Books

Following is a review of Lion Feuchtwanger’s latest by Arnold Zweig, noted German writer

In 1923, the rising Nazi movement in Bavaria, made it expedient for Lion Feuchtwanger to leave his beloved Munich. A few years later, he transmuted his experiences in connection with his flight into his now famous novel "Success", a true mirror of times and events. The Naziminded critics perceived at once the danger with which the novel threatened their "Leader’s" prestige and immediately launched an attack on its author, unprecedented in its savagery. None of the literati in the opposing camp took the trouble of putting a correct interpretation on this attack, and none came to the defense of either Feuchtwanger or his work which certainly deserved their unstinted support for its great cultural and artistic value, not to mention its author’s undauted courage in publishing it. By a subtle irony of fate, none of the literary lights who could and should have prung to his defense, has been a resident of Munich since the "revolution" of 1933….

The Nazi have never forgiven Feuchtwanger his "Success". He was one of the few who foresaw what was comting. Without hesitation, however, he sacreficed his worldly goods for the sake of Truth. He had just turned forty-nine, he loved his comfortable home, his brave little wife, his books. He had settled down, after a successful tour of the United States, to a life of ease, seclusion and work-on the second part of his "Jospephus". Nevertheless, knowing full well what to expect, he courageously lent his signature to the nwo historical telegram of protest which, viciously interpreted by the new rulers of Germany as "atrocity propaganda", loosened an avalanche of venmous hatred and ferocious rage against him. For the second time in his life, and earthquake cast him out of his home, and not alone from Munich, but from Germany altogether.

WAR AGAINST THE REICH

Two months later I had an opportunity to peruse the rough draft of the novel based on what Feuchtwanger had gone through. This time it did not take him seven years to complete it. Hurt more painfully than ever before, he reacted keenly and at once. Seven months later, the book was off the press. Under the title "The Oppenheims", it is a scathing indictment of the Third Empire. And just as Heinrich Heine’s immorral satires, in verse and in prose, are sending, to this very, day, their deadly shafts into carcass of reactionary monarchy, so, too, will "The Oppenheims" wage an implacable war against the Third Reich long after its perpetrators are gone and forgotten and when we, its contemporaries, are no longer among the living.

The book tells of the vicissitudes of a well-to-do middle class German-Jewish family before and after the invasion of the Barbarians, the only term Gustay Oppenheim, the principal character, finds suitable for the advent of Hitler and his henchmen Gustay is a man of learning, of artistic leanings, and is busy collecting material for a biography of Lessing, whom he admires and with whose works he is thoroughly familiar. If he is not unduly preoccupied with the affairs of the firm to which he and his two relatives have fallen heir, he makes up for it by devoting himself with great earmestness to the better, higher things in life, to a study of the spiritual values and culture of Germany, his Fatherland. He refuses to believe that the situation is growing more and more serious for the Jews, and it is only upon the repeated insistence of friends that he finally leaves his native country. He learns while abroad, of the Nazi reing of terror in Germany, and is #eized with an irrepressible desire to enlighten her people ragarding the true state of affairs, lest his silence make him a silent partner to the new regime. Against all dictates of common sense, against all friendly advice, he returns to Germany. Back there, he proceeds with his self-imposed mission-to proclaim openly the Truth as revealed to him but not to the benighted and befuddled masses in Naziland. It goes without saying that he finally lands in a concentration camp, and meets an untimely end as a reward for his messianic activity.

THE FATE OF THE FAMILY

The novel also concerns itself with the fate of Gustav’s brother, Maritin, the actual head of the firm, his sister Clara, his nephew Berthold, whom the new order of things drives to suicide; with the lives of the firm’s emplotees, with the Iriends of the Oppenheim family, with Berthold’s chums, and with the fine arts under a regime that confines them in a Procrustean bed of conformity in the name of an ill-smelling "national up-lift."

