Feuchtwanger

Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958)

Feuchtwanger grew up in Munich, the son of an upper middle class Jewish family. He studied German literature and became one of the most popular novelists of the Weimar Republic. When Hitler and the Nazis seized power in 1933, he fled to France. In 1937 he visited the USSR and wrote a favourable report about this experience. When the Germans invaded France in 1940, he was imprisoned, but escaped via Spain and Portgual. In 1941 he settled in Los Angeles, California, where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1944, he co-founded the publishing house Aurora Verlag in New York. Feuchtwanger was a friend of other German authors in exile, including Bertolt Brecht and Arnold Zweig. As a pro-Soviet intellectual, he was targeted by McCarthyism. In 1947 he wrote a play about the Salem Witch Trials: Wahn oder der Teufel in Boston (Delusion, or The Devil in Boston), which anticipates Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (1953) about McCarthyism by six years.

Today, Feuchtwanger is perhaps best known for three novels:

Jud Süß (1925) (Jew Suss) based on the life of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (1698-1738), a Court Jew in the employ of Duke Karl Alexander of Württemberg in Stuttgart.

Erfolg (1930) (Success), an epic novel about Bavarian politics and Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch in Munich on 8-9 November 1923. See below for more information.

Die Geschwister Oppermann (1933, retitled 1935) (The Oppermanns), about a family of Jewish furniture manufacturers who are persecuted by the Nazis in the year 1932.

Further Reading in English

Lothar Kahn, Insight and Action: The Life and Work of Lion Feuchtwanger (Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975)

Pól O’Dochartaigh and Alexander Stephan (eds.), Refuge and Reality: Feuchtwanger and the European Émigrés in California, German Monitor, Volume 61 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005)

Web Link

https://libraries.usc.edu/locations/special-collections/international-feuchtwanger-society

International Feuchtwanger Society (IFS) in California

Erfolg; Success (written 1925-1930, published 1930)

Erfolg – subtitled ‘Drei Jahre Geschichte einer Provinz’ (Three Years in the Life of a Province) is an epic novel set in Munich in the years 1922-1924 against the background of the German inflation crisis and the early years of the Nazi party. It is part one of the ‘Wartesaal’ (Waiting-Room) trilogy, together with Die Geschwister Oppermann (1933; The Oppermanns) and Exil (1939; Exile).

Feuchtwanger relied on extensive historical research done by his secretary Lola Sernau, his wife Marta Feuchtwanger, and a student called Werner Kahn-Bieker. The novel describes itself self-reflexively in Book 5, Chapter 18 as ‘Das Buch Bayern’ (‘The Book of Bavaria’).

Erfolg is a novel about a miscarriage of justice; it explores the close connections between politics and the judiciary, showing how court cases can become highly politicised. As the narrator tells us in Book 1, Chapter 4: ‘In jenen Jahren nach dem großen Krieg war über den ganzen Globus hin die Justiz mehr als sonst politisiert’ (‘In those years after the Great War and all over the world, the judiciary was more politicised than usual’).

Martin Krüger, an art historian and museum director, is imprisoned for a crime (perjury) that he did not commit. Krüger is charged for political reasons: the paintings that he chooses to display in the state art museum are regarded as ‘immoral’ by the political establishment in Munich. The politicians decide to make an example of him. At the end of Book 1, Krüger is found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison. In the rest of the novel, there are various attempts to free him from prison, which are ultimately unsuccessful.

The unjustly sentenced Martin Krüger becomes the lynchpin for an enormous historical panorama of Munich in the first half of the 1920s.

Erfolg features a huge cast of characters including Jewish lawyer Dr Siegbert Geyer and his estranged son Erich Bornhaak who becomes a Nazi Gauleiter, Communist engineer Kaspar Pröckl (loosely based on Bertolt Brecht), the comedian Balthasar Hierl (based on Karl Valentin), the car manufacturer Reindl, and fascist demagogue Rupert Kutzner (based on Adolf Hitler). Rupert Kutzner is the leader of a new far-right political party, ‘Die Wahrhaft Deutschen’ (‘The Real Germans’), a thinly-disguised version of the Nazi Party (NSDAP).

