“Jud Süß” anniversary: ​​The long shadow of the worst film of history

How she finds the script, Tobias Moretti asks in the role of the actor Ferdinand Marian under pressure in “Jud Süss – film without conscience” his wife, to whom he had given the script. She replies: “It’s not bad, but terrible.”

Just as Martina Gedeck puts as Anna in Oskar Roehler’s film from 2010, you have to put it.

85 years ago, from mid -March to June 1940, the director Veit Harlan (1899-1964), who was later acquired because of “crimes against humanity” – and in the end – made the anti -Semitic feature film “Jud Süß” (often also written with “SS”), which was also encouraged after the Nazi era.

The propaganda film celebrated its premiere in Venice

On September 5, 1940, the might, which was under special supervision by Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, was premiered at the Venice Film Festival. On September 24th was a premiere in Berlin – in the UFA Palace at the zoo. At that time, more than 20 million cinema seekers were later counted.

The film was often shown in the areas occupied by the Germans when Jews deportations. SS-Schergen received the National Socialist agitation film especially in order to murder uninhibitedly.

After war and Holocaust, “Jud Süß” has been one of the so-called reservations films in the existence of the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau Foundation for almost 60 years. According to the Murnau Foundation, performances must be integrated into an introductory lecture and a discussion afterwards.

The film shows a distorted version of the biography of banker Joseph Ben Issachar Süßkind Oppenheimer (in short: Joseph Süß Oppenheimer), who was executed in Stuttgart in 1738. Director Harlan referred to the bestseller “Jud Süß” by Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958) published in 1925.

Harlan film and Feuchtwanger novel only have titles together

However, the 100-year-old Feuchtwanger novel asks whether assimilation of Jews in Germany is possible. Harlan’s film completely twists the story. However, it is by no means clumsy as anti-Semitic indoctrination, but as a entertainment cinema and almost subtle villain thriller.

Feuchtwanger’s “Jud Süß” was a world success in the 1920s. The book was quickly banned by the Nazis in 1933 – proof enough that the Jewish author told his Jewish title hero differently as a historical figure.

The film claims to be based on historical facts. However, it is anything but the genus True Crime. In the film, the Jew Süß Oppenheimer unites many anti -Semitic stereotypes such as greed, behind list, cowardice, threatening lust to the world conspiracy.

That’s what the feature film from 1940 is about

The Frankfurt money and jewelry dealer Oppenheimer (Ferdinand Marian) was appointed to the court in the 18th century by Duke Karl Alexander (Heinrich George; the father of Götz George). He should help finance its excessive lifestyle. Obsessible and greasy, Marian plays cute the Jew. It is quickly unpopular from the land stands.

The financial expert uses his influence to abolish the Jewenbann in Stuttgart. Many Jews flock to the city – as extras for compulsory people, the Nazi film industry Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto.

The virtuous counter image to Oppenheimer deliver upright citizens, above all the Sturm (Eugen Klöpfer) State Councilor, his daughter Dorothea (the woman from Sweden’s wife of director Harlan, Kristina Söderbaum) and her fiance Faber (Malte Jaeger). Oppenheimer is obsessed with taking Dorothea to a woman. Since she refuses to do so, he lets Faber torture and raped Dorothea. She then takes life.

Oppenheimer puts the Duke to put down the beginning of the population. The Duke dies of a stroke. Oppenheimer is arrested and sentenced to death. Misinformed for his life he is hung. All Jews must leave Württemberg within three days. The last words in the film are: “May our descendants hold on to this law. That they are sparing a lot of suffering in their good and life – and on the blood of their children and child children.”

Historian: Film acted as an anti-Israel propaganda after the war

The British historian Bill Nive (“Jud Süß – The Long Life of a Propaganda Milk”) pleads to take the nimbus of the forbidden to the film from 1940. “Otherwise right -wing radicals can come and say: So there must be something on it, otherwise you would not” ban “the film.”

It would be best to find niven when there was a commented, scientifically prepared version – on DVD or streaming. Anyone who puts it on it can find him on the Internet anyway, says the historian.

A largely dark chapter in reception history is the use of the film in the post -war period outside of Germany. Niven researched: “The film was shown in the 1950s and 60s in the Middle East – Lebanon, Syria, Iraq – as propaganda against Israel.” Right now – in 2025 – it would be important to show the film how some anti -Semitic patterns that can be seen in the film are still alive today and are also spread after the Hamas massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, says Niven.

The historian explains: “For example, it is about the idea that Jews” colonized “, the state of Württemberg, today the Middle East. It is also about the idea that Jews have no real home; that they are on the destruction of other cultures, then Christian, now the Palestinian.” And NIVEN adds: “Above all, it is also about the delusion that the only solution is in the expulsion of the Jews, at that time from Württemberg, today through the wreath of the state of Israel.”

“Jud Süß” is 85 years old, but anything but outdated. “Anti -Semitism can be found in the right political spectrum and in the left, post -colonial milieu,” says Bill Niven. “The problem has become more diverse. It’s great – and global.”