FEUCHTWANGER, Lion

PUBLICATIONS

Collections

Gesammelte Werke [Collected Works]. 1933-54.

Gesammelte Werke in Einzelausgaben. 1959.

Novels

Der tönerne Gott: Roman [The God of Clay]. 1910.

Thomas Wendt: Ein dramatischer Roman. 1920.

Die hässliche Herzogin Margarete Maultasch: Roman. 1923; as The Ugly Duchess, 1927.

Jud Süss: Roman. 1925; as Power, 1926; as Jew Suess, 1926.

Wartesaal-Trilogie (Waiting Room Trilogy):

Erfolg: Drei Jahre Geschichte einer Provinz (2 vols.).1930; as Success: Three Years History of a Province, 1930.

Die Geschwister Oppermann. 1933; as The Oppermanns, 1933.

Exil: Roman. 1940; as Paris Gazette, 1940.

Josephus Trilogie:

Der jüdische Krieg (trilogy). 1932; as Josephus, 1932.

Die Söhne: Roman. 1935; as The Jew of Rome, 1935.

Der Tag wird kommen. 1945; as Josephus and the Emperor, 1942; as The Day Will Come, 1942.

Der falsche Nero: Roman. 1936; as The Pretender, 1937.

Die Brüder Lautensack. 1944; as Double, Double, Toil and Trouble, 1943; as The Lautensack Brothers, 1944.

Simone: Roman. 1944; as Simone, 1944.

Waffen für Amerika [Arms for America]. 1947; as Die Füchse im Weinberg [Foxes in the Vineyard] (2 volumes), 1948; as Proud Destiny, 1947.

Goya oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis. 1951; as This Is the Hour, 1951.

Narrenweisheit, oder Tod und Verklärung des Jean-Jacques Rousseau. 1952; as Tis Folly to Be Wise; or, Death and Transfiguration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1953.

Die Jüdin von Toledo: Roman. 1955; as Spanische Ballade, 1955; as Raquel, the Jewess of Toledo, 1956.

Jefta und seine Tochter: Roman. 1957; as Jefta and His Daughter, 1958.

Das Haus der Desdemona, oder Grösse und Grenzen historischer Dichtung (unfinished), edited by Fritz Zschech. 1961; as The House of Desdemona; or, The Laurels and Limitations of Historical Fiction, 1963.

Plays

Die Einsamen: Zwei Skizzen. 1903.

Kleine Dramen: Joel; König Saul; Das Weib des Urias; Der arme Heinrich; Donna Bianca; Die Braut von Korinth (2 vols.). 1905-06.

Der Fetisch: Schauspiel. 1907.

Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott: Volksstück, adaptation of a work by Arthur Müller. 1911.

Julia Farnese: Ein Trauerspiel in drei Akten. 1915.

Warren Hastings, Gouverneur von Indien: Schauspiel in vier Akten und einem Vorspiel, with Bertolt Brecht. 1916; as Kalkutta, 4. Mai: Drei Akte Kolonialgeschichte, 1927.

Pierrots Herrentraum: Eine Pantomine in fünf Bildern, music by A. Hartmann-Trepka. 1916.

Vasantasema: Ein Schauspiel in drei Akten: Nach dem Indischen des Königs Sudraka. 1916.

Der König und die Tanzerin: Ein Spiel in vier Akten: Nach dem Indischen des Kalidasa. 1917.

Friede: Ein burleskes Spiel: Nach den "Acharneern" und der "Eirene" des Aristophanes. 1918.

Appius und Virginia: Trauerspiel. 1918.

Jd Süss: Schauspiel. 1918.

Die Kriegsgefangenen: Ein Schauspiel in fünf Akten [ThePrisoners of War]. 1919.

Der Amerikaner oder die entzauberte Stadt: Eine melancholische Komödie. 1921.

Der Frauenverkäufer: Ein Spiel in drei Akten nach Calderon. 1923.

Der holländische Kaufmann: Schauspiel. 1923.

Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England , with Bertolt Brecht, adaptation of Edward II by Christopher Marlowe (produced Munich, 1924). 1924; translated as Edward II, 1966.

Hill: Komödie in vier Akten 1925; as Wird Hill amnestiert? 1927.

Two Anglo-Saxon Plays: Oil Islands; Warren Hastings. 1928.

