trying her hand as a director on two occasions (with only moderate success). In 1933, she was elected chair of the Association of German Sound Film Authors, a body that signaled its Nazification by purging itself of Jews and anti-fascists. She eagerly worked as a script doctor for propaganda films and provided scripts for several films directed by the notorious Veit Harlan.
By the end of the war, in 1945, Thea had become notorious as a last-ditch Nazi, particularly because of her screenplay for Kolberg, a historical epic that appealed to the German people to fight to the bitter end, pending a military miracle that might still change the course of the war. Declared a Nazi by German courts, she was banned from working in films for several years, but by the late 1940s was once more active in the industry, writing dubbing scripts for Deutsche London Film. Von Harbou’s last screenplay was for the 1953 film Dein Herz ist meine Heimat (Your Heart is My Home). Critical opinion then and now has concluded that this, her final work, was no better than mediocre. Thea von Harbou died in West Berlin on July 1, 1954.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/von-harbou-thea-1888-1954
Literature Review
In a dystopian vision of the future, the bustling city of Metropolis is structured in a way that the working classes live and work beneath the ground, while the upper classes live in high rises that stretch into the sky. Metropolis is governed by Joh Fredersen, a businessman and ruler who has no interest in listening to the needs of the working class, and cares only about keeping his city running as usual.
https://www.gradesaver.com/metropolis/study-guide/summary
Set in 2026, Metropolis is a futuristic city with severe socio-economic class divisions: the ruling class lives above ground in luxury and the working class lives below ground and operates the machines that run the city. The action is focused largely on Freder, the son of the powerful city master, and Maria, a working-class girl who advocates for systemic change. These two fall in love after Maria forces Freder to confront the economic disparities, and Freder vows to become the mediator between the working class and ruling class.
MEANWHILE, Freder’s dad Joh Frederson enlists the help of Metropolis’ mad scientist Rotwang to use his hobby of creating lifelike female robots (just go with it) to replace Maria to disrupt and discredit the change movement. They kidnap Maria and copy her onto a robot. EPIC. Little does Frederson know that Rotwang intends to use Robot Maria to destroy the city because he’s vowed revenge on Frederson because once upon a time Frederson stole Rotwang’s girlfriend, Hel, who died after giving birth to Freder. WHEW.
So while real, good Maria was gently encouraging the working class to care for each other and unionize, Parody a.k.a. Evil Robot Maria takes it a step too far with destruction, violence, and anarchy. The workers rise up and storm the city, destroying machines. While all the adults are above ground raising hell, the children (and real, good Maria, who has escaped the mad scientist) are endangered by a flooding underground. Maria and Freder save the children, but the parents, believing them to be drowned, turn on both the Marias. LUCKILY good Maria escapes and the mob grabs Parody, whose evil but wicked-cool robot self is revealed when her human parts burn away at a stake execution. METAL. Instead of rising up for an epic last stand, Evil Robot Maria kind of just horrifies people with the newfound knowledge that they’ve been incited to violence by a body double. Now Freder and Rotwang are fighting over real Maria on the roof of the cathedral because Rotwang thinks he’s dead, they’re in the afterlife, and she’s his long-lost Hel! Maria and Freder overpower him and he falls to his death. Frederson, faced with the endangerment of his own kid, figures out that he should be kind to other people. Our heroes plan to rebuild a more equitable city.
https://cannonballread.com/2024/05/metropolis-hc/
Metropolis” takes place in the year 2000 in the mythical setting of Metropolis. This German story is a utopic vision of a Marxist society that goes too far. The protagonist, Jon Frederson (John Masterman in the English version) and his son Freder Frederson are members of the wealthy class, living high above the proletariat of yeoman workers who are crowded together in the urban squalor of Metropolis. Despite the dictatorial demands of his father, Freder Frederson moves among the masses and falls in love with an outspoken woman of the working class named Maria. However, Jon Frederson does not approve of the association. With the guidance of the evil scientist Rotwang, Jon vies to gain control of the working class. To accomplish this, Rotwang kidnaps Maria and designs a robot in her image. According to plan, the robot Maria introduces chaos into the world of the workers. But, ultimately, both the robot Maria and Rotwang are destroyed; Freder Frederson rescues Maria and they live happily ever after; and Jon Frederson even learns to like the workers. Within the context of the film, the robot Maria is important as a catalyst that institutes anarchy into the structured world of the working class. Considering the prolificness of Fritz Lang and the international popularity of “Metropolis,” the robot Maria stands the first major robot in the history of film.
