Rotwang is a brilliant scientist as well as an occult magician and alchemist. The door of his strange old house is marked with the sign of the pentagram, the five-pointed star, a fitting symbol for his qualities because on the one hand it represents the golden section, a mathematical numerical ratio, on the other hand it stands for magic.

Rotwang, eventually unable to overcome the pain of the loss of his beloved through the worship of her replicated head, has the knowledge, and the technical skills and means to create a figure with a human form and the looks of a machine. From this figure, born out of the longing for love the fulfilment of which will reveal the divine, there is to emerge one day, once more, his adored HEL, internally and externally. By its looks, it is a Metropolis Robot, but inside it reflects the nature of a deity.

1. 6. The Construct of the Metropolis Robot

The Metropolis Robot – HEL

For the Metropolis Robot to have a divine appearance is intentional; the screenplay for Metropolis gives the following specifications: "Enthroned In Rotwang's laboratory is the Machine Man, bearing resemblance to an Egyptian god." – and the artistic realisation has successfully achieved this goal. The Machine Man’s appearance is mystical, as if it came from a distant world, and like a deity it radiates aloofness and transcendence. It beholds the viewer in an impersonal, motionless manner. Empty inside, it simultaneously transmits the capacity of clear consciousness. In its being it remains untouched while it touches the being of its beholder. This manner of a sphinx-like super naturalness frequently causes a shiver of fascination in the viewer.

Similar to the goddess HEL, who unifies within her being the duality of life and death the Metropolis Robot also is androgynous. Even though it has a human form it does not connect man with the machine, but rather the goddess with the machine; it is in its origins a ‘Dea en Machina’, the goddess in the machine, a Machine Goddess. Like HEL, the Metropolis Robot also resembles a goddess of death, but in its purpose it can be likened to the Indian black goddess Kali. As a goddess of death Kali is fierce and terrifying, her symbol of terror she wears as a wreath of skulls around her neck. Kali uses the terror of death to shake us up so that man may realize the aberrations of the world, and return to his divine core, which is untouched by death.

1. 7. The Metropolis Robot – a Deity

The Face of the Metropolis Robot

The Indian Goddess Kali

Light On Metropolis  –  Mystical Traces