Murnau's lost Faust Bible scrapbook published after century — SkimNews
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- Art directors Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig salvaged a leather-bound Bible prop from a fire scene in FW Murnau's 1926 'Faust' and pasted designs, stills, and behind-the-scenes photographs onto its blank pages as a farewell gift to the director at the end of the shoot.
- FW Murnau left the Bible behind in his Berlin flat in 1931 when he moved to Hollywood and died that year at age 42; his brother later stored his belongings in flood-prone city-centre basements during WWII bombing.
- Archivist Lotte Eisner spent decades searching for the lost Bible without finding it; the book resurfaced in the 1960s when curator Engelbert von Mallinckrodt bought Murnau's photo albums from a restaurateur named Rolf Conscienze — then Mallinckrodt vanished, leaving his flatmate to guard it wrapped in brown paper on top of a cupboard.
- The Cinémathèque Française acquired the Bible in 2017 and restored it under heritage director Laurent Mannoni; shadows where a thief pried off the metal crucifix and corner pieces are still visible on the leather cover.
- 'The Faust Bible: The Making of FW Murnau's Masterpiece' comprehensively reprints all the scrapbook's images with explanatory captions and quotations from the screenplay, gatefold reproductions of the Weltflug flight-simulation diagrams, plus essays and archival drawings from the Cinémathèque's collection.
- The Bible documents how designer sketches were realized on set by cinematographer Carl Hoffmann using the 'entfesselte Kamera' (unchained camera) technique — including the celebrated Weltflug flight sequence, achieved via a low wooden trolley on a plaster ramp, an idea Herlth and Röhrig hit on after watching a truck being unloaded in the street.
Why it matters: The facsimile refutes Murnau's mystique as a solitary genius. His own production Bible documents that 'Faust's' celebrated effects were a team effort with cinematographer Carl Hoffmann and designers Herlth and Röhrig — with designer sketches functioning as binding contracts on set, giving film scholars the first tangible evidence of how silent-era visual invention was actually achieved.
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