Jud Suess (1934)

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Movie
German title Jud Suss
Original title Jew sweet
Country of production United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 1934
length 108 minutes
Rod
Director Lothar Mendes
script Heinrich Fraenkel ,
AR Rawlinson ,
Dorothy Farnum
production Michael Balcon
music Louis Levy
camera Roy Kellino
cut Otto Ludwig
occupation

Jud Süß is a British fiction film from 1934 directed by Lothar Mendes based on the original by Lion Feuchtwanger . Conrad Veidt plays the title role .

action

Württemberg in 1730. The Jews of the duchy are forced to live in the ghetto. Joseph Suss-Oppenheimer no longer wants to bow to this decree and thinks about how he can alleviate the difficult fate of his fellow believers in the future and enable the young among them a better future. He also has his own advantage in mind: he wants power, he explains to his confidante, the old Jew Landauer. And so one day Süss-Oppenheimer sneaks into a party at which the old Duke's cousin is also present. He made himself acquainted with him and helped the future prince financially out of a jam when gambling. The first step towards social advancement has been taken, and Suss-Oppenheimer soon makes himself indispensable for Karl Alexander, who is always financially struggling. When the reigning Hereditary Duke dies, Karl Alexander follows him to the throne. This opens up undreamt-of possibilities for Süß-Oppenheimer. The new duke is addicted to waste and weak of character, and so he comes more and more under the influence of Suss, who continuously provides him with money and to influence him with gifts for himself and his cause, which is first and foremost that of the ghetto Jews.

The ducal coronation celebrations, the personal expenses of the new duke and his wife, who also lives on very large feet, as well as the prince's wish for a larger army: All these extravagances devour huge sums of money, money that the duke does not have and that Suss-Oppenheimer can now get for him should. This has meanwhile settled in the luxurious surroundings of the sovereign and brought his old confidante Landauer to him. When Suss's pretty daughter Naomi visits him and asks her father to return to the ghetto with her, Suss-Oppenheimer has long since indulged in the comforts of worldly power and remains. He is now also hooking up with women of the court, such as the respected Demoiselle Weissensee, but in order not to endanger his position, grudgingly gives in to Karl Alexander's insistence that he let him take precedence over the lady when Suss-Oppenheimer took the young woman in his boudoir asks.

Gradually the mood in the population begins to change. Since the Jews have been allowed to work as business people outside of their ghetto, they have become increasingly unpleasant competition for ordinary traders. A pogrom mood finally spreads when a blood-soaked cloth is found in a Jewish shop. It is claimed that it is the blood of a Christian child allegedly assassinated in a Jewish ritual. A Jew named Seligmann is accused, who is immediately sentenced to death. In this heated situation, Landauer demands from Suss to stand up for the doomed man with the duke. In fact, Suss-Oppenheimer obtained the Duke's pardon for Seligmann, but only after he threatened to resign in front of his sovereign prince. The Jews then exuberantly celebrate their most important advocate on his temporary return home to the ghetto.

It comes as a shock when Suss-Oppenheimer's uncle, Rabbi Gabriel, presents him with old letters written to his mother. These come from a marshal from Heidersdorf, who is said to be the actual father of Joseph Süß-Oppenheimer. He wouldn't be a Jew at all! Soon afterwards the Duke also arrives in the ghetto and meets Naomi in the house of Süss-Oppenheimer, whom he immediately likes. When he chases after her one night, she takes refuge on the roof and throws herself to death. Her returning father collapses on the side of her lifeless body when he sees his daughter lying in front of her. He learns that Karl Alexander is responsible for Naomi's death and only pretends to continue working in his service. In order to induce him to remain silent, the Duke quickly appoints him as lord of his finances. In this role, Suss-Oppenheimer is now doing everything in his power to harm his patrons and confidants and to disavow him with the people. He increases taxes drastically and decrees that anyone who cannot pay his taxes is liable for his belongings. As a result, countless households are unceremoniously emptied by the duke's shackles, and the people gradually begin to revolt.

Out of sheer hatred of his mentor and sponsor, Süß-Oppenheimer is increasingly becoming a false whisperer. He calls on the hesitant Karl Alexander to break the constitution, to occupy the rebellious parliament with his soldiers and finally to be proclaimed King of Württemberg. When Suss-Oppenheimer presented Karl Alexander with a list of the names of people to be arrested, the Duke quickly added Suss-Oppenheimer's name and signed it. The list in turn brings Demoiselle Weissensee, who has deeply hates the Duke since his intrusiveness, Süss-Oppenheimer, so that he realizes that he has to flee. When Suss-Oppenheimer complained to the Duke at a coup celebration that the coup d'état in Stuttgart that Suss-Oppenheimer had devised had failed - just as he had secretly planned - Karl Alexander suffered a heart attack and died. Shortly before, Suss triumphantly announced to the dying duke that he was only part of a plan to avenge his daughter Naomi.

In order not to drag the failed putschists around the dead Duke into ruin, Joseph Suss-Oppenheimer calls on them to arrest him immediately. He will then be brought to justice. Since he cannot be accused of anything that would justify a conviction, the judges try to prove that, as a Jew, he has forbidden sexual contact with a Christian. His sentence to death is a done deal. In the courtyard with a snowstorm, the convicted delinquent is locked in an iron cage with a hinged floor in front of a hooting crowd and a rope is put around his neck. Finally, the cage is pulled to a clear height. A small group of Jews present mournfully starts the Shema Yisrael prayer , and Joseph Suss-Oppenheimer joins in. Then the trap door opens and the Jew Suss-Oppenheimer dies. The film ends with the words: "Perhaps one day the walls will crumble like the walls of Jericho and all the world will be one people."

production

Prehistory and production background

After the seizure of power by the Nazis in Germany in 1933 there were among Britain's producers sporadic attempts against the government-sponsored anti-Semitism of the government of Adolf Hitler to control. As early as 1933, the German-born producer Julius Hagen had the film The Wandering Jew produced for Twickenham Film Studios . The film star Conrad Veidt, who emigrated from Germany for the sake of his Jewish wife, was won for the lead role. This film had its world premiere on November 20, 1933 in London. While this philosemitic flick was not allowed to be shown in the Third Reich, as expected , it was sold in Austria in 1934 under the title Ahasver, the eternal Jew .

