56 Friday, May 30, 1980
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Marta Feuchtwanger: A 20th Century Woman
Marta Feuchtwanger will celebrate her 90th birthday in surfaced on the West Side of
Lion was incarcerated in
a prison camp, and Marta, January. The amazing widow of one of this century's most Los Angeles, and now they
were joined by others, in-
Marta was born in on the outside, worked fran- widely-read social-conscience authors, Lion Feuchtwanger,
cluding Arnold Schoenberg,
Marta
continues
to
lead
an
active
life
in
Pacific
Palisades,
tically
to
wheedle
his
re-
Munich in 1891 to middle-
Igor Stravinsky, Bertolt
Calif
as
the
grand
dame
of
the
West
Coast
arts
colony.
lease.
At
length
she
suc-
class assimilated Jewish
Brecht, Fritz Lang, Otto
Mrs.
Feuchtwanger
is
being
cited
this
month
at
the
parents, their only child to ceeded, and the two quickly
commencement exercises of the University of Southern Klemperer, Bruno Walter,
smuggled
their
way
back
to
survive infancy.
Max Reinhardt — the list is
In 1910 she met Lion Munich, where Lion was California. She will receive her fifth honorary degree.
She was the subject last January of a two-part West legion. Many found em-
Feuchtwanger, seven years summarily slapped into the
ployment in local univer-
German
television special.
Kaiser's
army.
her senior, a young playw-
sities or Hollywood.
In
the
last
year,
Mrs.
Feuchtwanger
was
interviewed
for
During
the
war
years,
right and critic, at a party
more
than
50
hours
by
Lawrence
Weschler
for
the
UCLA
Lion wrote books and was
Lion's
aesthetics
gradually
given by one of his sisters.
His parents, quite weal- changed: In short, he be- Oral History Program and the USC Library. Those inter- quite successful; with the
royalties he set about amas-
thy Orthodox Jews, had vir- came politicized. Indeed, his views have been edited into four volumes, nearly 2,000 sing his third library, per-
pages,
covering
"her
friendships
and
interactions
with
many
"Lied
der
Gefallenen"
in
tually disowned their
haps his greatest. They
lapsed son, who had in the 1915 was among the first of the greatest figures in world politics and culture over the were, as someone had called _
past century."
meantime taken to living a German anti-war poems.
MARTA
This article is excerpted from the Reader—Los Angeles' them, exiles in paradise.
As the war savaged the
bohemian life, espousing
FEUCHTWANGER
Then the McCarthy era
Fart pour l'art, and cutting a monarchial social order in Free Weekly.
closed in. The Feuchtwan-
She busied herself with
dashing figure in Munich Bavaria, Lion and Marta
fi- gers saw their -friends the stewardship of Lion's es-
became
increasingly
sym-
into
a
nascent
bibliophilic
spairing
refugees,
and
underground society. He
lo- Brecht and Hanns Eisler tate, negotiating with the
was immediately taken pathetic to the socialist up- obsession: By 1933, his was nally determined Lion's
hounded out of the country trustees of USC to establish
swelling
that,
with
the
con-
one
of
the
finest
private
lib-
cation.
with her.
She secreted herself into and Thomas Mann leave in their house and its contents
Their marrige, con- clusion of hostilities in raries in Berlin. It, and al-
his camp (disguised as a disgust.
as the Lion Feuchtwanger
ceived in secret, entered 1918, breifly saw the ascen- most everything else, would black
marketeer), estab-
dency
of
a
progressive
leftist
Feuchtwanger himself, Memorial Library. She con-
be
lost.
into out of - necessity,
In January 1933, while lished contact, secreted her- despite the success of his tinues to live in the house,
would last 48 years; but it regime in Bavaria.
That experiment was Lion was on tour in self back out, and then, with novel "Proud Destiny," a over the years shepherding
barely survived its first.
the assistance of two young
Within a few months the quickly squashed by the America and Marta ski- American consular officials, celebration of the Ameri- thousands of visitors
young couple was in Berlin authorities, but ing in Austria, Hitter engineered Lion's kidnap- can Revolution that he through its magnificent
saw as his present to his MOMS.
