Metropolis is a 1925 science fiction novel by the German writer Thea von Harbou. The novel was a treatment for Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis, on which von Harbou and Lang collaborated in 1924.
Premise The story is set in a technologically advanced city, which is sustained by the existence of an exploited class of labourers who live underground, far away from the gleaming surface world. Freder, the son and heir of Joh Fredersen, one of the city's founders, falls in love with Maria, a girl from the underground. Their romance takes place against the growing threat of civil war between the labourers and the armies of the founders, and the question of whether a lasting peace can be found.
Publication The novel was serialised in the magazine Illustriertes Blatt in 1925, accompanied by stills from the upcoming film adaptation. It was published in book form in 1926 by August Scherl. An English translation was published in 1927.
Reception Michael Joseph of The Bookman wrote about the novel: "It is a remarkable piece of work, skilfully reproducing the atmosphere one has come to associate with the most ambitious German film productions. Suggestive in many respects of the dramatic work of Karel Capek and of the earlier fantastic romances of H. G. Wells, in treatment it is an interesting example of expressionist literature. [...] Metropolis is one of the most powerful novels I have read and one which may capture a large public both in America and England if it does not prove too bewildering to the plain reader."
Film adaptation
The book was written with the intention of being adapted for film by Harbou's husband, the director Fritz Lang. Harbou collaborated with Lang on the script for the film, also titled Metropolis. Shooting began before the novel was published. The film omits certain parts of the book, especially references to the occult (of which a small hint exists in the film). Other parts of the story in the book disappeared from the film after drastic cuts made by the studio and distributors after the film's initial release. Some of these cuts have been rediscovered, while others remain lost. Also missing from the film are explications of the moral motivations for certain actions of the main characters.
Synopsis
Chapter I
Freder broods in his “work-shop” playing the organ and having visions of the heavens and of a woman he does not know. He dismisses all of his servants, including Slim, who is both servant and keeper.
“Club of the Sons” is a massive complex, featuring theaters, libraries, lecture rooms, and a stadium. Luxuriating in the Eternal Gardens, and about to seduce a young servant, they are interrupted by the entrance of a crowd of emaciated children in rags, led by Maria, whose appearance overwhelms Freder. She tells the children, and all those present, that they are all brothers, before she is led away. Freder becomes obsessed.
In his work-room, Freder speaks to a machine he is making that he would give up everything for this woman he has seen. He hears the signal for the shift change, which is activated every ten hours by his father, Joh Frederson, Master of Metropolis, positioned in the Brain-pan, high up in the New Tower of Babel. Joh Frederson activates the city through his exclusive use of the blue plate. Freder goes to see his father.
Chapter II
Joh Frederson, Master of Metropolis, stands in the Brain-pan of the New Tower of Babel, from where he communicates with all other major world capitals. Freder witnesses his father firing his first secretary over one clerical error. Freder argues for the man but Joh is unmoved. He believes a man is to be defined by his ability to work and how much he can work. Joh is disappointed that his son speaks sympathetically for the men in depths of Metropolis who are driven to exhaustion manning the machines that make the city live. Joh suggests one day there will be a replacement for man – the man-machine.
Freder goes, and Joh instructs Slim to keep constant watch over his son.
Chapter III
Freders seeks and finds his father’s first secretary, a man named Josaphat, who is riding the pater-noster (a kind of elevator) without getting off on any level. Freder joins him, and asks for his help – which Josaphat gratefully agrees to – and instructs him to go home and wait, for him or for a messenger.
Once they part, Freder descends into the depths. He goes to a man who is operating a machine, exerting himself in tedious repetition, lost in a rambling prayer to God, to the machine, and to Joh Frederson. When Freder interrupts him, the man collapses.
Freder tells the man, named Georgi (number 11811) they will change clothes, and he will take Georgi’s place at the machine. He gives further instruction to wait for him at Josaphat’s apartment. Freder begins the ten hour shift in Georgi’s dark blue linen uniform and hard shoes.
Georgi goes to the street in Freder’s fine silk clothes and soft footwear, and takes a car for hire. Georgi is overwhelmed by the magnificent sights of Metropolis, which he has always served but never experienced. He is seduced by advertisements for the night club Yoshiwara (and the tremendous amount of cash in his pockets) and decides to go there instead.
Chapter IV
The Magician’s House is the oldest house in Metropolis, with a red pentagram set into every door. The Magician vanished many years past, but the house remains cursed, and none have been able to destroy it. This is the home of Rotwang, the great inventor. Years ago he and Frederson had a falling out over Hel, who partnered with Joh and presumably died in giving birth to Freder. Rotwang keeps a bust of Hel on prominent display.
Joh visits Rotwang to ask if he understands a message Grot discovered in the possession of an injured worker. First, Rotwang reveals Futura, an artificial humanoid being. Joh had requested a man-machine, but is repulsed by the humanoid yet faceless form of Futura.
Rotwang recognizes the message as a map of the maze of tunnels beneath the city – a labyrinth in which the Magician himself became lost and died. They agree to meet at the change of shift and follow the map. When Joh returns to the Brain of Metropolis, Slim informs him that Freder is missing.