Another pro-Jewish film was still being planned in London in 1933 with “Jew Süss”, the original title - again with Veidt in the title role - after Feuchtwanger's original was first performed as a play in London in 1929. The emigrant Heinrich Fraenkel , who was involved in the script, wrote in his memory book “Immortal Film”: “In the summer of 1933 [...] I was working on the script for“ Jew Süss ”, the film adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger's novel Jud Süss . For the title role, we wanted Conrad Veidt, the ideal cast for the figure of a very imposing and ambitious personality, who was recreated by Feuchtwanger from the historical model, in many facets shimmering and deeply an ambivalent and unhappy person, who in grief over the death of his own pride Child finds his real dignity. We knew that Connie was very eager to play "Süß", but we also knew that this very role would earn him Hitler and Goebbels' mortal hostility. For him the decision meant nothing less than the end of his German film career ”.

In early 1934, Jud Suss finally went into production. The filming was reported by the Observer in its January 7, 1934 issue and Picturegoer Weekly on February 3, 1934. The production cost was around £ 100,000.

Pamela Ostrer, the actress of the Jew Naomi and later wife of James Mason , made her film debut here at the age of 18 and a little later married the Jud-Süß- chief cameraman Roy Kellino .

In addition to the main actor Veidt, the actor Paul Graetz from Germany , the film architect Alfred Junge and Günther Krampf were involved in Jud Süß in his role as a simple cameraman under the direction of Roy Kellino .

In 1940 Veit Harlan staged a virulently anti-Semitic, infamous version under the same title . He copied many scenes, but reinterpreted the plot in an anti-Semitic sense.

publication

The world premiere of Jud Suss was on October 4, 1934 in London's Tivoli Film Theater and a few hours later on the same day in New York's Radio City Music Hall and (also on October 4) in Toronto . While the film was on the index in Germany, Jud Süß also had its German-language premiere in Vienna in October 1934 . The Austrian Film Newspaper dedicated a review to the film in its October 20, 1934 issue. Other German-language publications that discussed the film were all exile papers: for example, “Die Critique” (October 1934), which appeared in Prague, and the “ Pariser Tageblatt ” (December 1934).

criticism

The reviewer Pem - of Jewish descent and in exile in Austria since 1933 - had little interest in the film in his review in Der Morgen - Wiener Montagblatt in October 1934: "Jud Süss oscillates between ambiguous villainy and a clear fighter for freedom and equality; almost this film could also be shown in Germany. Racial issues as a boom, attitudes with consideration - that does not work! Only at the end does the director Lothar Mendes, thanks to a wonderful sound direction, succeed in becoming clear and painfully accusing. Conrad Veidt is noble and simple in his means and on the whole become a wonderfully human actor - beyond a former demonic. Next to him is Paul Graetz, who was once unemployed in the Zwischenreich in Berlin and now offers a unique character study - a win for the English, for every film. "

The critic Erich Kaiser discussed Jud Suss in detail under the pseudonym Emile Grant. In the Pariser Tageblatt it can be read: “Even in the film, much of what the poet has hidden in his characters must necessarily get stuck in the hint. So the Kabbalistic sphere around Rabbi van der Straaten is not sufficiently expressed. ”Furthermore, it is said: Mendes“ in this British Gaumont film grabs the subject that is broadly spun out in the novel and resolved in many subplots with a firm hand and performs it his leitmotif back: the fate of the Jewish person who wants to rule, but is not up to the task because of his own emotional ties that force him to take very specific actions. [...] No praise is too high for Conrad Veidt. He grasps the figure of Jud Süss down to its deepest depths. He is ruler and ruler, loving father and lover of women, devout Jew and gentleman of the 18th century at the same time. His smile seduces and his clever forehead harbors dangerous thoughts. Next to him as a counterpart is the ghetto Jew Landauer, whom Paul Graetz gives an uncanny life. "

Heinrich Fraenkel wrote in Immortal Film about the finished film product: “In contrast to the film of the same title initiated by Goebbels a few years later, this is an attempt to create the human being out of the many facets of the personality of the title character deep, self-inflicted suffering is purified. "

In the biography of Lothar Mendes, the film's great lexicon of people called the film a “remarkable version” of the Feuchtwanger novel.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Translation: Perhaps one day the walls will crumble like the walls of Jericho and the world will consist of only one people.
  2. ↑ Immortal Film. The big chronicle from the first note to the colored wide screen . Munich 1957, p. 101
  3. ↑ Jew Süss In: filmexile.soton.ac.uk
  4. ↑ pem : film review - sincere. Jud Süss. In: Der Morgen - Wiener Montagblatt , October 22, 1934, p. 11.
  5. ^ Pariser Tageblatt , December 7, 1934; London Calling. Germans in British Film in the 1930s (edited by Hans-Michael Bock, Wolfgang Jacobsen, Jörg Schöning), a CineGraph book, Munich 1993, p. 156.
  6. ↑ Immortal Film, p. 391
  7. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 5: L - N. Rudolf Lettinger - Lloyd Nolan. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 389.

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