Racially profiled?: ‘Jewish’ vampirism in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922)

ABSTRACT

Since 1947 and Siegfried Kracauer’s seminal From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, Weimar Film Studies has been dominated by discussions on the representation of power, which has only recently begun to fall away. This article breaks away from this tradition and contributes to a new range of approaches to Weimar cinema, which centre upon figures belonging to a group that has largely been excluded from the existing narrative: ‘the Jew’ . Though Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) does not contain any characters explicitly identified as Jewish, I consider how the titular character is imbued with antisemitic tropes and thus steps into a similar role as enemy of mainstream German society. This article thus explores the notion of antisemitism as a socially generated projection formulated in response to the social experience of modernity, projected onto a representative of ‘Jewishness’ as the ultimate enemy of the national community.

KEYWORDS:

• Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
• Weimar cinema
• Antisemitism
• Vampires

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is still considered one of Weimar cinema’s greatest outputs and has been subject to significant academic attention. However, current scholarship within Weimar Film Studies does not engage with the antisemitic elements of this film in sufficient detail, despite the fact that ‘the Jew’ had been identified as one of the greatest social ‘threats’ for centuries. Part of this reluctance to engage with the antisemitic interpretations in Nosferatu could be due to the Republic’s reputation as a period in which the outsider became the insider (Gay 2001), and indeed the Jewish population did enjoy a greater degree of freedom in the interwar period. However, as Enzo Traverso (1995) points out these freedoms were simultaneously accompanied by an increase in antisemitic attitudes. Additionally, Murnau’s friendship with the Jewish poet Hans Ehrenbaum Degele and his collaboration with Jewish filmmakers, including the screenwriter for Nosferatu Albin Grau, have also been used by those wishing to defend the film from accusations of antisemitism (Eisner 1973; Jackson, 2013). Although the purpose of this article is to understand Nosferatu as containing antisemitic undercurrents, my intention is not to imply that Murnau or any of the filmmakers involved in the making of Nosferatu are antisemitic. Indeed, the collaborative nature of filmmaking in the Weimar period is widely documented (St.Pierre 2015) and within this scholarship, the significant role of Jewish filmmakers in this period has been revealed (Prawer 2007). This throws any analysis that relies upon the film’s authorship into contention.

Roy Ashbury has claimed that ‘to read anti-Semitism in Nosferatu is to claim that the film is a work of ‘evil genius’ (2001, 68). Interpreting Nosferatu as containing antisemitism does not automatically imply that Nosferatu is connected to the atrocities committed during the Holocaust, nor does it suggest that Murnau himself was an antisemite. Indeed, as Roland Barthes (1977) notes in his 1967 Death of the Author essay, originally published in 1967, the identity and intent of the creator is irrelevant to a work’s potential interpretations. What is achieved through a focus on the antisemitic tropes in Nosferatu is a greater insight into the attitudes directed towards Jewish people in the Weimar Republic. Siegfried Kracauer regards film as ‘the mirror of the prevailing society’ through which the audience is able to see society both how it is and how it wished it would be (1995, 291). Though there has been much debate over Kracauer’s ‘from Caligari to Hitler’ thesis, due to the fact that it relies heavily on a reading of Weimar cinema as evidence of a turbulent climate that eventually paved the way for the rise of Nationalism, his assessment of the cinematic medium is pertinent here, for it underlines the importance of considering Nosferatu as a product of its time. I use the Kracauerian understanding of film here to interpret Nosferatu as a reflection of anxieties present during the Weimar period relating to ‘the Jew’, as opposed to using Weimar cinema as evidence of the foundations of National Socialism.

In the fictional town of Wisborg, Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) is sent by the real estate agent Knock (Alexander Granach) to visit a new client, Count Orlok. Ignoring his wife, Ellen’s (Greta Schröder), pleas to remain in Wisborg, Hutter journeys to the Count’s castle in Transylvania on horseback and is warned by locals of the dangers posed to him by Orlok. The townsfolk are frightened by the mere mention of Orlok’s name, for they believe him to be a vampire, yet in spite of this, Hutter concludes it is a mere rumour. He continues his journey and arrives at the Count’s castle, where the proprietor greets him. During his stay at the castle, there are indications that the Count is a vampire, such as puncture marks appearing on Hutter’s neck overnight and comments made by Orlok about Ellen’s neck when he sees a photograph of her. It is only when he reads a book about vampires that he begins to suspect Orlok, whom he finds dormant in a crypt the following morning. Concerned about his wife’s safety as the vampire prepares to move to Wisborg, Hutter races home, whilst the Count sneaks his way onto a ship stowed away in one of the coffins onboard. The ship arrives in Wisborg, with all of the crew killed by a mysterious disease, which soon spreads throughout the town. Ellen finds the same book her husband read and realises that in order to defeat the vampire, he must be distracted by a beautiful woman. Their encounter sees the vampire drinking her blood, oblivious to the rising sun, which sees him turn to dust, whilst Ellen dies from the blood loss.

