Fritz Lang (1890-1976 AD):
Friedrich Christian Anton “Fritz” Lang was a German-Austrian filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany’s school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the “Master of Darkness” by the British Film Institute.
That which follows is derived from Patrick McGilligan’s book, Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast, from The Religious Affiliation of Director Fritz Lang, Adherents and from Daniel Shaw, Fritz Lang, Senses of Cinema, 2002 AD.
My interest in Fritz Lang came about from a consideration of his 1927 AD movie Metropolis wherein an occult scientist downloads the contents of a woman’s brain into a robot which also takes on her appearance.
As elucidated within my article Crypt notes on “Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus” by Mary Shelley, such concepts which today are, generally, termed transhuman.
But just what was Lang into that in 1927 AD he is expressing that which today is cutting edge high tech?
Well, just what he was into remains mysterious but due to his various and sundry interests and worldview-philosophy-theological claims and the fact that he was living in pre and post Nazi Germany, perhaps we can get a hint.
He also studied the explosive theories of Friedrich Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud, gleaning from them ideas about amoral ubermenschen and unconscious drives which would animate his work for decades to come.
To learn more about how Nietzsche ties into the Nazis, see here.
Lily Latte, one of Fritz’s wives, stated, “Fritz would want to be known as an atheist.”
When marrying Thea von Harboou in 1922 AD Fritz Lang:
…following his father’s example, declared his religion as agnostic (“without confession“), while von Harbou named herself a Protestant. Shortly after the wedding, according to her World War II interrogation papers, she stopped practicing any religion, “for private reasons.”
He steadfastly referred to himself as Catholic…
Lang himself rarely mentioned his mother’s [Jewish] background; when he did, it was a circumstance he played down, or misstated, or—in the most generous interpretation—regarded as irrelevant…
Friedrich Steinbach…was standing on the balcony of the Lang summer home in Gars am Kamp with Anton Lang, who was his godfather as well as his uncle. A storm was brewing. Thunder rang out, lightning flashed across the sky. Suddenly, Anton Lang opened his arms to the heavens, and, to his horror, cried out, “Hit me! Hit me now! Send a bolt for me!” Then, turning to the boy, who cowered before such blasphemy, Anton Lang asked with a malicious grin, “Do you really believer everything they tell you?”
“All of my German films and the best of my American ones deal with fate,” Lang said at the Directors Guild tribute. “I don’t believe in fate anymore. Everyone makes fate for himself. You can accept it, you can reject it and go on. There is no mysterious something, no God who puts the fate on you. It is you who makes the fate yourself.”
Although Fritz placed the film in 1919, it seems possible, nevertheless, that Lilith und Ly was one of Lang’s earliest hospital scenarios (the one he once vaguely recalled as a “werewolf story”)… Contemporary newspaper notices claimed that the Lilith und Ly script was inspired by an original Sanskrit manuscript…which Lang acquired during his “extensive” travels in Asia.
But the film’s main idea, of an artificial creature brought to life with a slip of parchment, is clearly pinched from the Jewish legend of golem, a monster of clay which can only be brought to life by placing a sacred text into its mouth.
Lang was also “fascinated with India.”
Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang’s second wife, “worshiped Karl May and in her twenties could regale visitors by reciting May’s translation of parts of the Koran [aka Qur’an].”
A blend of eroticism, violent crime, and the supernatural had already begun to emerge as Fritz Lang’s forte.
Prostitutes in the end were for Lang, as for Peter Altenberg, a shrine at which to prostrate himself and worship.
The Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels:
…told the director that the Fuhrer was one of his most avid fans. The Fuhrer had “loved” Metropolis…Lang quoted Goebbels quoting Hitler: “Here is a man who will give us great Nazi films!”
Did you get that?
Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Gobbles.
The supernatural and the ubermenschen.
An Atheist, an Agnostic, a Catholic and a Jew.
Asia / India.
Sanskrit and the Koran / Qur’an.
…………..and downloading the contents of a person’s brain into a robot in 1927 AD!
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