Der Trödler von Prag (1916)

In Prague’s Jewish ghetto, the secondhand dealer Simon and his daughter Judith trade in antiques. They are helped by David, an assistant who goes every day into the Golden City to collect antiquities that might be worth selling. Judith is secretly in love with him, but David has eyes only for Leontine, who represents the great, wide world to him and promises a life of luxury. His love for this “Grande Dame” blinds him to everything else: David neglects his work and, on top of that, fails to notice how much Leontine is playing him. This becomes clear, for example, when she rebuffs him just as a man of the world—the Baron—comes along. She then calls David a pushy fellow in front of everyone and calmly watches as the nobleman beats him with a riding crop. Eventually, the young assistant realizes he has no chance with this upper-class lady and finally agrees to marry the patient Judith. Simon’s greatest treasure, which he keeps hidden in a small room, is a magic candle. Whoever lights it will have every wish granted, but must die the moment the candle burns down. The message is: it brings happiness only to the wise, but misfortune and ruin to the fool. By chance, David discovers what the candle can do. He immediately wants to try it out and wishes to sell an El Greco he has just acquired for a high price. And indeed, his wish is granted. One wish follows another, and they all have to do with money and a lavish life beyond the ghetto, in the great, sophisticated city. Before long, David is leading a secret double life: here, a dutiful husband at Judith’s side; there, living in splendor among people he wants to regard as his equals: the upper ten thousand. At one of the elegant soirées David attends, he meets Leontine again, and his old passion for her flares up at once. In front of everyone, he kisses her, whereupon Nemesis, in the form of the Baron, challenges him to a duel. David’s obsession with Leontine leads him to light the candle again, this time wishing that Leontine would beg for his love and that he himself would cut off the Baron’s right sword arm in the upcoming duel. And so it happens. Leontine comes crawling to David, but, full of pride, he sends her away from his townhouse. The Baron loses his right arm in the sword duel, just as David wished. Leontine leaves her prospective husband, now one-armed, and hurries to David, who is overjoyed. She does not leave him even when David reveals his secret to her. But one day, when David’s only child falls gravely ill back in the ghetto, and his wife Judith and her father have long since given up all hope, David lights the pitiful remnant of the candle, which has already burned almost all the way down, and succeeds in making his child well again. He himself, however, must pay for this sacrifice with his own life and dies in the arms of his beloved Leontine.