Feuchtwanger, Lion

(1884-1958)

   novelist; his best work treated the problem of being Jewish in a non-Jewish world. Born to an Orthodox family in Munich, he studied philosophy, German language, and anthropology and com-pleted a doctorate in 1907. Through his drama reviews (written for Siegfried Jacobsohn's* Schaubuhne) and adaptations of theater* works (in 1923 he col-laborated with Bertolt Brecht* on The Life of Edward IT), he ascertained his gift as a novelist.

   Feuchtwanger was a master of the historical novel, consolidating contempo-rary themes with bizarre individual experiences and complex historical scenery. Using a thorough knowledge of historical detail and playing the role of an enlightened philosopher, he was partial to both ancient Jewish history and the dilemmas of Jewish existence. His best-known works are Jud Süss (Jew Süss, 1925; the Nazis transformed it in 1940 into a viciously anti-Semitic film*), Erfolg (Success, 1930), and the trilogy Josephus (1932-1935). In his diary the writer Robert Musil* described Feuchtwanger as vapid yet manifesting the tal-ents of a great author. This typically German critique was prompted by Feucht-wanger s blending of literature and history, deemed an aberration by Musil. The reproach notwithstanding, Erfolg brought Feuchtwanger a Nobel Prize nomi-nation.

   Despite his progressivism, Feuchtwanger s politics were indistinct in his early writings; indeed, believing politics and culture incompatible, he objected in 1918 when Jacobsohn changed the name of the Schaubuhne to Weltbuhne.* But with the rise of the NSDAP and through his work with Brecht, he grew sympathetic to communism. Having satirized the Nazis in Erfolg, Feuchtwanger, who in early 1933 was on tour in New York, was forced into exile. By the late 1930s his anti-Nazi propaganda efforts were linked with a naïve sympathy for the Soviet Union.* Living in southern France, he fled to Portugal in 1940 after brief internment as a German national. He made his way to the United States in 1941.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon;Deak, Weimar Germany's Left-Wing Tntellectuals; NDB, vol. 5.