Kinga S. Bloch
“In itself it is nothing. Nothing but a book: parchment, colouring, ink. Yet the most perishable material is at the same time the most durable substance in the world…”
Lion Feuchtwanger, The Jew of Rome
Today, we would like you to meet one of the most widely read and renowned German-Jewish authors of the 20th century: Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958). Sitting on one of the shelves in the Leo Baeck Institute’s library is half a metre of sharp observation, attentive inquiry, and critical reflection about people, politics, and the power of the arts. Our collection features early editions of some of the works that established Feuchtwanger’s global acclaim; an exceptionally talented and productive writer whose life alone provides enough material for a nail-biting series of novels about the impact of Nazism during the Weimar Republic, his flight from Nazi Germany, and the experience of exile.
Lion Jacob Arje Feuchtwanger was born in Munich on 7th July 1884 into a German-Jewish dynasty of successful entrepreneurs. His grandfather Elkan was involved in the emerging innovative food industry in late 19th century Munich, founding a margarine factory that soon had branches in Romania, the Netherlands and Egypt. Spending his childhood and formative years in the Bavarian capital, Lion Feuchtwanger, the oldest of nine siblings, grew up in an assimilated yet observant Orthodox environment. After attending St. Anna’s primary school in the beautiful quarter of Lehel, Feuchtwanger continued his schooling at the conservative Wilhelmsgymnasium. The latter was a popular choice amongst German-Jewish families because of its high academic standard and the option to attend lessons in Hebrew and Jewish religious education.
Feuchtwanger’s desire to become a writer already manifested during his schooldays. He enjoyed first successes and public attention at the age of 13 when a play that he had written with Paul Drey to mark the Bavarian prince regent’s 80th birthday was published in the local papers and performed at the theatre. His early years and much of his oeuvre were deeply influenced by his German-Jewish roots, a passion for literature, and last, but certainly not least, by the unique socio-political fabric of his hometown Munich. In his lifetime, the beautiful town on the river Isar that navigated the challenges of modernity, political upheaval and Bavarian bucolic Gemütlichkeit in a unique, yet not always inspiring manner, went from being a haven for the Schwabing avant-garde, a famous group of artists, writers, painters, and all sorts of libertines in the early 20th century, to becoming the ‘capitol’ of the Nazi movement. The combination of his German-Jewish origins, a fervent belief in the transformative power of art and literature, and a sharp analytical eye for the ambiguities, rifts, and extremes shaping contemporary society and politics defined Lion Feuchtwanger’s literary oeuvre in a unique manner.
Feuchtwanger was not only a gifted writer but also an accomplished academic. He studied history, philosophy, and German philology in Munich and Berlin, culminating in a PhD in 1907 with a thesis on Heinrich Heine’s unfinished text Der Rabbi von Bacharach (The Rabbi of Bacharach). During his time at the Bavarian Ludwig Maximilians Universität, Feuchtwanger became a prominent figure in Munich’s intellectual circles. In 1908, he launched his own cultural periodical, Spigel. However, after only 15 editions and six months, the publication merged with Siegfried Jakobsohn’s Berlin-based paper Die Schaubühne (which later became the renowned Die Weltbühne in 1918). Although initially focused on theatre, Die Weltbühne became legendary for its contributions to Weimar culture and its role in exposing Germany’s secret rearmament in violation of the Treaty of Versailles – a revelation that led to its editor, Carl von Ossietzky, being imprisoned by the Nazis and later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Feuchtwanger continued to contribute to Die Schaubühne, gaining a solid reputation as a theatre critic within this influential publication. He pursued a journalistic career for several years before dedicating his entire time to writing. His keen sense for quality in works of the stage manifested in his lifelong friendship with the legendary German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956); it is often said that Lion Feuchtwanger was the person who discovered and fostered Brecht’s unique talent and his career like no one else.
Feuchtwanger also appears to have been an adventurous and determined man who was not easily phased by challenges and failures. In 1912 he married Marta Löffler (1891–1987), who was from an affluent, Munich based German-Jewish family that practiced Reform Judaism. It is said that Marta was lively and beautiful, as well as of remarkable intellect; she remained Lion Feuchtwanger’s most important critic throughout his career. She was keen on sports and made sure her husband did physical exercise regularly and maintained a healthy lifestyle. Their marriage was, however, not only moulded by happy experiences. When the couple spent their honeymoon travelling through Europe, their newborn daughter, Elisabeth-Marianne, died shortly after birth. The grieving parents decided to extend their journey, addressing their loss by being on the move.
