A new and improved Doppelgänger in Prague

The remake of The Student of Prague (Der Student von Prag), released 25 October 1926, is head and shoulders above the rather creaky 1913 original. Though the original version was a huge success and deeply tapped into the sense of alienation many Germans felt as their empire headed towards collapse, sparked interest in psychoanalysis, and set the stage for German Expressionism, it nevertheless was limited by early 1910s technology, acting styles, and film storytelling methods. Filmmaking advanced by leaps and bounds within those thirteen years, in so many ways. Acting was more natural, films used way more intertitles (thus making it more obvious who exactly characters are and what’s going on), and technology was much better. The special effects and split-screen interactions of 1926 were just a fantasy in 1913.

The 1926 version of The Student of Prague is widely considered director Henrik Galeen’s most important film since the 1915 first installment in the Golem trilogy (widely considered lost but for a 24-minute version, though some film scholars assert a full print exists in archives). It was inspired by the legend of Faust, and loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “William Wilson” (1839) and Alfred de Musset’s poem “The December Night” (1835).

The film opens with a monument to Balduin, Prague’s best fencer, who battled with evil and lost. We then shift to a letter dated 25 August 1820, announcing Count von Schwarzenberg is having a wild boar hunt in his estate’s forests in honor of his daughter Margit’s engagement to his nephew Baron Waldis Schwarzenberg.

While the nobles are on their hunt, a crowd of students are hanging out at an inn and drinking. Peasant flower girl Liduschka (Elizza La Porta) stands on a table and sings, and some of the guys tear her apron. Someone tells her not to worry, that Balduin will buy her a new one. Balduin (the awesome Conrad Veidt) stalks up and invites him to a duel, but all the other guys jeer him and go into the inn.

Scapinelli (Werner Krauss), who remained behind, asks Balduin why he’s so morose and offers to help, at moderate interest. Balduin tells the old opportunist to lay off his drivel, unless he can find a rich heiress and a big jackpot. Scapinelli’s mind starts working overtime, and says Balguin will have everything he wants and then some, if…

Balduin looks offended and horrorstruck at whatever that “if” was, then laughs and walks away. Scapinelli wanders off as Act I ends.

When Act II opens, Balduin and the other guys are fencing, while Liduschka watches from a window outside. Balduin triumphantly defeats Krebs, and he’s carried off in triumph to everyone’s cheers.

Scapinelli watches the hunting party from a hilltop and casts a spell on the horses, who start galloping towards the inn and jumping fences. Balduin sees Margit (Agnes Esterházy) on a runaway horse threatening to throw her, and races to rescue her. Scapinelli watches with a conniving expression as Balduin helps her after her narrow escape. Balduin then picks up a cross necklace that fell off of her, and Margit insists he keep it to remember her. When Waldis (Ferdinand von Alten) comes upon the scene, he’s deeply grateful.

Scapinelli comes up behind Balduin as the hunting party rides away and says his rich heiress is riding off.

Act III opens with Balduin fencing himself in a mirror and then reverently holding Margit’s necklace. When he goes outside, Liduschka, who was watching from a window, offers flowers she picked just for him. Balduin, blind to her feelings, pays her and walks off. Liduschka then goes into the room and lovingly caresses his sword, redds up. and polishes his shoes.

Balduin is granted a meeting with Margit, who’s very happy to see him again. Alas, his plan to give her the concealed corsage is dashed when Waldis arrives with a huge bouquet. Balduin takes his leave and returns home very depressed. Liduschka’s attempts to comfort him are met with more anguish. She goes back to work, and is crushed when she sees her sweet corsage has been thrown out of the window.

Scapinelli drops by Balduin’s room with a contract for him to sign, attesting Balduin has received 600,000 gold pieces in exchange for Scapinelli having the right to take whatever he wants from Balduin’s room. Balduin looks at his meagre surroundings and laughs uproarously. He’s still laughing as he signs, and demands the gold.

Scapinelli pours the gold all over the table. There are so many coins, it pours over the sides. Balduin is incredulous that this huge bounty is really all his. Then Scapinelli demands his share. After lingering over the richness of the choice, he demands Balduin’s reflection in the mirror. Balduin watches in transfixed horror as said reflection proceeds to walk out of the mirror and into the room. The Doppelgänger leaves with Scapinelli.

