The 1920 silent film Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam [The Golem, how he came into the world] represented actor-screenwriter-director Paul Wegener’s third retelling of an old rabbinical legend of the Golem, a clay monster who saves the Jews of medieval Prague from persecution. He had already made a very well-received version in 1915 and a parody in 1917, but the tale kept luring him back. In this clip of an early scene, the Holy Roman Emperor has ordered the exile of the Jews, and now Rabbi Loew (Albert Steinrück), who had earlier prophesied disaster for his people, secretly fashions the Golem (played by Wegener) from clay.  Later, in the presence of the emperor, Loew simultaneously shows off his creation and recounts for the royal audience the history of the Jews. When the audience begins to laugh at Loew’s story, the imperial palace starts to quiver and crack. The mighty Golem holds the ceiling up, however, and the emperor, in gratitude, pardons the Jews. In an echo of the Frankenstein story, however, Loew quickly discovers that he cannot control the Golem, and the latter rampages through the ghetto, attacking indiscriminately until a little girl innocently removes the magic amulet and renders him inanimate once again. Thanks to that action-packed plot and the film’s visual artistry, it played to sold-out theaters for months. Like the Frankenstein tale, as well, this story of the Golem suggested the unpredictable nature of any innovation and offered a cautionary tale in an era of accelerating technological and social transformations. The film’s theme of Jewish persecution would also have found a contemporary parallel in the post-1918 wave of Jewish refugees fleeing to Germany from pogroms in central and eastern Europe. Audience members might even have associated the film’s setting—the Jewish ghetto of medieval Prague—with some of the urban neighborhoods where these refugees concentrated, such as Berlin’s Scheunenviertel, which became the site of violent antisemitic attacks just three years after this film’s release.