In 1914, after an extensive journey through Italy, they encountered the news of the outbreak of World War One in Northern Africa. In Tunis, Lion got arrested by French military police and was put in detention for hostile aliens. With the help of Marta, the couple managed a narrow escape from Lion being imprisoned as a hostile alien. They boarded the Città di Messina, an Italian boat that was about to leave for Palermo whilst Lion was on short leave from prison for a few hours under the premise not to leave the city. He successfully managed hiding from a French patrol of the vessel who were looking for German stowaways. To Feuchtwanger’s deep regret though, he was forced leave his confiscated notes from the two-year long journey around Sicily and North Africa behind on the way to safety. It would sadly not be the last time he lost his work and his books escaping from a perilous situation. Upon their return to Munich, Lion was drafted into military service. Due to his fragile health, he was soon released from the infantry, remaining a fervent pacifist until the end of his life. Nonetheless, he stated that the experience of war impacted his work significantly, widening the focus of his texts from inner reflection to wider, societal and political themes. Heusler (2014) states that one could observe Feuchtwanger moving from aesthetic themes to a political stance in his writing after 1914/15, the shift manifesting in a historical drama that presented a sharp critical commentary on Feuchtwanger’s contemporary society.
Roughly ten years after marrying Marta and their adventurous travels, Feuchtwanger wrote the historical novel Jud Süß, a work that gained unprecedented international acclaim. Published in 1925 in Germany and with an English edition following in 1926, published by Martin Secker in the UK and in the USA by Viking Press, Feuchtwanger’s atmospheric retelling of the life story of an 18th century court Jew, Joseph Süß Oppenheimer of Württemberg, was particularly well received abroad. The global success of this work was a turning point in Feuchtwanger’s career and would also have a significant impact on his life in exile from Nazi Germany. Lion Feuchtwanger was one of the few voices that saw and openly addressed the violent and destructive nature of Nazi ideology early on. In his groundbreaking and highly popular novel Erfolg (Success, 1930), he presents a nuanced and sharp analysis of the atmosphere and societal structures that fostered the ascent of Hitler and his party in Bavaria. It was thus no surprise that Lion Feuchtwanger was amongst the first intellectuals to become a persona non grata in Nazi Germany. When the Nazis came to power in January 1933, the author cautiously refrained from returning to Germany from a US tour. His home in Berlin was plundered and occupied by the SA in March of the same year, his staff abused by the intruders. We do not have to guess how Feuchtwanger felt about the assault on his employees, his property and the theft of his lovingly collected library. In an open letter addressed to the person living in the house that was stolen from him, he writes:
‘I do not know your name or how you came into possession of my house [Mr. X].
[…] I wonder to what use you have put the two rooms which formerly contained my library. I have been told, Mr. X, that books are not very popular in the Reich in which you live, and whoever shows interest in them is likely to get into difficulties. I, for instance, read your “Führer’s” book and guilelessly remarked that his 140,000 words were 140,000 offenses against the spirit of the German language. The result of this remark is that you are now living in my house. Sometimes I wonder to what uses bookcases can be put in the Third Reich. […]
And what have you done with my terrarium which stood at one of the windows of my study? Did they actually kill my turtles and my lizards because their owner was of an “alien race”? And were the flower beds and the rock garden much damaged when the SA-men, shooting as they ran, pursued my sorely beaten concierge across the garden while he fled into the woods?
Doesn’t it sometimes seem odd to you that you should be living in my house? Your “Führer” is not generally considered a friend of Jewish literature. Isn’t it, therefore, astounding that he should have such a strong predilection for the Old Testament? I myself have heard him quote with much fervor, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” (by which he may have meant “A confiscation of property for literary criticism”). And now, through you, he has fulfilled a prophecy of the Old Testament—the saying, “Thou shalt dwell in houses thou hast not builded.”’
