Harbou, Thea von

(1888–1954)



German novelist, author of Metropolis, which became a classic of the silent cinema.
In a brief preface to her book, Thea von Harbou explained that Metropolis was not about any particular time or place; it was a fable making a moral point. However, especially in its film version, it was inevitably seen as a dystopia of the future. The imaginary city Metropolis is in two sections, above and below. The upper part is the luxurious home of an elite, headed by a supreme governor, Fredersen. It is dependent upon but completely dominates the lower part, which is an underworld housing a complex of machines. The workers who operate the machines live in servitude, performing repetitive tasks. Their only solace comes from the help and teaching of Maria, an evangelist who lives among them. In the face of growing unrest, she counsels peace and patience while they await a “mediator.”
Visiting the upper regions, she meets Fredersen’s son and shows him a group of wretched proletarian children she has brought with her. Deeply disquieted, he goes down to experience working-class conditions himself and urges his father to transfer the deadlier jobs to robots. (When this novel was written, robots had just been introduced to the public by Karel Capek’s play RUR, though, as a matter of fact, his own robots were biologically constructed androids, not mechanical humans.) Fredersen does not respond to his son’s appeal, but he is aware that all may not be well below. Disturbed about Maria’s influence over the workers, he takes up the idea in another way.
Rotwang, an eccentric inventor, has produced a highly sophisticated robot that he likes to think of as female and calls Parody. Fredersen employs Parody, disguised as Maria, to change her message and stir up anger among the workers. This will bring rebellion into the open, when he will be able to crush it, discrediting Maria in the process. But the situation gets uncontrollable. The workers break out in open revolt, chanting “Death to the machines,” and they throw Metropolis into chaos above and below. The author’s concluding plea is for mutual goodwill. A well-ordered society cannot be created by top-level expertise alone or, in Marxist style, by working-class power alone. “The heart” must mediate, and Fredersen’s son, who has seen both sides, may be the mediator whom Maria spoke of.
Thea von Harbou was married to the film director Fritz Lang. His spectacular version of Metropolis appeared in 1926. A few years later, Hitler’s propaganda chief, Goebbels, invited him to head the German film industry; Metropolis may have appealed to the Nazi leadership as a warning against Communist revolution. Lang, however, left Germany for the United States, where he made many

more films. He almost lived to see the first Star Wars, in which, it is said, the designer of the famous humanoid robot took a hint from Parody.