2 - Dr. Mabuse and His Doubles

Summary

Abstract: Chapter 2 introduces Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse der Spieler (1922) as the quintessential film that embodies all of the key crises of finance capital and modernity. It examines how the film connects crises of authority, identity, authenticity, and rationality back to the realm of finance capital. Dr. Mabuse both threatens fixed notions of territory, colonies, border, and nation while also embodying a fantasy of empowerment and mobility for the emergent class of Angestellten (‘white-collar workers’) as a film-going public. The film is situated in the context of the figures of the Raffke and Schieber, two established stereotypes of the profiteers and nouveau riche of the time, and as part of a micro-genre of Börsenfilme (‘stock-exchange films’) of the time of the hyperinflation.

Keywords: Dr. Mabuse, Fritz Lang, Fictions of Finance, Hyperinflation, German Colonies, Salaried Masses

Dr. Mabuse the Speculator

Introduction

Fritz Lang's two-part Dr. Mabuse der Spieler: Ein Bild der Zeit was released in April and May 1922, during a period in which the Berlin stock exchange was closed for all but one day per week due to the overwhelming demand of speculators. The ‘flight from the mark’ that characterized the hyperinflation at this time blurred the boundary between speculation and investment, and made speculation in currencies a common practice. This chapter situates Lang's canonical two-part film, the full title of which is Dr. Mabuse der Spieler: Der Große Spieler: Ein Bild der Zeit (released on April 27, 1922) and Inferno: Ein Spiel von Menschen Unserer Zeit (released on May 26, 1922), within this historical context. Here, I take my cue from Siegfried Kracauer in discussing the film-going audience of the period, who were members of the class of Angestellten, the numbers of which increased exponentially after the war. In so doing, I attempt to identify and draw attention to the overlooked cultural and historical signifiers that would have resonated with this class of workers, a workforce that, in Berlin, included members of the rapidly expanding financial sector. I also reconsider the ways in which this key film reflects and amplifies a worldview that resonated with the daily professional engagement of these workers with the money economy and financial markets.