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 "