Three Plays: Prisoners of War; 1918; The Dutch Merchant. 1934.

Wahn oder der Teufel in Boston: Ein Stück in drei Akten, edited by E. Gottlieb and F. Guggenheim. 1948.

Die Witwe Capet: Ein Stück in Drei Akten. 1956; as The Widow Capet, 1956.

Die Gesichte der Simone Marcard, with Bertolt Brecht. 1957; as The Visions of Simone Marchard, 1965.

Short Stories

PEP: J. L. Wetcheeks amerikanisches Liederbuch (as J. L.Wetcheek). 1928; as PEP: J. L. Wetcheek's American Songbook, 1929.

Marianne in Indien und sieben andere Erzählungen. 1934; asMarianne in India, 1935; as Little Tales, 1935.

Venedig (Texas) und vierzehn andere Erzählungen. 1946.

Odysseus und die Schweine und zwölf andere Erzählungen. 1950; as Odysseus and the Swine, and Other Stories, 1949.

Other

Heinrich Heines Fragment: "Der Rabbi von Bacharach": Eine kritische Studie (dissertation). 1907.

Die Aufgabe des Judentums, with Arnold Zweig. 1933.

Moskau 1937: Ein Reisebericht für meine Freunde. 1937; as Moscow 1937: A Visit Described for My Friends, 1937.

Unholdes Frankreich: Meine Erlebnisse unter der Regierung Petain. 1942; as Der Teufel in Frankreich ; as The Devil in France, 1941.

Centum Opuscula: Eine Auswahl (essays). 1956.

Translator, Die Perser, by Aeschylus. 1915.

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Film Adaptations:

Jud Süss, 1934; Die Geschwister Oppermann (television), 1986.

Bibliography:

A Bibliography of Lion Feuchtwanger's Major Works in German (dissertation) by Gertrude Goetz, University of Southern California, 1971; A Bibliography of Lion Feuchtwanger's Works in English Translation (dissertation) by Herta Maria Klopp Keilbach, University of Southern California, 1973; "Bibliographie zu Lion Feuchtwanger" by Wolfgang Müller-Funk, in Text + Kritik, 79/80, 1983, pp. 133-45.

Manuscript Collection:

Feuchtwanger Memorial Library in Doheny Memorial Library, University of Southern California, Los Angeles.

Critical Studies:

Lion Feuchtwanger: The Man, His Ideas, His Work, edited by John M. Spalek, 1972; Insight and Action: The Life and Work of Lion Feuchtwanger, 1975, and "Lion Feuchtwanger: The Hazards of Exile," in Exile: The Writer's Experience, edited by John M. Spalek and Robert F. Bell, 1982, both by Lothar Kahn; "An Ancient and Modern Identity Crisis: Lion Feuchtwanger's 'Josephus' Trilogy" by Marc L. Raphael, in Judaism: A Quarterly Journal of Jewish Life and Thought, 21, 1972, pp. 409-14; "Double, Double, Toil and Trouble: Kritisches zu Lion Feuchtwangers Roman Die Bruder Lautensack " by Sigrid Schneider, in MLN, 95, 1980, pp. 641-54; Lion Feuchtwanger's Erfolg, a "Grossstadt" Novel by Judith Wessler, 1989; "In Buddha's Footsteps: Feuchtwanger's Jud Süss, Walther Rathenau, and the Path to the Soul" by William Small, in German Studies Review, 12(3), October 1989, pp. 469-85; "The Case of the Well-Crafted Novel: Lion Feuchtwanger's 'Goya"' by Jost Hermand, translated by James Steakley, in High and Low Cultures: German Attempts at Mediation, edited by Hermand and Reinhold Grimm, 1994; "Warren Hastings in the Drama of Lion Feuchtwanger and Bertolt Brecht: Contexts and Connections" by T. H. Bowyer, in Comparative Drama, 31(3), Fall 1997, pp. 394-413; "Mapping the Other: Lion Feuchtwanger's Topographies of the Orient" by Paul Levesque, in The German Quarterly, 71(2), Spring 1998, pp. 145-65; God and Judaism in the Lives and Works of Beer-Hofmann and Feuchtwanger 1998; Lion Feuchtwanger: A Bibliographic Handbook (vol. 2) by Sandra H. Hawrylchak and John M. Spalek, 1998.

