Refuge and Reality. Feuchtwanger and the European Émigrés in California (review)

Reviewed by: Refuge and Reality. Feuchtwanger and the European Émigrés in California Geoff Wilkes Pól O'Dochartaigh and Alexander Stephan, eds. Refuge and Reality. Feuchtwanger and the European Émigrés in California. German Monitor 61. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005. 140 pp. € 40. US$ 56. ISBN 90-420-1945-X. This volume presents selected papers from the inaugural conference of the International Feuchtwanger Society in Pacific Palisades in 2003. The first three contributions analyse individual novels by Feuchtwanger. Wulf Koepke examines Die Brüder Lautensack, which he believes has received insufficient attention from scholars, and argues that it reflects Feuchtwanger's abiding interest in "der Zusammenhang der Erkenntnis, des 'Hellsehens,' mit dem Handeln, mit dem 'Führer'" (16) and that it is linked to Jud Süß and Die Geschwister Oppermann by "das unausgesprochene, untergründige Motiv der Verführung der Juden durch die deutsche Kultur, durch die Aussicht, Anteil am deutschen Leben zu haben und in ihm mitbestimmen zu können" (16). Arnold Pistiak interprets Feuchtwanger's last completed novel, Jefta und seine Tochter, as "zugleich Zusammenfassung und – vielleicht – Korrektur des Geschichtsverständnisses seines Autors" (28). Pól O'Dochartaigh investigates Waffen für Amerika, suggesting that until the 1980s it was "subjected to ideologically-driven interpretations that appeared to serve one or other side in the Cold War" (31) and advancing the alternative view that the novel articulates "a concept of human progress achieved through European-American cooperation both historically and in a contemporary context" (39). The next three papers deal more broadly with European émigrés in California. Ian Wallace's well sourced and closely argued analysis of Fritz Lang's and Bertolt Brecht's collaboration on Hangmen also die concludes inter alia that the two men's differing conceptions of the film are evident in the finished product, for example that the portrayal of the Czech resistance is shaped by both "the Hollywoodesque manhunt melodrama familiar to the American audience which Lang had in mind, and the film about mass popular resistance which, with more than one eye on a postwar German audience, Brecht so clearly envisioned" (46). David Midgley's discussion of Alfred Döblin's conversion to Catholicism during his Californian exile notes that the author's wife Erna and their sons Stefan and Peter converted at the same time and suggests that the Döblin family's "collective decision" (66) was motivated not only by spiritual and intellectual considerations, but also by the desire "to maintain a common sense of order and purpose in their lives together in America" (66) after their variegated and sometimes traumatic experiences in France from 1933 to 1940. Daniel Azuélos is concerned with the New York Aufbau under the editorship of Manfred George, maintaining that it pursued "eine straffe politische Linie [...], die jüdisches Bewusstsein, gemäßigten Zionismus, sozial-demokratisches Gedankengut und Treue zu den amerikanischen Grundwerten zu einem neuen Selbstverständnis der deutsch-jüdischen Exilbevölkerung zusammenfassen sollte" (71) and examining Feuchtwanger's and Franz Werfel's relationship with the magazine and its editor in that context. [End Page 90] The three final articles concentrate on unpublished materials. Alexander Stephan reviews numerous files recording FBI surveillance of Feuchtwanger and his associates and decides that these are significant primarily in prompting "ein tiefes Gefühl von der Absurdität moderner Bürokratien, der paranoiden Angst von mächtigen Staaten vor der subversiven Kraft einer kleinen, exilierten und marginalisierten Gruppe von Intellektuellen und der hoffnungslosen Machtlosigkeit des Einzelnen gegenüber der Gier von Geheimdiensten nach Informationen aller Art" (95). Marje Schuetze-Coburn refers to letters and other relevant documents to illuminate the creative obstacles that Feuchtwanger faced in his first years in the USA, although her short paper treats some topics, such as problems with literary translation (105), very cursorily. However, translation is discussed more extensively (with other issues) by Jeffrey B. Berlin, who sketches the career of Feuchtwanger's US publisher, Ben W. Huebsch, and surveys the two men's extensive unpublished correspondence. Geoff Wilkes The University of Queensland Copyright © 2007 The Canadian Association of University Teachers of German

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