In the passage quoted below the author tells of a letter to Jacques Lavendel, Doctor Oppenheim’s nephew by marriage, from his secretary, in which the latter records a conversation that took palce between them shortly before Oppenheim’s passing:

"After the notary left, Doctor Oppenheim insisted that I answer a question of his that had kept him in a state of unrest for a long time. He wanted to know whether I regarded him and his life as futile. I replied that he proved, under the most trying circumstances, his perfect readiness to fight for all tht is just and essential to Mankind. He saw the true state of things and did not know how to bring about a change for the better. He had run a marathon race to deliver a pouch; unfortunately, however, it turned out that there was no message enclosed in the pouch.

"Here your uncle’s breathing became labored. It was apparent, though, that he wanted me to continue and, since my assertion that he had not wasted away his life had put him into a more receptive mood, I did not hesitate to tell him that while he might not have possessed the key to Truth, he had set a good example, just the same. The work would go on, and we would know exactly what to do. When I said "we" and I knew he, too, understood it, I meant a very large part of Germany’s population. I assured him we would have to be reckoned with.

"Doctor Oppenheim, what with his speech greatly impeded, requested me repeatedtly to inform you, Herr Lavendel, of this conversation of ours, with which request I am complying herewith. Very turly yours, Klaus Frischlin."

KEPT THE AGONY WITHIN HIM

Such is the tenor of the book. Feuchtwanger kept within himself the agonly he had carried in his heart and soul ever since the wave of destruction sturck his native land. His style is lucid, delicately restrained and concise. His chief concern is to be fair, his most painstaking endeavor-to make sure that the reader will differentiate between the terrorists and the German people proper. After a somewhat diffused start in which the various members of the family are shown in their perhaps too-comfortable cirumstances, the novel keeps gaining momentum from page to page, with an unexcelled tempo,reaching a height of artistic delineation with which nothing in the literature within the borders of contemporary Germany can even begin to compare.

The socioalogical backround of the Jewish family may or may not be necessarily representative, but the individual men and women of the narrative with their mental growth and development are nothing if not typical Geman Jews of today. Drawing from the living present, from premises which are certain remain debatable for a long time to come, from origins whose curves may change direction at any instance, Feuchtwanger has succeeded, nevertheless, in creating a clear-cut and unified story. It is of equal importance to Jews as well as to non-Jews because it depicts, with the same force, both their points of resemblance as well as their dissimilariteis. No reader will finish perusing the book without being stirred by the deepest emotions, none, except perhaps one who, while mwardly opposed to the perpetrators of the terror, it at one-outwardly-with the victorious party as long as it is in the saddle. Whether the present rulers of Germany will attck the novel with froth at their mouths or will ignore it altogether-the fact remains that being the work of an author read the world over, it will become a stumbling block in their path. As for the few negligible defects one may discern in it, it would be petty quibbling, indeed, to try to point them out, especially in view of its vigor and noble aim-to champion and strengthen the cause of Truth. It is a great work, aiming high, reaching far, and its very advent is a blessing to humanity.

ART MOST EFFECTIVE WEAPON

Art is, and always has been, Mankind’s most effective weapon against the forces of evil. In order to attain immortality, great works of art need the cooperation of out reservoirs of grief and sorrow. They impart a magic effect to our struggle for existence. This is true of the rude drawings of the cave-men, of the demon-shaped friezes on ancient temples, as well as of contemporary art. And inasmuch as this art is beneficent and great, it resists the ravages of time and paves the way to the dwelling place of all that is holy in Man. In the flashed of true art, in its calmly rposing beauty, there rests, hidden, yet visisble in every touch of the creative artists’s hand, the triumph of pure reason and the victorious, forward march of life, with all that is sorrowful, sinister and bloodthirsty, with all that is beastly and earthly, with all that is sinful and evil, with all that is mean, crouching under the feet of Progress.

And in the vanguard of the fighters for Humanity, in the foremost ranks of its noblest standard bearers, marches onward the great poet of today, Lion Feuchtwanger.