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Lion Feuchtwanger (pseudonym: J.L. Wetcheek) (7 July 1884 - 21 December 1958) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
-Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish novelist and playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
.

Early career and persecution
Lion served in the German Army during World War I
World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
, an experience that led to a leftist tilt in his writings.






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Lion Feuchtwanger (pseudonym: J.L. Wetcheek) (7 July 1884 - 21 December 1958) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
-Jew
Jew

A Jew is a member of the Jewish people, an ethnoreligious group that traces its ancestry to the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East....
ish novelist and playwright
Playwright

A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes dramatic literature or drama. These works may be written specifically to be performed by actors or they may be closet dramas or literary works written using dramatic forms but not meant for performance....
.

Background


Feuchtwanger was born in Munich
Munich

Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Northern Limestone Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg....
 in 1884, and raised in a Jewish household. He studied literature and philosophy in the universities in Munich
Munich

Munich is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Munich is located on the River Isar north of the Northern Limestone Alps. Munich is the third largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Hamburg....
 and Berlin
Berlin

Berlin is the Capital of Germany city and one of sixteen States of Germany of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is the country's largest city....
.

Early career and persecution


Lion served in the German Army during World War I
World War I

World War I, or the First World War , was a global military conflict which involved the Great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War I and the Central Powers....
, an experience that led to a leftist tilt in his writings. After studying a variety of subjects, he became a theater critic and founded the culture magazing "Der Spiegel" in 1908. He soon became a figure in the literary world, and was sought out by the young Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht

was a Germany poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the Twentieth-century theatre, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and Theatre, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble?the post-war theatre company operated by Brec...
, with whom he collaborated on drafts of Brecht's early work, The Life of Edward II of England
The Life of Edward II of England

The Life of Edward II of England , also known as Edward II, is an Theatrical adaptation by the Germany Modernism playwright Bertolt Brecht of the 16th-century historical tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, Edward II ....
, in 1923-24. According to Feuchtwanger's widow, Marta, Feuchtwanger was a possible source for the titles of two other Brecht works, including Drums in the Night
Drums in the Night

Drums in the Night is a Play by the Germany Modernism playwright Bertolt Brecht. Brecht wrote it between 1918 and 1920, and it received its first theatrical production in 1922....
 (first called Spartakus by Brecht).

Feuchtwanger was already well-known throughout Germany in 1925 when his first popular novel, Jud Süß
Jud Süß (Feuchtwanger novel)

Jud S?? is a 1925 historical novel by Lion_Feuchtwanger based on the life of Joseph S?? Oppenheimer....
 (translated as Power), appeared. He also published Erfolg (m. "Success"), the fictionalized account of the rise and fall of the Nazi Party (which he considered, in 1930, a thing of the past) during the inflation
Inflation

In economics, inflation is a rise in the general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time. The term "inflation" once referred to increases in the money supply ; however, economic debates about the relationship between money supply and price levels have led to its primary use today in describing price inflatio...
 era. The new fascist regime soon began persecuting him, and while he was on a speaking tour of America
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
, in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the Capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790....
, he was a guest of honor at a dinner hosted by then German ambassador Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron
Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron

File:Bundesarchiv Bild 102-11795, Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron.jpgFriedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron was a Germany Ambassador to the United States under the Weimar Republic, from 1928 until April 14, 1933....
. That same day (January 30, 1933) Hitler was appointed Chancellor, and the next day, Prittwitz resigned from the diplomatic corps and called Feuchtwanger and recommended that he not return home.

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
Sanary-sur-Mer

The communes of France of Sanary-sur-Mer is a seaside resort in the departments of France of Var in Provence, located from Toulon and from Marseille, in the south of France....
. His works were included among those burned during the May 10, 1933 book burning
Book burning

Book burning is the practice of destroying, often ceremony, one or more copies of a book or other written material. In modern times, other forms of media, such as gramophone record, Video, and Compact disc have also been ceremoniously burned, torched, or shredded....
s held across Germany. On August 25, 1933, an official Nazi paper, Reichsanzeiger, included Feuchtwanger's name in the first 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 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", as mentioned in The Devil in France (Der Teufel in Frankreich).