Act IV opens with a letter announcing Balduin has donated money to ease the dire straits of the student body by donating permanent support for 100 students. There’s going to be a torchlight parade that night in celebration. Now a very wealthy young man, Balduin has most handsomely upgraded his housing and wardrobe, and even has servants and a grand carriage drawn by white horses. Balduin also uses his new riches to deliver a massive basket of flowers for Margit, dwarfing the bouquet Waldis got her.

High-society happily embraces Balduin now that he’s one of theirs. All, that is, except Waldis, who’s upset Margit deigns to be so friendly with him. Meanwhile, Liduschka is still pining away. That night, she spies on Margit and Balduin on a balcony, while below the long shadow of the Doppelgänger lurks. Shortly afterwards, the Doppelgänger creeps past Balduin and leaves him in a state of terror.

Margit steals away to meet Balduin as they planned, and they declare their love. The romantic mood, however, is shattered when Balduin sees the Doppelgänger lurking in a cemetery across the way.

Act V opens with Liduschka double-crossing Balduin by giving Waldis the note Balduin delivered to Margit the other night, asking her to meet him if her love were sincere. Waldis rides off to confront Balduin, throws the crumpled note on the ground, and rides back off in a fury. Balduin tells his two buddies to challenge Waldis to a duel.

When the Count (Fritz Alberti) gets word of this duel, he visits Balduin and says not only is Waldis his only male heir, but also the last to carry his name (hence why he’s making his daughter marry her own cousin). He begs Balduin for his word that he’ll spare Waldis.

Now the stage is set for the Doppelgänger to unleash unexpected horrors and wreak havoc on Balduin’s cake new life.

Reflections on the third anniversary of 7 October and the terrifying new world it wrought

To say that it’s been a rough three years is an understatement beyond the beyond. I never dreamt I’d be alive at a time when the levels of worldwide antisemitism would skyrocket, alongside a hugely increased incidence of hate crimes and hate speech. The number of people I have blocked on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook has probably risen to at least 50,000 by this point. To avoid summoning these nasty trolls, I won’t repeat their disgusting dogwhistles and conspiracy theories that result in an instablock. I also refuse to post their pet memes with hateful images and more hate speech.

I would say this insidious nonsense and profound historical ignorance are unique to the younger generations and the under-30 set, but I’ve sadly seen even people in my own Gen X age cohort and older falling for this crap. It’s like they were never taught critical thinking and historical facts at school, and now they unquestioningly believe whatever they hear on social media because it comes from a fellow self-proclaimed lefty.

It’s truly frightening how rapidly this upside-down, inverted version of history has taken fire, and how many people deny demonstrably documented evidence of, e.g., a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for 3,000 years, the Islamic conquest and Arabization of formerly majority-Christian lands, the Islamic world’s slave trade, the Arabic word for a Black person meaning “slave,” the terror of the First and Second Intifadas, the long-established Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, said communities being ethnically cleansed in 1948, the long history of radical Islamist terrorism, and, oh yeah, there never being a sovereign country called Palestine in the entire history of the world. That was the name for a region used during a few specific times, like British colonial rule, and it originated as a Roman humiliation and punishment designed to try to sever the long Jewish connection to the land. During Ottoman rule, before the British took over, it was part of Greater Syria.

I’m horrified at how easily many people on my purported side of the political aisle have begun happily cheering on political violence when it’s aimed at someone they don’t like. Murder is NEVER justified. So many people refuse to see anyone with different political views as fellow humans and have an honest, friendly, respectful conversation with them to try to learn why they believe what they believe, and to find common ground. We might share a few opinions for very different reasons, but that’s part of being a normal human.

I’m so glad this isn’t the generation who had to fight WWII. They would’ve run bawling for their safe spaces and trigger warnings instead of jumping into uniform to do what needed done. While it was wrong to refer to the Japanese as racist slurs, put Japanese–Americans in internment camps for no other reason than their ethnicity, and depict them as bucktoothed caricatures, it was morally right to defeat them militarily. And because their radicalism was ripped up by the roots after the war, the Japanese people are now very peace-loving and great friends with their former enemies. The Germans were likewise demilitarized and deradicalized after the war, and have changed for the better.

Apart from a tiny minority of extreme pacifists and isolationists, no one in my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generation was sobbing for Kumbaya after Pearl Harbor and lamenting the pwecious, pwecious Germans and Japanese civilians being killed during the resulting war. They understand there was a morally justified war to be fought and won, and that civilian casualties are unavoidable in any war. You can’t fight a war with rainbows, glitter, and daisies.

