- Hans Vergerus: [explains the upcoming social and political developments in Germany to Abel Rosenberg] It's like a serpent's egg. Through the thin membranes, you can clearly discern the already perfect reptile.
- Inspector Bauer: So what does Inspector Bauer do? Inspector Bauer does his job. He tries to create a little patch of order and reason in the midst of chaos. And he's not alone, Rosenberg. All over Germany, millions and millions of petty officials, just as terrified, are doing exactly the same. You get drunk every day, huh? That's also respectable, Rosenberg. But I'd be happier if you swung on your trapeze with your pals. That way you'd fight your fear more effectively.
- Abel Rosenberg: My head is splitting! You sure this gas isn't leaking?
- Manuela Rosenberg: It isn't.
- Abel Rosenberg: How can you be sure?
- Manuela Rosenberg: Because I've tried it.
- Abel Rosenberg: Then you did think it was leaking, didn't you?
- Manuela Rosenberg: All this guilt is too much for me! I feel it's my fault that Max committed suicide. You're responsible for someone, and then you fail your duties, and you stand there empty-handed and ashamed, wondering what you could have been doing.
- Manuela Rosenberg: You know what's the worst thing? People have no future. People have lost the future.
- Abel Rosenberg: Why do I have to stay here?
- Inspector Bauer: You may be able to help me with seven unsolved deaths.
- Abel Rosenberg: Tomorrow everything's gonna disappear. Why bother with a few murders?
- Inspector Bauer: I'll tell you, Rosenberg. I bother for my own sake. I know that the catastrophe could be here in a few hours. They say the rate of exchange for the dollar is five billion marks. The French have occupied the Ruhr. We have just paid a billion in gold to the British. On every damned job there are Bolshevik agitators. In Munich, a Herr Hitler is preparing a putsch with thousands of starving soldiers and madmen in uniform. We have a government that doesn't know which way to turn. Everyone's afraid. So am I. I can't sleep for fear. Nothing works properly except fear. On Friday I wanted to go to Stettin to see my old mother. She'll be 80. But there was no timetable anymore. There was a train that might go, but no timetable, Rosenberg. Imagine! A Germany without timetables! So what does Inspector Bauer do? Inspector Bauer does his job. He tries to create a little patch of order and reason in the midst of chaos. And he's not alone, Rosenberg. All over Germany, millions and millions of petty officials, just as terrified, are doing exactly the same. You get drunk every day, huh? That's also respectable, Rosenberg. But I'd be happier if you swung about on your trapeze with your pals. That way you'd fight your fear more effectively. So now you know why I sit here, investigating something I think is extremely odd, not to say horrible. And now I must ask you to keep quiet for a few minutes, while I write a few lines to Inspector Lohmann, who is working on another case that also seems insane.
- Narrator: Tuesday, November 6th. The newspapers are black with fear, threats, and rumors. The government seems powerless. A bloody confrontation between the extremist parties appears unavoidable. Despite all this, people go to work, the rain never stops, and fear rises like vapor from the cobblestones. It can be sensed like a pungent smell. Everyone bears it like a nerve poison, a slowly working poison, felt only as a quicker or slower pulse, or as a spasm of nausea.
- Manuela Rosenberg: Stop raving at me like a lunatic. If you want to leave, go!
- Abel Rosenberg: So you want me to get out?
- Manuela Rosenberg: I just say if you want to leave, you can go. I've done everything I can to keep us together. I just can't go on anything more. Do you hear what I'm saying? I can't go on anymore! I give a damn about your fear! I give a damn about you!
- Abel Rosenberg: Then you want me to leave.
- Manuela Rosenberg: No.
- Manuela Rosenberg: The advantage of knowing influential people is that you can have real coffee for breakfast. The fire is going nicely, but it will take a while before it gets really hot.
- Abel Rosenberg: Do you get firewood the same way?
- Manuela Rosenberg: I do know a woodkeeper, as a matter of fact. But I don't know anyone who can get me butter, so you'll have to eat marmalade. It's made of chemicals, the label says.
- Manuela Rosenberg: It's a very respectable whorehouse. Only for diplomats and managing editors and famous actors. Oh, it's so classy.
- Mikaela: Come home with me. It's warm. You can have it any way you want. You have dollars, don't you?
- Abel Rosenberg: Go to hell!
