12 - On Golems and Ghosts: Prague as a Site of Gothic Modernism

Summary

Prague occupies an unusual position on the map of literary modernism insofar as it came to be considered more than most other locations as an uncanny site of ghosts, golems, and mysticism in spite of comprehensive programs of urban modernization in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Whether through novels dealing thematically with Prague as an uncanny site (such as Francis Crawford's The Witch of Prague and Gustav Meyrink's Der Golem) or in literary and theosophical works by writers connected with Prague (such as Franz Kafka or Rudolf Steiner), the city's standing as a ghostly space was well-established. This reputation was further underlined by some of the most successful films in the period around the First World War, including Hanns Heinz Ewers and Stellan Rye's Der Student von Prag (The Student of Prague, 1913) and Paul Wegener's Der Golem (The Golem, 1914/1920). This essay will argue that Prague can thus be seen as a prime location for formulating and answering David Punter's question as to where we might locate the “Gothic moment” in modernism itself.

Punter's question is provocative as it implies a surprising convergence of what we today consider popular mass culture and “high” modernist aesthetics. The case of Prague modernism is of particular interest precisely because such a convergence is one of the defining moments of cultural production in the city, where different forms of modernism have engaged with gothic tropes and intertexts to give Prague a literary identity inseparable from German and wider European traditions of the gothic, or Schauerphantastik.