 | This article includes a list ofgeneral references, butit lacks sufficient correspondinginline citations. Please help toimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(August 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Lion Feuchtwanger | |
|---|---|
 Feuchtwanger in 1933 | |
| Born | (1884-07-07)7 July 1884 Munich |
| Died | 21 December 1958(1958-12-21) (aged 74) Los Angeles |
| Occupation | Novelist, playwright, essayist, theatre critic |
| Notable works | Jud Süß (1925) The Oppermanns (1933) |
| Signature | |
 | |
Lion Feuchtwanger (German:[ˈliːɔnˈfɔʏçtˌvaŋɐ]ⓘ; 7 July 1884 – 21 December 1958) was aGerman Jewish novelist and playwright. A prominent figure in the literary world ofWeimar Germany, he influenced contemporaries including playwrightBertolt Brecht.
Feuchtwanger'sJudaism and fierce criticism of theNazi Party, years before it assumed power, ensured that he would be a target of government-sponsored persecution afterAdolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Following a brief period of internment in France and a harrowing escape fromcontinental Europe, he found asylum in the United States, where he died in 1958.
Feuchtwanger'sJewish ancestors originated from theMiddle Franconian city ofFeuchtwangen; following apogrom in 1555, it had expelled all its resident Jews. Some of the expellees subsequently settled inFürth, where they were called the "Feuchtwangers", meaning those from Feuchtwangen.[1] Feuchtwanger's grandfather Elkan moved toMunich in the middle of the 19th century.[2]
Lion Feuchtwanger was born in 1884 toOrthodox Jewishmargarine manufacturer Sigmund Feuchtwanger and his wife, Johanna (née Bodenheimer). He was the oldest in a family of nine siblings of whom another two, Martin andLudwig Feuchtwanger, also became authors; Ludwig's son is the London-based historianEdgar Feuchtwanger (born 1924).[3] Two of his sisters settled in Palestine following the rise of the Nazi Party. One was killed in a concentration camp, and another settled in New York.
Feuchtwanger made his first attempt at writing while still a secondary-school student and won an award. In 1903, in Munich, he passed hisAbitur examinations at an elite school, the Wilhelmsgymnasium. He then studied history, philosophy and German philology in Munich andBerlin. He received hisPhD in 1907, underFrancis Muncker, with a study ofHeinrich Heine's unfinished 1840 novelThe Rabbi ofBacharach.
After studying a variety of subjects, he became a theatre critic and founded the culture magazineDer Spiegel in 1908[4] (no connection to the post-WWII magazineof the same name). The first issue appeared on 30 April. After 15 issues and six months,Der Spiegel merged withSiegfried Jacobsohn's journalDie Schaubühne (renamed in 1918 toDie Weltbühne) for which Feuchtwanger continued to write. He was one of the contributors of the Swedish avant-garde magazineThalia between 1910 and 1913.[5] In 1912, he married a Jewish merchant's daughter,Marta Loeffler. She was pregnant at the wedding, but the child died shortly after birth.[citation needed]
After the outbreak of theFirst World War in 1914, Feuchtwanger served in the German military (November 1914), but was released early for health reasons. His experience as a soldier contributed to his leftist writings.[citation needed]
In 1916, he published a play based on the story ofJoseph Süß Oppenheimer, which premiered in 1917, but Feuchtwanger withdrew it a couple of years later as he was dissatisfied with it.[citation needed]
During theGerman Revolution of 1918–1919, Feuchtwanger was ill and unable to participate.[clarification needed][citation needed]
Feuchtwanger soon became a figure in the literary world, and he was sought out by the youngBertolt Brecht. Both collaborated on drafts of Brecht's early work,The Life of Edward II of England, in 1923–1924.[6] According to Feuchtwanger's widow, Marta, Feuchtwanger was a possible source for the titles of two other Brecht works, includingDrums in the Night (first calledSpartakus by Brecht).[7]
After some success as a playwright, Feuchtwanger shifted his emphasis to writing historical novels. His most successful work in this genre wasJud Süß (Süss, the Jew), written 1921–1922, published 1925, which was well received internationally. His second great success wasThe Ugly DuchessMargarete Maultasch. For professional reasons, he moved to Berlin in 1925 and then to a large villa inGrunewald in 1932. He published the first part of his Josephus trilogy,The Jewish War, in 1932.