The connection of the vampire to ‘the Jew’ is one that has dominated antisemitic discourse for centuries, originating in Christian doctrine which saw ‘supposed misdeeds tied to the misuse and consumption of Christian blood’ (Robinson 2011, 15). Sara Libby Robinson points out that ‘blood lies at the bedrock of Western civilization and of Christianity’ due to its religious symbolism (Robinson 2011, 42) and notes the longevity of hatred of vampires and the hatred of Judaism by the Church. It is significant that as part of this long-term hatred of Judaism, the belief that Jews thirst after Christian blood has persisted and accusations ranged from drinking the blood of Christian children to suggesting that the Jewish people used the blood of their slaughtered animals to replenish themselves (Robinson 2011, 31). A connection to ‘Christianity’s religious vampires’ can be observed in Murnau’s film by the emphasis on the connection of the legend of Nosferatu to the Christian beliefs of the peasants. The demonisation of Jews, amongst other groups such as Slavs, as parasitic people continued into the nineteenth century in the process of nation-building, where ideas of vampirism merged with notions of degeneration, not only because the vampire drained the blood of individuals and ultimately killed them, but also because they contaminated the blood of their victims, thus making them vampires as well (Robinson 2011, 50). This perception of vampirism came at a time when a shift in the nature of antisemitism can be observed, for it became a ‘political term, a negative attitude towards Jews that no longer finds its causes in issues of religion, but instead derives from a concept of human races and the difference of human “natures”’ (Weissberg 1991, 140). In addition to the socio-political context of antisemitism in the nineteenth century, it is worth noting here that the film’s source material, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (2011), originally published in 1897,has also been interpreted as containing antisemitic representations including ‘his peculiar physique, his parasitical desires, his aversion to the cross and to all the trappings of Christianity, his blood-sucking attacks, and his avaricious relation to money’ (Halberstam 1993, 333). The bloodsucking aspect of Nosferatu’s character is visually reinforced through the cinematic medium. Upon his arrival at the vampire’s castle, Hutter shares an evening meal with Count Orlok, during which Hutter cuts himself whilst slicing a loaf of bread. The vampire shows great concern for his guest, though not out of concern for Hutter’s wellbeing, but for the ‘precious blood’. The vampire’s use of the word ‘precious’ demonstrates the importance that Nosferatu attaches to blood, which, as a vampire, he needs to keep himself alive.

The ‘vampire Jew’ metaphor would not have been lost on a Weimar audience however, for as Sara Libby Robinson notes ‘the decades before the First World War witnessed numerous blood libel accusations, even in countries that prided themselves on their modernity and rationalism’ (Robinson 2011, 42). What this indicates is the way in which antisemitism has continually adapted, almost like a virus, to ensure that ‘the Jew’ remains the ultimate outsider. Additionally, what is particularly pertinent to my examination of Nosferatu is the context of German defeat in the First World War and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which included harsh reparation requirements, restrictions on the German army and saw all of Germany’s colonies confiscated. The signing of this Treaty was one of the first major acts carried out by Friedrich Ebert’s government in 1919 and it was one that aroused strong feelings across the nation. It was felt that the treaty was ‘unjust, and when it added to the country’s huge economic problems, it was perceived to be sucking the life out of the nation’ (Robinson 2011, 53). It is in this context of national humiliation that Nosferatu was released. The Jewish connection is drawn out from the fact that many of the government’s representatives, such as Walther Rathenau, were Jewish and ‘the fact that they had wholly distanced themselves from their religion and community mattered little’ (Laqueur 2006, 30). Indeed, Donald L. Niewyk comments that the Weimar Republic’s acceptance of Jews into the government service led to charges that they had glutted the bureaucracy’ (1980, p. 9). It was for this reason that the Republic became known as a ‘Judenrepublik, and ‘the Jews’ were seen as vampires once again, sucking the life out of German society from their privileged position within it. This image would have been particularly pertinent to Murnau’s audiences in 1922, only a few years after defeat and the implementation of the Treaty of Versailles, rendering the horror story of Murnau’s film all the more potent. It is clear therefore that the stereotype of the ‘vampire Jew’ was well and truly alive during the Weimar Republic, particularly amongst criticism of the Treaty of Versailles.