Questions
- What is the role/function of robot? Why was it created?
The robot Maria is designed Rotwang initially with his dead wife, Hel, as a model. However, Jon Fredersen convinces him to create the robot to replicate Maria in order to cause chaos and to undermine Maria’s influence over the workers. The robot Maria is a model of “the workers of the future,” who would be mechanical slaves. In addition to being a prototype of an ideal proletarian automaton, the robot Maria is highly sexualized. She functions to seduce, corrupt and destroy. - How human is it? How human is it meant to be?
Though metalloid, the robot Maria physically resembles a woman. Her body has the full mobility of the human form, enabling her dance with serpentine litheness. Yet, it is the very convincingness of the pseudo-sexuality of this mechanical temptress that gives her power to control. - How does it act in society? How do humans react to it?
The robot Maria is designed to tantalize and annihilate. The men, including Rotwang and Jon Fredersen, almost fall for her lures, especially since the robot looks like Rotwang’s dead wife as well as the live heroine Maria. - What are the consequences within the context of the world of the work?
Ultimately, the robot Maria is seized by the people of the underworld. Her punishment is reminiscent of witch hunts and ritual sacrifice: she is burned at the stake for her crimes. “It is an effective image–of a technological power mocking the human for being so easily seduced by its attractive packaging, its seemingly human features.”(Telotte, p.67) - Does it introduce a new idea or aid in the evolution of the robot? i.e. What’s its contribution?
The robot Maria is more a psychological and socio-political statement than an actual scientific innovation. Her scorching fate reveals the fear of a modern industrialized society in regards to the rapid acceleration of technology. Also, the fact the robot Maria’s creators choose to make her female suggests that the combination of sexuality and science, especially in a woman, is both powerful and destructive. In all, Fritz Lang uses the image of a Marxist society threatened by anarchy to show the hazards of technology when it is the projection of human desires. The robot Maria represents how humans try to “reformulate god in their own image” but “in the process effectively eliminate him.”(Telotte, p.111)
Furthermore, “aside from the legendary 1910 Edison verson of Frankenstein, no American film had examined the idea of manufacturing human life which motivated German films…. To the German film-makers the idea of man challenging God and making artificial life was one which reflected the prevailing mood of the country…. American audiences were more pragmatic and sceptical,and it was not until 1931, when the German born Carl Laemmle at Universal made Frankenstein, that this dark stream of German fantasy touched the United States….” (Science Fiction in the Cinema, John Baxter: p.40-41)
https://public.websites.umich.edu/~engb415/film/Metropolis_(1927).html
Literature Sample:
METROPOLIS
Nothing about him betrayed that he was aware of the
upheavel in the well-being and disposition of his young
master, since that day in the “Club of the Sons.” But it was
one of the slim, silent one’s greatest secrets never to^ give
himself away, and, although he had no entrance to the “Club
of the Sons” Freder was by no means sure that the money-
backed agent of his father would be turned back by the
rules of the club.
He felt himself exposed, unclothed. A cruel brightness,
which left nothing concealed, bathed him and everything
in his workshop which was almost the most highly situated
room in Metropolis.
“I wish to be quite alone,” he said softly.
Silently the servants vanished, Slim went. . . . But all
these doors, which closed without the least sound, could
also, without the least sound, be opened again to the narrow-
est chink.
His eyes aching, Freder fingered all the doors of his
work-room.
A smile, a rather bitter smile, drew down the comers of his
mouth. He was a treasure which must be guarded as crown
jewels are guarded. The son of a great father, and the
only son.
Really the only one—?
Really the only one—?
His thoughts stopped again at the exit of the circuit and
the vision was there again and the scene and the event ….
The “Club of the Sons” was, perhaps, one of the most
beautiful buildings of Metropolis, and that was not so very
remarkable. For fathers, for whom every revolution of a
machine-wheel spelt gold, had presented this house to their
sons. It was more a district than a house. It embraced theatres,
picture-palaces, lecture-rooms and a library— in which, every
book, printed in all the five continents, was to be found-
race tracks and stadium and the famous “Eternal Gardens.”
It contained very extensive dwellings for the young sons
of indulgent fathers and it contained the dwellings of fault-
less male servants and handsome, well-trained female ser-
vants for whose training more time was requisite than for the
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METROPOLIS
development of new species of orchids.