In 1930, and wrote his first socio-political novelErfolg (Success) [de;ru;uk], based on the events ofBeer Hall Putsch, as his reaction on the impending threat of Nazism; the novel would become the first entry inWartesaal trilogy about the rise of Nazism in Germany. He continued the trilogy withThe Oppermanns in 1933, which would become one of his best-known books.
Feuchtwanger was one of the first to produce propaganda against Hitler and the Nazi Party. As early as 1920 he published in the satirical textConversations with the Wandering Jew:
Towers of Hebrew books were burning, and bonfires were erected as high as the clouds, and people burnt to char, innumerable, and voices of priests sang in accompaniment:Gloria in excelsis Deo. Traces of men, women, children dragged themselves across the square, from all sides, they were naked or in rags, and they had nothing with them but bodies and the tatters of book scrolls – of torn, disgraced book scrolls, soiled with feces. And there followed them men in kaftans and women and children in the clothes of our day, countlessly, endlessly.[8]
In 1930, Feuchtwanger publishedErfolg (Success) [de;ru;uk], a fictionalized account of the rise and fall of the Nazi Party (in 1930, he considered it a thing of the past) during the inflation era. The Nazis soon began persecuting him, and while he was on a speaking tour of America, inWashington, D.C., he was guest of honor at a dinner hosted by the then ambassadorFriedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron on the same day (30 January 1933) that Hitler was appointed Chancellor.[3] The next day, Prittwitz resigned from the diplomatic corps and called Feuchtwanger to recommend that he not return home. Feuchtwanger, however, did not heed his advice and returned to Germany.
In 1933, while Feuchtwanger was on tour, his house was ransacked by government agents who stole or destroyed many items from his extensive library, including invaluable manuscripts of some of his projected works (one of the characters inThe Oppermanns undergoes an identical experience). In the summer of 1933, his name appeared on the first of Hitler'sAusbürgerungsliste, which were documents by which the Nazis arbitrarily deprived Germans of their citizenship and so rendered them stateless. During that time, he published the novelThe Oppermanns. Feuchtwanger and his wife did not return to Germany but moved toSouthern France, settling inSanary-sur-Mer. His works were included among those burned in the 10 May 1933Nazi book burnings held across Germany. LaterSuccess andThe Oppermanns would become the first two parts of theWartesaal ("The Waiting Room") trilogy.
On 25 August 1933, the official German government gazette,Reichsanzeiger, included Feuchtwanger's name on the list of those whose German citizenship was revoked because of "disloyalty to the German Reich and the German people." Because Feuchtwanger had addressed and predicted many of the Nazis' crimes even before they came to power, Hitler considered him a personal enemy, and the Nazis designated Feuchtwanger as the "Enemy of the state number one," as mentioned inThe Devil in France.
In his writings, Feuchtwanger exposed Nazi racist policies years before the British and French governments abandoned their policy ofappeasement towards Hitler. He remembered that American politicians were also among those who suggested that "Hitler be given a chance". With the publication ofSuccess in 1930 andThe Oppermanns in 1933, he became a prominent spokesman in opposition to theThird Reich. Within a year, the novel was translated into theCzech,Danish, English,Finnish,Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian,Polish andSwedish languages. In 1936, still in Sanary, he wroteThe Pretender (Der falsche Nero), in which he compared the Roman upstartTerentius Maximus, who had claimed to beNero, with Hitler.