Still, the Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels
Goebbels

Goebbels is a surname common in the Rhineland derived from G?bbl, a nickname for the names Godebald and Godebert. It may refer to:*Joseph Goebbels , Germany propaganda minister...
 paid Feuchtwanger the dubious compliment of having his book Jud Süß
Jud Süß

Jud S?? is a novella by Wilhelm Hauff about a businessman who believes he is a Jew, and whose unfair business practices result in the betrayal of an innocent girl....
 made into a film in 1940 - of course, with an outrageous anti-Semitic 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
Appeasement

Appeasement is "the policy of settling international quarrels by admitting and satisfying grievances through rational negotiation and compromise, thereby avoiding the resort to an armed conflict which would be expensive, bloody, and possibly dangerous." The term is most often applied to the foreign policy of United Kingdom Prime Minister of t...
 towards Hitler. He remembered that American politicians also had suggested "Hitler be given a chance." With the publication of The Oppermanns in 1933 he became a prominent spokesman in opposition to the Third Reich. Within a year, the novel was translated to Czech
Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czech people worldwide....
, Danish
Danish language

Danish is one of the North Germanic languages , a sub-group of the Germanic languages branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany where it holds the status of minority language....
, English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
, Finnish
Finnish language

Finnish is the language spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by Finnish people outside of Finland. It is one of the official languages of Finland and an official minority language in Sweden....
, Hebrew
Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic languages of the Afro-Asiatic languages. Modern Hebrew is spoken by more than seven million people in Israel and Classical Hebrew is used for prayer or study in Jews communities around the world....
, Hungarian
Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic languages unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries....
, Norwegian
Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic languages language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is an official language. It is also spoken as a second language among Norwegian-Americans in the United States of America, especially in the central northern states....
, Polish
Polish language

Polish , an official language of Poland, has the largest number of speakers of any West Slavic languages. Polish-speakers use the language in a uniform manner through most of Poland, and it has a regular orthography....
 and Swedish
Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic languages language, spoken by around 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the coast and on the ?land islands....
 languages.

In 1936, still in Sanary, he wrote The Pretender (Der falsche Nero), in which he compared the Roman
Roman Empire

The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
 upstart Terentius Maximus
Terentius Maximus

Terentius Maximus was a Roman Empire also known as the Pseudo-Nero who rebelled during the reign of Titus, but was suppressed. He resembled Nero in appearance and in action, as he was known to perform singing with the accompaniment of the lyre....
, who had claimed to be Nero
Nero

Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus , born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, also called Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus, was the fifth and final Roman emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty....
, with Hitler.

The following year he traveled to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a Constitution of the Soviet Union socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991.The name is a translation of the , romanization of Russian Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik, abbreviated ????, SSSR....
. His notes about life in Moscow, Moskau 1937, show him praising life under Stalin and evidently against the international image of the Great Terror; he speaks approvingly of the Moscow Trials
Moscow Trials

The Moscow Trials were a series of trials of political opponents of Joseph Stalin during the Great Purge. Many of the defendants were executed....
. The book has been criticized as a work of naive apologism
Apologism

Apologism is the metaphysics philosophy that argues that it is wrong for humans to attempt to alter the conditions of life in the mortal sphere of influence....
.

Imprisonment and escape


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

Les Milles is a village, part of the communes of France of Aix-en-Provence, in southern France.See also* Camp des Milles...
 (Camp des Milles
Camp des Milles

The Camp des Milles was a France internment camp, opened in September 1939, in a former tile factory near the village of Les Milles, part of the communes of France of Aix-en-Provence ....
). In 1941, he published a memoir of his internment, The Devil in France (Der Teufel in Frankreich). He escaped Les Milles with the help of his wife Marta, Varian Fry
Varian Fry

Varian Mackey Fry was a Taft School and Harvard University educated American journalist who ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped approximately 2,000 to 4,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust....
, an American journalist who helped refugees escape from occupied France, Hiram Bingham IV
Hiram Bingham IV

Hiram "Harry" Bingham IV was an United States diplomat. He served as a Vice-Consul in Marseille, France, during World War II, and helped over 2,500 Jews to flee from France as Nazism forces advanced....
, US Vice Consul in Marseilles, and the Reverend Waitstill
Waitstill Sharp

Waitstill Hastings Sharp was a Unitarianism minister. He was the son of naturalist author and professor Dallas Lore Sharp and Grace Hastings. With his wife Martha Sharp, he helped hundreds of Jews escape The Holocaust in Czechoslovakia during World War II....
 and Martha Sharp
Martha Sharp

Martha Ingham Dickie Sharp-Cogan was an United States philanthropist who, along with her husband Waitstill Sharp, helped hundreds of Jews to escape Nazi persecution by sending them off through Czechoslovakia....
, a Unitarian minister and his wife who were in Europe on a similar mission as Fry. The Rev. Sharp volunteered to accompany Feuchtwanger by rail from Marseilles across Spain to Lisbon. If Feuchtwanger had been recognized at border crossings in France or Spain, he would have been detained and turned over to the Gestapo. Realizing that even in Portugal Feuchtwanger was still not out of reach of the Nazis, Martha Sharp gave up her own berth on the Excalibur, so Feuchtwanger could sail immediately for New York City with her husband.

