Lion Feuchtwanger

Feuchtwanger graduated from high school in 1903. From 1903 he studied German, history and philosophy in Munich and Berlin. He moved in the Munich artistic scene and began his first literary attempts with theater reviews, stories and dramas. In 1907 he received his doctorate. phil. with a work on Heinrich Heine's "Rabbi von Bacherach". Because of the restrictions for Jews at German colleges and universities at the time, he dropped his habilitation plans. From 1907 he initially worked as a theater critic and dramaturge in Munich. In 1912 he married Marta Loeffler. In 1914 he went on a trip to Tunisia with his wife, during which he narrowly escaped internment by the French. Lion Feuchtwanger became one of the first writers to express criticism of the exuberant patriotism of the Germans and against the war in plays during the First World War. His short military service ended with his discharge due to short-sightedness. In 1918 he experienced the revolution in Munich and worked on the dramatic novel "Thomas Wendt". In 1920 he met Bertold Brecht and Marieluise Fleißer there. A friendly relationship developed with Brecht, which led to them working together. Feuchtwanger realized several theater projects with him, incorporating influences from this collaboration into his epic theater. In 1924 the two of them worked on the play "Life of Edward the Second of England". In 1913, Feuchtwanger's historical novel "The Ugly Duchess Margarete Maultasch" about ugliness and outsiderness was published. In 1925 he moved to Berlin and in 1927 his play "The Petroleum Island" was premiered. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Feuchtwanger was expatriated. His house in Berlin was searched, looted and confiscated, and manuscripts were also lost. At that time he was on a lecture tour in the USA. He went to Sanary-sur-Mer in the south of France and to Moscow in 1937, where he co-edited the exile magazine "Das Wort", which was published in Germany, from 1936 to 1939. From 1939 to 1940 he was housed in an internment camp in Aix-en-Provence, France. Through the intervention of Eleanor Roosevelt, he was released and fled to the USA via Portugal. From 1941 he lived near Los Angeles. Due to his rapprochement with the communists and the persecution of socialists and communists under Joseph McCarthy, he was unable to become a citizen. Lion Feuchtwanger's literary focus is now on the historical novel. He did not see it as a representation or retracing of history, but wanted to use it to communicate generally valid truths, which he based on historical material and figures as well as on the conflicts highlighted. The first major success came in 1818 with the drama "Jud Süß". He then expanded it into a novel, published in 1925. But before that he had difficulty finding a publisher. Feuchtwanger's first contemporary historical novel, "Success. Three Years of History of a Province" (1930), not only tells the story of the rise of the Nazis in Bavaria, but also explains the socio-psychological prerequisites and the functioning of the interaction between politics, the judiciary, large industry and the crime of German citizens . "Success" became a highlight in Feuchtwanger's literary work. He later combined the contemporary historical novels "Success", "The Oppenheim Siblings" (1933) and "Exile" (1940) into the trilogy "The Waiting Room". The Josephus trilogy consisting of the works "The Jewish War" (1932), "The Sons" (1935), and "The Day Will Come" (1945) occupies a central position in Lion Feuchtwanger's oeuvre. This is also about the fate of the Jewish people based on the writer Flavius Josephus in a non-Jewish environment. Feuchtwanger also reflects on his own literary work. In 1936 the satire on Hitler "The False Nero" was published. The novel "Exile", published in 1940, makes Feuchtwanger's approach to socialism clear. In the report "Unholdes France" (1942) he describes his experiences in the internment camp. In 1945 the collaboration with Bert Brecht was resumed with the play "The Story of Simone Machard". In 1948 he created the play "Wahn or The Devil in Boston" about the witch hunt in Massachusetts - the reason for this work was his experiences of the persecution of communists in the USA. With the two works "The Jewess of Toledo" and "Jefta and his Daughter" Feuchtwanger turned back to the fate of the Jewish people. His other works include "Peace, a Burlesque Game" (1918), "The Prisoners of War" (1919), "Three Anglo-Saxon Pieces" (1927)