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Grant Benson

HIST 3728

Eric D. Weitz

April 26, 2012

Jew Süss and The Eternal Jew : anti-Semitic German Cinema and the Holocaust

In the decades after the Holocaust, mainstream and independent filmmakers have used

different techniques and strategies to accurately portray the horrors of an event that resulted in

the systematic murder of millions of Europeans ranging from but not limited to Jews, Gypsies,

Soviets, and disabled persons.1 Filmmakers like Steven Spielberg and Agnieszka Holland have

attempted to find moving stories within the frame of the Holocaust,2 while director Claude

Lanzmann collected horrific stories from survivors and presented them in a long, documentary

format.3 However, while there have been many efforts in re-telling the stories of the Holocaust in

film format, a lot of attention has also been paid to German films made in accordance to the

events leading up to the Holocaust. The films often discussed are a pair of 1940 films made in

accordance with the wishes of Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, Veit Harlan’s Jew Süss

and Fritz Hippler’s Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew). Both films couldn’t have been more

different. Harlan’s Jew Süss was a “historical” period piece complete with lavish sets and some

of the country’s most acclaimed actors. The film was also a huge success in the box office,

garnering a final profit of 4.5 million Reichsmarks and generating over 20 million viewers.

Hippler’s The Eternal Jew, on the other hand, was a staged film that was presented as a

documentary. Unlike Jew Süss, The Eternal Jew bombed in the German box-office with only 1

1 It is important to also mention homosexuals, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, prisoners of war, as well as political and religious opponents of the Nazis.2 Saving Private Ryan (1997) and Europa Europa (1990)3 Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary Shoah is 9 ½ hours long.

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million paid admissions compared to the 20 million by Jew Süss. Despite the two films’

differences, they both had unprecedented impact on the scope of the Holocaust. When analyzing

these films as it relates to the Holocaust, it is important to ask how these films played a role that

eventually enabled the Holocaust and a violation of human rights to happen. With clever

filmmaking that ignited fierce passions in its viewers, Jew Süss and The Eternal Jew ensured that

the medium of film would play a large role in the German annihilation of European Jewry in the

Holocaust.

Veit Harlan’s Jew Süss is “Nazi Cinema’s most controversial and contested film…it is

rivaled only by The Eternal Jew for its continuing ability to ignite fierce passions in its

viewers.”4 As stated, the film was huge financial success in Germany. However, the film’s

success in the box office hasn’t saved it from criticism. Even the most ardent of defenders of

German cinema5 back off when Jew Süss is brought up. In fact, the film is reserved by the

German government and can only be seen in closed screenings for educational purposes.6

“The events represented in this film are based on historical occurrences,” asserts the title

screen at the beginning of the film.7 The film takes place in 1733 and begins with the coronation

of Karl Alexander as duke of Wurttemberg in Stuttgart. Because of his lavish living style

coupled with a penny-pinching diet, he sends a runner to the Frankfurt Jewish ghetto to obtain a

wedding gift on credit from Joseph Süss Oppenheimer. With this, Süss hatches a plan to exploit

the monarch’s desire for luxury as a means to get himself political power. Süss gains access into

Stuttgart (which is off-limits to Jews) and finagles his way into the duke’s court until he is 4 Brockman, Steven, Critical History of German Film (New York, Camden House, 2010), 160.5 There are many defenders of German cinema. One in particular is German film critic Norbert Grob who urges film scholars to look past racist undertones in German films and analyze them as a piece of art. Most of the productions made under the direction of the Third Reich from 1933-1945 were not propagandistic in nature. The main goal of the German cinema was to be mindless escapism for a country that was at war.6 Rentschler, Eric, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife (Harvard University Press, 1996), 150.7 Harlan, Veit, dir. Jew Süss. 1940. Terra Film.

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appointed as the duke’s finance minister. Using his new found power, he transforms roads and

bridges into sources of personal revenue that cause widespread hardships for the people of

Stuttgart. Using the impending civil unrest as leverage, Süss persuades the duke to open the city

of Stuttgart to the Jews. With his deception of the duke, Süss has the sovereign completely at this

disposal.

