Lion Feuchtwanger

Lion Feuchtwanger (7 July 1884 - 21 December 1958) was a German-Jewish novelist who was imprisoned in a French internment camp in Les Milles and later escaped to Los Angeles with the help of his wife, Marta.

Early career and persecution

Lion served in the Germany Army during World War I, an experience that led to a leftist tilt in his writings. He soon became a figure in the literary world and was already well-known in 1925 when his first popular novel, Jud Süss, appeared. He also published Erfolg (m. "Success"), which was a thinly veiled criticism at the Nazi Party and Hitler. The new fascist regime soon began persecuting him, and while he was on a speaking tour of America, in Washington, D.C., he was a guest of honor at a dinner hosted by then German ambassador Friedrich Wilhelm von Prittwitz und Gaffron. That same day (January 30, 1933) Hitler was appointed Chancellor, and the next day, Prittwitz resigned from the diplomatic corps and called Feuchtwanger and recommended not to return home.

Related Topics:
World War I - 1925 - Jud Süss - Nazi Party - Hitler - Fascist - America - Washington, D.C. - January 30 - 1933

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In 1933, while Feuchtwanger was on the tour, his house was ransacked by government agents who stole many items from his extensive library. Feuchtwanger and his wife did not return to Germany, moving instead to Southern France, settling in Sanary sur Mer. His works were included among those burned during the May 10, 1933 Book Burnings held across Germany. On August 25, 1933, the official Nazi paper Reichsanzeiger included Feuchtwanger's name in the first list of those whose German citizenship was revoked because of "disloyalty to the German Reich and the German people."

Related Topics:
1933 - August 25 - Reichsanzeiger

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In his writings, Feuchtwanger exposed Nazi racist policies years before the official London and Paris abandoned their policy of appeasement towards Hitler. He remembered that American politicians also had suggested "Hitler be given a chance." With the publication of The Oppermanns in 1933 he became a prominent spokesman in opposition to the Third Reich. Within a year, the novel was translated to Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Norwegian, Polish and Swedish languages.

Related Topics:
Appeasement - Third Reich - Czech - Danish - English - Finnish - Hebrew - Hungarian - Norwegian - Polish - Swedish

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In 1936, still in Sanary, he wrote The Pretender (Der falsche Nero), in which he compared a Roman upstart claiming to be Nero and Hitler.

Related Topics:
1936 - Roman - Nero

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