Lausanne with Marta de- Lion's and Marta's politi- seized power in Berlin.
out of the camp.
adopted land, was re-
In 1961, as the Bel Air fire
livering her child, a cal. sympathies would The Feuchtwangers ping_
The Feuchtwangers then peatedly denied citizen- surged to withi-n a few
persist.
would never return to
daughter.
holed
up
in
a
Marseilles
One afternoon in 1919, their ransacked home.
ship on grounds — and hundred yards of the house,
Both mother and daugh-
ter, however, contracted Lion, who was by then Upon rejoining each - attic for several months be- this was the official imperiling the library for
fore they were able to
puerperal fever; the child Munich's ranking theater other, they instead hazard their perilous es- charge — of "premature yet a third time, 70-year-old
critic,
was
approached
by
a
sought
refuge
in
France,
anti-fascism." (Ironi- Marta heroically stayed be-
quickly died, and the
brash 20-year-old medical- in Sanary, a tiny fishing cape, by foot over the cally, Stalin was simul- hind, supervising_its evacu-
mother almost followed.
The Feuchtwangers student from the provinces village along the Riviera Pyrenees, by train through taneously ,banning his ation and watering down
Spain, and finally on once-popular books in the grounds, thereby saving
would never have another who thrust upon him a sheaf that somehow became fascist
two separate ships out of the Soviet Union on them.
child— there simply would of pages, his fledgling quite magnetized during
Lisbon.
grounds that they were
this period.
not be the time, Marta ex- dramatic effort.
Marta's tour of the library
- Within a year they had too reactionary.)
Feuchtwanger was im- -
is today one of the high-
For seven years, their re-established them-
pressed and championed the
A few days after Lion's lights _ of a Southern
time on the
work into production. The neighbors included Aldous selves, ' this
.
California visit for many
boy's name was Bertolt Huxley, Thomas Mann, Cahforma Riviera, even- death in 1958, at age 74, world dignitaries.. The col-
Marta
received
a
call
from
a
Franz
Werfel
and
Alma
Wy
securing
a
dilapi-
all
Brecht. (The two would re-
dated castle in the hills of functionary at the Immi- lection of more than 35,000 -
main lifelong friends and Mahler.
volumes includes some ex-
even collaborate on three
Lion worked feverishly, Pacific Palisades. Marta gration Service, grievously traordinary gems, and
apologizing
that
they
had
quickly
set
about
its
re-
composing his greatest his-
plays.)
'been just about to grant Marta, a spry gleam in her
A few years later, in 1923,
torical novels, the Josephus habilitation.
Lion his citizenship and eye, takes her visitors
Once
again
they
found
Hitler's abortive (and pre-
trilogy, while at the same
through a marvelously ca-
time producing a string of themselves in a rich corn- wouldn't she come down on denced walking history of
mature) Beerhall Putsch
her
next
birthday
and
re-
signaled the closing of an
contemporary stories spot- munity of emigres. The
Western Civilization.
ceive the honor.
lighting the German calam- whole Sanary group had re-
era.
-
Although Hitler had ity. In the meantime he
ludicrously failed this
slowly, built up a second li-
time around, the political brary, almost as fine as the
climate in Munich first, and equally doomed.
quickly deteriorated, and
In 1940, with Franco-
- LION
most of the city's cultural
German relations deter-
gesture, the full dimensions blamed for their atrocity."
FEUCHTWANGER
By DR. ARNOLD AGES
elite were presently iorating, the French gov-
In Canada, the four
of which are not revealed
Faculty
of
Arts,
plains — but it is interest- scampering for the safer
ernment interned its
Jewish operatives make
Department of French,
until
mid-way
through
the
ing that throughout his high ground of cos-
Jewish exiles as potential
University of
contact with their Nazi
book.
novels, Feuchtwanger is mopolitan Berlin.