With the duke’s approval, Süss engineers a coup that will set foreign soldiers upon

Stuttgart troops and grant the head of state absolute power. Süss’ plan hits a snag when he

sexually coerces the daughter of a prominent District Councilor. Shamed by the rape, the young

daughter drowns herself and the discovery of her body is followed by the death of the duke and

the failure of the planned coup. Without the duke’s protection, Süss is punished for his crimes by

way of public execution. In the film’s final shot, the dead girl’s father proclaims that all Jews

must leave Stuttgart within three days. In the closing line, he states: “May posterity honor this

law so that much suffering to their property, life, and the blood of their children and their

children’s children might be spared them.”8

Jew Süss was surprisingly one the Nazi era’s very few anti-Semitic features, but it made

its anti-Semitism count. The film is an exhibition of anti-Semitist racism. It portrays almost

every Jewish stereotype imaginable. Süss is a shifty figure, nomadic, he is without a homeland

and lives to be greedy.9 Despite its racist tones, some film scholars have commented on Hippler’s

talents as a filmmaker in visually communicating the film’s overt anti-Semitism. One of the main

technical tools the film uses is the dissolve.10 A dissolve takes us from a royal emblem in

Stuttgart to the Hebrew writing on store in the Jewish ghetto. A dissolve marks Süss’

8 Harlan, Jew Süss. 9 Rentschler, 154. 10 A dissolve is an editing technique that is a gradual transition from one image to another. Unlike a fade, a dissolve overlaps two shots for the duration of the effect.

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transformation from a bearded Jew living in the ghetto to a multinational European. In one of the

most famous shots of the film, a dissolve transforms gold coins tossed by Süss onto the duke’s

desk into a circle of dancing ballerinas. In the final scene of the film, a dissolve alters the court

Jew’s face back into his original Jewish, ghetto “look.”11

Jew Süss debuted at the Venice film festival in September, 1940 to universal acclaim to

all who viewed it. Italian film critic Michelangelo Antonio wrote: “We have no hesitation in

saying that if this is propaganda, then we welcome propaganda. It is a powerful, incisive,

extremely effective film…There is not a single moment when the film slows, not one episode in

disharmony with the another: it is a film of complete unity and balance…The episode in which

Süss violates the young girl is done with astonishing skill.”12 It wasn’t only critics that responded

enthusiastically towards Harlan’s film. Joseph Goebbels attended the Berlin opening of the film

on September 24: “A very large public, the film is a wild success. One hears only enthusiastic

comments. The audience is in frenzy. That is what I had hoped for…Everybody praises the film

to the skies, which is what I had hoped for.”13 The film’s effect on the public was substantial. On

October 15, 1940, the Bielefeld SD reported that no German film yet had succeeded in having

such an impact on wide segments of the public. Even people who rarely went to the cinema did

not want to miss Jew Süss.14

Simply put, Jew Süss provided a preview of coming atrocities, preparing the German

populace for the “final solution,” the deportation and mass execution of European Jews. Heinrich

Himmler, Reichsführer of the SS, ordered all SS and police members to screen the film during

the coming winter. It was shown to SS units, and Einsatzgruppen about to be sent east on their

11 Rentshcler, 159. 12 Friedlander, Saul, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (Harper, 2007), 100. 13 Friedlander, 10014 Friedlander, 100.

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murderous assignments.15 Veit Harlan eventually paid for the film’s enormous box-office

success. Harlan was one of three Third Reich film directors to stand trial for crimes against

humanity. However, he was acquitted on the grounds that the “Final Solution” would have taken

place with or without the film.16 It was an ironic ruling, considering the Wansee Conference,

where the plans of the “final solution” were set in motion, hadn’t taken place yet.17 So there’s no

way of knowing if the statement at Nuremberg was true or not. However, there is no denying the

public sentiment for the deportation of Jews was stronger after the release of the film, which had

20.3 million viewers in Germany.

Ten days after Himmler had praised Jew Süss, another major screen production of the

Nazi’s anti-Jewish campaign was completed: Fritz Hippler’s The Eternal Jew. The film opened

on November 29th. Two versions of the film had been prepared: an original version as well as a

version that deleted the gory scenes of ritual slaughtering. In Berlin alone, the film started

simultaneously in sixty-six theaters. The posters advertising the opening night in the capital

carried the following warning: “In the 6:30 PM presentation original images of Jewish animal

slaughtering are shown, a shortened version presented at 4:00 PM is recommended to sensitive

natures. Women are allowed only to the 4:00 PM presentation.”18

Fritz Hippler constructed The Eternal Jew as a documentary intended to cinematically

sell anti-Semitism to the German Public, but the film did not function as a typical documentary

where the viewers are invited to reflect on factual material assessed throughout the film. The

filmmakers had no intention to do this, nor were they interested in having the viewers interpret

15 Friedlander, 102.16 Haggith, Toby, and Newman, Joanna, The Holocaust and the Moving Image-Representations in Film and Television Since 1933 (Wallflower Press, 2005), 81.17 The Wansee Conference took place on January 20, 1942. Nearly two years after the release of Jew Süss.18 Friedlander, 101.