Their chief task consisted in nothing but, at all times, to
appear delightful and to be incapriciously cheerful; and,
with their bewildering costume, their painted faces, and
their eye-masks, surmounted by snow-white wigs and fra-
grant as flowers, they resembled delicate dolls of porcelain
and brocade, devised by a master-hand, not purchaseable
but rather delightful presents.
Freder was but a rare visitant to the “Club of the Sons.”
He preferred his work-shop and the starry chapel in which
this organ stood. But when once the desire took him to fling
himself into the radiant joyousness of the stadium competi-
tions he was the most radiant and joyous of all, playing on
from victory to victory with the laugh of a young god.
On that day too. … on that day too.
Still tingling from the icy coolness of falling water, every
muscle still quivering in the intoxication of victory he had
lain, stretched out, slender, panting, smiling, drunken, beside
himself, almost insane with joy. The milk-coloured glass
ceiling above the Eternal Gardens was an opal in the light
which bathed it. Loving little women attended him, waiting
roguishly and jealously, from whose white hands, from whose
fine finger-tips he would eat the fruits he desired.
One was standing aside, mixing him a drink. From hip to
knee billowed sparkling brocade. Slender, bare legs held
proudly together, she stood, like ivory, in purple, peaked
shoes. Her gleaming body rose, delicately, from her hips
and— she was not aware of it— quivered in the same rhythm
as did the man’s chest in exhaling his sweet-rising breath.
Carefully did the little painted face under the eye-mask
watch the work of her careful hands.
Her mouth was not rouged, but yet was pomegranate red.
And she smiled so unselfconsciously down at the beverage
that it caused the other girls to laugh aloud.
Infected, Freder also began to laugh. But the glee of the
maidens swelled to a storm as she who was mixing the drink,
not knowing why they were laughing, became suffused with
a blush of confusion, from her pomegranate-hued mouth to
her lustrous hips. The laughter induced the friends, for no
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METROPOLIS
reason, only because they were young and care-free, to join
in the cheerful sound. Like a joyously ringing rainbow, peal
upon peal of laughter arched itself gaily above the young
people.
Then suddenly— suddenly— Freder turned his head. His
hands, which were resting on the hips of the drink-mixer, lost
hold of her, dropping down by his sides as if dead. The
laughter ceased, not one of the friends moved. Not one of
the little, brocaded, bare-limbed women moved hand or foot.
They stood and looked.
The door of the Eternal Gardens had opened and through
the door came a procession of children. They were all hold-
ing hands. They had dwarves’ faces, grey and ancient. They
were little ghost-like skeletons, covered with faded rags and
smocks. They had colourless hair and colourless eyes. They
walked on emaciated bare feet. Noiselessly they followed
their leader.
Their leader was a girl. The austere countenance of the
Virgin. The sweet countenance of the mother. She held a
skinny child by each hand. Now she stood still, regarding
the young men and women one after another, with the
deadly severity of purity. She was quite maid and mistress,
inviolability— and was, too, graciousness itself, her beautiful
brow in the diadem of goodness; her voice, pity; every word
a song.
She released the children and stretched forward her hand,
motioning towards the friends and saying to the children:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
And, motioning towards the children, she said to the
friends:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
She waited. She stood still and her gaze rested upon
Freder.
Then the servants came, the door-keepers came. Between
these walls of marble and glass, under the opal dome of
the Eternal Gardens, there reigned, for a short time, an
unprecedented confusion of noise, indignation and embarrass-
ment. The girl appeared still to be waiting. Nobody dared to
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METROPOLIS
touch her, though she stood so defenceless, among the grey
infant-phantoms, Her eyes rested perpetually on Freder.
Then she took her eyes from his and, stooping a little, took
the children’s hands again, turned and led the procession out.
The door swung to behind her; the servants disappeared
with many apologies for not having been able to prevent the
occurrence. All was emptiness and silence. Had not each of
those before whom the girl had appeared, with her grey
procession of children, so large a number of witnesses to the
event they would have been inclined to put it down to
hallucination.
Near Freder, upon the illuminated mosaic floor, cowered
the little drink-mixer, sobbing uncontrolledly.
With a leisurely movement, Freder bent towards her and
suddenly twitched the mask, the narrow black mask, from
her eyes.
The drink-mixer shrieked out as though overtaken in stark
nudity. Her hands flew up, clutching, and remained hanging
stiffly in the air.
A little painted face stared, horror-stricken at the man. The
eyes, thus exposed, were senseless, quite empty. The little
face from which the charm of the mask had been taken
away, was quite weird.
