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AN EMIGRE LIFE
MUNICH, BERLIN, SANARY, PACIFIC PALISADES

Marta Feuchtwanger
Interviewed by Lawrence M. VJeschler

VOLUME I

Completed under the auspices

of the

Oral History Program

University of California

lo8 Angeles

This manuscript is hereby made available for research
purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript,
including the right to publication, are reserved to
the University Library of the University of California,
Los Angeles, and the University Library of the
University of Southern California. No part of the
manuscript may be quoted for publication without the
written permission of the University Librarian of the
University of California, Los Angeles, or the director
of the Lion Feuchtwanger Memorial Library of the
University of Southern California.

This interview was conducted and processed by the
UCLA Oral History Program under the shared sponsor-
ship of the Program and the Feuchtwanger Fund of
the University of Southern California.

TT^LE OF CONTENTS
VOLUME I

Illustrations ix

Introduction ^

Interview History xxvii

TAPE NUMBER: I, Side One (June 17, 1975) 1

Marta's birth in Munich--Ker family background:
bankers and merchants — Childhood in Munich:
father, mother, dead siblings— The Loeffler
home — Jewishness--Anti-Semitism in Bavaria —
East European Jews in transit — Overcautious
rearing and early ill health — Isolation--
Attending private school — Learning the facts
of life.

TAPE NUMBER: I, Side Two (June 17, 1975) 27

More on Marta's childhood in Munich: isolation
--Life in a "bourgeois" home — Desire to be a
doctor — Education--Introduction to literature
by a friendly cousin — Cultural life in Munich —
Opera--The Dreyfus affair--More on Jewishness —
Reading the Bible — Munich festivals — Seeing
herself in the first film she ever saw--Skills
in gymnastics — Opera and culture in Munich--
Anita Augspurg, feminism, and expressionism —
Munich as an art center--Flirts and boys.

TAPE NUMBER: II, Side One (June 17, 1975) 55

Liberalism, conservatism,, and Catholicism in
Bavaria — Resentment of Prussia — Beer halls and
knife fights — Lion's family background: a
fortune in margarine — His grandfather and
father--Their Orthodox Jewish lifestyle — A
pressured childhood, eldest of nine children--
An inventory of his siblings — His unhappy
childhood--Lion's parents.

TAPE NUMBER: II, Side Two (June 20, 1975) 81

More on Lion's family and early years--Parents '

attitudes--An unhappy home- -Orthodox observances
and doubts--A volume on Josephus in his father's
library — Education : Gymnasium--Vacations--
Friends — Athletics--Early literary influences
and endeavors: Wilde's Salome and his own
Prinzessin Hilde--An early flop — Early critical
work--The Torqgelstube wine restaurant and its
clientele: Frank Wedekind, Erich Muhsam, Max
Halbe--Lion ' s decision to give up criticism.

TAPE NUMBER: III, Side One (June 20, 1975) 108

Frank and Tilly Wedekind--Lion ' s early writings:
lost plays--The Phoebus Club scandal--Marta and
Lion meet at her sister's party--Brash overtures
--Their secret courtship.

[Second Part] (June 24, 1975) 127

Addenda to earlier sessions--Lion ' s attack on
the vacuousness of the Munich theater--Max
Reinhardt brought to Munich — A sensational
production of Offenbach's La^ Belle Helene .

TAPE NUMBER: III, Side Two (June 24, 1975) 136

The cultural life of Munich and environs before
World War I--Lion's early politics--Socialists
in prewar Germany--His lodging--Early odd jobs —
--His taste for gambling — Marta ' s "condition"
puts an end to the secrecy of their affair —
Parent's reactions — Wedding in black on the
Bodensee, 1912 — Honeymoon--Birth of daughter
in Lausanne--Puerperal fever kills child and
almost kills mother--Convalescence on the
Riviera--Opera in Monte Carlo — A total gambling
loss — Traveling penniless, on foot, into Italy.

TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side One (June 24, 1975) 166

Travels, 1912-1914 [cont'd] — Traveling, bankrupt,
across the Italian Alps — The Italian Riviera —
Florence--Rome--The sick pope--Stories in the
Roman Forum--Historical and aesthetic concerns.

[Second Part] (June 27, 1975) 172

Addenda to earlier sessions: a charity ball in
Munich; reactions to the marriage; incident at
a power line--Travels : sick in Naples —

Entertaining each other with tales of childhood
--Jewishness in Marta's family and childhood--
Lion's unhappy family lif e--Marta ' s father
accused of perjury — A fawning uncle--Recuperation
in Ischia.

TAPE NUMBER: IV, Side Two (June 27, 1975) 192

Travels, 1912-1914 [cont'd] — Ischia and Capri —
Maxim Gorky on Capri--Visit to Pompeii--Hiking
through the Sila Mountains--Rustic nights:
wolves, shepherds, porks, and country aristocrats
— The attitudes of the French and the Italians
toward Germany on the eve of World War I--The
Reise Kaiser and his Schmarren — Crossing over
to Sicily — Earthquakes, volcano, and the Mafia.

TAPE NUMBER: V, Side One (June 30, 1975) 218

Travels, 1912-1914 [cont'd] — Sicilian spring —
Christian paganism--Dangers--Count Li Destri:
Sicilian hospitality — Lion's sense of antiquity
--Poverty and happiness--A haunted castle--
Election in Calabria--Lion ' s writings during
this period--Seeing rehearsals for Agamemnon
in Syracuse--Travel to Tunisia--Jews in Tunisia
--Looking for a place to swim.