Maggie Hoffgen argues that Orlok’s representation as an anti-hero ‘owes most of his impact to his visuals’ (2009, 22), which have their foundations in antisemitic racial theories, as discussed in Richard T. Gray’s study (2004) of German physiognomic thought. It is significant then that Marie Mulvey-Roberts interprets Orlok’s physiognomy as marked with ‘the unmistakeable stamp of the Jew’ (2016, 140), for this suggests that the physical appearance of the vampire provides a strong indication to the audience that the character should be read as Jewish. When we first encounter the vampire, he slowly creeps towards the camera, with his bald head, pale face and large ears coming into view. His side-profile emphasises his over-developed nose, enabled by prosthesis,¹ a feature of Jewish physical appearance that is supposed to be a clear racial indicator of their ‘Jewishness’ (Gilman 1991, 169–193). Indeed, Patrick Colm-Hogan argues that it is the character’s nose that provides the most evidence of his ‘Jewishness’, stating ‘whatever one makes of [his] other characteristics, the nose indicates that he is not simply foreign. He is the stereotype of a Colm-Hogan (2006, 100). Colm-Hogan’s understanding of Orlok’s hooked nose therefore indicates that Orlok’s ‘Jewishness’ is assumed, although the character is never explicitly identified as being a ‘Jew’ in the film.

This ‘Jewishness’ would have been immediately evident to the Weimar audience, who were by now familiar with such antisemitic stereotypes, owing to the proliferation of such stereotypes in wider cultural output, such as literature (Thurn 2015). Not only did such stereotypes focus on the physical appearance of ‘the Jew’, but they also focused upon the supposedly parasitic and destructive nature of ‘the Jew’. Ritchie Robertson points out how such images were referenced not only in literature but also in pamphlets distributed in the late nineteenth century (1999, 195–196) and drew on the assumption that ‘Jewishness’ was ‘the sickness with which the modern world was infected’ (Robertson 1999, 196). A discussion of Orlok’s physical appearance must therefore also acknowledge the resemblance to that of a rat. When we experience the character on-screen for the first time, he emerges, scuttling slowly forward out of a dark archway. Ashbury notes how this approach ‘dramatize[s] the relentless advance of evil’ (2001, 33) but this image also reminds the viewer of a rat, coming out of its dark home to spread contagion and disease. The rat comparison is underscored further by Orlok’s sharp pointed ears, hunched back and rat-like teeth, exaggerated through the use of close-ups and low camera angles. The camera work emphasises these features even further, suggesting that the film wants its audience to be acutely aware of his likeness to the rat. This raises Siegfried Kracauer’s question of whether the character embodies pestilence or whether pestilence is evoked to characterise him (2004, p. 79). This question will be explored in more depth in the next sub-section, where I consider Nosferatu’s ‘Jewishness’ in the context of disease. However, what is clear from analysis of the vampire’s physical appearance, is that, as Ian Roberts proposes ‘Nosferatu […] conforms perfectly to [the] racial stereotypes, enhancing the thrill of fear generated by the film’s images’ (2000, 48).

