Succession: What does Doderick Macht Frei mean?

In Succession Season 4 Episode 6, Lukas Matsson tweets “Doderick Macht Frei” – but what exactly does it mean?

In our review, we wrote: “Succession’s latest episode plays host to some absolutely superb character work. Some may miss the momentum of the show’s earlier episodes, but the performances have never been better.”

After Matsson’s unprecedented offer at the end of the last episode, Kendall and Roman look for another way to tank the deal: Living+, a tech real-estate venture – essentially a supercharged retirement home – that could inflate the value of Waystar and price the Swede out of the deal.

He hates it and tries to get Shiv to put a stop to it, but Kendall goes ahead and launches the product – so, he tweets “Doderick Macht Frei”, but what does that even mean?

Succession: Doderick Macht Frei explained

Macht Frei is a reference to “Arbeit macht frei”, a message that appeared on the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, meaning “Work makes one free”. Doderick is one of Waystar’s mascots, so the tweet means: “Doderick makes one free” or “Doderick sets one free.”

As soon as Hugo sees Matsson’s tweet, he starts muttering, “F*ck, f*ck, f*ck.” Everyone immediately knows it’s a Holocaust joke, and it doesn’t take long before Kendall is confronted by the press in the audience at his presentation.

HBO

So, why would he compare Living+ to concentration camps? Earlier in the episode, he compares the idea to the “sh*tty, heartbreaking” experience of being “locked up” in one of Waystar’s cruises, but “you get to stay in the same place the whole time.” Even Kendall and Roman describe it as “depressing” and “warehousing the elderly and keeping them drunk on content while they suck them dry.”

Doderick appeared in Succession’s pilot in 2018, with Greg dressed up as the character in his brief job at a Waystar theme park.

The original “Arbeit macht frei” inscription appeared on the entrances of the Auschwitz, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, Gross-Rosen, and Theresienstadt concentration camps. In his book ‘The Kingdom of Auschwitz’, Otto Friedrich spoke about the decision to use the phrase, which came from SS General Theodor Eicke.

“He seems not to have intended it as a mockery, nor even to have intended it literally, as a false promise that those who worked to exhaustion would eventually be released, but rather as a kind of mystical declaration that self-sacrifice in the form of endless labor does in itself bring a kind of spiritual freedom,” he wrote.

Succession Season 4 Episodes 1-6 are streaming on HBO and Sky now. Episode 7 will be available to watch on May 7 in the US and May 8 in the UK. Check out our other coverage below:

Season 4 cast | Season 4 release schedule | Season 4 runtimes | Is Succession based on a real family? | Who will succeed Logan Roy? | What time does Succession drop?