Extract from: Lion Feuchtwanger, Pariser Tageblatt, March 1935
Lion Feuchtwanger was on the first list of denaturalised individuals on the so-called Ausbürgerungsliste (expatriation list) that the Nazis released in August 1933. His works were forbidden under Hitler’s regime and featured on lists of ‘books worth burning’ of the National Socialist Student Movement (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Studentenschaft). Read against the grain, the Nazis’ particularly aggressive stance towards the author Lion Feuchtwanger is indeed a testimony to the power of his words. In his novel Success, he pointed out the truth about the party with unforgiving clarity. His analysis of the late Weimar years was one of the reasons why he was stripped of his German citizenship, robbed of his assets, and forbidden to return to the place he called home.
After a short period in the Austrian Alps, the Feuchtwangers spent the spring and early summer of 1933 in Switzerland before setting up a new home in the French town of Sanary-sur-Mer where many German exiles like the brothers Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Arnold Zweig found a temporary home between 1933 and 1940. In the summer of 1933, Lion Feuchtwanger wrote the second part of what would be called The Waiting Room Trilogy (Die Wartesaal-Trilogie): The Oppermanns (Die Geschwister Oppermann, 1933). It tells the story of four German-Jewish siblings, Gustav, Martin, Edgar and Klara and their fate following the Nazis’ rise to power and the increase in antisemitic violence. Here, Feuchtwanger explores the impact of antisemitism on a German-Jewish family in the 1930s, providing yet another lucid analysis of the societal and political mechanisms that made room for a quotidian presence of violence against the German-Jewish minority during the rise of Nazism in Germany.
It was only the first of many works that Feuchtwanger produced in the exile of Southern France where he lived until 1940. In this period, he tirelessly continued to write and read extensively as well as being deeply involved with the community of intellectual exiles. Thanks to the international success of The Oppermanns, Feuchtwanger was able to fund purchases of books to recreate parts of his lost library. Soon, he held an impressive collection of around 2000 volumes at his new home in the ‘Villa Valmer’, the library being a crucial part of his work environment. Heusler states that every book Feuchtwanger added to this collection represented a sense of Heimat to the author. The Feuchtwangers’ home soon developed into a centre for gatherings of the exile community, and the couple were able to lead a relatively pleasant and productive life.
Lion Feuchtwanger’s international acclaim also led to an invitation to travel to Moscow in winter 1936. Among other issues, he was to discuss the option of a movie about his book The Oppermanns, resulting in Grigori Roshal’s Semja Oppengejm (The Oppenheim Family) that was released in 1938. Feuchtwanger was received with a lot of attention and many honours in Soviet Russia. In January 1937, he was even invited to meet Josef Stalin with whom he is said to have conversed for close to three hours. Feuchtwanger summarised his impressions in the controversial book Moscow – My visit described for my friends (Moskau 1937. Ein Reisebericht für meine Freunde) that contains Feuchtwanger’s naïve evaluation of the political, economic, and social landscape in Soviet Russia. The book haunted Feuchtwanger throughout his life. It led to the (false) suspicion of his alleged communist leanings that would have an impact on his status at his last station of exile in the USA.
Back in France, Feuchtwanger worked on the novel Exile (Exil, 1940), that is rooted in his experience of expulsion from one’s Heimat. It explores the threat of Nazi infiltration of the exile community of Paris and the tense atmosphere amongst displaced people. In 1939, when World War Two broke out, the German exiles in France became subject to harsh treatment as enemy aliens. Lion Feuchtwanger was interned in the camp for enemy aliens (Centre de Rassemblement des Étrangers) in Toulon. The prisoners were soon relocated to the camp Les Milles in the vicinity of Aix-en-Provence where Feuchtwanger and his fellow inmates had to endure insufferable circumstances. Marta, yet again, managed to free her husband from internment, rallying the support of the head of the International PEN Club, Jules Romains and the famous author Heinrich Mann, amongst others. In April 1940, however, both Lion and Marta were interned in detention camps yet again. Marta escaped from the camp in Gurs with the help of the Emergency Rescue Committee led by the US journalist and Quaker Varian Fry. Subsequently, Lion was rescued from the camp in Nîmes by impersonating the elderly mother-in-law of US Vice Consul Michael Standish. Eleanor Roosevelt, who had personally met Feuchtwanger on his US tour in 1932/33, initiated his rescue by US diplomats. Prior to the Feuchtwangers’ escape from Europe via Spain and Portugal, Lion hid at the American diplomat Hiram Bigham’s house. The couple had to leave Lisbon on separate vessels though and were reunited in New York. Lion Feuchtwanger never returned to Europe again.