- Mikaela: [laughing] Where do you think we are?
- Inspector Bauer: Not very chatty, are you, Rosenberg? Can you account for the movements on the evening of Sunday, October 28th? You can't?
- Abel Rosenberg: I was drunk. Ask me about October 19th. I was drunk then, too. I've been drunk every night since I left the circus.
- Inspector Bauer: Something doesn't add up.
- Abel Rosenberg: No?
- Inspector Bauer: If you were so well known... good income, good reputation... why did you start drinking?
- Abel Rosenberg: I'm an alcoholic.
- Inspector Bauer: Famous trapeze artist... alcoholic?
- Abel Rosenberg: Maybe I didn't feel welcome in your beautiful city.
- Hollinger: Do you need money? I can lend you some. Look. Here are some billions. Take them. I don't need them.
- Manuela Rosenberg: You know, actually it's quite nice to have a fever. You can daydream. You fall asleep, and then you wake up. Everything's mixed up. Suddenly you're 6 years old, and then I'm 15. It's all so clear.
- Narrator: The scene is Berlin, the evening of Saturday, November 3, 1923. A pack of cigarettes costs four billion marks, and most everyone has lost faith in both the future and the present.
- Abel Rosenberg: Excuse me for asking. What am I supposed to do?
- Dr. Soltermann: You see these gray files here?
- Dr. Silbermann: There are yellow files of a cheaper kind. Your first task will be to remove the contents of the gray files...
- Dr. Soltermann: And, uh, transfer them to the yellow files, after which you will number and letter them in the same way as the gray ones. Good luck, Herr Rosenberg.
- The Priest: We... We live so far away from God... so far away that he probably doesn't hear us when we pray for help. So... we must help each other, give each other the forgiveness that a remote God denies us. I... say to you... that you are forgiven for your husband's death. You're no longer to blame. I beg your forgiveness... for my apathy... and my indifference. Do you forgive me?
- Manuela Rosenberg: Yes, I forgive you.
- The Priest: That's all we can do.
- Hans Vergerus: I seem to recognize you. Did we smoke our first cigarette together? No? But if I say Amalfi, a summer day 26 years ago... Our parents had cottages next door to each other. You had an older sister called... let me see... Rebecca. Right?
- Abel Rosenberg: Do you mind letting me by? I'm in a hurry.
- Hans Vergerus: Why, of course... Abel Rosenberg.
- Abel Rosenberg: We used to spend the summers in Amalfi. And Mama had trouble with her lungs. Max and I used to play with a boy named Hans Vergerus. His folks came from Dusseldorf. The father was some kind of big shot, a Supreme Court Justice or something. Mama didn't like Hans. I guess no one did. But everyone thought he was some kind of genius. Once... we caught a cat and tied it down. Hans cut it open. It was still alive. He let me see how its heart beat.
- Inspector Bauer: The reason of your brother's suicide? Depression? Unhappy love affair? Alcoholism? Drugs? Nervous breakdown? Fed up with life generally?
- Abel Rosenberg: I don't know.
- Inspector Bauer: An unexplainable impulse, was that it? Well, it happens.
- Hans Vergerus: This is a resistance experiment. This woman, 30 years old, volunteered to look after a four-month-old baby with brain injury, who screams day and night. We wanted to see what would happen to this completely normal, fairly intelligent woman, if we shut her in with a child that never stopped screaming. As you see, after 12 hours she is still quite self-possessed. Now, however, 24 hours have passed. We can see now that she is affected. Her sympathy for the sick child has been wiped out, her feelings replaced by a deep depression, which in its turn paralyzes every initiative. She has left the child to its fate. Here we can see quite clearly, that the thought of ridding herself of the child has developed. But it took another six hours before she carried out her intention, a remarkable resistance. Unfortunately our camera didn't manage to document the actual deed. Our technique has not been quite perfected. You would like to see more, wouldn't you?
- Dr. Soltermann: Kill me, Herr Rosenberg. I won't resist. My body is weak, but my soul is strong and calm.
- Hans Vergerus: You are wondering how we could get anyone to agree to such an experiment voluntarily. No trouble, I assure you. People will do anything for a little money and a square meal.