The Jewish association with plague goes back to the Black Death, where they ‘were suspected of having caused the disease, even though Jews suffered as much from it as the rest of the population’ (Laqueur 2006, 60). Artur Dinter’s novel Die Sünde wider das Blut (1921) also points to this association of Jews with disease in a narrative that focuses upon the contamination of the Aryan bloodline by sexual relationships between Jewish men and non-Jewish women. Barbara Hales has also explored how depictions of prostitutes in Weimar cinema perpetuated the conspiracy that the Jews were spreading syphilis, and her examination of medical films demonstrates how ‘film functioned as a venue for antisemitic constructions of Jewishness’ (2021, 216). The connection between Jews and disease is brought to the forefront of the narrative in the opening intertitles of Nosferatu, which set the scene for the film’s plot by referring to the pestilence brought by Nosferatu to the town of Wisborg as ‘the Great Plague’. We also see images of the vampire loading coffins ‘filled with accursed Earth from the fields of the Black Death’ onto the ship headed for Wisborg. The ‘Jewish vampire’ is marked clearly as the one responsible for unleashing a lethal disease onto the town. The theme of disease in the film echoes the experiences of 1918–19, when ‘a Spanish flu epidemic and famine hit Germany, ravaging the country and reportedly killing more civilians than the Great War itself’ (Elsaesser 2009, 82). This echo increases the fear that the audience would have felt when watching Nosferatu, as the threat seemed all the more real. The fact that Nosferatu is accompanied by an army of rats, who assist in the distribution of the disease, furthers this narrative. As the audience bears witness to the death of the crew aboard the ship, it ‘shudders in unspoken acknowledgement of this xenophobia […] draw[ing] upon long-standing anti-Semitic prejudice, even before the Nazis began their concerted campaign against Jews’ (Roberts 2000, 48). The rats in this scene can be regarded as representatives of Jews. Thomas Elsaesser has noted that:

such an influx of the subjugated and exploited should be seen in terms of rats, contagion and contamination speaks volumes: about the unselfconscious racism of the educated classes during the last but one turn of the century but also about “us” hyper-self-conscious readers of literary texts and filmic discourses.

(2009, 82–83)

Elsaesser is right – the fact that the rats in this scene are so readily understood as being equated with Jews reveals a lot about our own understanding of antisemitic stereotypes, as well as that of the Weimar audience.

The association of Jews with rats and disease reaches a grim apex in Nazi antisemitism, notably in the 1940 antisemitic propaganda film Der ewige Jude (1940) directed by Fritz Hippler. This film presents the rat as ‘both an alien, invasive force from outside […] and an eruptive chaos from below’ (Sandford 1995, 320)²and makes comparisons between the behaviours of the rat to that of ‘the Jew’, presenting the viewer with statements about ‘the Jew’ that are portrayed as being factual. By intercutting images of Jews with images of rats, the film claims that the rat is ‘no different from the Jews among mankind’. The images displayed in Hippler’s film recall the scene in Nosferatu in which rats emerge from the coffins stored upon the ship that is carrying Count Orlok to Wisborg. It should be made clear here that the Nazi film goes further than the 1922 film in making the connection between Jews, rats, and disease much more explicit, for it points to both as ‘sources of contagion and instigators of mass death’ (Mulvey-Roberts 2016, 141). Indeed, Linda Schulte-Sasse argues that Nazism’s metaphoric coding of Jews as rats or vermin is a gesture divesting them of subject status, and this, in turn is a precondition of engineering consent to their extermination’ (1996, 80). Nosferatu’s association of ‘the Jew’ with the rat then prefigures the Nazis’, and this in turn builds upon earlier antisemitic tropes that become more evident during the National Socialist period. In this way, Nosferatu builds upon a centuries-old narrative that would eventually be used by the Nazis to justify their antisemitic policies.

It is not just physical appearance that contributes to the film’s antisemitic potential. Through the relationship between Count Orlok and Knock, Wisborg’s estate agent, the film presents images of ‘Jews’ conspiring together to bring down the German town. The ‘Jewishness’ of the two characters is not only portrayed through similarities in their physical appearance, but also through the letters that they exchange. These letters consist of a variety of symbols, including the Star of David, a symbol recognisable as belonging to the Jewish faith. The use of code taps into the belief that ‘anything secret, mysterious and unknown was potentially dangerous and threatening’ (Robinson 2011, 18), a belief that was directed particularly at Jewish scriptures, which most non-Jews could not understand. For Margrit Frölich, Knock can be understood as ‘a manifestation of fears that the town’s comfortable idyll may not be sufficiently safeguarded from potential ruin looming outside, because Knock mischievously undermines the protective shield from within’ (2021, 52). It is this threat from within that the Nazis would eventually identify themselves as resolving.