After leaving Germany in 1933, Feuchtwanger lived in Sanary-sur-Mer. The high sales of his books, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, allowed him a relatively comfortable life in exile. In 1940, he finishedWartesaal with the third novel,Exil (translated into English asParis Gazette)[9]
When France declared war on Germany in 1939, Feuchtwanger was interned for a few weeks inCamp des Milles. When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Feuchtwanger was captured and again imprisoned at Les Milles.[10] Later, the prisoners of Les Milles were moved to a makeshift tent-camp nearNîmes because of the advance of German troops. From there, he was smuggled toMarseille disguised as a woman. After months of waiting in Marseille, he fled with his wife Marta to the United States via Spain and Portugal, staying briefly inEstoril, with the help of several Americans involved in helping artists and writers in danger of persecution by Nazi Germany escape Nazi-controlled Europe.[11] His rescuers includedVarian Fry (an American journalist who helped refugees escape from occupied France);Hiram Bingham IV (US Vice Consul in Marseille); Myles Standish (US Vice Consul in Marseille);Waitstill Sharp andMartha Sharp (aUnitarian minister and his wife who were in Europe on a similar mission as Fry).
Waitstill Sharp volunteered to accompany Feuchtwanger by rail from Marseille, across Spain, toLisbon. Had Feuchtwanger been recognized at border crossings in France or Spain, he might have been detained and turned over to theGestapo. Realizing that Feuchtwanger might be abducted by Nazi agents even in Portugal, Martha Sharp gave up her own berth on theExcalibur so Feuchtwanger could sail immediately forNew York City with her husband.
Feuchtwanger's arrival in New York in early October 1940 had adverse consequences on the escape organizations in France. The novelist "out of an unplumbable naivete or an unforgivable and opportunistic ego" described his escape in detail toThe New York Times. His rescuers in France were endangered by Feuchtwanger's indiscretions. The news story soon got to Europe with the consequence that Spain closed its borders, possibly under pressure from Nazi Germany. The closed border with Spain caused rescue operations to nearly cease for the remainder of the year.[12]
Grantedpolitical asylum in the United States, Feuchtwanger settled in Los Angeles in 1941, when he published a memoir of his internment,The Devil in France (Der Teufel in Frankreich).
In 1943, Feuchtwanger boughtVilla Aurora inPacific Palisades, California; he continued to write there until his death in 1958. In 1944, he cofounded the publishing house Aurora-Verlag inNew York City.
In response to the Western Powers pursuing a policy of appeasement of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy (the Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935; allowing the German reoccupation of theRhineland (1936); non-intervention against the 1936 Falangist Coup in Spain; Italy's attack onAbyssinia in 1935), Feuchtwanger flirted withSoviet communism out of a longing to find the staunchest enemy of Germany's National Socialism.[13]
From November 1936 to February 1937 he travelled to theSoviet Union. In his book,Moskau 1937, he praised life underJoseph Stalin. Feuchtwanger also defended theGreat Purge and theshow trials which were then taking place against both real and imaginedTrotskyites and "enemies of the people". Feuchtwanger's praise of Stalin triggered outrage fromArnold Zweig andFranz Werfel.[14] The book has been criticized by Trotskyists as a work of naiveapologism.[15] Feuchtwanger's friendly attitude toward Stalin later delayed his naturalization in the United States.
During theMcCarthy era, Feuchtwanger became the target of suspicion as a pro-Soviet intellectual. In 1947 he wrote a play about theSalem Witch Trials,Wahn oder der Teufel in Boston (Delusion, or The Devil in Boston), thus anticipating the theme ofThe Crucible (1953) byArthur Miller;Wahn premiered in Germany in 1949. It was translated byJune Barrows Mussey and performed in Los Angeles in 1953 under the title "The Devil in Boston."[16] In New York a Yiddish translation was shown. At the end of life, Feuchtwanger dealt with Jewish themes again (The Jewess of Toledo) and advocated for theState of Israel as a Jewish refuge.
In 1953, Feuchtwanger won theNational Prize of East Germany first Class for art and literature.
Lion Feuchtwanger became ill withstomach cancer in 1957. After several operations he died from internal bleeding in late 1958. His wife Marta continued to live in their house on the coast and remained an important figure in the exile community, devoting the remainder of her life to the work of her husband. Before her death in 1987,Marta Feuchtwanger donated her husband's papers, photos and personal library to theFeuchtwanger Memorial Library, housed within the Special Collections of theDoheny Memorial Library at theUniversity of Southern California.