Chapter V
At the conclusion of the ten-hour shift, Freder is exhausted and delirious. He is helped away from his machine by an anonymous worker who informs him that “she” has called and asks if he is coming. He follows and is overwhelmed to discover the workers have gathered to hear Maria speak.
Maria tells the parable of Babel. A man proposed a tower to the heavens, but those who did the work knew nothing of what they were making and grew angry, and brought the tower down. The lesson; the mediator between the brain and the hands must be the heart.
When pressed about this mediator, Maria asks for patience. The men depart, Freder stays, and the two speak. He tells her how she has changed his life and given it purpose. But they have been watched and overheard by Joh and Rotwang, who are in hiding. Joh instructs Rotwang to give Futura Maria’s image.
Once the young lovers part, Rotwang pursues Maria who, terrified, becomes lost in the catacombs, eventually finding the trap door to Rotwang’s home. Maria is trapped.
Chapter VI
Slim arrives at Yoshiwara, seeking Freder. He is met by the proprietor, a man named September. September shows him Georgi, who has been under the influence of the drug “Maohee.” His silken clothes are in tatters, his soft shoes bloodied, Georgi had been on a terrifying rampage, horrifying the guests and assaulting the sex workers.
Taking Georgi to a medical facility, Slim learns from Georgi about his encounter with Freder, and his instruction to wait at Josaphat’s apartment.
Chapter VII
Freder is distressed to learn Georgi never made it to Josaphat’s. Josaphat lives alone in three well-appointed rooms. Freder knows Slim will be on his trail. Josaphat swears his allegiance, as a supplicant, but Freder insists their bond will be as equals. Shortly after Freder goes, Slim arrives and pressures Josaphat to accept an unconscionable amount of money to leave Metropolis forever, and the offer becomes irrefusable to Josaphat. He accepts.
Chapter VIII
Freder goes to the cathedral, seeking Maria. He has not entered this building since he was a child. He spies the woodcarved figure of Death, flanked by the Seven Deadly Sins. Desertus, the monk, orders the son of Joh Frederson to leave, and he does. Passing Rotwang’s house, the former house of the Magician, he is stunned to briefly see Maria at a window.
He enters, and becomes lost in a maze of doors and empty rooms, following Maria’s voice – or two voices, one calling to him seductively, the other in distress. He runs through the house to no avail and collapses in exhaustion.
Elsewhere in the house, Rotwang, who has been tracking Freder’s folly, goes to Maria, who is strapped into a chair. He taunts her, and she resists responding until he says Freder will one day marry – but never to her. She breaks, crying, “Never!”
Ashamed, Rotwang goes to Futura, whom he has nearly completed in providing Maria’s image.
Freder awakens trapped in a room with one window. From it, he sees Maria departing the house and going into the city. After many tries, Freder breaks the door to the room open and escapes the house. He tries to find Maria at her home, but no one admits to remembering she lived there or who she is. He thinks to ask his father and goes to the Brain-pan in the New Tower of Babel and finds Maria laughing in Joh’s arms.
Freder attempts to throttle his father. After a terrible struggle, Freder sees that Maria is no longer there. Joh says there never was anyone else in the room, and Freder is rendered helpless, laughing like one deranged.
Chapter IX
A plane is flying Josaphat away from Metropolis. He assaults the pilot, killing him, and parachutes to safety in a field.
Chapter X
Josaphat cannot gain entrance to Freder’s apartments, but watches from a distance, witnessing as Freder wanders the rooms and balconies, speaking to no one. Joh visits Freder, talking to him for hours before leaving him be. Josaphat finally attains entrance and he and Freder reunite.
Josaphat confesses his betrayal, Freder does not judge him. Freder admits his desire to murder his father, until the one time Joh did not blare the shift change so as not to disturb his sleeping son. That was when Freder knew his father had forgiven him.
Freder then recounts a dream, in which Metropolis is vacant, but alive, a living city. He seeks refuge in the cathedral where he is witness to a Book of Revelation inspired phantasm including a priest crying, “Repent,” the Whore of Babylon with Maria’s face, and Death leading the Seven Deadly Sins.
Chapter XI
Josaphat tries to assure Freder it was just a dream, But Freder continues, and it is unclear if this is true or the continuation of a dream. He goes out to the cathedral where Desertus was preaching of the fall of Babylon, and notices the statue of Death is missing. He encounters Jan, an old associate from the Club of the Sons, who leads him to the house adjacent to Rotwang’s and gives an account of a recent event when many were invited there to be introduced to a woman whom Rotwang called his daughter. It was Futura, and her presence overwhelms the men and enrages the women. Jan says her name is Maria, and that she has been seen in two places at once. Then Slim arrives and escorts Freder home.
The city screams the shift change, and Josaphat says many workers will be going to hear Maria speak in the City of the Dead, and Freder decides to go.
Chapter XII
Joh Frederson’s mother was horrified when she first learned how her son’s master plan involved the constant physical degradation of men. He wanted her near, but she did not want to leave her home, so he had it relocated, yard, tree and all, to the roof of a skyscraper in Metropolis.