TAPE NUMBER: V, Side Two (June 30, 1975) 242

Travels, 1912-1914 [cont'd] — Further explorations
of Tunisia--Attending a Moslem wedding--Harems
and summer palaces — The French consul's "dude
ranch" — In Hammamet — Ramadan — Arrest: the out-
break of World War I — Transfer to Tunis--Lion ' s
incarceration as prisoner of war--His release
engineered by Marta--A narrow escape by ship to
Sicily — On pacifism and patriotism--From Sicily
back toward Munich.

TAPE NUMBER: VI, Side One (July 3, 1975) 271

Addenda to earlier sessions: Monte Carlo opera;
more on Erich Muhsam; nascent f eminism--The
beginning of World War I — From Rome back to
Munich — Reunion with families — Lion's brothers
in the war--The Social Democrats and the war —
The slow realization of the horror of the war--
Spy hysteria--Lion ' s writings during this
period: adaptation of Aeschylus' Persians--

Lion in the anny--In the hospital with stomach
ulcers — Arduous military training.

TAPE NUMBER: VI, Side Two (July 7, 1975) 295

More on Munich during World War I — Attitudes of
literary figures toward the war: Wedekind, the
Mann brothers, Hesse, Holland — Lion's "Song of
the Fallen"--The We Itbiihne-- Operations of the
censor — Lion's theater direction--The denizens
of Schwabing: bohemian life--Artists--More on
Wedekind--Lion ' s writing habits--Julia Farnese
--Further tales of Schwabing.

TAPE NUMBER: VII, Side One (July 7, 1975) 322

Lion's own plays during the war years--Warren
Hastings and Vasantesena--The Berlin performance
of Warren Hastings — Per Konig und die Tanzerin--
Die Kriegsgefangenen--Friede (Aristophanes
translation) --Appius und Virginia (Webster
translation) --Jud Suss (the play) — Turning
away from aestheticism.

[Second Part] (July 10, 1975) 338

Attitudes in Munich toward the Soviet Revolution
— Salon socialism — The origins of the
Rateregierung : despair as the war is ending.

TAPE NUMBER: VII, Side Two (July 10, 1975) 348

The end of the war--The revolution in Munich —
Kurt Eisner and the Rateregierung- -A note on
Lion's earlier poverty--Eisner proclaims the
revolution--Attitudes of Munich's literati--
Politics in Bavaria--Parties and arrests--Erich
Miihsam as police commissioner--Treaty of
Versailles — The assassination of Eisner--The
violent overthrow of the Rateregierung by the
Berlin socialists--Bloodbaths and chaos — A close
call: the discovery by the White Guards of the
Spartacus manuscript in the Feuchtwangers '
apartment.

TAPE NUMBER: VIII, Side One (July 10, 1975) 377

More close calls with the White Guards--Ernst
Toller--An abortive defense of the city--The
White Guards in Munich--A sense of national

vii

politics: parties and f igures--Antiintellectu-
alism and counter re volution--Thomas Wendt.

[Second Part] (July 14, 1975) 397

The Munich theater--Marta ' s childhood memory of
Ibsen — The bohemians — Strindberg and Wedekind.

TAPE NUMBER: VIII, Side Two (July 14, 1975) 404

Wedekind as an actor--Life in Schwabing —
Theaters in Munich — The Mann brothers — Theater
and the Rateregierung — The beating death of
Gustav Landauer — Fall of the Rateregierung:
intelligentsia in jeopardy--Meeting Brecht--
Lion's support for his early p 1 ay s - -Edward II:
collaboration and celebration for Lion and
Brecht--Joachim Ringelnatz and Karl Valentin —
Cabaret life.

ERRATA: p. 32 does not exist; p. 218a exists to
correct the pagination.

Vlll

ILLUSTRATIONS

Marta Feuchtwanger during interview.
August 13, 1975. Photograph by
Norman Schindler, ASUCLA Campus
Studio.

frontispiece
Volume I

Marta Feuchtwanger in Berlin.
Circa 1926. Photograph for a
British journal.

Marta and Lion Feuchtwanger in their
Sanary Library. Circa 1935.
Photograph by Bondy.

Marta Feuchtwanger and Lawrence
Weschler during interview, in the
large hall of the Feuchtwanger
Memorial Library. August 13, 1975
Photograph by Norman Schindler,
ASUCLA Campus Studio.

frontispiece
Volume II

frontispiece
Volume III

frontispiece
Volume IV

INTRODUCTION

Marta Feuchtwanger, who was eighty-four years old
when these interviews began and eighty-seven when the
volumes finally reached the shelf — eighty-seven, and
perhaps more spry and vivacious than ever — was born on
January 21, 1891, in Munich, Germany. Her life was
subject to many migrations, none perhaps as definitive
as the temporal: in her serene old age she resided on
the far shore of another continent, on the nether cusp
of another century. In these generous recollections,
she has spanned them all.

