Martina Lüdicke
The most famous film presentation of a golem is Paul Wegener’s silent film The Golem: How He Came into the World. Actor and director Wegener made three golem films in just a few years—in 1915, 1917, and 1920. He played the golem himself in all three films and left his mark like no one else on the image of the clumsy, robot-like golem with a distinctive hairstyle.
Neither of the golem films that Wegener made during the First World War have survived in their entirety. Whereas the 1915 film already emphasized the threatening and monstrous traits of a golem who gets out of control, the second film, from 1917, entitled The Golem and the Dancing Girl, was conceived as a comedy.
Paul Wegener’s third golem film, produced in 1920, was a masterpiece which literally brought the golem into the world and was a milestone as it were in the horror film genre. The phantasmagorical, expressionistic film backdrop by Hans Poelzig and Marlene Moeschke offered a unique formal language and, for the first time in film history, a three-dimensional film set that the actors could actually enter and stand upon.
Martina Lüdicke majored in Literature Studies and works at the Jewish Museum Berlin, where she has curated the exhibitions Chrismukka, How German is It?, The Whole Truth... Everything you always wanted to know about Jews and Snip it! Stances on Ritual Circumcision.
Citation recommendation:
Martina Lüdicke (2016), Horror and Magic. Chapter 5 of the Exhibition Catalogue GOLEM: Introduction.
URL: www.jmberlin.de/en/node/4705
Online Edition of the GOLEM Catalog: Table of Contents
- The Golem in Berlin – introduction by Peter Schäfer
- Chapter 1
- The Golem Lives On – introduction by Martina Lüdicke
- My Light is Your Life – by Anna Dorothea Ludewig
- Avatars – by Louisa Hall
- The Secret of the Cyborgs – by Caspar Battegay
- Chapter 2
- Jewish Mysticism – introduction by Emily D. Bilski
- Golem Magic – by Martina Lüdicke
- Golem, Language, Dada – by Emily D. Bilski
- Chapter 3
- Transformation – introduction by Emily D. Bilski
- Jana Sterbak’s Golem: Objects as Sensations – by Rita Kersting
- Crisálidas (Chrysalises) – by Jorge Gil
- Rituals – by Christopher Lyon
- A Golem that Ended Well – by Emily D. Bilski
- On the Golem – by David Musgrave
- Louise Fishman’s Paint Golem – by Emily D. Bilski
- Chapter 4
- Legendary Prague – introduction by Martina Lüdicke
- Golem Variations – by Peter Schäfer
- Rabbi Loew’s Well-Deserved Bath – by Harold Gabriel Weisz Carrington
- Chapter 5
- Current page: Horror and Magic – introduction by Martina Lüdicke
- Golem and a Little Girl – by Helene Wecker
- The Golem with a Group of Children Dancing – by Karin Harrasser
- Bringing the Film Set To Life – by Anna-Carolin Augustin
- Golem and Mirjam – by Cathy S. Gelbin
- Chapter 6
- Out of Control – introduction by Emily D. Bilski
- Golem—Man Awakened with Glowing Hammer – by Arno Pařík
- Dangerous Symbols – by Charlotta Kotik
- Be Careful What You Wish For – by Marc Estrin
- Chapter 7
- Doppelgänger – introduction by Martina Lüdicke
- From the Golem-Talmud – by Joshua Cohen
- Kitaj’s Art Golem – by Tracy Bartley
- The Golem as Techno-Imagination? – by Cosima Wagner
- See also
- GOLEM – 2016, online edition with selected texts of the exhibition catalog
- GOLEM – 2016, complete printed edition of the exhibition catalog, in German
- Golem. From Mysticism to Minecraft – Online Feature, 2016
- GOLEM – exhibition, 23 Sep 2016 to 29 Jan 2017