Conference talk
The second day of the “Feuchtwanger and Film” conference was dominated by Konrad Wolf’s film “Goya” (based on Feuchtwanger’s novel), which is probably the most interesting of the films based on works by Feuchtwanger, and the best of the papers was presented by Séan Allan and dealt with the whole GDR cultural policy background, which led to some great discussions on how the image of the inquisition as an allusion of McCarthyism can turn into an allusion to censorship by the party (film) in an East-German state, and how more recent filmmakers dealing with Goya, such as Carlos Saura and Milos Forman, have each used the same images with their own politicial context - Saura alluding to the Franco dictatorship, Forman to Guantanomo and beyond. Something that Feuchtwanger, who always insisted that telling history was also commenting on the present, would have been very pleased with. Some of the papers were rendered in German, others in English, and the debates afterwards kept switching languages as well, which made me think that one of the purposes of the Villa Aurora, the mixing and mingling of cultures, was being achieved. (I was also somewhat grateful there were no papers in French as there had been in Sanary, I must admit, because I’m far less fluent in French and thus while getting the gist of a presentation miss something of the arguments.)
My own presentation came at the end of the day and was a playful attempt to reconstruct a conversation between Feuchtwanger and Brecht via using quotes from their letter, diaries and novels; the audience responded pretty well, and it was great to see some old aquaintances again such as Barbara Schönberg (daughter-in-law to the composer, a very kind lady who insists on feeding you with Sachertorte in the Californian sun when you visit her), and meet people I only have known online before (hi, K!). Of course, it was a particular thrill do to this in Feuchtwanger’s living room:
Conspiracy theory of the day: Manfred Flügge telling me he's convinced Brecht died because the state deliberately prevented him from getting medication only available in the West. He says there is a tape of Erich Mielke ranting about unreliable writers, and mentioning Brecht before adding, after an ominous pause, "...but then he died". "They didn't exactly kill him," the compact, fierce-looking Mr. Flügge pronounced, daring anyone to disagree, "but they let him die!"
Friday, the third conference day, was for some other emigré writers in addition to Feuchtwanger - Franz Werfel’s “Song of Bernadette”, book and film (with the question “how come a novel by a Jewish writer on a Catholic subject became such a rousing success in Protestant America in the middle of WWII?”) and Anna Seghers’ “The Seventh Cross”, book and film (which, given this was the work of a Communist writer, was no less a miraculous success in the US of the same period). Both lectures were good, but the Seghers talk which pointed out the differences between book and film mainly consisting not just of the focus on one heroic individual rather than a portrait of multiple storylines, but also the simplification of the people depicted into good Germans and bad Nazis, as opposed to Seghers’ more complicated depiction of people capable of personal kindness on the one hand but being Nazis on the other, with their conscience slowly eroded by the moral compromises they make, was the more intriguing. Then came Deborah Vietor-Engländer and proved, like Sean Allan the day before, that no one beats the English when it comes to make witty, trenchant presentations, as she had a go on “Das Beil von Wandsbeck”, a novel by Feuchtwanger’s friend Arnold Zweig, which was filmed in the GDR and withdrawn very soon in another case of state censorship which was particularly ironic given that Zweig was simultanously made into the president of the Academy of Fine Arts, and didn’t know what hit him. (Not an unusual experience for Arnold Zweig, who had spent his exile during the Third Reich in Palestine and arrived there not understanding why he was greeted with dislike; his 1930 novel “Devrient kehrt heim”, based on his earlier trip in the 20s to Palestine, in which there is much squabbling between Jewish settlers ending in a murder, a sympathetic gay relationship between the hero and an Arab and an English officer as voice of conscience might have had something to do with it…)
Going back to Feuchtwanger again, there was a presentation about the various tv versions produced by East German state television, with the most interesting examples being the three parter based on Die Brüder Lautensack (which was Feuchtwanger’s then contemporary novel a clef about Hanussen, a subject that was more recently dealt with by Istvan Szabo with Klaus Maria Brandauer in the title role) and a tv version of Feuchtwanger’s last play, Die Witwe Capet, about the last days of Marie Antoinette. The last one was especially fascinating because it was done in the late 80s, virtually before the GDR stopped existing, and the question of the play - the justification of sacrificing the rights of the invididual for historical progress (“you only have the right to die”, informs St. Just Marie Antoinette in the play, because by the very nature of her position as representative of the old order she cannot be but the enemy of the people, and so the rights the new republic has fought for do not apply to her), which remains ambiguousin the text, is rendered in favour of the individual by the way the film depicts her, down to ending in sympathetic close up on her face, while St. Just’s words are spoken in the off and fade away.