Marta was the third child of Leopold and Johanna
Reitlinger Loeffler, the only one to survive infancy.
Although there was a stratum of banking in the family's
prehistory, the passing years had compressed its standard
of living; still, during Marta' s childhood her father
generated a steady income as a merchant with his own
dry goods shop in town and a two-horse carriage for
performing country rounds. At school, Marta proved an
eager student with an intensely independent and inquisi-
tive nature; meanwhile, from early escapades as a frisky
tomboy, she gradually blossomed into an especially graceful
athlete, securing many prizes at gymnastics competitions.
Marta 's family participated in the vast German-Jewish

movement toward reformism and assimilation: yet, Marta
vividly recalls the ripples of anxiety caused by the
Dreyfus affair to the west and the Kichinev pogroms to
the east, and she herself was frequently embroiled in
scuffles arising out of the casual anti-Semitism of her
playmates .

Meanwhile, in another part of Munich, her future
husband. Lion, was growing up in a very different environ-
ment. The Feuchtwangers were quite wealthy: they had
made their fortune in margarine, and Lion's father still
supervised the family factory. But Lion's history was
perhaps shaped not as much by his family's wealth as by
its Orthodoxy. Born on July 7, 1884, the first of the
nine children of Sigmund and Johanna Feuchtwanger, Lion
grew up in an environment at once deeply steeped in its
Orthodox traditions and simultaneously straining to square
those traditions with the practical requirements of life
in a bustling provincial capital. Thus, for example,
every Friday afternoon Lion's father "sold" his factory
to his Gentile accountant, "buying" it back the next
evening, thereby allowing production to continue uninter-
rupted while at the same time adhering to the injunction
against work on the Sabbath. Likewise, young Lion was
expected to succeed in two educations at once, the
classical German matriculation during the day and the

Orthodox Jewish regimen in the predawn hours . As the
eldest child, the glare of expectation was especially
focused on Lion, and although this double education in
fact formed Lion's sweeping intellectual horizons, it
also robbed him of his childhood, his health, and even-
tually his spirit. By his late teens he had already
spawned a stomach ulcer and abandoned his Orthodox
faith. (The theme of Jewishness was nevertheless to
remain a central concern recurring throughout the
writings of his later years.) He rebelled, renounced
his family wealth, and set out on his own.

The town in which these two young people were born,
grew up, met, and matured, Munich at the end of the last
century and during the first quarter of our own, was
singularly graced with cultural and intellectual energy.
Indeed, seldom in history has such a relatively small
provincial town attracted such a variegated concentration
of creative genius . This intense productivity is especi-
ally striking since it appears to have taken place in
relative isolation from the native population--that is,
the artists and writers formed a fairly self-sufficient
community, drawing little on the conservative, largely
Catholic population of the surrounding province. During
the previous generation, Munich had served as a frequent
homebase for Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, and

Xll

at the turn of the century their tradition was being con-
tinued in the work of Frank VJedekind. Summers saw the
arrival of Max Reinhardt and his ensemble with their
dazzling dramatic productions staged at one of the several
flourishing theaters in town. In the popular Weinstube
and Bierkeller, Karl Valentin was engendering the cabaret
style. Munich was also the nurturing ground for Thomas
and Heinrich Mann, for Bruno Frank as well as Lion
Feuchtwanger , and in later years for Bertolt Brecht,
flanked by Georg Kaiser and Ernst Toller. Erich Miihsam
and Kurt Eisner propagated their blend of radical politics
and creative integrity. On the musical front, Richard
Strauss was launched in a town where, a generation later,
Bruno Walter manned the chief podium. For its part,
painting was revolutionized in Munich when Franz Marc and
Wassily Kandinsky forged their Blaue Reiter movement. The
Schwabing district, the Torggelstube cafe, the Simplicissimus
journal, the Elf Scharf richter cabaret .... During the
early years of this century, Munich was Berlin in prepa-
ration. And indeed, with the upswelling of a virulent
strain of anti-Semitic protofascism after the First World
War--for, of course, Munich was also the town where Adolf
Hitler was discovering himself in the early twenties--many
of the cultural leaders in Munich scrambled for the safer
high ground of Weimar Berlin.

Xlll

To be sure, the vantage of hindsight accordions the
series of cultural epiphanies which in fact transpired
over decades: not all of these individuals, for example,
dwelt in Munich at the same time. Nevertheless, the
capital of Bavaria was undoubtedly redolent with the
aura of cultural ferment during the years that Marta
and Lion were growing up. By 1910, Marta was a lovely
young woman, flitting about the edges of a cultural scene
in which Lion had already become somewhat prominent as an
upstart theater critic. And it was now, at a party given
by one of Lion's sisters, that the two met.

Marta describes the snappy, sassy tone of their early
encounters. Lion's persistent siege, her own persistent
aloofness. But the chemistry of the relationship gradually
took hold, and the two were soon pursuing "a secret court-
ship," secret encounters in Lion's attic apartment, secret
for two years, that is, "until it was no longer possible
to keep it a secret." Their engagement was suddenly
announced to both sets of parents in 1912, and the wedding
quickly dispatched on the shore of the Bodensee, a small
affair with Marta gowned in black because of her "con-
dition. "

They embarked on a honeymoon which was to last years.
Several months passed and they found themselves in Lausanne
with Marta in labor: she gave birth to a daughter but

XIV

contracted puerperal fever during the delivery. The infant
contracted the fever from her mother: the baby died, and
the mother only barely survived. In the months thereafter
the young couple recuperated on the French Riviera. Soon
they embarked on a walking tour of Italy, living out of
their knapsacks, Lion dispatching occasional articles in
order to meet their meager expenses. Throughout 1913 and
into 1914 they hiked down the Italian boot, crossed over
to Sicily and then on over to North Africa, utterly
oblivious in their primitive happiness to the gloom that
was gradually gathering over Europe.