- Dr. Soltermann: Something unheard of is happening down there in Munich. A savior is born. The delivery is taking place in pain and blood. A terrible time is at hand. But what are 30 or 40 years of suffering and death? What do you or I matter? What do even millions of lives matter? There are plenty of human beings, Herr Rosenberg.
- Hans Vergerus: In a day or two, maybe even tomorrow, the national units in South Germany will attempt a revolt led by an incredible scatterbrain, called Adolf Hitler. It will be a colossal fiasco. Herr Hitler lacks intellectual capacity and method. He doesn't realize what tremendous forces he is about to conjure up. He will be swept away like a withered leaf, the day the storm breaks.
- Hans Vergerus: Look at that picture. Look at all those people. They are incapable of a revolution. They are far too humiliated, too afraid, too downtrodden. But in ten years... By then... the 10-year-olds will be 20, the 15-year-olds will be 25. To the hatred inherited from their parents, they will add their own idealism and impatience. Someone will step forward and put their unspoken feelings into words. Someone will promise a future. Someone will make demands. Someone will talk of greatness and sacrifice. The young and inexperienced will give their courage and their faith to the tired and the uncertain. And then there will be a revolution, and our world will go down in blood and fire. In ten years, no more, those people will create a new society unequalled in world history. The old society was based on extremely romantic ideas of man's goodness. It was all very complicated, since the ideas didn't match the reality. The new society will be based on a realistic assessment of man's potentials and limitations.
- Hans Vergerus: I'm not a monster, Abel. What you have seen are the first faltering steps of a necessary and logical development. I know you have told Inspector Bauer of your experiences. I also know that justice, represented by the plodding inspector, has begun to move, slow and creaking. He'll be here, soon, with his police and his rusty guns. But in a few moments, I'll bite on this cyanide capsule. I did consider burning the archives and destroying the results of our work, but it seemed too melodramatic. The law will confiscate our results, and then file them. In a few years, science will ask for the documents and will continue our experiments on a gigantic scale. We are ahead of our time, Abel. We are to be sacrificed. It's only logical.
- Narrator: On the morning of Wednesday, November 7th, there is no milk to be had in Berlin. Many food shops remain closed. They have nothing to sell. The Reichsmark has practically ceased to exist. The wads of bills are now counted by weight, and no more notice is taken of the printed value.
- Hans Vergerus: The subject was given an injection of Thanatoxin, a drug that produces violent anguish. What you will see is someone subjected to unbearable agony. Here you see him just as he's given the injection. You notice that he is quite balanced and is laughing and joking. An unusually nice boy, incidentally. He was a student of political science at the university. We are now at the condition of dread, which is getting worse and worse. In a few moments he'll commit suicide. Watch carefully. It happens without any warning. He picks up the revolver. You can't see it properly. Now you can see it. Then he puts it in his mouth. The gun is not loaded, of course. That student really did shoot himself a few days later, although the effects of the Thanatoxin had completely worn off. Your brother, Max, met with the same misfortune. By the way, he was one of our best assistants. He was really interested in our experiments. He wanted to try out the Thanatoxin. I advised him not to, but he insisted.
- Hans Vergerus: This is one of our most recent and interesting experiments. The subjects are administered carefully controlled doses of Kapta Blue, a virtually odorless gas. Initially the gas plays tricks with the behavioral centers, throwing the entire emotional balance out of kilter. The subjects are stripped of their social defenses, lose their inhibitions, teeter madly between quickly changing moods which possess them. Their reactions are so farcical, at times one can hardly keep from laughing. Of course, repeated exposure to Kapta Blue can cause some permanent damage.
- Inspector Bauer: By the way, Herr Hitler failed with his Munich putsch. The whole thing was a colossal fiasco. Herr Hitler and his gang underrated the strength of the German democracy.
- Hans Vergerus: Man is a malformation, a perversity of nature. That is where our experiments come in. We deal with the basic construction and reshape it. We set the productive forces free and control the destructive ones. We exterminate what is inferior, and increase what is useful.
- Narrator: On the evening of Sunday, November 11th, Abel Rosenberg escaped the police escort which was taking him to the railroad station. He was never seen again.
- Hans Vergerus: One day you can tell all this to anyone who is willing to listen. No one will believe you, despite the fact that anyone who makes the slightest effort can see what is waiting in the future. It's like a serpent's egg. Through the thin membranes, you can clearly discern the already perfect reptile.