Newspaper clipping from August 25, 1933 showing that Lion Feuchtwanger had been stripped of his German citizenship
The USC Libraries' upcoming "Enemy Number One": Lion Feuchtwanger and the Literature of Exile panel discussion was featured in the September 27 issue of the USC Chronicle. The event, organized by USC Libraries in conjunction with USC Visions and Voices, will be held on Wednesday, September, 29 at noon in the Doheny Memorial Library's Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall. A panel will discuss censorship, political repression of writers, and writing in exile. Following the discussion, Exile Studies Librarian Michaela Ullmann will lead a special tour of the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library.
Read Diane Krieger's article from the USC Chronicle to learn more:
A Lion in Exile
By Diane KriegerWhat does a contemporary Zimbabwean playwright have in common with a German-Jewish novelist who faced Nazi repression nearly 80 years ago? That’s the central question posed by “Enemy Number One: Lion Feuchtwanger and the Literature of Exile,” a special event on Wednesday hosted by USC Libraries and the Visions and Voices program.
The Zimbabwean playwright is Christopher Mlalazi, an award-winning poet, journalist and frequent critic of the Mugabe regime. Feuchtwanger is the aforementioned German-Jewish novelist and, though he died in 1958, his spirit lives on in the USC-affiliated Feuchtwanger Fellowship program, which brings a writer-in-exile to Los Angeles each year.
Mlalazi is this year’s Feuchtwanger Fellow. While technically not in exile, he has long toed a precarious line between speaking his mind and preserving his liberty. A new production of Mlalazi’s play recently was shut down by Zimbabwean police on opening night. On Wednesday, he will join German historian Wolf Gruner, a leading Holocaust studies authority, and African-American literature scholar Michelle Gordon, an expert on migration and exile studies, in a freewheeling panel discussion on censorship, repression and writing in exile. Moderating the dialogue is Marje Schuetze-Coburn, head of USC’s Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, which houses the late novelist’s extensive archives and rare books collection.
“Enemy No. 1 of the German people" is what Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had called Feuchtwanger when rescinding his German citizenship and ordering his books burned. To the rest of the German-speaking world, though, Feuchtwanger was simply the most popular novelist of his day, a cultural treasure whose prose could deftly reconstruct the Salem witch hunt, the French Revolution, first-century Rome and Benjamin Franklin’s Philadelphia. His first major novel, Jud Süß, already had brought Feuchtwanger international fame by 1927. But his next novel, Success, painted an unflattering picture of a Hitler-like fanatical leader. When the Nazis took power in 1933, Feuchtwanger fled his homeland and resettled in France.
It wasn’t far enough. In 1940, he and his wife escaped from a French internment camp and made their way to safety in Los Angeles. Southern California was a haven for German intellectuals fleeing the ravages of Europe. At the center of this émigré community were Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger, whose Pacific Palisades home, called Villa Aurora, served as a hub for cultural titans such as playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Hanns Eisler, authors Thomas and Heinrich Mann, novelist Erich Maria Remarque and conductor Bruno Walter. (Highlights from the Feuchtwanger collection, including photographs of the émigré community, will be on display at the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library on the day of the panel discussion.)
The timing of this event is meaningful. It takes place during Banned Books Week and coincides with USC Libraries’ publication of The Devil in France, Feuchtwanger’s memoir of his and his wife’s imprisonment and escape from Vichy France.
Originally published in 1940, the new edition contains some improvements in the translation, plus a postscript written in 1980 by Marta Feuchtwanger that never before has been published in English. It also features a biographical timeline and a detailed map of Southern France.
“Lion Feuchtwanger was a very important writer,” said Schuetze-Coburn, who oversaw the publication, “and this is his only full-length autobiographical work. It is a very gripping and engaging work. He clearly and coolly describes his experiences, makes it quite vivid and personalizes a piece of history.”
The book is being distributed free to the USC community at the circulation desks of all University Park libraries. A PDF version can be downloaded at www.usc.edu/libraries/devilinfrance. For those who want to dig deeper, USC exile studies librarian Michaela Ullmann has assembled related multimedia bibliographies, or LibGuides, at https://libguides.usc.edu/prf.php?account_id=24654
The panel discussion “Enemy Number One: Lion Feuchtwanger and the Literature of Exile” will take place Wednesday at noon in Doheny Memorial Library’s Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall (Room 240). Admission is free and a light lunch will be served. Following the panel discussion, participants are invited to visit USC’s Feuchtwanger Memorial Library on the second floor of Doheny Library and see an exhibition of rare photos and other materials related to German exiles in Los Angeles. The exhibition will only be viewable the day of the panel discussion. Feuchtwanger Library hours are Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. For more information, call (213) 740-8185.