In August 1914, the young couple was sojourning in
the desert of French Tunisia when they suddenly found
themselves arrested as enemy aliens. Lion was incarcerated
in a prisoner camp, and Marta, on the outside, worked
frantically to wheedle his release. Miraculously, she
succeeded, and the two quickly smuggled themselves onto
a boat and escaped to Italy and then on back to Munich.

During the early stages of the war. Lion was in and
out of military training, his stomach ulcer in a state of
continual rebellion. He was constantly being pulled, at
the last possible moment, out of squadrons marching off
to precipitous annihilation. Eventually he was relegated
to the back lines and put in charge of theater productions
for the army. It was during this period that his own

cultural biases underwent the marked evolution from the
purely aesthetical sympathies of his early years (IVart
pour I'art) to the decidedly political concerns that were
to characterize all of his subsequent production. And
those politics, from very early on, were pacifist: he
translated Aeschylus (The Persians) and Aristophanes
(Peace); produced Gorky; wrote a play (Warren Hastings)
which portrayed the despised English as complex human
beings; and composed one of the first antiwar poems of
that era ("Lied der Gefallenen" in 1915).

With the utter collapse of the war effort in 1918,
Munich experienced a spontaneous revolution. The monarch
fled and the socialists seized power. Led by Kurt Eisner,
a former theater critic, they sought simultaneously to
establish the socialist republic to which they aspired
and to salvage the desperate economy which they had
inherited. When Eisner was subsequently assassinated
by a reactionary fanatic, the communist radicals rose
up and proclaimed the Munich Soviet. But this last phase
of the Ratereqierung was short-lived: within months it
was brutally suppressed by the military-dominated
socialists in Berlin. Their "White Guards" entered the
city and initiated a bloody purge of the Reds. Lion,
who had been sympathetic to some of the aspirations of
the Ratereqierung and friendly with many of its leaders,

XVI

paid bitter homage with his play Thomas Wendt.

It was during these years just after the war that
Lion, the occasional theater critic, was approached by
a twenty-year-old medical student named Bertolt Brecht.
The young man showed him the manuscripts of two plays.
Lion immediately championed this precocious talent,
arranged for performances, and even collaborated with
him in writing a new play (Edward II) . This was the
dawn of a lifelong friendship and professional associa-
tion. (Two later collaborations included Kalkutta 4 .
Mai in 1925 and Die Gesichte der Simone Ilachard in 1943.)

The early twenties in Munich were years of financial
dislocation climaxing in a swirl of berserk inflation.
They were also years of political instability, culminating
in Adolf Hitler's abortive (premature) coup d'etat in
1923. The cultural community of Munich was quickly
scattering, most of its members restationing themselves
in Berlin. In 1925 the Feuchtwangers followed the trend.

During the early twenties, Lion moved from being a
playwright who occasionally wrote criticism to becoming
a novelist who occasionally wrote plays. In 1922 he
completed Jud Siiss, a novelized transformation of an
earlier play. This historical novel, coupled with the
next. Die hassliche Herzogin, catapulted Lion to the
front of the world stage: his success, particularly

xvii

in Britain, was phenomenal. His next major work, Erfolg,
treated contemporary events in Munich and indeed provided
the first sustained satirical treatment of Adolf Hitler,
a fact which the Nazis were not to forget. By 1930,
Feuchtwanger had staked out his distinctive terrain as
a writer: throughout the rest of his career he alter-
nately treated historical subjects with an uncanny sense
of lived realism, or contemporary situations with the
distanced, objective tone of a future historian. His
next major undertaking, perhaps his masterpiece, was
Die judische Krieg, the first volume of the monumental
Josephus trilogy which was to occupy him throughout the
next decade.

Berlin was . . . Berlin. To sing its praises, to
enumerate its titans, to approximate its ethos would
seem at this point simultaneously redundant and reduc-
tionary. The Feuchtwangers situated themselves at its
heart. Marta designed a superb house in the Grunewald
district, and Lion gradually stocked it with a magnificent
library, the first of three. Marta and Lion traveled
widely--to Austria, Switzerland, France, Spain, England,
Italy, Yugoslavia, even America .... They returned
each time to a Berlin as vibrant as it was doomed.

In January 1933, while Lion was on tour in T^erica
and Marta out skiing in Austria, Hitler came to power.

XVlll

They did not return: they left everything behind. Lion
rushed to join Marta in Sankt Anton, and the two quickly
retired to Bern. After a few months they moved south to
the French Riviera, eventually settling in the sleepy
fishing village of Sanary.

The Feuchtwangers were not the first literary people
to discover Sanary — the region had been favored by the
English, discovered by D.H. Lawrence years earlier and
still savored by Aldous Huxley and his circle — but their
presence seems to have magnetized the region. Within a
year the coastal hills around Sanary were inhabited by
the Thomas Manns, the Heinrich Manns, the Bruno Franks,
the Ludwig Marcuses, Alma Mahler and Franz Werfel, and
many others. Bertolt Brecht and Arnold Zweig were fre-
quent visitors. For a period of seven years, this small
corner of France constituted a brief refuge for the
Weimar spirit.