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the film’s message for themselves.19 The film opens with a lengthy sequence of images of the

newly created Jewish ghettos in Nazi-occupied Poland. At the conclusion of the opening credits,

animated text informs the audience that the film uses documented footage in order to show Jews

in their original state, before “they put on the mask of civilized Europeans.”20 The film has

communicated its point from the beginning: Jews have always lived in the ghettos and they

choose to live there.21 The rest of the film, there are a succession of scenes in which Jews are

portrayed as uncivilized, parasitic people with low social standing. Jews that are poorly dressed,

dirty, and have partially toothless grins were deliberately selected. The narrator proclaims that

the Jews prefer their filthy conditions; they are not like the Germans. In fact, they represent a

danger to any German who dares to pity them.22

Crowd shots of the ghetto showing Jews working and living in their miserable housing,

schools, and synagogues are dispersed throughout the film as well. Each time ghetto footage is

used, the film repeats its claims that it depicts the daily lives of Jews. The narrator describes the

Jews as lazy; they’d rather trade and barter rather than subject themselves to a day of honest

work.23 Like Jew Süss, The Eternal Jew also uses clever filmmaking techniques to convey

messages visually. There is a segment that begins with a series of mug shots of Polish Jews is

traditional Orthodox attire. The screen fades to black then shows a close-up image of a bearded

Jewish man wearing a hat and glasses. The image then dissolves into another shot in which the

same man shown is now without his beard and dress as a west European businessman. This

19 Clinefelter, Joan, “A Cinematic Construction of Nazi Anti-Semitism: The Documentary Der ewige Jude,” in Cultural History Through a National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich (New York, Camden House, 2000), 133.20 Hippler, Fritz, dir. The Eternal Jew. 1940. Terra Films. 21 Hippler, The Eternal Jew.22 Clinefelter, 137.23 Clinefelter, 137.

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process is repeated with two more times. With these editing techniques, the film is creating an

illusion that claims to reveal the Jews’ methods of “infiltrating” society.24

In another sequence, hordes of rats scurry through sewers and cellars. Immediately after,

an image of groups of Jews migrating from Palestine to the most remote corners of the world is

juxtaposed onto the screen. The narrator then explains that while rats are the vermin of the

animal kingdom, Jews are the vermin of the human race and similarly spread disease and

corruption. Unlike rats however, the narrator continues, Jews have the ability to change

appearance and blend into their “human hosts.”25 Sequences that depict the graphic nature of

ritualistic animal slaughter are also shown. “It depicts the slow deaths of cattle and sheep,

bathing in their own blood, heads partly severed, throats slit while the laughing faces of the

Jewish ritual slaughters are set in motion with the severed heads of the dying animals.”26

The Eternal Jew doesn’t operate like most documentaries. It does not appeal to the

intellect, nor does it invite audience reflection. Instead, the film arouses fears, feeds prejudices,

and confirms the audience’s hatred of the film’s object of interest, the Jews. The film was not a

financial success.27 Much of that is contributed to the graphic nature of the film. It just wasn’t

that easy to watch. Therefore, it couldn’t have had as much success rallying the masses as Jew

Süss. But, The Eternal Jew is particularly useful as allegory as it relates to the Holocaust.

Interpretation of the film points out that Hippler effectively creates an alternate reality of sorts.

That is, the film constructs a Nazi reality, a world in which dangerous Jews lurk suspiciously in

24 Clinefelter, 138.25 Hippler, The Eternal Jew.26 Friedlander, 101.27 1 million views compared to 20.3 million for Jew Süss.

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every street corner and sleep in their own filth; a world that depicts and therefore justifies Nazi

anti-Semitism, and ultimately, the Nazi extermination of Jews.28

The commercial success of Jew Süss and the commercial failure of The Eternal Jew

should not be viewed as contrary results in terms of Joseph Goebbels’ intentions. Images from

both films were endlessly used in anti-Semitic posters and published material all throughout the

Reich and in Europe’s occupied areas. The off-putting images of The Eternal Jew might not have

resonated with viewers like they did with Jew Süss (at least not in the same way), but in both

cases the goal was exactly the same: elicit fear, disgust, and hatred. As well as act as a preview

for the atrocities that were soon to be committed by the Third Reich during the Holocaust.29 With

the clever filmmaking techniques used by Harlan and Hippler in their films Jew Süss and The

Eternal Jew, German audiences were sent in frenzy in response to the “Jewish Problem” that was

implied and suggested by these films. This public reaction ensured that German popular cinema

would play a large role in the annihilation of European Jewry in the Holocaust.

28 Clinefelter, 136.29 Friedlander, 102.