The Mad Scientist and “The Little Man of the Gallows”: Mandrake’s Mystery and the Promethean Folly in Galeen’s “Alruane”

by Angela Holm

When a common thief […] is hanged and passes water, then the mandrake, or the little man of the gallows grows at that spot. 

-Grimm’s German Tales, no. 85:  “The Tale of the Little Man of the Gallows”

This sprang first from the glades of Caucasus the flesh-devouring eagle sent dripping to the earth the gory ichor of wretched Prometheus.  And a cubit’s height above appeared a flower […] supported on twin stalks, and the root in the earth was like a new-cut flesh…The dark earth shook beneath as the Titanian root was cut, and the son of Iapetus groaned himself, for his heart was mad with anguish.

-The herb of Prometheus as described in the Argonautica of Appollonuis Rhodius (275 b.c.)

By 1928, Hanns Heinz Ewers’ influence clearly helped to establish a tradition of investigating old legends in early German cinema.  This was due in large part to his groundbreaking and influential script for the 1913 film “Der Student von Prag” that unleashed a wave of Romantic, Faustian nightmares.  Henrik Galeen and Ewers made another version the same film in 1926 shortly before they decided to continue their fruitful collaboration with a new film in 1928.  At the height of the chaos and enlightenment that characterized the myriad artistic movements of the Weimar Republic and the apex of German silent cinema, comes “Alraune”.

The film was directed by Galeen and adapted from Ewers’ novel of the same title.  However, the theme explored in this legend is not Faustian, but Promethean.  Ewers’ story mirrored in many ways the legacy of Shelly’s Frankentstein: A Modern Prometheus and her association of Prometheus as a sinister figure who, although he brought life in the form of fire to humans, also represented modern man’s over-reaching into dangerous areas of knowledge (Wolf 1993: 20).  Ewers himself had a penchant for delving into such dangerous areas, and, with “Alruane,” he and Galeen, through the medium of cinema, gave birth to a living reminder of this danger.

From “Alraune” we discover that Hanns Heinz Ewers’ Romantic pen had a prurient tint, and his taste for the indulgences of Berlin’s underworld blossomed.  He was known to possess “an imagination reveling in gross sensation and sex”, exploring in his lifetime the occult, aberrant sexuality, and inebriants of all sorts (Kracauer 1947: 29).  In his introduction to Joe E. Bandel’s 2010 translation of “Alraune” Tyler Davis notes that Ewers had a keen interest in botanical intoxicants and advocated their use in his 1906 article, “Intoxication and Art”.  The intoxicating Mandrake plant — an aphrodisiac, rich in occult lore and one of the most alluring and dangerous plants in recorded history — naturally fits well with Ewers’ tastes.

Ewers was a logical match for the dark and fantastic themes of early German cinema.  The films of the time clearly drew inspiration from Ewers’ cosmopolitan style, and there have been several cinematic attempts at “Alraune” before and after Galeen’s version.  “Alraune” starred Paul Wegener as the scientist Professor Jakob ten Brinken, and Brigit Helm, the actress who became famous the previous year for her starring role in “Metropolis” as the character Alruane.

The film is centered on the legend of the mandrake plant.  In medieval Germany mandrake was believed to grow under the gallows, fertilized by the semen of a hanged thief at the moment of death.  It was also thought to be a potent aphrodisiac, and if a woman, under its arousing influence, were to become pregnant she would produce a soulless and evil child.  The mandrake root, known to resemble a human form, was secretly kept in the homes of common families and even royalty, as if it were a little man, to bring luck and fortune.  The mandrake legend is full of taboos and omens cautioning that death would be the result if one refused to respect its power.  Grimm recounted some of the ritualistic practices involving the mandrake root as follows (note that the root is anthropomorphized in his text signifying the human-like characteristics that were commonly attributed to the mandrake):

“When excavating [the mandrake] there is great danger that when he is pulled out he will groan, howl, scream so terribly that he who dug him out must forthwith die.  For this reason to obtain him a man must […] take a black dog and […] dig up the earth around it.  Then he must tie it to the tail of the dog […that…] will pull the root out, but will die forthwith.  Now the man may pick it up, wash it clean with red wine, wrap it in white and red silk, place it in a small chest, bathe it every Friday, and give it a new little white shirt every new moon.”

Ewers’ story is about a scientist (Professor ten Brinken) and his nephew (Franz Bruan) who discuss the mandrake legend after haphazardly finding a mandrake fetish in the home of their friends.  On a whim, Braun, who many believe to represent the author himself, convinces Brinken to perform an experiment to bring life to a living mandrake child.  To accomplish this, Braun proceeds to find a whore from “the dredges of society”[i] to artificially inseminate with the semen of an executed criminal to produce a child named, appropriately, Alraune.

Artificial life was not a novel theme to the German silent film audience at the time of Galeen’s “Alraune”.  By 1817, Dr. Frankenstein had already made his famous monster, who inspired the imagination of Ewers and others.  The perfect “robot” woman was created in Villies de l’isle-Adam’s 1886 novel Tomorrow’s Eve (which would later inspire Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis”).  From 1915, the film “Der Golem” by Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen is still recognized as one of the roots of cinema’s horror genre, and Otto Ripert’s 1916 silent film series “Humunculus” was also hugely popular.  The human life force animated from dead flesh or inanimate matter like clay or roots holds a dangerous mystery that has driven dreamers for millennia.  From accounts describing magicians of antiquity who tried to create the living homunculi to recent films about genetic experiments, all of these stories share one thing in common:  the destructive and compelling mystery associated with artificial life.

