• The City Without Jews (Die Stadt ohne Juden)

2/4/26 (Wed)

I was made aware of this startling 1924 silent film when the irreplaceable Mark Steyn featured the German novel from two years earlier in his column. The film had long been thought lost, but fragments were found in poor condition in Amsterdam in 1991, which were only shown publicly years later. Then, in one of those seemingly impossible coincidences, a full copy in excellent condition emerged at a French flea market in 2015. That was digitally restored and released three years later.

A large city – Vienna in the original, a limp “Utopia” in the film – is roiled by economic troubles and severe public discontent amid a stark divide between the decadent rich and the struggling poor. Looking for a scapegoat, politicians soon target the Jews, blaming them for all the city’s woes. The Jews are compared to a pest that must be exterminated to protect the roses. The government orders that all Jews be expelled from the city, though allowing second-generation Jews to remain if they agree to be baptized. It arranges stock cars to take them away along with all their worldly possessions, ripping them from their roots. The city is soon bereft of all Jewish life. It quickly becomes clear that its business and cultural life has been torn apart as well: the theaters are empty, fashion houses flounder, the currency plunges, businesses die. “When you expelled the Jews,” says one person, “you banished prosperity as well.”

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