Freder dropped the black piece of stuff. The drink-mixer
pounced quickly upon it, hiding her face. Freder looked
around him. t
The Eternal Gardens scintillated. The beautiful beings in
it, even if, temporarily, thrown out of balance, shone in their
well-cared-forness, their cleanly abundance. The odour of
freshness, which pervaded everywhere, was like the breath
of a dewy garden.
Freder looked down at himself. He wore, as all the youths
in the “House of the Sons,” the white silk, which they wore
but once— the soft, supple shoes, with the noiseless soles.
He looked at his friends. He saw these beings who never
wearied, unless from sport— who never sweated, unless from
s P ort — who were never out of breath, unless from sport.
Beings requiring their joyous games in order that their food
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METROPOLIS
and drink might agree with them, in order to be able to sleep
well and digest easily.
The tables, at which they had all eaten, were laid, as
before-hand, with untouched dishes. Wine, golden and
purple, embedded in ice or warmth, was there, proffering
itself, like the loving little women. Now the music was
playing again. It had been silenced when the girlish voice
spoke the five soft words:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
And once more, with her eyes resting on Freder:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
As one suffocating, Freder sprang up. The masked women
stared at him. He dashed to the door. He ran along passages
and down steps. He came to the entrance.
“Who was that girl?”
Perplexed shrugs. Apologies. The occurrence was inex-
cusable, the servants knew it. Dismissals, in plenty, would be
distributed.
The Major Domo was pale with anger.
“I do not wish,” said Freder, gazing into space, “that any-
one should suffer for what has happened. Nobody is to be
dismissed …. I do not wish it . . . .”
The Major Domo bowed in silence. He was accustomed to
whims in the “Club of the Sons.”
“Who is the girl. . . . can nobody tell me?”
No. Nobody. But if an inquiry is to be made . . . . ?
Freder remained silent. He thought of Slim. He shook
his head. First slowly, then violently. “No-
One does not set a bloodhound on the hack of a sacred,
white hind.
“Nobody is to inquire about her,” he said, tonelessly.
He felt the soulless glance of the strange, hired person
upon his face. He felt himself poor and besmirched. In an
ill-temper which rendered him as wretched as though he
had poison in his veins, he left the club. He walked home as
though going into exile. He shut himself up in his work-
room and worked. At nights he clung to his instrument and
forced the monstrous solitude of Jupiter and Saturn down to
him.
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METROPOLIS
Nothing could help him— nothing! In an agonising blissful
omnipresence stood, before his vision the one, one counten-
ance; the austere countenance of the virgin, the sweet
countenance of the mother.
A voice spoke:
“Look, these are your brothers.”
And the glory of the heavens was nothing, and the
intoxication of work was nothing. And the conflagration
which wiped out the sea could not wipe out the soft voice
of the girl:
“Look, these are your brothers!”
My God, my God—
With a painful, violent jerk, Freder turned around and
walked up to his machine. Something like deliverance passed
across his face as he considered this shining creation, waiting
only for him, of which there was not a steel link, not a rivet,
not a spring which he had not calculated and created.
The creature was not large, appearing still more fragile
by reason of the huge room and flood of sunlight in which
it stood. But the soft lustre of its metal and the proud swing
with which the foremost body seemed to raise itself to leap,
even when not in motion, gave it something of the fair god-
liness of a faultlessly beautiful anifnal, which is quite fearless,
because it knows itself to be invincible.
Freder caressed his creation. He pressed his head gently
against the machine. With ineffable affection he felt its cool,
flexible members.
“To-night,” he said, “I shall be with you. I shall be entirely
enwrapped by you s I shall pour out my life into you and shall
fathom whether or not I can bring you to life. I shall,
perhaps, feel your throb and the commencement of move-
ment in your controlled body. I shall, perhaps, feel the
giddiness with which you throw yourself out into your bound-
less element, carrying me— me, the man who made-through
the huge sea of midnight. The seven stars will be above us
and the sad beauty of the moon. Mount Everest will remain,
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METROPOLIS
a hill, below us. You shall carry me and I shall know:
You carry me as high as I wish. . . .”
He stopped, closing his eyes. The shudder which ran
through him was imparted, a thrill, to the silent machine.
“But perhaps,” he continued, without raising his voice,
“perhaps you notice, you, my beloved creation, that you are
no longer my only love. Nothing on earth is more vengeful
than the jealousy of a machine which believes itself to be
neglected. Yes, I know that. . . . You are imperious mis-
tresses. . . . ‘Thou shalt have none other Gods but me.” . . .