Lion produced relentlessly. He turned his craft
to the exposure of the Nazi menace in a series of pas-
sionate political allegories — Die Geschwister Oppermann,
Exil, Per falsche Nero, Die Briider Lautensack--inter-
spersing these efforts with work on the continuing
Josephus saga, which now took on an urgent tone of
contemporary relevance. In 1937 he traveled to Russia,
met Stalin, and returned to compose his controversial

XIX

report, Moskau 1937. He frequently traveled to Paris and
was active in PEN (Poets, Essayists, and Novelists), trying
to save writers and underscore the Nazi threat, a threat
which all too quickly inundated the Feuchtwangers once
again.

In 1940, with Franco-German relations deteriorating,
the French government interned its Jewish exiles as
potential enemy aliens. The Feuchtwangers, like all
other Germans, were herded into camps. (Lion would now
lose his second library.) They were separated, Lion sent
to Les Milles and then San Nicolas (near Nlmes) , Marta to
Hyeres and then the huge camp at Gurs in the foothills of
the Pyrenees. In June, the Nazi armies swamped the French
defenses, and Paris fell within a matter of days. Control
of the camps devolved to the Nazis (through their Vichy
puppets) and Feuchtwanger was among the select list whom
they were specifically seeking. During a summer fraught
with danger, Marta escaped from her camp, wandered through
southern France, its roads swollen with disoriented and
despairing refugees, and finally determined Lion's loca-
tion. She secreted herself into his camp (disguised as
a black marketeer) , established contact, secreted her-
self back out, sought assistance from the American con-
sulate in Marseilles (Roosevelt had ordered Feuchtwanger
rescued at all costs), and with the aid of two young

consular officials, engineered Lion's kidnapping out of
the camp. The Feuchtwangers then holed up in a Marseilles
attic for several months before they were able to hazard
their perilous escape, by foot over the Pyrenees, by train
through fascist Spain, and finally in two separate ships
out of Lisbon, They were reunited in October in New York,
exhausted but safe. Lion quickly composed his Per Teufel
in Frankreich as a memoir and a witness.

Within a year they had reestablished themselves, this
time on the California Riviera; they caromed from one
rented house to another until they finally secured a
dilapidated castle in the hills of Pacific Palisades,
the house at 520 Paseo Miramar. Marta quickly set about
its rehabilitation. Once again they found themselves in
a rich community of emigres. The whole Sanary group had
resurfaced on the west side of Los Angeles — the Manns,
the VJerfels, the Huxley s, the Franks--but now they were
joined by others whose escapes had coursed elsewhere —
Austrians, Germans, Russians, French; writers, musicians,
artists, architects, f ilmmakers--Arnold Schoenberg, Fritz
Lang, Jean Renoir, Max Reinhardt, Berthold and Salka
Viertel, Christopher Isherwood, Bruno Walter, Igor
Stravinsky, Ernst Toch, Wilhelm Dieterle, Peter Lorre,
Greta Garbo, Erich Maria Remarque, Rudolf Carnap, Hans
Reichenbach, Man Ray, Rico Lebrun, Arnold Doblin, Theodor

XXI

Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Richard Neutra, Otto Klemperer . .
By 1941, even Brecht was here, although virtually ignored
by the general public. Many found employment in local
universities or in Hollywood: they found succor in one
another's company. They spent evenings on the Palisade,
watching the sun set over the Pacific, contemplating the
ravages in the land they had left behind, awaiting the
coming dawn. They worked as best they could. They were,
as someone has called them, exiles in paradise.

Time passed. The war ended. Dawn came, but the
eastern sky was bloody with revelations of death camps
and bomb devastation. During the first years after the
Nazi surrender, many of the emigres expired, as much from
exhaustion as anything else--Bruno Frank, Franz Werfel,
Heinrich Mann, Arnold Schoenberg . The satisfactions of
victory were further tempered by a pervading sense of
anxiety as America lurched from its external war against
fascism into an internal obsession with communism. The
very broadcasts and papers with which these emigres had
cried out against Nazism from its earliest festerings
were suddenly being cited against them as evidence of
longstanding "communist" sympathies. They were scored
for their "premature antifascism. " Within years these
emigres were transformed from heroic resisters into
scheming subversives. The witchhunt focused on Hollywood

xxii

and, by implication, the emigre influence. Many of the
emigres found themselves forced into yet another exile--
Bert Brecht, Hanns Eisler, Thomas Mann. Many of those
who remained, including Lion, were subject to official
harassments: Lion, for example, was never granted American
citizenship, despite repeated hearings. Lion's writings
during these years explored the social psychology of
earlier inquisitions, first in his play Wahn, Per Teufel
in Boston (which anticipated, by several years, Arthur
Miller's treatment of the same historical analog in his
The Crucible) and later in his novel Goya. If the emigre
community in Los Angeles had constituted a shadow of its
Weimar greatness, by 1955 it had lapsed into a shadow of
itself.

Despite the political pressures impinging all about
him. Lion spent his last decades in a state of continual
productivity. Generally, the work of these last years
divides along two central concerns. On the one hand.
Lion's historical imagination became riveted on the
foundations of the modern era, the revolutions of the
late eighteenth century: he composed novels based on
the lives of Goya, Rousseau, Benjamin Franklin, a play
on the last days of Marie Antoinette. Meanwhile, he
also returned in his old age to his originary impulse,
an evocation of the core essence of Jewishness, producing

XXlll

two final novels. Die Jlidin von Toledo and Jef ta und
seine Tochter .

