Lion Feuchtwanger - geachtet & geächtet (2005)

Lion Feuchtwanger's historical novel have been translated into over 20 languages, combined great readability with considerable scholarship. Several of them explored his Jewish heritage, especially "Jew Seuss" (1925), about the trial and execution of a ruthless Jewish financier in 18th Century Germany. Despite its underlying anti-fascist theme, this novel was seized upon by the Nazis as anti-Semitic propaganda. A viciously distorted movie version was produced by UFA in 1940, with the great actor Werner Krauss playing an evil caricature of a rabbi. It remains among the most notorious films of the Nazi era. Feuchtwanger was born in Munich and studied at the University of Berlin. An active socialist and pacifist, he was a friend of playwright Bertolt Brecht and collaborated on his early drama "The Life of Edward II of England" (1923). When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Feuchtwanger was targeted for arrest and he fled to France. He later toured the Soviet Union and wrote a controversial book, "Moscow 1937" (1938), which defended the Stalinist purge trials. Feuchtwanger eventually made his way to the United States and settled in Los Angeles in 1941.