January Meme: My first Feuchtwanger novel and what I thought about it then
Asked by cahn. This was Jud Süß (English title: Power), when I was in my 20s. One of my university classes was about propaganda movies, and in preparation for the infamous Nazi movie of the same title, several of us did a presentation on other fictional treatments of the life of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer; one of us talked about the 19th century Wilhelm Hauff Novella, one about one of the theatre plays, and yours truly about the Feuchtwanger novel.
Now, said novel wasn't Lion Feuchtwanger's first, but it was his big breakout book, which made him an international bestselling author, with a glowing review by Arnold Bennett in the Observer being responsible for the jiumpstarting the English reading part of his fame. Feuchtwanger got interested in Süß mid WWI, wrote a play, - he mainly worked as a dramatist and journalist until then -, wasn't satisfied, and then in the early 1920s on the advice of his wife Marta went back to the subject and wrote a novel about Süß instead. In retrospect, one of the most amazing things about all of this is that a novel mostly set in 1730s Württemberg, dealing with an obscure bit of German history in one of the German principalities which has absolutely no connection to British history at all, could become a British and American bestseller in the 1920s. I didn't know anything about this when I started to read the novel in preparation for my presentation. I knew the Nazi movie existed, of course, but not whether or not this novel had anything to do with it. Also, I had never read anything by Lion Feuchtwanger before, and thus was unfamiliar with his tropes.
So when I started to read the book, what shocked me early on was that our main character, an 18th century Jewish banker and later Court Jew, gets introduced as incredibly shady. He's ambitious, he's ruthless, and when he manages to make a connection with the soon to be Duke of Württemberg Karl Alexander, he comes up with ever more inventive methods for the Duke to squeeze the population financially. At this point young me googled because I had recalled Feuchtwanger had been a Jew himself, and later an exile, and this early on looked to me as if fulfilling one antisemitic cliché after another, so, like I said, young me was startled and shocked. However. Even early on I did notice the Christian world around Süß isn't described as morally superior. At all. (The population of Württemberg got squeezed dry under the previous Duke, too, only in this case via his mistress, which is described in the opening chapter. The novel does make it clear in both cases the problems are the Dukes and the feudal system.) Also, and this was increasingly obvious the longer I continued reading, one of the big themes and narrative red threads is Süß' repressed spiritual side - embodied by his secret daughter and his uncle, Rabbi Gabriel, and very much connected to his Jewish identity - struggling with with his ambitious side that makes him one of the most powerful men in the Duchy. The turning point comes in three steps - Süß finds out his mother (an actress) had had an affair with a Christian nobleman, and thus in theory he could opt out of being a Jew and get Karl Alexander to make him a nobleman as well, thus concluding his ascension to power and glory and complete assimilation. He decides to remain a Jew (and continues to see the father who raised him as his true father). Then Karl Alexander indirectly causes the death of Süß' secret daughter Naomi (this is also partly Süß' fault, for complicated plot reasons). (The traumatic loss of a child, btw, as is the Jewish father to whom this happens changing radically is a recurring motif in Feuchtwanger's works, and it culminates in his last book, Jephtah and his daughter.) This means both that the rest of Süß' assimilation ambitions are over ("you have a suffering face now, you have a Jewish face" - "du hast ein zerlittenes Gesicht, du hast ein jüdisches Gesicht" - , his uncle tells him, who previously called Süß' face only a bland mask) and that he wants revenge; he engineers Karl Alexander's downfall, knowing very well it will mean his own as well. And the third, last step happens after Karl Alexander's death, when Süß becomes the scapegoat for the next regime and all of Karl Alexander's deeds gets blamed on him. But again he's offered an out, if he converts to Christianity (and/or uses the intel of his blood connection to a noble family). He refuses, prefering to die as a Jew and while he's executed after a show trial by a braying mob (btw, those mob scenes are absolutely chilling and in many ways prescient for a novel written in the 1920s), the Jews are with him, he hears their prayers through the mob jeers, and he dies with the Shma Israel on his lips.
