Lion Feuchtwanger - Family background, Early career and persecution, Imprisonment and escape, Works

Writer, born in Munich, SE Germany. He studied in Berlin and Munich, and won a European reputation with the 18th-c historical novel Jud Süss (1925), as well as the 14th-c tale Die hässliche Herzogin (1923), which as The Ugly Duchess (1927) was a great success in Britain. His thinly disguised satire on Hitler's Munich putsch, Erfolg (1930, Success), earned him the hatred of the Nazis. In 1933 he fled to France, where in 1940 he was interned by the German army, but escaped to the USA. He also wrote numerous dramas, and collaborated with Brecht in a translation of Marlowe's Edward II. His later works included detailed part-biographies of Goya (1952) and Rousseau (1954).

Family background

Feuchtwanger was born in Munich in 1884, and raised in a household that was both observantly Jewish and patriotically German.

Early career and persecution

Lion served in the Germany Army during World War I, an experience that led to a leftist tilt in his writings.

In 1933, while Feuchtwanger was on the 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 in The Oppermanns undergoes an identical experience).

Feuchtwanger and his wife did not return to Germany, moving instead to Southern France, settling in Sanary sur Mer. Because Feuchtwanger had addressed and predicted many of their 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" (this is mentioned in The Devil in France (Der Teufel in Frankreich)).

Still, the Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels paid Feuchtwanger the dubious compliment of having his book Jud Süß made into a film in 1940 - of course, with an outright antisemitic slant added, which did not appear in the original.

In his writings, Feuchtwanger exposed Nazi racist policies years before the official London and Paris abandoned their policy of appeasement towards Hitler.

In 1936, still in Sanary, he wrote The Pretender (Der falsche Nero), in which he compared the Roman upstart Terentius Maximus, who had claimed to be Nero, with Hitler.

Imprisonment and escape

When the Germans invaded France in 1940, Feuchtwanger was captured and imprisoned in an internment camp.

Works

Die häßliche Herzogin Margarete Maultasch (The Ugly Duchess), 1923 -- about Margarete Maultasch (14th century in Tyrol) Jud Süß (Jew Suess, Power), 1925 Der falsche Nero (The Pretender), 1936 -- about Terentius Maximus, the "False Nero" Moskau 1937 (Moscow 1937), 1937 Unholdes Frankreich (Ungracious France, Der Teufel in Frankreich,The Devil in France), 1941 Die Brüder Lautensack (Die Zauberer, Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, The Lautensack Brothers), 1943 Simone, 1944 Die Füchse im Weinberg (Proud Destiny, Waffen für Amerika, Foxes in the Vineyard), 1947/48 - a novel mainly about Pierre Beaumarchais and Benjamin Franklin beginning in 1776's Paris Goya, 1951 -- a novel about the famous painter Francisco Goya in the 1790s in Spain Narrenweisheit oder Tod und Verklärung des Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1952, a novel set before and during the Great French Revolution Die Jüdin von Toledo (Spanische Ballade, Raquel, The Jewess of Toledo), 1955 Jefta und seine Tochter (Jephthah and his Daughter, Jephta and his daughter), 1957 Der Teufel in Frankreich (The Devil in France), 1941 The Wartesaal Trilogy Erfolg. Drei Jahre Geschichte einer Provinz (Success), 1930 Die Geschwister Oppenheim (Die Geschwister Oppermann, The Oppermanns), 1933 Exil, 1940 The Josephus Trilogy -- about Flavius Josephus beginning in the year 60 in Rome Der jüdische Krieg (Josephus), 1932 Die Söhne (The Jews of Rome), 1935 Der Tag wird kommen (Das gelobte Land, The day will come, Josephus and the Emperor), 1942