SEXUAL ABUSE AND FEMALE SACRIFICE are constitutiveelements of Veit Harlan's notorious Nazi propagandafilm, Jud Süß (JewSuss). Promoted byJoseph Goebbels and released in 1940 to fomenthatred toward the Jews, this film features thevillainous Joseph Sus Oppenheimer, a cunning andgreedy financier from Frankfurt's Jewish ghetto whogains favor with Karl Alexander, the new duke ofWurttemberg. Though loosely based on real eventsthat took place in Stuttgart in the 1730s, the filmdistorts historical facts—for example, by depictingOppenheimer as a Jew bent on having his way withbourgeois Christian women. From young maidens forcedto perform sexual favors for the duke atOppenheimer's behest to Oppenheimer's rape of theyoung, innocent, and already-spoken- for DorotheaSturm, sexual violence against women propels thefilm's action. The work thus builds on severalestablished genres that revolve around the abuse anddeath of beautiful women. These genres span genderedand anti-Semitic expressions of abjection inportraying victimization, violence, andexclusion.

The two cultural antecedents I wish to consider in thiscontext form a surprising pair: eighteenth-centurybourgeois tragedy and twentiethcentury horror film.The former is well represented by Gotthold EphraimLessing's Miß SaraSampson (1755) and Emilia Galotti (1772), two works thatclosely adhere to the tropes of the genre, featuringa close fatherdaughter relationship, a weak orabsent mother, a tyrannical and depravedaristocracy, and the seduction of a virtuous yetcorruptible maiden. The horror film, too,prominently features women as victims of sexualabuse, as exemplified by Friedrich Murnau's Nosferatu, eine Symphonie desGrauens (1922; Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror), inwhich a monstrous male character becomes obsessedwith hunting down and killing an innocent butalluring female. By discussing features common tothese works, this essay illuminates the influence ofthe German cultural heritage on the making ofJud Süß. In turn,these commonalities shed light on representations ofvictimization central to the #MeToo movement,thereby revealing different manifestations of therape culture characteristic of male-dominatedsocieties.