These works met with a tremendous popular reception:
they were pressed into countless paperback editions, sold
to the movies. Lion poured his large income into his
lifelong bibliophilic obsession: he gradually built up
his third library, perhaps his greatest, certainly one
of the great private libraries in America, including rare
editions of Spinoza, Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, a Nuremberg
Chronicle, and hundreds of other treasures. (Years later,
after Lion had died, this library too would be imperiled,
this time by the famous Bel-Air fire of 1961, v/hich surged
to within yards of the house.)

During his last year. Lion was once again mobilizing
his vast library, this time for a book-length essay on
the history of and prospects for the historical novel.
The manuscript would never be completed. The constricted
organ of his unhappy childhood, his stomach, erupted once
again in disease, this time a cancer; and within a fairly
short time, on December 21, 1958, Lion Feuchtwanger was
dead. He was seventy-four.

Of all of the extraordinary accomplishments of Lion
Feuchtwanger ' s life, none perhaps supersedes the triumph
of his forty-eight years with Marta Loeffler. The story
of their marriage, in effect, constitutes his greatest

XXIV

unwritten novel--not written, because it was lived. In
the months following Lion's passing, Marta curled into a
solitary seclusion: the only companions she allowed into
her world were the animals she encountered on long hikes
through the Santa Monica Mountains on during early morning
swims in the Pacific.

Gradually, however, she was coaxed out of her isola-
tion through the solicitude of friends, especially Ernst
and Lilly Toch. Slowly her interest in the world recir-
culated. She busied herself with the stewardship of
Lion's estate. She negotiated with the trustees of the
University of Southern California, eventually donating
the house and contents at Paseo Miramar to the university
as a permanent subdivision of the USC Library, the Lion
Feuchtwanger Memorial Library. She continued to live at
the house, becoming the library's curator and guide, over
the years shepherding thousands of visitors through its
magnificent rooms. Her correspondence soon encompassed
the entire literary world. She also became involved with
local civic concerns: she spearheaded a campaign, for
example, to save the Watts Towers. But more than any-
thing else, she seemed to go through an apotheosis: with
her long, black Chinese gowns, her sleek, white hair
pulled back tight in a neat bun, her face a study in
animation, she seemed to appear at every major cultural

XXV

event — concerts, theaters, films, art openings, consular
and university receptions--the living embodiment of a
noble tradition, a bridge with the past.

In short, she had become an institution. She just
refused to behave like one. During the months of our
interviews, she seemed as fresh and sassy as the young
woman whose tale she was recounting. Occasionally we
had to cut our sessions short because she had to drive
off to yet another function: at age eighty-four she was
chauffeuring friends a generation younger than she. She

disarmed with her dry wit, endeared with her glowing
charm, fascinated with her penetrating intellect.
"The tragical and the comical" — she kept marvelling
at their intertwining across her life. She might have
added, the humane.

Lawrence VJeschler

Los Angeles, California
January, 1978

XXVI

INTERVIEW HISTORY

INTERVIEVJER: Lawrence Weschler, Assistant Editor, UCLA
Oral History Program. BA, Philosophy and Cultural
History, University of California, Santa Cruz.

TIME AND SETTING OF THE INTERVIEWS:

Place: Mrs. Feuchtwanger ' s residence in the Lion
Feuchtwanger Library, 520 Paseo Miramar, Pacific
Palisades, in the modern German literature room.

Dates; June 17, 20, 24, 30; July 3, 7, 10, 14, 15,

17, 24, 25, 28, 30; August 1, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 15,

19, 22, 27, 29; September 1, 4, 9, 12, 17, 26, 30;

October 3, 5, 1975.

Time of day, length of sessions, and total number
of recording hours: The interviews generally took
place in the mid-afternoon. Sessions averaged just
over three hours each, although the actual taping
time was seldom over two hours. Total recording
time for the interviews was just under fifty hours.

Persons present during interview: Feuchtwanger and

Weschler .

Video session: The session of August 13 (Tapes
XIX-XX) , which detailed the Feuchtwangers ' escape
from Nazi-occupied Europe in 1940, was videotaped.
The session lasted two hours; the cameraman was
Joel Gardner of the Program staff.

CONDUCT OF THE INTERVIEW:

Mrs. Feuchtwanger, widow of the noted novelist Lion
Feuchtwanger and herself a singularly important
figure in the German emigre community in Southern
California, had been a primary candidate for a UCLA
oral history for several years already at the time
that Lawrence Weschler of the Program staff approached
her in June 1975, to contribute to a series of short
interviews that he was conducting with friends of
his grandparents, Ernst and Lilly Toch, to supple-
ment the program interview of Lilly Toch. Mrs.
Feuchtwanger, as a dear friend of the Tochs, was
pleased to participate. Following this session
with Mrs. Feuchtwanger on June 3, Program Director

XXVll

Bernard Galm decided to extend this initial contact
into a full-fledged oral history of Mrs. Feuchtwanger
herself .

Mr. Weschler resumed the interviews with Mrs.
Feuchtwanger on June 17. The two undertook a
rigorous schedule of tapings, sometimes as many
as three per week, and by October 15, after thirty-
six sessions and just over fifty tape hours, the
oral history was completed. As the interview pro-
ceeded, Mrs. Feuchtwanger prepared typed outlines
of material she wished to cover, and, somewhat
nervous about her fluency in English, she insisted
on reviewing the outlines at the outset of each
session before the tape recorder was turned on.

