Der Student Debt von Prag (Patreon)

There are two Der Student von Prag movies. Both are adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “William Wilson.” One was made in 1913 by noted Nazi film star Paul Wegener. The other was made in 1926 by Henrik Galeen, who fled the Nazis, and stars the spooky Conrad Veidt who not only fled the Nazis, but donated a chunk of his fortune to the war effort against them. Today, we’re talking about the 1926 remake: now with less Nazis. 

Der Student von Prag tells the story of Balduin, The Student (Conrad Veidt). After falling for a woman and realizing she’s engaged to a baron, Balduin needs some fast cash. Enter Scapinelli (Werner Krauss, unapologetic Nazi who died in obscurity in Vienna) who offers him a giant sack of cash in exchange for “anything inside this room.” Scapinelli, in the Faustian tradition, choses Balduin’s reflection. The reflection runs amok and is ultimately killed by the real Balduin who then dies. His grave reads "Here lies Balduin. He fought the devil and lost.”

Speaking of losing to the devil. The total student loan debt in the United States is currently hovering around 1.56 trillion dollars. Let’s add those zeros in for scale: 1,560,000,000,000.00. That’s about triple the total credit card debt or 7,800,000 homes at the average US price of 200,000 dollars per. Balduin sells his soul to the devil in exchange for the class advancement that might win him his love, similarly, the student loan crisis has sold our souls for another’s material gain.

We, like Balduin, have been tricked into selling our souls. If the soul is a metaphor for anything in Der Student von Prag, it is the future. Balduin loses both his extant future as a student and his possible future with his love. The student loan crisis has a similar effect of robbing us of our futures. There are fewer and fewer viable career paths without taking on student debt and even fewer with it. A future under mounting student debt feels just as bleak as Balduin’s. Balduin’s fate was sealed not just by this pact with the devil, but by the medium of cinema. 

One of the essential functions of horror cinema is that these movies are open-ended on a metatextual level. We, the audience, are implicated within the text of each horror film. We simultaneously take pleasure in joining the monsters as they scare and are scared with the protagonists as they flee. At the end of each film, when the characters have all been dispatched or the evil is left to resurface another grim night, it is only we, the audience, that can walk away. We are both burdened with all the responsibilities and empowered by all the knowledge that implies. 

Unlike Balduin, our story, our fight, is not yet over. Our epitaphs might yet read: “We fought the devil and won.”