This last circumstance - that the historical Süß, who didn't live in an orthodox way but like a Christian nobleman, was offered to be spared execution if he converted, and that he refused - was what had awoken Feuchtwanger's interest in him in the first place. (Feuchtwanger himself had orthodox parents and was raised as an orthodox Jew, stopped practicising as a young man and thereafter went through life as an agnostic, but also refused to convert when told this was a condition for becoming a professor at the university of Munich.) Marxist critic Georg Lucacz, who mostly approved of Feuchtwanger's novels, had a big beef with this one because he complained that "the suffering of millions is used as the background for the redemption arc of a Jewish loanshark" - "eines jüdischen Wucherers" is what he literally wrote. It's true that the novel doesn't have that much sympathy for the (non-Jewish) population of Württemberg, in that they get depicted as exploited one way or another, just by different people, and are easily manipulated and swayed by demagogues. But I also wouldn't call it cynical, and I don't just mean relating to Süß' character development through it. Most of the characters come across as three dimensional, and there are a lot of human (and humorous) moments despite the dark themes, and even minor characters get their turn to shine. For example, Isaak Landauer, an old school Jewish banker who believes in dressing as traditionally and modestly as possible as to not make the Gojim too envious, when he's visiting Süß in his new Stuttgart palace, looks around, takes in the whole worldly splendour a 1730s Rokoko mansion can offer, which includes a pet parrot owned by Süß' current mistress, and his sole comment is: "A parrot, Reb Süß? Really?" And then there's Magister Polycarp, one of the few non-Jewish really sympathetic characters, who starts out as a school teacher with a hobby of writing poetry and taking care of his cats in provincial Württemberg where he accidentally comes across Naomi, which is how he eventually ends up as Süß' secretary. When Süß is secretly arranging the Duke's and his own downfall, he relies on Polycarp - who is a Pietist, i.e. belongs to a subsection of extra pious Protestants, and started out seeing Süß as the Antichrist - ratting him out to the authorities, but finds to his surprise that Polycarp is too honest for that, and too loyal, so has to explicitly order him to do the denouncing. Polycarp finds this all very confusing, later tries his best to make it clear Süß is actually innocent of the trumped up charges, and ends up back in his old village where, we are told, he "lived for cats and poetry" - "lebte den Katzen und der Poesie" again for the rest of his days. As he's one of the few innocents of the book, I was glad.
So by the time I had finished the novel, I could see why this had been such a big success back in the day, and rarely out of print thereafter. (The Nazis immediately put it on the index of forbidden books in 1933 and it was among those literally thrown in the fire in the book burnings, but yes, the fact that Feuchtwanger had made people interested in Süß again was probably a factor as to why Goebbels wanted to do a Nazi version of this tale. Not of this novel, mind. If on anything previously published, the Nazi movie is based on Hauff's novella, but mostly it misappropriates some plot of Tosca, as in the Nazi movie, Süß blackmails the virtuous Christian heroine for sex by imprisoning her fiance, and this is what causes the uprising of the virtuous people, his trial and his execution.) I also had become curious and looking for more, and started to read my next Feuchtwanger novel. (Die häßliche Herzogin, "The Ugly Duchess").
The other days
Now, said novel wasn't Lion Feuchtwanger's first, but it was his big breakout book, which made him an international bestselling author, with a glowing review by Arnold Bennett in the Observer being responsible for the jiumpstarting the English reading part of his fame. Feuchtwanger got interested in Süß mid WWI, wrote a play, - he mainly worked as a dramatist and journalist until then -, wasn't satisfied, and then in the early 1920s on the advice of his wife Marta went back to the subject and wrote a novel about Süß instead. In retrospect, one of the most amazing things about all of this is that a novel mostly set in 1730s Württemberg, dealing with an obscure bit of German history in one of the German principalities which has absolutely no connection to British history at all, could become a British and American bestseller in the 1920s. I didn't know anything about this when I started to read the novel in preparation for my presentation. I knew the Nazi movie existed, of course, but not whether or not this novel had anything to do with it. Also, I had never read anything by Lion Feuchtwanger before, and thus was unfamiliar with his tropes.
