FEUCHTWANGER, LION

FEUCHTWANGER, LION (1884–1958), German historical novelist. Feuchtwanger was born into a Bavarian-Jewish family. Coming from the Jewish community of Fuerth the Feuchtwangers settled in Munich in the mid-1840s, established a successful private bank and a factory for margarine, and were very active in the Orthodox Synagogenverein Ohel Jakob. Lion Feuchtwanger studied philosophy at Berlin and Munich; in 1907 he received his doctorate from the University of Munich for a thesis on Heine's Rabbi of Bacherach. As a young man he was mainly interested in drama. He wrote about a dozen plays, three of them in collaboration with Brecht. It was after World War I that Feuchtwanger's name first became known. His greatest success came with Jud Suess (1925; English edition Jew Suess, 1926; U.S. edition Power, 1927), a novel about joseph suess oppenheimer , the 18th-century court Jew, which he had originally written as a play. In 1939 this world best seller, which had already been made into a motion picture in Britain, was used by the Nazis as the basis for a viciously antisemitic film. Feuchtwanger's other big success of the 1920s was Die haessliche Herzogin Margarete Maultasch (1923; The Ugly Duchess, 1927), a psychological study of an Austrian historical figure. Erfolg (1930; Success, 1930) daringly exposed the moral corruption of postwar Germany. It was during this period that he began writing his josephus trilogy – Der juedische Krieg (1932; Josephus, 1932), Die Soehne (1935; The Jew of Rome, 1936), and Der Tag wird kommen (1941; The Day Will Come, 1942). Lion Feuchtwanger's brother Ludwig was a   well-known figure in the cultural life of the Weimar Republic. Until 1933 he was the editor of the Duncker & Humblot publishing house in Munich. Feuchtwanger spent the winter of 1932/33 on a lecture tour of the U.S. and was there when Hitler came to power. He never returned to Germany, but settled in the south of France. After the French collapse in June 1940, the Vichy regime put him into a concentration camp. With the help of American friends he managed to escape over the Pyrenees and, as a result of the intervention of President Roosevelt, was able to enter the U.S., where he spent the rest of his life. The novel Die Geschwister Oppenheim (1933; The Oppermanns, 1934) deals with the fate of a German-Jewish family in the early days of Nazi rule. A trip to the U.S.S.R. produced Moskau 1937, which included an historic interview with Stalin. The years of exile in France inspired several novels, including Simone (1944; Eng. tr., 1944), Exil (1939; Paris Gazette, 1940), and Unholdes Frank-reich (1942; The Devil in France, 1941). When he was living in Pacific Palisades, California, Feuchtwanger wrote more best sellers, including Waffen fuer America (2 vols, 1947–48; Proud Destiny, 1947), the story of Benjamin Franklin's activities in France; Goya (1951; This Is the Hour, 1952); Narrenweisheit, oder Tod und Verklaerung des Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1952; 'tis Folly to be Wise… 1953); Spanische Ballade (1955, also published 1955 under the title Die Juedin von Toledo; Raquel the Jewess of Toledo, 1956), and Jefta und seine Tochter (1957; Jephta and his Daughter, 1958). Many of these books were translated into more than 30 languages. Feuchtwanger's play Wahn, oder der Teufel in Boston (1946) is a penetrating study of Cotton Mather and his times. The 30,000-volume Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, bequeathed to the University of Southern California, was the novelist's third collection; previous libraries were lost in Nazi Germany and occupied France. After World War II, Feuchtwanger received awards and honors from both West and East Germany. -BIBLIOGRAPHY Lion Feuchtwanger zum 70. Geburtstag (1954), contains bibliography; NDB, 5 (1957), 109–10; Zohn, in: Jewish Quarterly (Winter 1958/59), 3–4; Lion Feuchtwanger zum Gedenken (1959); Yuill, in: German Men of Letters, 3 (1964), 179–206. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: L. Kahn, Insight and Action. The Life and Work of Lion Feuchtwanger (1975); J. Pischel, Lion Feuchtwanger – Versuch über ein Leben (1984). (Harry Zohn / Heike Specht (2nd ed.)