Am I right? A thought apart from you— you feel it at once
and become perverse. How could I keep it hidden from you
that all my thoughts are not with you. I can’t help it, my
creation. I was bewitched, machine. I press my forehead
upon you and my forehead longs for the knees of the girl of
whom I do not even know the name. . . .”
He ceased and held his breath. He raised his head and
listened.
Hundreds and thousands of times had he heard that same
sound in the city. But hundreds and thousands of time, it
seemed to him, he had not comprehended it.
It was an immeasurably glorious and transporting sound.
As deep and rumbling as, and more powerful than, any
sound on earth. The voice of the ocean when it is angry,
the voice of falling torrents, the voice of very close thunder-
storms would be miserably drowned in this- Behemoth-din.
Without being shrill it penetrated all walls, and, as long as
it lasted, all things seemed to swing in it. It was omnipresent,
coming from the heights and from the depths, being beautiful
and horrible, being an irresistible command.
It was high above the town. It was the voice of the town.
Metropolis raised her voice. The machines of Metropolis
roared; they wanted to be fed.
Freder pushed open the glass doors. He felt- them tremble
like strings under strokes of the bow. He stepped out on to
the narrow gallery which ran around this, almost the highest
house of Metropoh’s. The roaring sound received him, en-
veloped him, never coming to an end.
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METROPOLIS
Great as Metropolis was: at all four corners of the city,
this roared command was equally perceptible.
Freder looked across the city at the building known to the
world as the “New Tower of Babel.”
In the brain-pan of this New Tower of Babel lived the
man who was himself the Brain of Metropolis.
As long as the man over there, who was nothing but work,
despising sleep, eating and drinking mechanically, pressed
his fingers on the blue metal plate, which apart from himself,
no man had ever touched, so long would the voice of the
machine-city of Metropolis roar for food, for food, for
food. . . .
She wanted living men for food.
Then the living food came pushing along in masses. Along
the street it came, along its own street which never crossed
with other people’s streets. It rolled on, a broad, an endless
stream. The stream was twelve files deep. They walked in
even step. Men, men, men— all in the same uniform, from
throat to ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in the same hard
shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the same black caps.
And they all had the same faces. And they all appeared to
be of the same age. They held themselves straightened up,
but not straight. They did not raise their heads, they pushed
them ‘forward. They planted their feet forward, but they did
not walk. The open gates of the New Tower of Babel, the
machine center of Metropolis, gulped the masses down.
Towards them, but past them, another procession dragged
itself along, the shift just used. It rolled on, a broad, an
endless stream. The stream was twelve files deep. They
walked in even step. Men, men, men— all in the same uniform,
from throat to ankle in dark blue linen, bare feet in the same
hard shoes, hair tightly pressed down by the same black caps.
And they all had the same faces. And they all seemed
one thousand years old. They walked with hanging fists, they
walked with hanging heads. No, they planted their feet for-
ward but they did not walk. The open gates of the New
Tower of Babel, the machine centre of Metropolis, threw the
masses up as it gulped them down.
When the fresh living food had disappeared through the
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METROPOLIS
gates the roaring voice was silent at last. And the never
ceasing, throbbing hum of the great Metropolis became per-
ceptible again, producing the effect of silence, a deep relief.
The man who was the great brain in the brain-pan of Me-
tropolis had ceased to press his fingers on the blue metal plate.
In ten hours he would let the machine brute roar anew.
And in another ten hours, again. And always the same, and
always the same, without ever loosening the ten-hour clamp.
Metropolis did not know what Sunday was. Metropolis
knew neither high days nor holidays. Metropolis had the
most saintly cathedral in the world, richly adorned with
Gothic decoration. In times of which only the chronicles
could tell, the star-crowned Virgin on its tower used to smile,
as a mother, from out her golden mantle, deep, deep down
upon the pious red rooves and the only companions of her
graciousness were the doves which used to nest in the gar-
goyles of the water-spouts and the bells which were called
after the four archangels and of which Saint Michael was
the most magnificent.
It was said that the Master who cast it turned villain for
its sake, for he stole consecrated and unconsecrated silver,
like a raven, casting it into the metal body of the bell. As a
reward for his deed he suffered, on the place of execution,
the dreadful death on the wheel. But, it was said, he died
exceedingly happy, for the Archangel Michael rang him on
his way to death so wonderfully, touchingly, that all agreed
the saints must have forgiven the sinner already, to ring the
heavenly bells, thus, to receive him.
