The City Without Jews (German: Die Stadt ohne Juden) is a 1924 Austrian Expressionist film by Hans Karl Breslauer, based on the novel of the same title by Hugo Bettauer.
Shortly after the premiere of the film Hugo Bettauer was murdered by Otto Rothstock, a former member of the Nazi Party, who was lionized by the antisemitic Austrian masses and was released less than two years after having been committed to a psychiatric institution.
The political characters of the book (although not of the film, to avoid difficulties with censorship) are delineated in such a way as to be identifiable with real politicians of the period; Bundeskanzler Schwerdtfeger, for example, is based on Ignaz Seipel.
Besides the political action, the film also notes the love relationship between Lotte (Anny Milety), a typical Viennese girl (Wiener Mädel) and the daughter of a member of the National Assembly who voted for the banishment of the Jews, and the Jewish artist Leo Strakosch (Johannes Riemann).
However, to achieve the necessary two-thirds majority, Lotte and Leo, who have already illegally returned to Austria with forged papers identifying him as a French painter, have to remove the antisemitic parliamentary representative Bernard (played by Hans Moser), which they do by getting him drunk.
He is committed to a psychiatric institution represented in Expressionist scenery, where in a claustrophobic and asymmetrically painted cell, he sees himself threatened by Stars of David.
The well-known Jewish actors Gisela Werbisek (billed as "Werbezirk") and Armin Berg appeared only in minor roles, as Kathi the cook and Isidor the commissionaire.
[8] In 1933, the film was shown commercially for the last time, again causing a stir, when it was screened in the Amsterdam theatre Carré as a protest against Hitler's Germany.
The German Bundesarchiv in Coblenz therefore made an "emergency copy", which was then reconstructed on behalf of the Filmarchiv Austria (Austrian Film Archive) by the company HS-ART Digital Service of Graz using the "DIAMANT" software developed by Joanneum Research; faded parts were then re-colored.
Instead it documents a by no means unthinkable and in no way dreamlike reality [...] This surprising turn of the plot, deviating totally from the literary original, which simplifies the action as the content of a dream, cannot merely be regarded as a simple dramatic exigency, but as a prime example of the Austrian soul's ability to repress.