Hildesheim was combined with Renfield, Dracula’s thrall in the novel, to create the estate agent Knock (played by Alexander Granach, a Jewish actor). But Nosferatu’s powerful visuals and streamlined plot faithfully conveyed Stoker’s bigotry and added an additional expressionist bite. Murnau does not seem to have been antisemitic himself, and the film’s scriptwriter, Henrick Galeen, was Jewish. In fact, Dracula looks rather like his own human agent, Hildesheim, who Stoker says was “a Hebrew of rather the Adelphi Theatre type, with a nose like a sheep, and a fez.” (Stoker is probably referencing Petit and Sim’s London Day by Day, a particularly vicious antisemitic play which was performed at the Adelphi.) Stoker’s heroes bribe Hildesheim for information, because he's Jewish, and Jews are supposedly greedy – for money or, in Dracula’s case, for blood.
Stoker described Dracula himself as having an “aquiline” nose, pointed ears, and “bushy” eyebrows – all staples of antisemitic depictions at the time. His 1897 book Dracula, scholars believe, was partially based on the antisemitic 1894 novel Trilby, in which a Jewish villain seduces and abuses European girls. Nosferatu faithfully suckled on antisemitism, but it did not introduce it into the vampire myth – that was Bram Stoker’s doing. It’s a horror which continues to stalk us, but which the vampire myth may also provide us with some resources to dispel. In part, Nosferatu remains relevant not despite, but because of the hatred at its core. They still lurk around the edges of the genre though, as generations of creators have either furtively invited them in or tried to put a stake through their heart. Today, the vampire remains one of cinema’s most popular horror villains, and the connections to prejudice are largely forgotten, or erased. He was a twisted Jewish caricature – a parasitic, invasive outsider who fed on the blood of noble Christians. As the undead villain Count Orlok, Max Schreck was thin, stooped, and pale with an enormous hooked nose, a long black coat, and an odd skull cap. Murnau’s Nosferatu helped establish the vampire as one of the iconic antisemitic stereotypes of the 20th century.
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