The Posthumous Life of Dr. Mabuse

Dr. Mabuse, master of crime and No.1 enemy of society, was invented as fictional character by Luxembourgian writer Norbert Jacques in his novel from 1921. Char-acter of Mabuse inspired great German director Fritz Lang to make three films. In the first one, Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), he is powerful criminal figure, de-stroying social and economic life of young Weimar Republic and could be per-ceived as an allegory of German inflation at the beginning of 1920-s. Caught, how-ever, by general attorney Von Wenk, in the final of film is placed in psychiatric asylum. In Lang’s sequel Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse (1933) Mabuse in the half
of film dies as physical person in psychiatric clinic of Professor Baum. However, he
becomes by fact of his death the more dangerous as immaterial and abstract Idea of
Evil which could be incarnated in everyone. The third and last Lang’s Mabuse film,
Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse (1960) is at the same time the first one of Mabuse
series produced by Arthur Brauner for his Berlin company CCC-Filmkunst.
Brauner’s series consists of 7 films (including Lang’s last work) made in the decade
1960–1970. The short analysis of it is made on the base of powerful monography
The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse by American film historian David Kalat who is also
editor of DVD edition of Brauner’s series.