Exile and residence in America


Feuchtwanger eventually received asylum
Refugee

Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecutionOwing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality,...
 in the United States, settled in Los Angeles in 1941. He bought Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades, California in 1943, and continued to write there until his death in 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 promoting the work of her husband. Before her death in 1987, Marta Feuchtwanger donated her husband's papers, photos and personal library to the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, housed within Special Collections in the Doheny Memorial Library at the University of Southern California
University of Southern California

The University of Southern California is a private university, nonsectarian, research university located in the University Park, Los Angeles, California neighborhood in Los Angeles, California, California, United States....
.

Works

  • Die häßliche Herzogin Margarete Maultasch (The Ugly Duchess), 1923 -- about Margarete Maultasch
    Margarete Maultasch

    Margarete Maultasch was the last Countess of Tyrol from the Meinhardiner dynasty. Upon her death, the Tyrol became united with the Habsburg patrimony....
     (14th century in Tyrol
    Tyrol

    Tyrol is a region in Western Central Europe, which included the present day States of Austria of Tyrol , the Regions of Italy Trentino-Alto Adige/S?dtirol and three Comunes of the Veneto Regions of Italy ....
    )
  • Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England (The Life of Edward II of England
    The Life of Edward II of England

    The Life of Edward II of England , also known as Edward II, is an Theatrical adaptation by the Germany Modernism playwright Bertolt Brecht of the 16th-century historical tragedy by Christopher Marlowe, Edward II ....
    ), 1924: written with Bertolt Brecht
    Bertolt Brecht

    was a Germany poet, playwright, and theatre director. An influential theatre practitioner of the Twentieth-century theatre, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and Theatre, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble?the post-war theatre company operated by Brec...
    .
  • Jud Süß
    Jud Süß (Feuchtwanger novel)

    Jud S?? is a 1925 historical novel by Lion_Feuchtwanger based on the life of Joseph S?? Oppenheimer....
     (Jew Suess, Power), 1925.
  • Die Geschwister Oppermann, (The Oppermanns), 1933.
  • Marianne in Indien und sieben andere Erzählungen (Marianne in Indien, Höhenflugrekord, Stierkampf, Polfahrt, Nachsaison, Herrn Hannsickes Wiedergeburt, Panzerkreuzer Orlow, Geschichte des Gehirnphysiologen Dr. Bl.), 1934 -- title translated into English as Little Tales and as Marianne in India and seven other tales (Marianne in India, Altitude Record, Bullfight, Polar Expedition, The Little Season, Herr Hannsicke's Second Birth, The Armored Cruiser "Orlov", History of the Brain Specialist Dr. Bl.)
  • Der falsche Nero (The Pretender), 1936 -- about Terentius Maximus
    Terentius Maximus

    Terentius Maximus was a Roman Empire also known as the Pseudo-Nero who rebelled during the reign of Titus, but was suppressed. He resembled Nero in appearance and in action, as he was known to perform singing with the accompaniment of the lyre....
    , 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
    Benjamin Franklin

    Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author and Printer , Satire, list of political philosophers, politician, scientist, inventor, activism, statesman, and diplomacy....
     beginning in 1776's Paris
  • Goya, 1951 -- a novel about the famous painter Francisco Goya
    Francisco Goya

    Francisco Jos? de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish Painting and Printmaking. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown and a chronicler of history....
     in the 1790s in Spain
  • Narrenweisheit oder Tod und Verklärung des Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Tis folly to be wise, or, Death and transfiguration of Jean-Jaques Rousseau), 1952, a novel set before and during the Great French Revolution
  • Die Jüdin von Toledo
    Die Jüdin von Toledo

    This article describes the book by Lion Feuchtwanger. For the play by Franz Grillparzer, see The Jewess of Toledo.Die J?din von Toledo is a 1955 novel by German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger....
     (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
    Roman Empire

    The Roman Empire was the Roman Republic phase of the Ancient Rome, characterised by an autocracy form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
    • 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


See also


  • Walter Duranty
    Walter Duranty

    Walter Duranty was a Liverpool-born United Kingdom journalist who served as the New York Times Moscow bureau chief from 1922 through 1936....


External links