Paul Wegener's Golem: the Prague legend on screen
From Rabbi Loew to the clay creature brought to life by a word: how Wegener's 1920 film carried one of Europe's oldest legends into the cinema.
In Jewish tradition the word golem refers to formless matter, not yet complete; in Psalm 139 it appears to indicate the embryo. Over time it became the name of a clay being brought to life by a sage through the power of the divine letters. In the early twentieth century the legend found an enthusiastic interpreter in German cinema: the actor and director Paul Wegener, who devoted three films to it between 1915 and 1920.
A legend between mysticism and folklore
The roots of the idea lie in mystical speculation on letters and divine names, especially in the Sefer Yetzirah, the Book of Formation, an ancient text of uncertain date that describes the creation of the world through combinations of the Hebrew alphabet. In medieval commentaries, above all among the Rhineland pietists, there are descriptions of the creation of a golem as a contemplative experience rather than a practical one.
The most famous version, which links the golem to Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague, who died in 1609, spread mainly in the nineteenth century through collections of folk tales. According to the legend the rabbi shaped a clay giant to protect the ghetto community and animated it with the divine name; in some versions the word emet, truth, was written on its forehead, and erasing the first letter left met, death.
Wegener's three films
Wegener made a first Der Golem in 1915, set in the present day, and a parody, Der Golem und die Tänzerin, in 1917; both are largely lost. The film we know is Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam, The Golem: How He Came into the World, of 1920, co-directed with Carl Boese. Wegener plays the creature, with a bobbed wig, a massive body and a heavy gait that would become a model for many later monsters.
The film does not derive from Gustav Meyrink's novel Der Golem, published in 1915 and much closer to initiatory esotericism, but from popular tradition. It shows the rabbi consulting the stars, summoning a spirit to learn the word that gives life and placing a star-shaped amulet in the creature's chest. These are dramatic inventions and should not be confused with real practices of Jewish mysticism.
A ghetto of clay and light
The sets were designed by the architect Hans Poelzig, who built an imaginary ghetto of curved houses, pointed roofs and winding stairs, almost modelled by hand like the creature's clay. The cinematography of Karl Freund, who would later work on Metropolis, lights the interiors with flames and glows, giving the scenes of magic the air of an alchemical laboratory.
Wegener's Golem lies at the origin of a theme that cinema would take up countless times: the creature built by man that escapes its creator's control. From Frankenstein to the robots of science fiction, the question remains the one posed by the Prague legend, namely how far human knowledge can imitate the act of creation without being overwhelmed by it. Every new technology, the film seems to suggest, carries with it the ancient ambition and the ancient fear of the rabbi of Prague.