Waterloo, Ontario
enemy aliens. The
agents. One of the group,
First
Kurt,
along
with
haunted by the elusive
Lion and Marta joined the Feuchtwangers, like all
The Lions of Judah" by three inmates of the Sac- Moshe, is indiscreet
presence of daughters.
exodus, but Lion also other Germans, were Ted Willis (Holt, Rinehart henhausen concentration enough to attempt mak-
As Marta recovered, the sounded an early alarm in herded into camps. --
and Winston) has a certain
ing contact with a Jewish
two began a gypsy honey- his writings. His 1927 novel
They were separated, meretricious quality. It de- camp are put through an in- relative in New York City
tensive
one-month
training
moon, trekking from the "Success" included the first with Lion incarcerated rives in part from an imag-
and is quickly killed by
French Riviera down the sustained satirical treat- near Nimes and Marta in inative scenario involving excercise and taught the Nazi thugs before he sees
rudiments
of
guerilla
war-
boot of Italy across to Sicily . ment of Hitler in German the foothills of the Herman Goering, Heinrich
family.
and– eventually over to literure; it was a portrait Pyrenees. In June, the Himmler and the Fuhrer fare. As Jews they suffer his The
three remaining
physical and moral abuse
North Africa. For almost the Nazis wo .ild not forget. Nazis swamped the himself.
Jews devise an ingenious
but
the
ultra-secret
nature
two years they lived out of
The Feuchtwangers' Be- French defenses and
The evil trinity led their of their job keeps' them plan through which they
their knapsacks, from day rlin years w c3re lively. seized control of the
seek to derive the max'
names
to a plan devised by alive.
to day, utterly oblivious in Feuchtwanger's reputation camps.
effect. Under Kurt's .d-
Reichsmarshal
Goering
The
four
Jewish
men
are
their primitive happiness to soared with the sensational
was
Feuchtwanger
through which a group of placed on a Nazi submarine ance they stage a train
the gloom that was inexora-
successes of such novels as among a select group of in- German Jews are enlisted which wends its way across hijacking and isolat
bly gathering over Europe.
"Jud Suss" (known as dividuals they were specifi- in the furtherance of the
the Atlantic to the coastal physicists on one c ‘
cally seeking. During a
In August, 1914, the "Power" in America).
Nazi war effort.
waters of New Brunswick, They then proceed to intqrm
They played host to cul- summer fraught with
young couple was
Herman Goering, the Canada. Kurt is informed of Germany via a Nazi agent
sojourning in the desert tural figures from through- danger, Marta (age, 49) es- target of an assassination the mission he and his com- in their midst that the
physicists will be killed only
of French Tunisia when out the world, ranging from caped out of her camp, attempt by a German Jew rades must execute.
they suddenly found Sinclair Lewis to Sergei wandered through southern
persuades the latter to as-
The Nazis, aware of the after they , the saboteurs re-
themselves arrested as Eisenstein.-Lion plowed his France, its roads swollen sist the Reich in exchange progress made in the West ceive news that Jews are on
substantial royalties back with disoriented and de- for the release of 10,300 on the splitting of the atom, their way to safety and free-
enemy aliens.
Jews.
have ordered this Jewish dom.
This complicated plot is
Kurt Reis, the unsuc- unit to kill 10 world-famous resolved with some skill by
physicists,
scheduled
to
con-
cessful assassin, finds ,
author Willis. The novel is
himself on the horns of a fer in Halifax, Nova Scotia. no work of art but a
In
the
Goering
plan
the
moral dilemma: To refuse
workman-like reconstruc-
the unsavory offer is to Reich has nothing to lose. If tion of a scenario that is just
sentence to death the Jewish assassins shirk barely plausible. It's not the
thousands of his fellow their task European Jews best in the Second World
will be slaughtered anyway.
Jews.
War-cum-Jews genre but it
Accepting the proposal If they complete the murder is readable.
operation
Jews
will
be
involves an equally heinous
By LAWRENCE
WESCHLER
`Lions of Judah' Is Readable
ovel Based on World War II
"