Feuchtwanger was already well known throughout Germany in 1925, when his first popular novel,Jud Süß (Jew Suss), appeared. The story ofJoseph Süß Oppenheimer had been the subject of a number of literary and dramatic treatments over the course of the past century, the earliestWilhelm Hauff's 1827 novella. The most successful literary adaptation was Feuchtwanger's 1925novel, based on a play he had written in 1916 but then withdrawn. Feuchtwanger intended his portrayal of Süß not as an antisemitic slur but as a study of the tragedy caused by the human weaknesses of greed, pride, and ambition.
The novel was rejected by the major publishing houses and then was reluctantly taken on by a small publishing house. However, the novel was so well received that it went through five printings of 39,000 copies within a year as well as being translated into 17 languages by 1931. The novel's success established Feuchtwanger as a major German author as well as giving him a royalty stream that afforded him a measure of financial independence for the rest of his life.[17]
His drama and his hugely successful novel were adapted for the cinema screen initially in a sympathetic version produced atDenham Studios in Great Britain in 1934 under the direction of fellow German expatriateLothar Mendes with one of Germany's greatest actors, also a refugee from Nazi persecution,Conrad Veidt:Jew Süss.[18]
The NSDAP party in Germany then made their own anti-Semitic version under the very same title, to undercut the British film.[19] TheNazi film industry version was made under the direction ofVeit Harlan:Jud Süß (1940). Unlike the British version, the anti-Semitic film, released in 1940, portrays Oppenheimer as an evil character.[20]
In January 1933, Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany. Feuchtwanger reacted to the regime change with the novelThe Oppermanns. At first, Feuchtwanger was writing it as a screenplay proposed by the British Government, however, it was never completed and instead was reworked into a novel, resulting in the book's style, which differs with quick-cuts and literary montage sequences. After being released the same year, it instantly became popular and was translated into over 10 languages.Klaus Mann later praised the novel as the "most striking, most widely read narrative description of the calamity that descended over Germany"; Frederick S. Roffman wrote inThe New York Times in 1983 that "no single historical or fictional work has more tellingly or insightfully depicted the relentless disintegration of German humanism, the insidious manner in which Nazism began to permeate the fabric of German society."
In 2018,Deutsche Welle put the novel in their "100 German Must-Reads" list, called it "Feuchtwanger's most recognized novel" and wrote that today it is "considered one of the most important literary works documenting the downfall of a democracy".[21][22][23]
As Roffman noted, Feuchtwanger's popularity has declined after the 1950s in the English-speaking countries, while remaining strong in the German-speaking ones.[22] In 2022, the novel was rediscovered, and a new version of the English translation ofThe Oppermanns was released, with an introduction byJoshua Cohen, who also noted the lack of Feuchtwanger's popularity in English-speaking countries.
Given that Feuchtwanger’s books were so explicitly and accessibly addressed to a general audience, it’s poignant that he has none now. His novels go unread; his plays go unperformed; he’s a first-class writer without a first-class berth; a classic firebrand without a canon.[21]
In his review of the novel, Cohen calls it "one of the last masterpieces of German Jewish culture".[21]
Türme von hebräischen Büchern verbrannten, und Scheiterhaufen waren aufgerichtet, hoch bis in die Wolken, und Menschen verkohlten, zahllose, und Priesterstimmen sangen dazu: Gloria in excelsis Deo. Züge von Männern, Frauen, Kindern schleppten sich über den Platz, von allen Seiten; sie waren nackt oder in Lumpen, und sie hatten nichts mit sich als Leichen und die Fetzen von Bücherrollen, von zerrissenen, geschändeten, mit Kot besudelten Bücherrollen. Und ihnen folgten Männer im Kaftan und Frauen und Kinder in den Kleidern unserer Tage, zahllos, endlos.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Artists | |
| People | |
| Other | |
