Banned in Vienna

As if there weren’t enough delectable distractions everywhere, The Metrokino, a few minutes from my apartment, has been screening historic Austrian films. I’ve seen two rarities that were shown in English: Dishonored, with Marlene Dietrich (I’ll return to this one in a subsequent post), and Jew Süss, banned in Vienna when it was released in 1934. Based on the novel of the same name, by Lion Feuchtwanger, it stars the actor Conrad Veidt (in photo; also find him fifteen years earlier in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) in the part of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer, the Finance Minister serving the Catholic Duke, Karl Alexander von Wüttemberg---a despotic drunkard. When the Duke meets Naomi, the beloved fifteen-year old daughter of Süß, he attempts to molest her. She escapes momentarily, only to plunge to her death from the rooftop in her haste to get away. Süß, now a broken man, schemes to cause the downfall of his former sponsor. He betrays the Duke’s planned coup d'etat, but before the Duke could have him arrested, the Duke dies of a sudden fit---a stroke or heart attack. Although Süß discovered that he was an illegitimate child and was not Jewish after all, he was noble-minded and responsible to his people. In the end, he was hung (for 'carnal relations' with a non-Jewish woman), and went to his death as a hero and a martyr.

I had read that this film was intended as a satire of the Nazis and their racism. In fact it gives the unsettling appearance, especially in the first thirty minutes, of an early Mel Brooks film, with the stark lighting (a la Young Frankenstein), the silences between the spoken lines, and various eccentricities of the characters. Both the book and the film were condemnations of anti-Semitism. As for the ban, some Viennese periodicals wrote of the film’s “offense to the entire Christian faith” as well as “blasphemy,” and requested the authorities to forbid the screening of the film. In response, the Vice-Chancellor, Starhemberg, actually issued a prohibition. The British, who made the film, were unable to convince the Austrians to abolish this resolution. The Germans considered the Austrian reaction to be exemplary.