The City without Jews
About The City without Jews
In a republic the film calls Utopia, Chancellor Dr. Schwerdtfeger pushes a law that expels the Jews by the end of the year. The artist Leo Strakosch is among those who leave. Theaters empty down to a few approved plays, business shifts to Prague and Budapest, and the assembly later wants the exiles back so it can muster a majority. Leo, back on forged papers as a French painter, and Lotte, daughter of a deputy who voted for the ban, get the antisemitic councillor Bernard drunk. Bernard wakes in a tavern: the expulsion was his dream, and he says he wants to live with other people, not hate them.
Cast & crew
More about The City without Jews
Hans Karl Breslauer directed and, with Ida Jenbach, adapted Hugo Bettauer's 1922 novel. Hugo Eywo photographed. The Vienna premiere was July 25, 1924. The film renames the city Utopia, drops the book's recognizable politicians, and ends as Bernard's dream. Bettauer refused to claim the picture.
Themes
Background
In the spring of 1925 Otto Rothstock, a Nazi Party member, shot Bettauer. A vilification campaign had already used the film and Bettauer's other work against him. Rothstock was treated as a hero, sent to a mental hospital, and freed after eighteen months. Money was collected for him from the public.
In film history
Thomas Ballhausen and Günter Krenn wrote in 2006 that the dream ending, unlike the novel, cancels both Bettauer's argument and the antisemitism the book was answering.
Making
Inferior prints were shortened by exhibitors. The premiere itself had technical trouble, and the film did not match the book's sale.
Audiences
Screenings were disrupted, including by National Socialists with stink bombs, and the film was banned in Linz. Crowds for the picture did not match the sale of the novel.
Look
Hugo Eywo photographed the film, including the crooked cell in which Bernard hallucinates Stars of David.
Music
The 1924 release was silent. Gerhard Gruber prepared a score in 2000, and Olga Neuwirth another in 2017.
Preservation
A copy turned up in 1991 at the Nederlands Filmmuseum; the Bundesarchiv made an emergency copy, and Filmarchiv Austria reconstructed it with HS-ART and the DIAMANT software of Joanneum Research. A complete print found at a Paris flea market in 2015 was restored with a crowdfunding campaign of more than 700 contributors and over €86,000, and was re-released in 2018. A 2008 DVD appeared in the series Der österreichische Film.
Notes
- Johannes Riemann plays Leo Strakosch, Eugen Neufeld the chancellor, Hans Moser councillor Bernard, and Anny Milety Lotte.
- After the expulsion the theaters are left with plays by Ludwig Ganghofer and Ludwig Anzengruber.
- Bernard's cell, painted with crooked walls, shows him Stars of David as threats.
- National Socialists threw stink bombs at screenings. The film was banned in Linz.
- It opened in Berlin in 1926 and in New York in 1928. The last commercial run of the original release was at Carré in Amsterdam in 1933, billed as a protest against Hitler's Germany.
- Bettauer's novel sold more than 250,000 copies and was translated into several languages.
Scenes
- The assembly cheers the law that orders the Jews out by year's end.
- Leo returns as a French painter and drinks Bernard under the table.
- Bernard wakes in the tavern and calls the expulsion a dream.
Influenced by
- Hugo Bettauer's novel Die Stadt ohne Juden (1922)
Also available
- Internet Archive (the-city-without-jews-1924-by-hans-karl-breslauer)
- DVD series Der österreichische Film (2008)
Quotes
Thank God that stupid dream is over—we are all just people and we don't want hate—we want life—we want to live together in peace.