The climax of the novel is in Chapters 7 and 8 of Book 5, which describe Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch of 8-9 November 1923. Hitler and General Ludendorff attempted a coup d’état, which was foiled largely by the actions of Gustav von Kahr. In Feuchtwanger’s novel, Adolf Hitler is renamed Rupert Kutzner, General Ludendorff is renamed General Vesemann, and Gustav von Kahr becomes Franz Flaucher (because of his actions during the Putsch, Gustav von Kahr was later murdered in the Night of the Long Knives in June 1934).

In Book 1, ‘Justiz’ (Justice), Martin Krüger, the Director of the State Art Museums, is put on trial for perjury, found guilty, and sent to prison. We learn that the accusations are false and politically motivated. Krüger has been framed by his political opponents – Justice Minister Klenk and Culture Minister Flaucher – who regard him as a troublemaker. The chief witness for the prosecution, a taxi driver called Franz Xaver Ratzenberger, is lying. However, Ratzenberger is killed in a fight before he can confess the truth. Meanwhile his son Ludwig becomes a driver for Rupert Kutzner (the Hitler figure).

In Book 2, ‘Betrieb’ (Business), the defence lawyer Geyer is assaulted but soon recovers. Martin Krüger’s girlfriend Johanna Krain marries him while he is in prison. Geyer advises Johanna to exploit high society connections in an attempt to secure Krüger’s release. Johanna befriends the ceramics manufacturer Paul Hessreiter, who was one of the jurors in Krüger’s trial. He invites her to spend some time with him in luxury winter resort of Garmisch. Johanna joins Bavarian high society in Garmisch and begins a brief affair with Hessreiter.

In Book 3, ‘Spaß. Sport. Spiel’ (Fun, Sport, Play), the entrepreneur Pfaundler has hired a Swiss writer, Jacques Tüverlin, to write a revue, a musical starring the comedian Balthasar Hierl. Johanna visits Paris. There she encounters Erich Bornhaak, the estranged son of the laywer Geyer. Erich is involved in criminal enterprises with Dellmaier, a man suspected of political murder and dog poisoning. Justice minister Klenk suffers from kidney problems while his rivals conspire against him, and he is forced to resign. The premiere of the musical revue takes place. The producer, Pfaundler, has watered down Tüverlin’s ideas and the result is a piece of kitsch.

In Book 4, ‘Politik und Wirtschaft’ (Politics and Economics), the French occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923 causes a surge in German nationalism. Klenk and Flaucher are now using Kutzner and ‘Die Wahrhaft Deutschen’ (The Real Germans) in order to pursue their own political ambitions. Erich Bornhaak is becoming a rising star in the fascist movement. He and his comrades murder a maid who is suspected of informing on the right-wing paramilitaries and their meetings with General Vesemann (based on General Ludendorff). Erich gets away with the murder and is promoted to the rank of Gauleiter. Kutzner plans a right-wing uprising in the early months of 1923, but then he backs down.

In Book 5, ‘Erfolg’ (Success), Flaucher attempts to control Kutzner, but Kutzner launches his Beer Hall Putsch of 8-9 November 1923. The coup d’état fails, largely due to the swift actions of Flaucher, who is motivated by his wish to avoid a bloodbath. Kutzner is arrested and charged with high treason. The penalty for high treason at that time was life imprisonment, but Kutzner is only sentenced to five years. Kutzner uses the trial as a political platform and speaks in court for two whole weeks. He describes his former ally Flaucher as a Judas and a traitor. By December 1923, Germany’s political crisis, provoked by the French occupation of the Ruhr, is resolved when the Dawes Committee proposes a settlement. In 1924 the Dawes Plan comes into effect, and Germany’s economy is stablised. All the plot threads are resolved. Three characters – Klenk, Tüverlin and Johanna – bear witness and deliver their own version of the events.

English Edition

Lion Feuchtwanger, Success: Three years in the life of a province, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir (London: M. Secker 1930)