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29/3/1933: Goebbels Bans Fritz Lang's Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse

The rise to power of the Nazi party in 1930s Germany heralded a major shift in the nature of the country’s film output as Josef Goebbels’ Ministry of Information and Propaganda swiftly established control of all aspects of filmmaking. Goebbels, an avid film buff, was acutely aware of the propagandistic potential of the cinema and intuitively understood not only the uses to which it could be put in order to deliver the Nazi message to the German people, but also the harm an unmonitored industry could inflict on the cause of the Reich.

One of the early films to suffer under the new regime was Fritz Lang’s Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (The Testament of dr. Mabuse), a sequel to the silent 1922 box office hit Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler) which was based on a novel by Norbert Jacques. Lang would later claim that the film, in which gang boss Dr. Mabuse writes a last will and testament which is a blueprint for the future of the organised criminal underworld, was his and wife Thea von Harbou’s metaphorical condemnation of the country’s new Fuehrer, Adolf Hitler, but the facts behind the film’s development suggest otherwise.

In 1965, Lang told Cahiers du Cinema that he had been virtually bullied into making a sequel to the 1922 Mabuse film by producer Seymour Nenbenzahl, who had identified the commercial potential of a sequel. As the first film had concluded with arch-criminal Mabuse’s incarceration in an insane asylum, Lang said he had originally been reluctant to try to take the story forward – until, that is, he saw the potential of using the film as a vehicle for his anti-Hitler message. He told Film in 1956, ‘Testament had nothing to do with Jacques’ book. It was an invention by Thea von Harbou and myself.’

However, David Kalat, in his book The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse: A Study of the Twelve Films and Five Novels, reveals that Jacques involvement is perhaps greater than the director gave him credit for. In a letter asking for assistance with the writing of the script for Murderer Among Us (which would eventually become M) that Lang wrote to Jacques in September 1930, the director mentioned that he wanted to film a sequel to Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler and asked Jacques whether he had any ideas. The author proposed the plot for a new novel he was writing with a German actress in mind in which a woman inherits Mabuse’s empire. Lang felt the idea lacked cinematic potential and proposed an idea of his own – which would eventually serve as the template from which Thea von Harbou would prepare a screenplay while Jacques simultaneously wrote a novel.

In July 1931, before Hitler and the Nazis had risen to power, Jacques signed over the rights to the film adaptation of his book to Nero Films. One of the conditions of the agreement was that Thea von Harbou would write the screenplay and her husband Lang would direct. Because the film wasn’t technically an adaptation of the book, Jacques received no credit on the film whatsoever. He also failed to find a publisher for the book until 1950, nearly twenty years after it was written, when it was published as Dr Mabuses letztes Spiel (Dr Mabuse’s Last Gamble).

Filming of Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse was completed early in 1933. On 28^th March that year, Goebbels invited the top names of the German film industry to a bierabend in the Hotel Kaiserhof. Although no substantiating documentation exists, some reports indicate that Lang attended this conference. He was certainly a prominent enough figure in the German film industry to justify inclusion among the film-making elite, and he was known to be a staunch nationalist. On 27^th, the day before Goebbels’ meeting, Lang had participated in the founding of the ‘direction group’ of the NSBO (Die Nationalsozialistische Betriebsorganisation) with fellow directors Carl Boese, Viktor Jansen and Luis Trenker.

At the meeting of the 28^th, Goebbels expressed his admiration for Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin, the American version of Anna Karenina, Lang’s Die Nibelungen, and Luis Trenker’s Der Rebell, and made it clear to those present that he felt these films should provide a political and ideological benchmark for the type of films the German film industry should be producing.

The following day, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse was banned on the order of Goebbels. It was reported that the party’s main objection was that, instead of going insane, the professor who assumes the identity of Dr. Mabuse should have been brought down by the people, led, of course, by a Fuehrer figure. Given Lang’s later claims regarding the film’s subtext, it is entirely possible that, while Goebbels’ department correctly identified a menace in the film, it had arrived at an interpretation of the film that was diametrically opposed to that intended by Lang.

In April, Goebbels summoned the director to his office in the Ministry of Propaganda.   He made no mention of the Dr. Mabuse film during the meeting, and confided to Lang that Hitler was a great admirer of his work. The Fuehrer had particularly admired his 1927 film, Metropolis, which he and Goebbels had seen in a small town a number of years before. While they watched the film, Goebbels told Lang, Hitler had remarked that he wanted the director of Metropolis to be the man who made films for the Nazi party.

Lang, who was half Jewish, later claimed that, after leaving the meeting, he almost immediately smuggled himself out of the country. Documentary evidence that has come to light since his death casts considerable doubt on Lang’s melodramatic account of his flight, but it was undoubtedly his meeting with Goebbels and the offer of a position as the Nazi party’s official filmmaker, that triggered his decision to leave the country - and von Harbou, his pro-Nazi wife.

The film premiered in Vienna on 12^th May 1933. An article in the German magazine Film Kurier on 29^th September 1933, gave an insight into the official view of films like Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse:

‘Greatness does not dwell in a criminality tainted with Metropolis fantasies, gigantic destructiveness, and decay, but rather in the great service done for the people by the tireless exponents of speed, intelligence, and justice. The limelight of the crime film is no longer focused on gangsters who go about their dirty business with some degree of skill (as has been the case until recently), but rather on heroes in uniform or civilian clothes who fight out of duty and are motivated by professional honour.

‘There will remain enough tension, darkness and adventure when the German detective film stages its fight against enemies of the people, state, and society, which is closer to the reality of today. To fight for a just cause is the important point, not the glorification of criminals.’

Five years later, while addressing the Reichsfilmkammer in 1938, Goebbels singled out Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse for criticism of both its political content and technical qualities: ‘I have recently seen a film that was filmed at the end of 1932 and completed at the beginning of 1933. This film was banned for political reasons, but that is not the aspect that interests us in this context. More interesting is another fact. The film was lauded by experts in its day as a technical and visual sensation. It broke new ground. But now when we come back to it just five years later, we are struck by the dullness of its portrayal, the coarseness of its construction, and the inadequacy of its acting.’

However, Goebbels harboured a guilty secret; despite his public criticism of Lang’s film, he was actually one of its greatest admirers: in October 1933, to celebrate his 36^th birthday, Goebbels held a special screening of the banned film for guests at his official residence in Berlin.

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