So when I started to read the book, what shocked me early on was that our main character, an 18th century Jewish banker and later Court Jew, gets introduced as incredibly shady. He's ambitious, he's ruthless, and when he manages to make a connection with the soon to be Duke of Württemberg Karl Alexander, he comes up with ever more inventive methods for the Duke to squeeze the population financially. At this point young me googled because I had recalled Feuchtwanger had been a Jew himself, and later an exile, and this early on looked to me as if fulfilling one antisemitic cliché after another, so, like I said, young me was startled and shocked. However. Even early on I did notice the Christian world around Süß isn't described as morally superior. At all. (The population of Württemberg got squeezed dry under the previous Duke, too, only in this case via his mistress, which is described in the opening chapter. The novel does make it clear in both cases the problems are the Dukes and the feudal system.) Also, and this was increasingly obvious the longer I continued reading, one of the big themes and narrative red threads is Süß' repressed spiritual side - embodied by his secret daughter and his uncle, Rabbi Gabriel, and very much connected to his Jewish identity - struggling with with his ambitious side that makes him one of the most powerful men in the Duchy. The turning point comes in three steps - Süß finds out his mother (an actress) had had an affair with a Christian nobleman, and thus in theory he could opt out of being a Jew and get Karl Alexander to make him a nobleman as well, thus concluding his ascension to power and glory and complete assimilation. He decides to remain a Jew (and continues to see the father who raised him as his true father). Then Karl Alexander indirectly causes the death of Süß' secret daughter Naomi (this is also partly Süß' fault, for complicated plot reasons). (The traumatic loss of a child, btw, as is the Jewish father to whom this happens changing radically is a recurring motif in Feuchtwanger's works, and it culminates in his last book, Jephtah and his daughter.) This means both that the rest of Süß' assimilation ambitions are over ("you have a suffering face now, you have a Jewish face" - "du hast ein zerlittenes Gesicht, du hast ein jüdisches Gesicht" - , his uncle tells him, who previously called Süß' face only a bland mask) and that he wants revenge; he engineers Karl Alexander's downfall, knowing very well it will mean his own as well. And the third, last step happens after Karl Alexander's death, when Süß becomes the scapegoat for the next regime and all of Karl Alexander's deeds gets blamed on him. But again he's offered an out, if he converts to Christianity (and/or uses the intel of his blood connection to a noble family). He refuses, prefering to die as a Jew and while he's executed after a show trial by a braying mob (btw, those mob scenes are absolutely chilling and in many ways prescient for a novel written in the 1920s), the Jews are with him, he hears their prayers through the mob jeers, and he dies with the Shma Israel on his lips.
This last circumstance - that the historical Süß, who didn't live in an orthodox way but like a Christian nobleman, was offered to be spared execution if he converted, and that he refused - was what had awoken Feuchtwanger's interest in him in the first place. (Feuchtwanger himself had orthodox parents and was raised as an orthodox Jew, stopped practicising as a young man and thereafter went through life as an agnostic, but also refused to convert when told this was a condition for becoming a professor at the university of Munich.) Marxist critic Georg Lucacz, who mostly approved of Feuchtwanger's novels, had a big beef with this one because he complained that "the suffering of millions is used as the background for the redemption arc of a Jewish loanshark" - "eines jüdischen Wucherers" is what he literally wrote. It's true that the novel doesn't have that much sympathy for the (non-Jewish) population of Württemberg, in that they get depicted as exploited one way or another, just by different people, and are easily manipulated and swayed by demagogues. But I also wouldn't call it cynical, and I don't just mean relating to Süß' character development through it. Most of the characters come across as three dimensional, and there are a lot of human (and humorous) moments despite the dark themes, and even minor characters get their turn to shine. For example, Isaak Landauer, an old school Jewish banker who believes in dressing as traditionally and modestly as possible as to not make the Gojim too envious, when he's visiting Süß in his new Stuttgart palace, looks around, takes in the whole worldly splendour a 1730s Rokoko mansion can offer, which includes a pet parrot owned by Süß' current mistress, and his sole comment is: "A parrot, Reb Süß? Really?" And then there's Magister Polycarp, one of the few non-Jewish really sympathetic characters, who starts out as a school teacher with a hobby of writing poetry and taking care of his cats in provincial Württemberg where he accidentally comes across Naomi, which is how he eventually ends up as Süß' secretary. When Süß is secretly arranging the Duke's and his own downfall, he relies on Polycarp - who is a Pietist, i.e. belongs to a subsection of extra pious Protestants, and started out seeing Süß as the Antichrist - ratting him out to the authorities, but finds to his surprise that Polycarp is too honest for that, and too loyal, so has to explicitly order him to do the denouncing. Polycarp finds this all very confusing, later tries his best to make it clear Süß is actually innocent of the trumped up charges, and ends up back in his old village where, we are told, he "lived for cats and poetry" - "lebte den Katzen und der Poesie" again for the rest of his days. As he's one of the few innocents of the book, I was glad.
So by the time I had finished the novel, I could see why this had been such a big success back in the day, and rarely out of print thereafter. (The Nazis immediately put it on the index of forbidden books in 1933 and it was among those literally thrown in the fire in the book burnings, but yes, the fact that Feuchtwanger had made people interested in Süß again was probably a factor as to why Goebbels wanted to do a Nazi version of this tale. Not of this novel, mind. If on anything previously published, the Nazi movie is based on Hauff's novella, but mostly it misappropriates some plot of Tosca, as in the Nazi movie, Süß blackmails the virtuous Christian heroine for sex by imprisoning her fiance, and this is what causes the uprising of the virtuous people, his trial and his execution.) I also had become curious and looking for more, and started to read my next Feuchtwanger novel. (Die häßliche Herzogin, "The Ugly Duchess").
The other days