Moreover, Nosferatu posits that this ‘Jewish’ threat is one which comes from the East. Count Orlok’s castle is in Transylvania, with a map on the wall in Knock’s office emphasising just how far East it is located. The physical location of the castle contributes to the ‘them’ and ‘us’ narrative of the film, presenting those from the East as ‘other’ to the German people. The power that Orlok wields contributes to the ‘othering’ of those from the East, for it is presented as unnatural and evil. Richard W. McCormick argues that ‘the monster can easily be read in terms of the typical fascist association of McCormick (2001, 27), for by now Russia had become Communist and there were real fears that Germany, in its fragile state following the First World War, would also succumb to Communism. The ‘Jewishness’ of Bolshevism was due to the fact that many of the left-wing revolutionaries of the period had Jewish backgrounds, such as Rosa Luxemburg, Hugo Haase and Eugen Lévine. The fear of Bolshevism can be regarded as being a fear of a ‘Jewish’ conspiracy to destroy Germany. One can quite easily interpret Nosferatu’s plague as a metaphor for the spreading of Bolshevism through Europe, whereby ‘like the Jews, Nosferatu comes from the East to upset the stability of the German way of life’ (Taylor 1998, 177), thereby depicting the negative impact this would have on Germany if it were to take hold there.

The image of the vampire has consistently been portrayed in religious and cultural discourses not only as anti-Christian, but also sexually delinquent. Nosferatu’s presence in Wisborg is made even more disturbing on account of his pursuit of Hutter’s wife Ellen and the ‘contrasting [of] the anodyne puppy love of Mina and Harker with Nosferatu’s necrophiliac lust’ (Elsaesser 2009, 86).³The Count becomes obsessed with Ellen when he notices her photograph in her husband’s locket, commenting on her beautiful neck. This is when his threat intensifies, transitioning from the collective to the personal, for it is clear that he goes to Wisborg, not to spread disease, but to pursue Ellen. This is highlighted by his decision to purchase the house directly opposite the one which Hutter and Ellen occupy. The vampire’s threat is twofold – he is a threat to the community, but also to their sacred values. Colm-Hogan argues that ‘it is the entry of the Eastern European alien – specifically the alien who is associated with Jewish tradition – into the heart of one’s “home”, the entry of this foreigner as one’s “neighbor” that leads to the destruction of the home society’ (2006, 99), and whilst this does not acknowledge the sexual threat of the ‘vampire Jew’, it does support the view that the film issues a warning against those who are supportive of Jewish assimilation into German society.

The film increases in suspense as the audience anticipates the meeting between Nosferatu and Ellen. There are hints throughout the film prior to their physical interaction that suggest that Ellen is not awaiting the return of her husband, but rather the vampire. The most famous example of this is the match-cut where Ellen, feverish in bed, is seen reaching out towards Nosferatu, not her husband, and it is from this point on that it is clear that the fates of Nosferatu and Ellen are entwined. The scene in which Ellen is looking out to sea, despite being often overlooked, is particularly insightful, for the audience knows that it is not her husband who will arrive in Wisborg by sea, but Nosferatu himself. Hoffgen notes how this ‘ambiguity is intensified by her black dress, and by the black crosses dotted about incongruously and higgledy-piggledy on the beach: obvious references to death’ (2009, 21). The mise-en-scène suggests that the narrative does not revolve around the reunion of two lovers, but rather that Ellen is ‘fascinated by the menace and virility of Nosferatu’ (Roberts 2000, 48). In centring the narrative on Nosferatu and Ellen, the film implies that the greatest threat that ‘the Jew’ poses to society is sexual.

The image of the ‘vampire Jew’ as sexual predator reaches its climax in the image of the dark shadow against the wall as Nosferatu makes his way towards Ellen’s bedroom. Ellen’s virginity is underlined in this scene by her white dress, making the vampire’s crime more despicable, for he is taking away her innocence, despite not being her husband. It is worthwhile noting that this is also the first time that we see Nosferatu drinking blood on screen. The previous blood-sucking incidents have been implied but have taken place off-camera, suggesting that they are too horrific to show to the audience, as was Fritz Lang’s intention in M (1931). This may have been a conscious decision on behalf of the filmmakers to further emphasise the evil behind the crime. Their miscegenation demonstrates how ‘the Jew’ destroys Christian values, for it is a ‘transgression against the institution of marriage, another central building block of modern nation states’ (Mušanović 2017, 598). The impact of this scene is immense, for its sacrificial nature further marks the forbidden sexual interaction as perverse. Ashbury suggests that ‘Ellen does come to represent the ‘German soul’ […], at the mercy of the property-acquiring Gay (2001, 67),⁴ and in this way her fate is troubling to the Weimar audience for her interaction with Nosferatu brings about her and implicitly Germany’s demise.