Though I will never declare an entire group of people inherently, automatically evil, it felt like a betrayal to discover how many Muslims have revealed themselves as virulent antisemites after I stood in solidarity with them when they were stereotyped and attacked in the wake of 9/11. Most of the courageous Muslim activists engaged in interfaith dialogue and condemning radical Islam live in the West, where it’s much safer to take such a stand. It was shocking to learn about the Red–Green Alliance that swept Khomeini to power in 1979 and is happening again with useful idiots in the West teaming up with Islamic nutjobs who oppose everything they stand for.

My ninth grade Global Studies and community college World Religions professor taught me a lot of objectively false things about Islamic history and theology, which caused me to be blind to the reality of radical Islamism even after 9/11. The Muslim world is centuries overdue for the kind of reformation and modernization Christianity and Judaism had.

Many of these people have clearly never met a Jew in their entire lives, or at least anyone they knew to be Jewish. Thus, we’ve taken on a mythical life of our own in their fevered minds, assigned all these nefarious actions and beliefs that would instantly fall apart if they actually got to know any Jews as people. The kinds of things I’ve seen people saying all over social media in the last three years are so out of touch with reality and hearken back to the Middle Ages. If you truly believe Jews are poisoning wells and kidnapping kids to steal their organs, you need serious mental help.

Even if you’re a hardened atheist and don’t believe any of the religious claims in the Bible, you can’t deny archaeological and historical evidence of Jews being indigenous to Israel and having a constant presence there for 3,000 years. Notice how these people never question how Arabs, indigenous to the Arabian peninsula, spread so far beyond their own lands. They seem to think Islam existed since time immemorial and Arabs are the true natives of Israel, while the Jews of the Bible mysteriously disappeared and then reappeared out of thin air in 18th century Poland. History begs to differ.

If you wouldn’t presume to speak for any other minority and tell them how to define themselves, what their history is, whether their collective trauma is valid, and what constitutes hatred against them, why in blazes would you do that for Jews? Suddenly microaggressions and macroaggressions both are perfectly okay, silence isn’t violence, and we need to let outsiders speak on our behalf. In hindsight, it seems like a lot of unintentional damage was done when Jews were redefined as a religious group only in the postwar world in an attempt to atone for the Shoah and increase our acceptance in American suburbia. So many people today, even many Jews themselves, have no conception of us being an ethnoreligious tribe predating modern Western identity categories.

It’s a blessing in disguise I haven’t been blessed with kids yet. If I merit motherhood before time runs out and this Gen X gives birth to Gen Beta, I hope my potential future child inherits a much better world, one in which these marauding demagogues have become pariahs called out by everyone decent and real history has returned to mass public awareness.

Sunday Snippets—The séance begins

Though the long-running Weekend Writing Warriors seems to be officially over for all intents and purposes, I’ve decided to keep its spirit alive by sharing my own snippets on Sundays. There are no more rules about a certain number of lines, so we get to decide how much to include now!

Though I haven’t any new Halloween-themed material to share, I thought snippets from Chapter 15, “Mrs. Malspur’s Séance,” from Movements in the Symphony of 1939 (the book formerly known as The Very Next) would be close enough in spirit. It’s May of 1939, and Cinnimin and several of her friends have been invited to the latest séance hosted by Julieanna Malspur’s mother. They’re now in the special séance room on the fourth floor, all painted in black and with solid black curtains blocking out any light.

Mrs. Malspur addressed Al’s father, Mr. Scots. “Timothy, you go first, since you were the first to RSVP. Concentrate on the dead one whom you wish to see again. He or she will appear in the mirror.”

Cinni and her friends sat quietly as the adults tried to bring up people they’d never heard of. Their attention was piqued when Mr. and Mrs. Green both passed on using the mirror.

“Are you scared of ghosts, Daddy?” Kit asked. “It might not work. Not everyone was successful.”

“We have reasons of our own,” Mr. Green said elusively. “Some things are better left dead and forgotten forever.”

“Why did you come here if you didn’t want to commune with your dear departed ones?” Miss Runds asked. “That’s the main reason to come to a séance. At least Julieanna and her friends are here to learn and observe, not to waste everyone’s time. They’re too young to have any deceased friends and relatives to conjure up.”

“We were curious. I love and miss my parents every single day, but I’d prefer not to try to conjure them up in front of an audience. They might say things I’d prefer to keep private.”

“Come now, don’t ruin the party for everyone,” Mrs. Cortez said. “You act like you’ll automatically conjure up your parents. Timothy, Ione, and I weren’t successful in bringing up every single friend or relative we wished to speak with.”