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The early work of Munich-born Lion Feuchtwanger, son of a well-to-do Jewish margarine manufacturer, deals with the contemplative wisdom of the Eastern versus the Western (Nietzschean) philosophy of action. Prime examples for this theme are his drama Warren Hastings (1916), which was later reworked, together with Bertolt Brecht, into Kalkutta, 4. Mai (1927), and his drama about the German November Revolution of 1918, Thomas Wendt (1920). The theme of contemplation versus action, materialism versus spirituality, was initially continued in Feuchtwanger's most important works, his historical novels.

For Feuchtwanger the historical novel, which for him includes works that deal with the recent past or with problems of the present, should not merely depict life and events of the past, but rather it should deal with problems and issues of the present in historical garb. Through his historical novels he wants to gain insights from history for the present and the future. Historical facts are a mere means for him to gain distance from the present, thus gaining a better perspective. His almost Hegelian underlying philosophy is that the course of history is marked by progress of humanity toward a society governed by reason, even if here and there reason suffers a temporary defeat and the development seems to be going backward a step or two.

Adhering to this theory, Feuchtwanger wrote The Ugly Duchess (1923), in which the fourteenth-century duchess Margarethe of Tyrol tries in vain to cope with her physical ugliness by shrewdly reigning her country. In his perhaps biggest international success, Power (1925), the eighteenth-century "Court Jew" Süss-Oppenheimer undergoes an inner development from a life of frantic activity to an attitude of contemplation and acceptance of his fate.

As a witness of power politics of the Weimar Republic and the rise of National Socialism, Feuchtwanger felt impelled to deal with the politics of his own times. He earned the Nazis' hate by publishing Success: Three Years History of a Province (1930), a novel about the reactionary politics in Bavaria from 1921 to 1924 and Hitler's failed putsch of 1923. The next novel of what he later referred to as his Waiting Room Trilogy was The Oppermanns (1933). The novel deals with the persecution of Jews shortly before and after the Nazis' accession to power. In the third volume, Paris Gazette (1940), he deals with the fate of the German exiles in France. As a whole, the Waiting Room Trilogy may be considered Feuchtwanger's contribution to the German intellectuals' fight against Hitler. Other novels, such as the historical satire The Pretender (1936), Double, Double, Toil and Trouble (The Lautensack Brothers, 1943), and a novel about French resistance and collaboration, Simone (1944), were less successful in dealing with the Third Reich.

In 1936, during his exile in France—he had left Germany in 1933—Feuchtwanger visited the Soviet Union and published a disturbing defense of the Soviet system in his report Moscow 1937: A Visit Described for My Friends. In 1940 he had experienced internment in France, as he reports in detail in The Devil in France (1942).

The progress of reason in history is the theme of his novels dealing with the time before and after the French Revolution: Proud Destiny (1947) is a novel about the writer, businessman, and politician Beaumarchais and Benjamin Franklin, the American envoy in Paris. Since in October 1940 Feuchtwanger had come to America, ultimately settling in Pacific Palisades, California, the book may be considered an homage to the United States. This Is the Hour (1951) is about the development of Spanish artist Francisco de Goya's career, from his early work as a conventional court painter to the political responsibility he later demonstrated in his social-critical Caprichos. In Tis Folly to Be Wise; or, Death and Transfiguration of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1952) Feuchtwanger writes about the last weeks of the French philosopher's life and the effect of his ideals on the French as well as on the American Revolution.

Throughout his career Feuchtwanger was drawn to the theme of Jewishness. In his Josephus Trilogy (Josephus, 1932; The Jew of Rome, 1935; and Josephus and the Emperor, or The Day Will Come, 1942) he deals with the theme of nationalism versus cosmopolitanism by describing the development of Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century A.D. Toward the end of his life he took up the theme of Jewishness by writing about the beautiful Raquel, the Jewess of Toledo (1955), who for seven years was able to prevent Alfonso VIII of Castile from going to war against the Moors. In Jefta and His Daughter (1957) he wrote about a character from the Old Testament who kept his promise to God and sacrificed his own daughter.

Feuchtwanger explicitly dealt with the Holocaust only in The Oppermanns. But in dealing with the fate of the Jews in history and the development of National Socialism in Germany, he made an important contribution to our understanding of this dark period of German history.

—Hans Wagener

See the essay on The Oppermanns.