At surface level, the reason for Ellen’s relationship with the vampire is so that she can destroy him and save the town. This reading therefore considers Ellen to have sacrificed herself for the wellbeing of wider society. However, despite the fact that Ellen’s encounter with the vampire results in his removal from society, there is evidence to suggest, as outlined above, that she also secretly desires him. Her actions have consequences, and she dies shortly after the vampire. Her role in Murnau’s film is similar to that of the character Dorothea (Christina Söderbaum) in Veit Harlan’s Jud Süß (1940). Both women engage in sexual activity with the ‘enemy’’, who is identified as ‘Jewish’. Schulte-Sasse has noted how ‘without invoking the supernatural at all, Jew Süß repeats the horror narrative’s fantasy of a social body penetrated by a monster defined as sexually, biologically different’ (1996, 193). The same can be said for the encounter between Ellen and Orlok in Nosferatu, though Jud Süss goes further than Nosferatu, depicting Söderbaum’s character being raped by the ‘Jewish’ sexual predator, thereby building on Nosferatu, for ‘what is magical or metaphorical in the earlier film is given some literal correlate in the later film’ as Colm-Hogan (2006, 103). Ultimately both films end in the death of the woman, though in Jud Süss the audience is more obviously urged to ‘read the rape in antisemitic terms as racial poisoning’ (Schulte-Sasse 1996, 209). It is important to note here how ‘Jud Süß is not a transformation of Nosferatu per se’ (Colm-Hogan 2006, 103), but the similarities between the two films serve to remind us of the antisemitism that lies at the core of Murnau’s film.

It would however be naive to discuss Nosferatu without acknowledging the fact that the vampire’s ‘transgressions against nationally sanctioned matrimony play out equally on male and female bodies’ (Mušanović 2017, 599). The film reaches a climax in the image of the dark shadow against the wall as Orlok makes his way upstairs towards Ellen’s bedroom and it is implied that the two engage in sexual relations. At first glance then, it would seem that the film centres on a heterosexual relationship. However, as Mušanović (2017) points out, this understanding of the film ignores the fact that Orlok is also interested in Hutter and even drinks his blood twice during his stay at the Count’s Transylvanian castle. The second scene in which we see Hutter being bitten by the vampire is of particular importance with regard to the issue of Orlok’s potential homosexuality. The shadow on the wall of the vampire’s hands and pointed ears over Hutter’s body slowly disappears down, whilst Hutter’s neck remains clearly in view. Although we do not see what happens next as the camera cuts to the next scene, Richard Dyer (1990, 23) notes that the vampire is not just making do with male ‘blood’’. Cathy Gelbin (2020) has also pointed to the phallic connotations of bloodsucking, particularly in relation to the scene discussed earlier in this article where Hutter’s thumb is bleeding, and she argues that ‘the bleeding thumb’s suggestion of gay fellatio and ejaculation on the one hand, and of the Jewish ritual of circumcision on the other, are by no means mutually exclusive, but ultimately feed into the anti-Jewish imagination, which linked circumcision to the presumed castrated and effeminate nature of the Jew’ (127). The fact that Orlok can thus be read as both ‘queer’ and ‘Jewish’ emphasises his status as ‘other’ in the film, further supported by the extensive alienation that Orlok experiences. He is relegated to the very fringes of society, represented by the fact that Orlok lives alone in a huge castle in the middle of the countryside where no one, not even animals, dare to go. Stories are also spread amongst local people about the horrors that take place inside those castle walls, which develop a quasi-conspiracy theory that perpetuate the narrative of ‘otherness’ that has been attached to the vampire. A stereotype is thus formed that does not respond to the encounter with the specific ‘other’, but rather to a kind of social experience with modernity and its crises and personifies the perceived threat. This means that characters not explicitly identified as ‘queer’ or ‘Jewish’ can step into the same roles as ‘outsiders’ within the mainstream community and supports the understanding of ‘othering’ as a socially generated projection and not an encounter with a minority gone wrong. Rather than generating sympathy for this ‘othered’ figure, Nosferatu can therefore be interpreted as contributing to a reactionary pushback against the inclusion of those considered deviant and destructive (here read ‘different’) in the concept of the German national community.