The interview followed a roughly chronological course
with occasional thematic digressions or anticipations.
Many sessions began with flashbacks to periods dis-
cussed earlier so as to supplement the record with
newly recalled details. The oral history focused
on Lion Feuchtwanger ' s work but placed perhaps even
greater emphasis on his working environment. As
such, portrayals of four distinct milieus were
generated, each time as if from scratch: Munich,
from the turn of the century through the Hitler
putsch in 1923; Berlin, from the mid-twenties through
Hitler's rise to power in 1933; Sanary-sur-mer, the
Germany emigre colony on the French Riviera, from
1933 through Hitler's invasion of France in 1940;
and Southern California after 1941. A few important
friends — notably the Mann brothers and Bertolt
Brecht — recur throughout the interview, as do such
themes as Jewish assimilation and political perse-
cution. The interview concludes with a survey of
Mrs. Feuchtwanger ' s life and travels in the years
since her husband's death in 1958.

Once the interviewing had begun, Mr. Galm sought
independent funding to help in processing the
mammoth transcript. Negotiations with the University
of Southern California (the custodians of the
Feuchtwanger Library) were brief and cordial, and
by May 11, 1976, Harold Von Hofe, dean of the USC
Graduate Division, and Mr. Galm agreed on a plan
of evenly shared sponsorship of the oral history.

XXVlll

EDITING:

Editing was performed by the interviewer, who
checked the verbatim transcript for accuracy and
edited it for punctuation, paragraphing, spelling,
and verification of proper and place names. The
final manuscript remains in the same order as the
taped material. Words or phrases introduced by
the editor have been bracketed.

Mrs. Feuchtwanger reviewed and approved the tran-
script. She supplied spellings of names that had
not been verified previously. Although she made
extensive small changes, these were primarily
cosmetic rather than substantive and again reflected
her concern over proper English usage. Outright
deletions were rare.

The index was prepared by the interviewer, who
also wrote the introduction. Front matter was
assembled by the Program staff.

SUPPORTING DOCUMENTS:

The original tape recordings and edited transcript
of the interviews are in the University Archives
and are available under the regulations governing
the use of noncurrent records of the University.
Copies of both the tapes and the edited transcript
are on deposit in the Lion Feuchtwanger Library, a
special division of the USC Library.

A file of supplementary materials compiled by the

editor during the interview process (see Appendix

B, p- 1747), including photographs, Mrs. Feuchtwanger ' s

typewritten notes for the interview, and copies of

articles about and by both her and her husband, is

on deposit as Collection 100/155 in the Department

of Special Collections of the UCLA Library.

XXIX

TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE
JUNE 17, 19 75

WESCHLER: Well, we've just been talking about how we should
begin, Marta, and I guess the best way is for us to begin
with you, to talk a little bit about when you were born,
where you were born, and your family.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. I was born in Munich, in Bavaria
[on January 21, 1891]. Already my mother had been born
there, and my grandparents lived there. My grandfather was
a banker.

WESCHLER: On which side, on your mother's side?
FEUCHTWANGER: Mother's side, ja.
WESCHLER: What was the name of the family?

FEUCHTWANGER: Reitlinger. That's also very complicated, be-
cause it should be Feuchtwang. My grandfather was an
adopted child, because his parents died. He was adopted by
his aunt, but he had been born Feuchtwang. His family
came from the same little village or little town [Feucht-
wangen] from which my husband came, but they dropped their
last syllable. So I always say I am my own comparative,
[laughter] Anyway, my grandfather was a Reitlinger because
his adopted parents--their name was Reitlinger. And he
became a banker.

My grandmother from my mother's side [nee Sulzbacher]

was from the north of Bavaria, from Franken, and they
had a big farm there. I don't know much, but my mother
said she wove linen and brought it every Friday to the
market in the next big town, with a little carriage with
a horse. There they were sitting on the floor or on the
ground, and she had a big white crinoline on like in those
days, and like a peasant, she also had a handkerchief on
her head. She was--it was said she was very beautiful. My
grandfather chanced to come by there, saw her, and fell in
love with this little girl, who was more or less a peasant
girl. And so they both went to Munich.

He was also from Franken, I think, somewhere. I don't
remember where he was from. But they went to Munich, and
he became a banker there. He was not a great banker, but
anyway, they were wealthy people. It was a little bit like
the Buddenbrooks; every generation was a little less wealthy
because they were too much interested in studying — not in
science, but in literature and law — and not very well in
their trade. Anyway, he was a considerably wealthy man.
Then came the war of 1870, the war between Germany and
France. Most of his clientele were officers of the army,
and they invited also his three lovely daughters for dancing,
which was not usual — that Jewish girls were dancing with
officers. But I think it was a little bit because they
wanted to borrow some money from the banker to speculate.

Then came the war, and some didn't come back; some didn't
have money, much money, and they just didn't pay their
debts, when they had speculated with the money of my
grandfather. My grandfather lost all his money. The
lawyers told him to sue those officers, and then these
three daughters--or anyway, so says my mother--fell on
their knees and said, "Don't sue those nice officers."
He was a very mild man, not very much out for money; so
he didn't sue the officers, and he had to give up to be
a banker. Soon afterwards he died. My grandmother, who
was a very energetic girl--she was the girl who came from
this farm — opened a shop for linen and ladies' underwear,
and things like that, and this was rather well progressing.
Then my mother met her future....

