This book is not of today or of the future. It tells of no place. It serves no cause, party or class. It has a moral which grows on the pillar of understanding: “The mediator between brain and muscle ...

Now the rumbling of the great organ swelled to a roar, pressing, like a rising giant, against the vaulted ceiling, to burst through it. Freder bent his head backwards, his wide-open, burning eyes star...

The brainpan of the New Tower of Babel was peopled with numbers. From an invisible source the numbers dropped rhythmically down through the cooled air of the room, being collected, as in a water-basin...

The man who had been Joh Fredersen’s first secretary stood in a cell of the Paternoster, the never-stopping passenger lift which, like a series of never-ceasing well-buckets, transsected the New Tower...

There was a house in the great Metropolis which was older than the town. Many said that it was older, even, than the cathedral, and, before the Archangel Michael raised his voice as advocate in the co...

The man before the machine which was like Ganesha, the god with the elephant’s head, was no longer a human being. Merely a dripping piece of exhaustion, from the pores of which the last powers of voli...

The proprietor of Yoshiwara used to earn money in a variety of ways. One of them, and quite positively the most harmless, was to make bets that no man⁠—be he never so widely travelled⁠—was capable of ...

“Where is Georgi?” asked Freder, his eyes wandering through Josaphat’s three rooms, which stretched out before him⁠—beautiful, with a rather bewildering superabundance of armchairs, divans and silk cu...

Freder walked up the steps of the cathedral hesitatingly; he was walking up them for the first time. Hel, his mother, used often to go to the cathedral. But her son had never yet done so. Now he longe...

The aeroplane which had carried Josaphat away from Metropolis swam in the golden air of the setting sun, rushing towards it at a tearing speed, as though fastened to the westward sinking ball by metal...

Whenever Josaphat tried, during the days which followed, to break through the barrier which was drawn around Freder, there was always a strange person there, and always a different one, who said, with...

“Yes,” said Josaphat hoarsely, “but that was a dream⁠ ⁠…” “Of course it was a dream⁠ ⁠… And they say dreams are bubbles, don’t they? But just listen to this, Josaphat⁠ ⁠… I emerged from this dream bac...

It was one hour after midnight. Joh Fredersen came to his mother’s house. It was a farmhouse, one-storied, thatch-roofed, overshadowed by a walnut tree and it stood upon the flat back of one of the st...

It was midnight and no light was burning. Only through the window there fell the radiance of the city, lying like a pale gleam upon the face of the girl who sat, leaning back against the wall, without...

A vault, like the vault of a sepulchre⁠—human heads so closely crowded as to produce the effect of clods of a freshly ploughed field. All faces turned to one point: to the source of a light, as mild a...

Maria did not dare to stir. She did not even dare to breathe. She did not close her eyes for quaking fear that, between the lowering and raising of her eyelids, a fresh horror could come upon her and ...

“Father⁠—!!” Joh Fredersen’s son knew quite well that his father could not hear him, for he, the son, was standing in the lowest part of the pedestal of the New Tower of Babel, whither the twitching p...

Maria felt something licking at her feet, like the tongue of a great, gentle dog. She bent down to fumble for the animal’s head, and felt that it was water into which she was groping. From where did t...

“Little sister⁠ ⁠…” “Yes?” “I am so hungry, sister⁠ ⁠… !” “Hungry⁠ ⁠… !” echoed out of the depths. “Don’t you want to hear the end of my story?” “Yes⁠ ⁠… But sister, when you’ve finished, can’t we go ...

They had taken the children into the house and Freder’s eyes sought Maria, who was kneeling in the street, among the last remaining children, consoling them, and bestowing her loving smile upon weepin...

“Freder⁠—!!! Grot⁠—!!! Freder⁠—!!!” Josaphat shouted so that his voice cracked, and raced with the bounds of a harried wolf, through passages, across steps of the great pump-works. His shouts were not...

Rotwang awoke; but he knew quite well he was dead. And this consciousness filled him with the deepest satisfaction. His aching body no longer had anything to do with him. That was perhaps the last rem...

Joh Fredersen stood in the dome-room of the New Tower of Babel, waiting for Slim. He was to bring him news of his son. A ghostly darkness lay upon the New Tower of Babel. The light had gone completely...

“Beloved⁠—!” said Freder, Joh Fredersen’s son. It was the softest, the most cautious call of which a human voice is capable. But Maria answered it just as little as she had answered the shouts of desp...

“Freder⁠ ⁠… ?” said the soft Madonna-voice. “Yes, you beloved! Speak to me! Speak to me!” “Where are we?” “In the cathedral.” “Is it day or night?” “It is day.” “Wasn’t your father here, with us, just...

Joh Fredersen came to his mother’s house. Death had passed over Metropolis. Destruction of the world and the Day of Judgment had shouted from out the roars of explosion, the clanging of the bells of t...