Miss Runds pushed the Ouija board across the table to Mr. Green. “How about this? Will you object to trying to get a message from beyond the grave this way, or are you too frightened of being yelled at by your dead parents? I’ve never had any spirits deliver private secrets or embarrassing personal business in front of an audience.”

“We’re not like most people,” Mr. Green muttered as he placed his shaking hands on the planchette.

“Who is the first person you wish to speak with?”

“My father, Alexis Benjamin Green.”

“Let the board spell out the spirit’s name.”

An uprising against the odds

Though the tragedy of 7 October 2023 has taken on such magnitude in the Jewish community, many people find it difficult to think of anything else on that sad day. However, another anniversary deserves just as much attention. 7 October 1944 was the day the Sonderkommando revolted at Auschwitz. They knew the odds were against them, but they were courageous enough to take a stand. I wrote about it in my hiatused WIP The Strongest Branches of Uprooted Trees, which is below. It’s also in my collection of vignettes about my character Samuel Robleński, but those pieces need way more work before they’re ready for primetime on account of way too much telling (being originally intended as wraparound narrative segments to be periodically inserted into my Atlantic City books as a sobering counterpoint).

At about 3:00 in the afternoon on the sixth day of Sukkot, gunfire erupted from the direction of the Kremchy. The Kanadakommando girls had heard shots from the Kremchy before, but nothing like this. There weren’t just a few isolated shots, but regular, persistent gunfire. Commingled with the gunshots were explosions.

“Do you think today’s our day to die?” Antónia asked. “I’m ready to go to the other world, though I would’ve preferred to go in my sleep instead of from being shot.”

Hajnalka gasped and seized Antónia’s arm. “Look at that, Toncsi. That doesn’t look like the work of the Germans.”

Flames rose from the Kremchy roof, and both Sonderkommando and SS came spilling out of the two buildings. Many of the women in the sorting room stopped what they were doing and gazed at the Sonderkommando attacking the SS and Kapos with axes, hammers, stones, and guns. Pandemonium had broken out, with both dead and dying SS and Sonderkommando lying on the ground while fighting continued, the red and orange flames consumed the roof, and prisoners made a mad dash for presumably the nearby woods.

“God be with them!” Fruzsina whispered. “I hope this entire camp goes down in flames!”

“How could they risk all of our lives?” Noémi asked. “We could all be killed because those guys decided to try to escape and fight back. Those are the same kind of people who escaped from the ghettoes and trains, thinking only of their own lives instead of their families and friends left behind.”

“We had nothing to do with it.” Csilla slipped a dried apricot into her mouth. “I’m glad someone decided to rise up and take a stand. If more of us had fought back sooner, so many more of us would still be alive.”

Many of the overseers had stopped guarding the workers and now stared out the windows themselves. The revolt didn’t last long, as the Germans had machine guns at their disposal, not just homemade grenades, axes, hammers, stones, and a few small guns. Outside reinforcements also soon arrived to help with putting down the Sonderkommando revolt. All the while, the roof continued to crackle away, and prisoners were still making a run for it and fighting to the death.

“We’ll all pay for it,” Noémi said. “We both had secure positions, and now they’ve been jeopardized by that foolishness. If we don’t have any duties to perform, we’ll be fed into the Kremchy. The entire camp could be killed in retaliation.”

“Listen to yourself talk!” Csilla said. “You’re being so self-defeatist. As the oldest one left besides Miri, it’s my God-given duty to keep all of you alive. We all must live, and sail in triumph to Eretz Yisrael after the Nazis are swept into the dustbin of history.”

“I wish we could stage our own uprising here,” Fruzsina said. “If only we’d run across gunpowder and weapons in all these damned suitcases.”

“The Nazis’ end must be near,” Hajnalka said. “I bet the Sonderkommando did this because they were afraid of being killed off. People in their position wouldn’t be killed unless there were no more need for it. If their position were going to be eliminated, or the Nazis were afraid of them getting away and talking, that must mean the Russians are close. Maybe we’ll be liberated by Pesach.”

Copyright Adam Jones, Ph.D., Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

“I don’t want to fall into Russian hands,” Antónia said. “They’re atheist fanatics, and send people to Siberia for no reason. As soon as the war’s over, I bet they’ll be back to their old tricks.”

“Well, for now, the Russians are our friends,” Csilla said. “We should pray for them to reach us before it’s too late to save anyone.”