In the USA, Lion Feuchtwanger was yet again forced to rebuild his life anew. The industrious writer commenced a new novel upon his arrival, addressing the dire experiences endured during his internment in France. ‘The Devil in France. My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940’ (Der Teufel in Frankreich, 1942) was published by Viking Press in December 1941. The couple settled in Los Angeles and Lion Feuchtwanger was overjoyed when he finally received the shipment of his books that were stuck in Lisbon until 1942. He spent the remainder of his life in California, where he continued writing. In his final novels, Feuchtwanger returned to historical Jewish themes that he had addressed in his early writings. With The Jewess of Toledo (Die Jüdin von Toledo, 1955) and Jephthah and his Daughter (Jefta und seine Tochter, 1957) he concluded the circle commenced with the Josephus Trilogy (1932–1942) that tells the life story of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, and in his seminal novel Jew Süß (1925).
Despite a deep personal desire to visit Germany and his hometown of Munich again after the war, Lion Feuchtwanger never returned to Europe. His application for US citizenship was not successful due to concerns about his alleged affiliation with communism that were rooted in his unfortunate publication of Moscow (1937), leaving him in a perpetual state of uncertainty and worries about potential remigration issues. Feuchtwanger refrained from leaving the Villa Aurora in the hills of Los Angeles to go on a trip to Germany out of fear to lose yet another place he called home.
It is not possible to address every aspect of Lion Feuchtwanger’s complex personal life and his multifaceted oeuvre here; however, I hope to have triggered some curiosity into this exciting German-Jewish author whose keen observation of societies at a breaking point remain relevant in present times.
Lion Feuchtwanger died at the last station of his exile in California in 1958. His words, however, are still here to provide sharp insights into a society at a tipping point, the experience of exile, and the very essence of being a writer. Today, the author is honoured and remembered in his hometown of Munich, where a square in the neighbourhood where he spent his childhood was named in his honour in 2024. Posters with quotes from his works were scattered all over his former neighbourhoods in town to celebrate the naming of the square. In Los Angeles, his and Marta’s former home, the Villa Aurora, was established in 1995 as an artist residence and venue for international cultural encounters. As an interdisciplinary residence, Villa Aurora carries the memory of the artists and intellectuals who found refuge in California during the Nazi era and who had a significant influence on cultural life on the American West Coast. Since 1995, more than 400 artists have been granted scholarships at Villa Aurora.
His work and life are also subject to the tireless dedication of the International Feuchtwanger Society, founded in 2001 by scholars and journalists from the US and Europe, while Feuchtwanger’s manuscripts and letters, along with those of other German exile writers such as Heinrich Mann, are available at the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, University of Southern California. The Leo Baeck Institute London is honoured to co-host the society’s annual conference in London in September 2024, titled From Weimar to Hope – The Feuchtwangers in the Interwar Period.
Works consulted:
Andreas Heusler, Lion Feuchtwanger. Münchner – Emigrant – Weltbürger, 2014.
Reinhold Jaretzky, Lion Feuchtwanger, 1984.
Lothar Kahn, Lion Feuchtwanger: The Hazards of Exile in: JOHN M. SPALEK and ROBERT F. BELL, Exile: The Writer's Experience, 1982, pp. 157-167.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469658421_spalek
Herbert Krill, Feuchtwanger lebt! (Documentary, 2008).
Elizabeth M. Petuchowski, Some Aspects of the Judaic Element in the Work of Lion Feuchtwanger, in: The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, Volume 23, Issue 1, January 1978, Pages 213–226, https://doi.org/10.1093/leobaeck/23.1.213.
Primary Sources:
Lion Feuchtwanger, “Thou Shalt Dwell in Houses Thou Hast Not Builded” (Pariser Tageblatt, March 20, 1935), published in: German History in Documents and Images, <https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/nazi-germany-1933-1945/ghdi:document-2…; [August 13, 2024].
We would like to thank Tanja Kinkel of the International Feuchtwanger Society for lending us her expertise.