Identifying Nosferatu with ‘the Jew’ provides a commentary both on ‘the Jew’ himself and on those who seek to incorporate him into society and the film can be interpreted as a warning to those who include Jews in society that they will suffer for doing so. Hutter’s excitement at the opportunity to go to Transylvania ignores the fact that his wife is unenthusiastic and is reluctant for him to go. Additionally, their relationship seems to be lacking in affection, and this could be regarded as the reason why Ellen chooses to seek satisfaction elsewhere. If, as Janet Bergstrom suggests, Hutter ‘represents the passive, impotent male so common in the Bergstrom (1986, 255), then the film issues a warning specifically to German men that they should satisfy their wives to prevent their seduction by the ‘Jewish’ sexual predator. I propose an alternative reading, that the film reveals a psychosexual fear of ‘Jews’ as great predators. In this way, the film does not serve as a caution to the German male and his impotency, but rather it articulates latent fears about the male ‘identities in crisis’ following German defeat in the First World War (McCormick 2001, 12).⁵

It still remains, however, that Hutter is the only character from the main trio who survives the film’s plot. Distracted by Ellen, Nosferatu turns to dust at sunrise, punishment for the ‘Jewish’ vampire that transgressed social boundaries by having sexual relations with a woman who belongs to the mainstream community. Similarly, Ellen also dies in Hutter’s arms shortly after and her death functions as a punishment for disobeying ethnic-sexual boundaries. By contrast, Hutter remains alive at the film’s conclusion and one might say then that Hutter has been condemned to continue his life in misery. Instead of heeding the warnings paid to him by others, for example the reaction by those in the inn, he opts to believe that the bite marks on his neck have come from mosquitoes. For this, he is portrayed as being a fool, ignoring the warning signs of the imminent threat to both his family and his society. Though this threat to society is removed and Germany is safe from the danger posed by Nosferatu, the film presents its audience with ‘narratives of foreboding, images of ghouls and other horrors [which] struck a nerve with the population which was, metaphorically at least, still glancing over its shoulder in fear, uncertain of its future in a period of chaos’ (Roberts 2000, 36).

It is clear that Nosferatu was released in a time of established antisemitism and demonstrates the intensification of the ‘Jewish’ threat that many Germans felt was growing as the years went by. In the same year as Nosferatu’s release, an increase in membership of the antisemitic group Schutz und Trutz Bund was noted (Mulvey-Roberts 2016, 144). Whilst it is impossible to comment confidently on whether the film had any bearing on this, it is certainly possible to infer that the film and the rise in antisemitic membership are related. The antisemitic undercurrent to the film gains particular potence, for they capture the Zeitgeist, fuelling the antisemitic understanding of society whilst doing so. The power of the antisemitic elements of Nosferatu is however best summed up by Roberts who believes that ‘the film gains added poignancy for the modern viewer since the vampire represents both the anti-Semitic fear of the Jewish-Eastern threat, as well as the sinister threat of the Nazis, at one and the same time’ (2000, 51). Analysing Nosferatu in this way allows us to consider the impact of antisemitism on Germany’s past and its impending future under Nazism. The growing perception of a Jewish threat becomes imminent and immanent, making Nosferatu’s cinematic release a pivotal moment in both the history of Weimar Republic and Germany itself.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Research for my PhD project has been provided by Midlands 4 Cities, Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Notes on contributors

Molly Harrabin

Molly Harrabin is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick, where she is supervised by Dr Ian Roberts and Dr Christine Achinger. Her research focuses upon representations of women in the Weimar films of Fritz Lang and G. W. Pabst and how these are depicted in visions of the national community.

Notes

1. A photo of Max Schreck without the prosthetic is available in David J. Skal’s (1991) book Hollywood Gothic: The Tangled Web of Dracula from Novel to Stage to Screen, p. 99.

2. Sandford’s emphasis used here.

3. Elsaesser uses the names from the Bram Stoker Dracula novel here rather than the names used in Murnau’s film.

4. Ashbury’s emphasis used here.

5. See also Anton Kaes, Shell Shock Cinema: Weimar Culture and the Wounds of War.