Adolf Lang

From PATRICK MCGILLIGAN: Fritz LangThe Nature of the Beast St. Martin's Press http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/m/mcgilligan-lang.html

"Adolf Lang (named in honor of Adolf Endl?) was born on March 19, 1884, less than a year after the marriage of Paula and Anton Lang. A full six years older than Fritz, Dolf (as he was called) was a few inches shorter than his brother, who grew to five feet eleven. With his dark-blond hair, Dolf resembled his father, while Fritz Lang, with his deep-brown hair, gray eyes, long face, straight nose and pointed chin, took after Paula. Dolf's character and personality were more like his father's, too. He took no interest in artistic pursuits, and in time became a staid businessman like his father--a bank manager; in fact, utterly middle class.

Dolf, the oldest boy carrying the family surname, ought to have been the favored son, but the opposite was true. Dolf was disadvantaged within the family, treated almost as a leper. The reason, as Steinbach remembered--and Austrian military records confirm--must have carried with it a devastating personal humiliation. Adolf Lang had a rampant psoriasis that resulted in scabs and rashes all over his body. When guests came to call, Dolf was actually hidden away in the Lang household, like the boy whose father cannot abide him, who is closeted in one of the mansion's many rooms in Secret Beyond the Door. The ugly, embarrassing Dolf was hidden away, while the handsome Fritz--with his intelligent face, his shock of tawny hair, his creamy complexion--was paraded in front of visitors, his ego petted and pampered.

The brothers, as a result, had a terrible relationship, a lifelong violent antipathy to each other. It wounded their mother, Paula Lang, even though she helped spur their lopsided rivalry. Fritz Lang learned superiority and domination, even over his older brother, from adolescence. Throughout adulthood the brothers communicated with each other only when absolutely necessary. Not once, when expounding on his past in the dozens upon dozens of published interviews he gave, did the film director ever mention his older brother. Even Lotte Eisner, in her authorized book about Lang, presents the man she knew as well as anyone as an "only child.""