The etymology of the film’s title, “Alruane”, further illustrates this “mystery” of artificial life.  Alraune is also Alruna in modern German, and in Old High German, Ailrun and is a Germanic female name.  The title clearly contains the root runa, the whisper, the secret, or the mystery.  To beget new life is a mystery of strange powers, and the word alruane signifies the power of life imbued within the mandrake plant.  This power relates also to another meaning of the word alruna — a general title for witches in Germany at the time of the Goths.  Additionally, alrunen was a divining priestess (witch) in northern lands who used prisoner’s blood to predict the future (De Cleene and Lejeune 2003: 341).

Another German name for mandrake is Galgenmännlein, “little man of the gallows”[ii].  According to Tacitus, the Germans referred to women who could predict the future as alrunen, but the word also meant one who “knows the secrets”, or “one who knows the runes.”  As we know, Odin took up the runes after hanging on the tree Yggdrasil.  Runes were the secret of the hanged man.  (Rätsch 1997:138).  Randolph draws a connection between the “little man of the gallows” and the herb of Prometheus by tracing the source of the hanged thief motif in the story of the mandrake plant to “an ancient fable about a so-called herb of Prometheus, described in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes: “[...] Prometheus was condemned to his punishment for theft (and wrongly condemned, we should say); the flower sprang from his gore as it dripped to the ground.  [...] Since gore does not drip from the bodies of hanged thieves, a change had to be made in adapting the story to the mandrake, and so the plant is said to spring from the thief’s urine” (1905: 494).  Because Ewers was an associate of Guido von List, it could be plausible that he understood this Odinic relationship to the mandrake legend.[iii]

During a period of overwhelming modernity, after the recent advent of highly mechanized war, when Germany was known as the most advanced in science, technology, literature, philosophy, and art, the legend of this hoary plant and its mysterious genesis gives birth to the screen character of Alruane.  Just as the mandrake root is animated as “the little man of the gallows” when the proper rituals are performed so too did Galeen bring artificial life to Alruane, who pulses on the flickering screen.  Ewers, who was so interested in the modern mechanical eye of cinema, and who positioned himself socially at the center of depravity in Berlin, transforms the legend under his pen into something decidedly modern.  His character of Professor ten Brinken uses science to try to disprove the unsettling legend.  He becomes the “mad scientist” who fits conveniently with the archetype utilized in German film since Caligari, and he will “shed the light of science on ancient superstitions”[iv].  By 1911, when Ewers wrote “Alruane”, many obscure legends and beliefs had crawled to the surface thanks to the Romantic Movement, and the Scientist becomes their greatest enemy.  He becomes mad with his conflicting drives to at once dominate the atavistic demons with his experiments while simultaneously fearing their power more than anyone else.

Once she is brought to life, the character of Alruane fits nicely into Berlin’s haughty underworld society, and she perfectly embodies the Weimar anti-ideal, the femme fatale.

There are many other cinematic and real-life examples of the feminine anti-ideal from the time, born to master and destroy men.  Brinken’s own sexual weakness erupts forth, escaping his rigid scientific controls, as he becomes sexually obsessed with his own experiment, his adopted daughter.  He becomes a slave to his own creation, to the ancient power of the mandrake, and perishes in suicide.  Alruane, the femme fatale, is a living reminder of the dark power of the mandrake (the mystery, the rûna) and the danger that comes to men if they refuse to respect its power by upholding the taboos and taking proper precautions.  She does not let us forget the Promethean folly in harnessing too much power carelessly.

The femme fatale in general holds some secret of the ancient alruna priestesses and their dark feminine powers.  The chaos of Weimar Berlin opened a doorway to debauchery and the flowering of the arts and gave birth to the destructive cinematic femme fatale.  Similarly, our current wave of disillusionment and chaos provides an opportunity to open lost mysteries for those who shall seek them and the femme fatale, the alruna, can be a guide for those who respect her.

Bibliography:

De Cleene, Marcel and Lejeune, Marie Claire.  Compendium of Symbolic and Ritual Plants in Europe.  Man and Culture Publishers, Ghent, Belgium, 2003.

Kracauer, Siegfried.  From Caligari to Hitle: The Psychological History of German Film.  Princeton University Press, 1947.

Randolf, Charles B.  “The Mandragora of the Ancients in Folk-lore and Medicine”.  Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences XL(1905): 485-537.

Rätsch, Christian.  Plants of Love: The History of Aphrodisiacs and a Guide to Their Identification and Use.  Ten Speed Press, 1997.

Simek, Rudolf translated by Angela Hall.  Dictionary of Northern Mythology.  D.S.  Brewer, 1996.

Wolf, Leonard and Shelley, Mary.  The Essential Frankenstein: The Definitive, Annotated Edition of Mary Shelley’s Classic Novel.  Plume, 1993.

---

[i] Ewers, Hanns Heinz translated by Bandel, Joe E.  Alruane.  Side Real Press, 2010.

[ii] Simoons, Frederick J.  Plants of life, Plants of Death.  University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, pg.  121.

[iii] From the ad for “Strange Tales” on the Runa Raven website. 

[iv] This quote is from English translation of the film’s inter-titles.