We then had a summing up debate of the conference, and a promise to come to the next one, which is going to take place in Vienna (I lobbied for Munich as Feuchtwanger’s home town, but then again, I’m not opposed to an excuse to visit Vienna, either). As this part of the conference took place not in the Villa Aurora but in the USC (where the Feuchtwanger Archive is located), we finished with listening to an Erich Korngold (he who went from opera in Europe to film soundtracks in the US, and among ourselves, imo his soundtracks are better) concert performed by some of the students.
My own presentation came at the end of the day and was a playful attempt to reconstruct a conversation between Feuchtwanger and Brecht via using quotes from their letter, diaries and novels; the audience responded pretty well, and it was great to see some old aquaintances again such as Barbara Schönberg (daughter-in-law to the composer, a very kind lady who insists on feeding you with Sachertorte in the Californian sun when you visit her), and meet people I only have known online before (hi, K!). Of course, it was a particular thrill do to this in Feuchtwanger’s living room:
Conspiracy theory of the day: Manfred Flügge telling me he's convinced Brecht died because the state deliberately prevented him from getting medication only available in the West. He says there is a tape of Erich Mielke ranting about unreliable writers, and mentioning Brecht before adding, after an ominous pause, "...but then he died". "They didn't exactly kill him," the compact, fierce-looking Mr. Flügge pronounced, daring anyone to disagree, "but they let him die!"
Friday, the third conference day, was for some other emigré writers in addition to Feuchtwanger - Franz Werfel’s “Song of Bernadette”, book and film (with the question “how come a novel by a Jewish writer on a Catholic subject became such a rousing success in Protestant America in the middle of WWII?”) and Anna Seghers’ “The Seventh Cross”, book and film (which, given this was the work of a Communist writer, was no less a miraculous success in the US of the same period). Both lectures were good, but the Seghers talk which pointed out the differences between book and film mainly consisting not just of the focus on one heroic individual rather than a portrait of multiple storylines, but also the simplification of the people depicted into good Germans and bad Nazis, as opposed to Seghers’ more complicated depiction of people capable of personal kindness on the one hand but being Nazis on the other, with their conscience slowly eroded by the moral compromises they make, was the more intriguing. Then came Deborah Vietor-Engländer and proved, like Sean Allan the day before, that no one beats the English when it comes to make witty, trenchant presentations, as she had a go on “Das Beil von Wandsbeck”, a novel by Feuchtwanger’s friend Arnold Zweig, which was filmed in the GDR and withdrawn very soon in another case of state censorship which was particularly ironic given that Zweig was simultanously made into the president of the Academy of Fine Arts, and didn’t know what hit him. (Not an unusual experience for Arnold Zweig, who had spent his exile during the Third Reich in Palestine and arrived there not understanding why he was greeted with dislike; his 1930 novel “Devrient kehrt heim”, based on his earlier trip in the 20s to Palestine, in which there is much squabbling between Jewish settlers ending in a murder, a sympathetic gay relationship between the hero and an Arab and an English officer as voice of conscience might have had something to do with it…)
Going back to Feuchtwanger again, there was a presentation about the various tv versions produced by East German state television, with the most interesting examples being the three parter based on Die Brüder Lautensack (which was Feuchtwanger’s then contemporary novel a clef about Hanussen, a subject that was more recently dealt with by Istvan Szabo with Klaus Maria Brandauer in the title role) and a tv version of Feuchtwanger’s last play, Die Witwe Capet, about the last days of Marie Antoinette. The last one was especially fascinating because it was done in the late 80s, virtually before the GDR stopped existing, and the question of the play - the justification of sacrificing the rights of the invididual for historical progress (“you only have the right to die”, informs St. Just Marie Antoinette in the play, because by the very nature of her position as representative of the old order she cannot be but the enemy of the people, and so the rights the new republic has fought for do not apply to her), which remains ambiguousin the text, is rendered in favour of the individual by the way the film depicts her, down to ending in sympathetic close up on her face, while St. Just’s words are spoken in the off and fade away.
We then had a summing up debate of the conference, and a promise to come to the next one, which is going to take place in Vienna (I lobbied for Munich as Feuchtwanger’s home town, but then again, I’m not opposed to an excuse to visit Vienna, either). As this part of the conference took place not in the Villa Aurora but in the USC (where the Feuchtwanger Archive is located), we finished with listening to an Erich Korngold (he who went from opera in Europe to film soundtracks in the US, and among ourselves, imo his soundtracks are better) concert performed by some of the students.