CALIGARI
161
Carl Mayer, co-author with J anowitz of
Caligari,
was born in
the Austrian provincial capital of Graz, where his father, a wealthy
businessman, would have prospered had he not been obsessed by the
idea of becoming a "scientific" gambler. In the prime of life he sold
his property, went, armed with an infallible "system," to Monte
Carlo, and reappeared a few months later in Graz, broke. Under the
stress of this catastrophe, the monomaniac father turned the sixteen–
year-old Carl and his three younger brothers out into the street and
finally committed suicide. A mere boy, Carl Mayer was responsible
for the three children. While he toured through Austria, peddling
barometers, singing in choirs, and playing extras in peasant theaters,
he became increasingly interested in the stage. There was no branch
of theatrical production which he did not explore during those years
of nomadic life-years full of experiences that were to be of immense
use in his future career as a film poet. At the beginning of the war,
the adolescent made his living by sketching Hindenburg portraits on
postcards in Munich cafes. Later in the war, Janowitz reports, he
had to undergo repeated examinations of his mental condition. Mayer
seems to have been very embittered against the high-ranking military
psychiatrist in charge of his case.
The war was over. Janowitz, who from its outbreak had been
an officer in an infantry regiment, returned as a convinced pacifist,
animated by hatred of an authority which had sent millions of men
to death. He felt that absolute authority was bad
in
itself. He settled
in Berlin, met Carl Mayer there, and soon found out that this eccen–
tric young man, who had never before written a line, shared his
revolutionary moods and views. Why not express them on the screen?
Intoxicated with Wegener's films, J anowitz believed that this new
medium might lend itself to powerful poetic revelations.
As
youth
will, the two friends embarked on endless discussions that hovered
around Janowitz' Holstenwall adventure as well as Mayer's mental
duel with the psychiatrist. These stories seemed to evoke and supple–
ment each other. After such discussions the pair would stroll through
the night, irresistibly attracted by a dazzling and clamorous fair on
Kantstrasse. It was a bright jungle, more hell than paradise, but a
paradise to those! who had exchanged the horror of war for the terror
of want. One evening, Mayer dragged his companion to a sideshow
by which he had been impressed. Under the title "Man and Machine"
it presented a strong man who achieved miracles of strength in an
apparent stupor. He acted as if he were hypnotized. The strangest
thing was that he accompanied his feats with utterances which af-
