Dr. Mabuse is a
fictional character
In fiction, a character (or speaker, in poetry) is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game). The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life perso ...
created by
Norbert Jacques
Norbert Jacques (6 June 1880 – 15 May 1954) was a Luxembourgish novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and translator who wrote in German. He was born in Luxembourg-Eich, Luxembourg and died in Koblenz, West Germany. He created the character Dr. ...
in his 1921 novel ('Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler'), and his 1932 follow-up novel ''Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse'' (1932).
The character was made famous by three films about the character directed in Germany by
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...
: ''
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler'' (silent, 1922) ''
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
''The Testament of Dr. Mabuse'' (german: Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse), also called ''The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse'', is a 1933 German crime-thriller film directed by Fritz Lang. The movie is a sequel to Lang's silent film ''Dr. Mabuse the Gambl ...
'' (1933) and the much later ''
The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
''The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse'' (German language, German ''Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse'') is a 1960 black-and-white crime film, crime thriller (genre), thriller film directed by Fritz Lang in his final film. A West German/French/Italian co-p ...
'' (1960). Five other films featuring Dr. Mabuse were made by other directors in Germany in the early 1960s, followed by
Jess Franco
Jess is a unisex given name, often a short form (hypocorism) of Jessica, Jesse, Jessie, etc., and a surname. It may refer to:
Given name
* Jess Atkinson (born 1961), American football player
* Jess Cain (1926–2008), American radio host
* J ...
's interpretation ''The Vengeance of Dr. Mabuse'' in 1971.
![Dr Mabuse, der Spieler](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0d/Dr_Mabuse%2C_der_Spieler.jpg)
Although the character was deliberately written to mimic villains such as Dr.
Fu Manchu
Dr. Fu Manchu () is a supervillain who was introduced in a series of novels by the English author Sax Rohmer beginning shortly before World War I and continuing for another forty years. The character featured in cinema, television, radio, com ...
,
Guy Boothby
Guy Newell Boothby (13 October 1867 – 26 February 1905) was a prolific Australian novelist and writer, noted for sensational fiction in variety magazines around the end of the nineteenth century. He lived mainly in England. He is best known fo ...
's Doctor Nikola,
Fantômas
Fantômas () is a fictional character created by French writers Marcel Allain (1885–1969) and Pierre Souvestre (1874–1914).
One of the most popular characters in the history of French crime fiction, Fantômas was created in 1911 and appear ...
, or
Svengali
Svengali () is a character in the novel ''Trilby'' which was first published in 1894 by George du Maurier. Svengali is a man who seduces, dominates and exploits Trilby, a young half-Irish girl, and makes her into a famous singer.
Definition
...
, the last of which was a direct inspiration, Jacques' goals were commercial success and to make political comments, in much the same way that the film ''
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari'' (1920) had done just a few years previously.
Description
Dr. Mabuse is a master of disguise and
telepathic
Telepathy () is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person's mind to another's without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction. The term was first coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Frederic ...
hypnosis
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...
known to employ body
transference
Transference (german: Übertragung) is a phenomenon within psychotherapy in which the "feelings, attitudes, or desires" a person had about one thing are subconsciously projected onto the here-and-now Other. It usually concerns feelings from a ...
, most often through
demonic possession, but sometimes utilizing object
technologies
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...
such as
television
Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...
or
phonograph machines, to build a "
society
A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soci ...
of
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...
". Mabuse rarely commits his crimes in person, instead operating primarily through a network of agents enacting his schemes. Mabuse's agents range from career criminals working for him, to innocents
blackmailed or hypnotized into cooperation, to dupes
manipulated so successfully that they do not realize that they are doing exactly what Mabuse planned for them to do.
Mabuse's identity often changes; one "Dr. Mabuse" may be defeated and sent to an asylum, jail or the grave, only for a new "Dr. Mabuse" to later appear, as depicted in ''The Testament of Dr. Mabuse''. The replacement invariably has the same methods, the same powers of hypnosis and the same criminal
genius
Genius is a characteristic of original and exceptional insight in the performance of some art or endeavor that surpasses expectations, sets new standards for future works, establishes better methods of operation, or remains outside the capabili ...
. There are even suggestions in some installments of the series that the "real" Mabuse is some sort of spirit that
possesses a series of hosts.