The bells still rang with their old, ore voices but when
Metropolis roared, then Saint Michael itself was hoarse. The
New Tower of Babel and its fellow houses stretched their
sombre heights high above the cathedral spire, that the
young girls in the work-rooms and wireless stations gazed
down just as deep from the thirtieth story windows on the
star-crowned virgin as she, in earlier days, had looked down
on the pious red rooves. In place of doves, flying machines
swarmed over the cathedral roof and over the city, resting
on the rooves, from which, at night glaring pillars and circles
indicated the course of flight and landing points.
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METROPOLIS
The Master of Metropolis had already considered, more
than once, having the cathedral pulled down, as being point-
less and an obstruction to the traffic in the town of fifty
million inhabitants.
But the small, eager sect of Gothics, whose leader was
Desertus, half monk, half one enraptured, had sworn the
solemn oath: If one hand from the wicked city of Metropolis
were to dare to touch just one stone -of the cathedral, then
they would neither repose nor rest until the wicked city of
Metropolis should lie, a heap of ruins, at the foot of her
cathedral.
The Master of Metropolis used to avenge the threats which
constituted one sixth of his daily mail. But he did not care
to fight with opponents to whom he rendered a service by
destroying them for their belief. The great brain of Me-
tropolis, a stranger to the sacrifice of a desire, estimated the
incalculable power which the sacrificed ones and martyrs
showered upon their followers too high rather than too low.
Too, the demolition of the cathedral was not yet so burning
a question as to have been the object of an estimate of
expenses. But when the moment should come, the cost of its
pulling down would exceed that of the construction of Me-
tropolis. The Gothics were ascetics; the Master of Metropolis
knew by experience that a multi-milliardaire was more
cheaply bought over than an ascetic.
Freder wondered, not without a foreign feeling of bitter-
ness, how many more times the great Master of Metropolis
would permit him to look on at the scene which the cathedral
would present to him on every rainless day: When the sun
sank at the back of Metropolis, the houses turning to moun-
tains and the streets to valleys; when the stream of light,
which seemed to crackle with coldness, broke forth from all
windows, from the walls of the houses, from the rooves
and from the heart of the town; when the silent quiver of
electric advertisments began; when the searchlights, in all
colours of the rainbow, began to play around the New Tower
of Babel; when the omnibuses turned to chains of light-
spitting monsters, the little motor cars to scurrying, luminous
fishes in a waterless deep-sea, while from tire invisible
. 20
METROPOLIS
harbour of the underground railway, an ever equal, magical
shimmer pressed on to be swallowed by the hurrying shad-
ows— then the cathedral would stand there, in this boundless
ocean of light, which dissolved all forms by. outshining them,
the only dark object, black and persistant, seeming, in its
lightlessness, to free itself from the earth, to rise higher and
ever higher, and appearing in this maelstrom of tumultous
light, the only reposeful and masterful object.
But the Virgin on the top of the tower seemed to have her
own gentle starlight, and hovered, set free from the blackness
of the stone, on the sickle of the silver moon, above the
cathedral.
Freder had never seen the countenance of the Virgin and
yet he knew it so well he could have drawn it: the austere
countenance of the Virgin, the sweet countenance of the
mother.
He stooped, clasping the burning palms of his hands
around the iron railing.
“Look at me, Virgin,” he begged, “Mother, look at me!”
The spear of a searchlight flew into his eyes causing him
to close them angrily. A whistling rocket hissed through
the air, dropping down into the pale twilight of the afternoon,
the word : Yoshiwara. . . .
Remarkably white, and with penetrating beams, there
hovered, towering up, over a house which was not to be
seen, the word: Cinema.
All the seven colours of the rainbow flared, cold and ghost-
like in silently swinging circles. The enormous face of the
clock on the New Tower of Babel was bathed in the glaring
cross-fire of the searchlights. And over and over again from
the pale, unreal-looking sky, dripped the word: Yoshiwara.
Freder’s eyes hung on the clock of the New Tower of
Babel, where the seconds flashed off as sparks of breathing
lightning, continuous in their coming as in their going.
He calculated the time which had passed since the voice of
Metropolis had roared for food, for food, for food. He
knew that behind the throbbing second flashes on the New
Tower of Babel there was a wide, bare room with narrow
windows, the height of the walls, switch-boards bn all sides,
21
METROPOLIS
right in the centre, the table, the most ingenious instrument
which the Master of Metropolis had created, on which to
play, alone, as solitary master.