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The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari Essay

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Weimar Politics in Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari In his book, From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer proposed that Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was an allegory for the sociopolitical situation of the Weimar period – where Dr. Caligari represents a tyrannical ruler, and the fairground illustrates the chaos that might ensue as an alternative to this authoritarianism. However, the individual characters in the asylum in the alternate ending of the film can also be interpreted as representing “unwanted” groups of people within early Weimar society. Most obvious out of all the examples is Jane, a woman who is seemingly stricken with an illness that makes her think of herself as a queen, and represents Weimar’s departure from monarchy in this interpretation. Although people such as Paul von Hindenburg and Friedrich Ebert supported the monarchy that existed pre-First World War, both of them realized that the ship that is monarchy has sailed, and won’t be willingly endorsed by the …show more content…

As evident in the film, Cesare’s somnambulist condition is, ironically enough, never treated by the director of the institution, Dr. Caligari, but his condition is instead exploited when he is used as a puppet of sorts to kill whomever Dr. Caligari chooses. This robot-like, unquestioning behavior and suffering of Cesare is a metaphor for the soldiers returning from the war fronts, as the soldiers’ mental neuroses were taken lightly by doctors, and refused pensions by the Weimar government. Hence, like Jane, Cesare’s soldier-like character may be portrayed as one of the patients in the asylum, as traumatized soldiers seeking healthcare and compensation were often “unwanted” facets of the Weimar

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