Mabuse has had a number of nemeses, with the main ones including Prosecutor (or Chief Inspector) von Wenk in ''Dr. Mabuse the Gambler'' (played by
Bernhard Goetzke
Bernhard Goetzke (5 June 1884 – 7 October 1964) was a German stage and film actor. He appeared in 130 films between 1917 and 1961.
Selected filmography
* ''Fear'' (1917)
* ''The Last Sun Son'' (1919)
* ''The Japanese Woman'' (1919)
* ''The P ...
) and Kommissar Karl Lohmann (played variously by
Otto Wernicke
Otto Karl Robert Wernicke (30 September 1893, Osterode am Harz – 7 November 1965) was a German actor. He is best known for his role as police inspector Karl Lohmann in the two Fritz Lang films '' M'' and ''The Testament of Dr. Mabuse''.
Marrie ...
and
Gert Fröbe as "Inspector Carl Lohemann").
History
Mabuse first appeared in the 1921 German
novel ("Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler") by
Norbert Jacques
Norbert Jacques (6 June 1880 – 15 May 1954) was a Luxembourgish novelist, journalist, screenwriter, and translator who wrote in German. He was born in Luxembourg-Eich, Luxembourg and died in Koblenz, West Germany. He created the character Dr. ...
. The novel benefitted from unprecedented publicity and quickly became a best-seller. Fritz Lang, already an accomplished director, worked with his wife
Thea von Harbou
Thea Gabriele von Harbou (27 December 1888 – 1 July 1954) was a German screenwriter, novelist, film director, and actress. She is remembered as the screenwriter of the science fiction film classic ''Metropolis'' (1927) and for the 19 ...
on a revision of the novel to bring it to the screen, where it also became a great success. The film ''
Dr. Mabuse the Gambler'' (1922), with a playing time of more than four hours, was released in two sections: ''The Great Gambler: An Image of the Time'' and ''Inferno: A Game for the People of our Age''.
Despite the success of the novel and the film, it was almost a decade before anything more was done with the character. Jacques had been working on a sequel to the novel, named ''Mabuse's Colony'', in which Mabuse has died and a group of his devotees are starting an island colony, based on the principles described by Mabuse's
manifesto. However, the novel was unfinished. After conversations with Lang and von Harbou, Jacques agreed to discontinue the novel and the sequel instead became the 1933 movie ''
The Testament of Dr. Mabuse
''The Testament of Dr. Mabuse'' (german: Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse), also called ''The Last Will of Dr. Mabuse'', is a 1933 German crime-thriller film directed by Fritz Lang. The movie is a sequel to Lang's silent film ''Dr. Mabuse the Gambl ...
'', in which the Mabuse of 1922 – played again by
Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Friedrich Rudolf Klein (24 November 1885 – 29 May 1955), better known as Rudolf Klein-Rogge, was a German film actor, best known for playing sinister figures in films in the 1920s and 1930s as well as being a mainstay in director Fritz Lang's ...
– is an inmate in an
insane asylum
The lunatic asylum (or insane asylum) was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital.
The fall of the lunatic asylum and its eventual replacement by modern psychiatric hospitals explains the rise of organized, institutional psychiatry ...
but has for some time been obsessively writing meticulous plans for crime and
terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...
, plans that are being performed by a gang of criminals outside the asylum, who receive their orders from a person who has identified himself to them only as Dr. Mabuse.
Filmography
Bibliography
Novels
* ''Dr. Mabuse, Master of Mystery'' (Original title: ''Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler''. 1921) – English translation by Lilian A. Clare published in 1923.
* ''Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse'' – Written in the early 1930s, but not published until 1950 under the title ''Dr. Mabuses letztes Spiel''. In the late 1980s, it was reprinted under its original title ''Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse''.
* ''Mabuses Kolonie'' – Unfinished novel that was written in 1930 and published in 1994.
*Mabuse also appears in Jacques's 1923 sci-fi novel ''Ingenieur Mars''.
*Jacques wrote a novel called ''Der Chemiker des Dr. Mabuse'', but he ultimately removed all references to Mabuse from it and serialized it in 1934 under the title ''Chemiker Null''.
Short stories
* "Dr. Mabuse auf dem Presseball" (1923)
References
Notes
Sources
*
Further reading
*Haase, Holger: ''The Many Masks of Dr. Mabuse: Mabuse in the 1960s''. (Kindle 2020)
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mabuse
Fictional psychologists
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Fictional telepaths
Fictional characters with spirit possession or body swapping abilities
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