Aranka jammed her scissors into the hem of a yellow dress and found several large emeralds, which she slipped into her shoe. “I don’t believe in praying anymore, but I’ll hope the Russians get here soon.”

Copyright Brian Snelson, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

“You shouldn’t organize anything today,” Csilla warned. “After what happened, we might be searched head to toe, and I don’t want any more of us to be turned into smoke and ashes.”

“They constantly search us, guard us, and make us take showers. Only an idiot would think we were in on that riot.”

“You never know. They’ll probably interrogate everyone in the camp, knowing the Nazis.”

Copyright Brian Snelson, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic

“Don’t get any funny ideas,” one of the overseers said from the window, without turning around. “Anyone who wants to start a riot and escape attempt here will be dealt with just as swiftly and strictly. One way or another, we’ll kill all of you vermin, even if it takes until the last day of the war.”

Klaudia squeezed Aranka’s hand under the table. “If we’re fated to die before our time, I want us to die together. I have no more sisters, brother, or parents, but I consider you my real sister now. No matter what happens, only Death can separate us.”

IWSG—Spooky season odds and sods

Welcome back to the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, which convenes the first Wednesday of every month to commiserate over worries, fears, doubts, and struggles.

This month’s question is:

Many people are calling for writers who use AI to disclose it. Most who employ ghostwriters do not admit it—do you think authors who use ghostwriters should have to disclose that, too?

I’m of the opinion that no book created with AI should be published! It shows such a lack of creativity, and flies in the face of everything our profession is supposed to stand for. The same goes for cover art. I admit I’ve been having fun asking Grok to make images of me in the style of classic artists, with background elements inspired by my Twitter account and Tweets, plus spooky-looking houses in my favorite architectural styles, but I don’t intend to use them for actual books. They’re just a fun collection, and the houses can be used to illustrate future Halloween posts.

Richardsonian Romanesque Revival

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the general Pre-Raphaelite style

Stick-Eastlake

I also had Grok make me a fun image of a humanzee and hybrid human-gorilla, human-baboon, and human-orangutan with background images inspired by my account and Tweets!

There’s always something artificial about AI, though, regardless of whether it’s art or writing. At present, even the best-trained machine can’t replicate what a human hand and mind do effortlessly. I’ve been playing around with Google’s AI Mode over the last few weeks, and have at least one future blog post planned about what I think of its strengths and shortcomings as a research assistant, crit partner, and general problem-solver, and how it’s incapable of understanding context, nuance, vital details, and human emotions and experiences.

After tentatively starting to ease back into the new material in the radical rewrite of the book formerly known as The Very Last, I pivoted to transcribing what I completed for my NaNo 2023 project, “Rising from the Rubble,” for my posts from 22 September through 6 October. It just felt right to keep that sombre mood going both in the 25th anniversary month of 9/11 and in the lead-up to the third anniversary of the 7 October pogrom, even if that meant delaying my yearly celebration of classic horror films.

To close out this long-running series of posts, I resumed this long-hiatused part of Cinnimin and wrote a scene of Mancika and Ammiel watching their stowaway cat Zoe giving birth to eleven kittens on the eve of Rosh Hashanah. Six days after they witnessed so much mass death and Mancika had four narrow escapes, the perfect antidote is witnessing mass life coming into the world.

Now I’m slowly easing back into the book formerly known as The Very Last once more, though I’ve been functioning at only half of my sight capacity for the last four weeks thanks to suddenly developing blurry vision in my right eye. I have to wear an eyepatch and use two types of medicines in that eye thrice daily. So far, it appears this will resolve within a few months and I won’t need surgery number eight.

And since it’s the third anniversary of 7 October (which I’ll be writing much more about in my next post), it bears saying that nothing has been the same since that day. Time has been divided into the worlds of Before and After. I miss the person I was on 6 October 2023, before I knew how many people are so easily manipulated by nefarious propaganda and so comfortable being openly, disgustingly antisemitic at levels equal or even exceeding that of 1939.

But despite all the hatred and the willingness of these bad actors to fall for a made-up version of history and the 21st century iteration of antisemitism, I am so deeply thankful for our genuine friends and allies. So many Christians and Hindus have stood up for us, as well as a small but courageous minority of moderate Muslims. Many fellow indigenous peoples around the world, like Native Americans and Maoris, have also been huge, outspoken allies. Their support hasn’t gone unnoticed.

What do you think about generative AI in writing or cover art? What defining events have broken your measurement of time into Before and After?