WESCHLER: Oh, wait, before you go on. First of all, what
was the first name of your grandfather?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't remember. I never met him, you know.
WESCHLER: Okay. When did he die?

FEUCHTWANGER: Soon after the end of the war, 1871, some-
thing like that.

WESCHLER: And he had three daughters. What were their
names?

FEUCHTWANGER: Sedonie, and Ida. And my mother was the
youngest one, Johanna, called Hannchen • And she was talented
for making dresses. She always looked very elegant. I

remember when we made a walk, my mother and I, then those
officers would come by, and they greeted like the officers
greet, you know, were very friendly, and she always blushed
like a young girl. It was the things which happened in her
youth. Also the mother was energetic, and she did rather
well with this shop. But she wanted to marry the three
daughters, so first the oldest one got a dowry and married
a cousin of my father. So my father came to the wedding,
from Augsburg, a little village near Augsburg. He met my
mother and he fell in love.

WESCHLER: We might leave them there falling in love, and
find out a little bit about his family.

FEUCHTWANGER: His family was in — it was a little, little
village near Augsburg, the very old city where Brecht was
born. It was Hurben-bei-Krumbach-bei-Augsburg , so little
that it was not on the map. There his father was a cattle
dealer, but he looked, according to the photos I have seen
(we lost everything there, all of the daguerreotypes) --he
looked very aristocratic, and he must have been a very good
man. He was not very rich, but he was wealthy. He died early.
There were two sons, I think. The one was a cigar merchant,
and my father was his apprentice.
WESCHLER: Now, what was your father's name?
FEUCHTWANGER: Leopold. Leopold Loeffler. My grandfather
from my father's side--his firm was together with another

man with the name of [Hermann] Landauer. This Landauer
married my aunt, and my father came to the wedding and met
my mother. And they two--Loef f ler and Landauer (it was
an old name, you know, this firm, already from Augsburg
here) — they took over the shop of my grandmother, and it
was the firm of Loeffler and Landauer. It was kind of a
little department shop, but not only for ladies.
WESCHLER: In Munich.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . In Munich. Not a house — it was only
a shop — but in an old palace, also in a very good site.

They did all right, but not much. My father then began
to go traveling and sold much more merchandise in traveling
than he sold [earlier] , not any more in a small way,
but in a bigger way. Mostly he sold before the First World
War to the little shops in the country. He always had a
carriage and two horses and a coach. The whole year, all
through snow and ice and rain, he went outside to the
country and sold his merchandise to the little merchants there,
He made more money than he made in town because he sold
it wholesale, you see. Also he always found more merchan-
dise in the countryside which was also woven by--he bought
the merchandise from the one who wove it and then sold
it to others in another little town, or so. My uncle, his
associate, was not very--he was not very efficient. He
always stood under the door and looked out. [laughter]

WESCHLER: Mr. Landauer.

FEUCHTWANGER: Mr. Landauer. Ja, ja. And they stayed
little people in comparison. But my father then became
more wealthy, because my uncle retired very soon, and also
died very soon, because he was just sitting at home and
doing nothing and that is not very healthy. My father
was then more enterprising and became rather wealthy. Not
very wealthy, not as wealthy as my husband's parents were.
But still, I was an only child, and I could have elegant
dresses, and we were making trips a lot to other families.
WESCHLER: Do you have any idea what year your parents
were married in?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, I....

WESCHLER: How long before you were born?
FEUCHTWANGER: I was the third child. The two first
children died, and I was born in 1891. My parents were
already not very young anymore. They could have been my
grandparents. And this was very unfortunate for me, so
I was very lonely. I had no young parents, you know,
WESCHLER: You had two siblings that died in infancy?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. One child died right after birth.
My mother never wanted a dog anymore because my uncle, her
brother, was a high official in the government as a
lawyer. What would you call it? A high judge, a superior
judge, or something. And he imitated all those students

in those times, with long pipes which went from the mouth
to the ground, and a big dog, a Great Dane. [Otto von]
Bismarck is always painted with his long pipe and this dog--
and he did the same. He also had a kind of hat with colors,
you know; he imitated all those things. Later he was in
a small town--he was a superior judge--and he came to visit
my mother. And my mother, when she was pregnant, fell
over the dog. That, she said, was the reason that the child
died. And she never wanted any animal anymore, in the house,
which I missed very much. My father liked animals, but
she didn't want animals in the house.

The second child: there was an epidemic of typhoid
fever in those times, when she was small. She recovered,
but she was a little retarded. She had special lessons
at home; she was not sent to school because she couldn't
follow the other children. I was sitting on the floor when
she was with the teacher, and I heard her at play with
my building blocks. I heard everything that my older sister
learned, and I picked it up so I could read and write,
along with a little arithmetic, what you need as a little
child. So I was sent at six years into the second grade
already.

WESCHLER: Your sister was still alive, how long then?
FEUCHTWANGER: My sister died then. From meningitis.
WESCHLER: How much older than you was she?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, at least four years older than I.
WESCHLER: And she died at what age?

FEUCHTWANGER: I was about three or four years old, and she
was about ten years old, or nine. I don't remember anymore.
She was a beautiful girl with blue eyes and blonde hair
and [was] very good-natured. And I was terrible, vivacious
like two boys; I was not a very good sister for her. You
know, she was nicer than I was. I did terrible things with
her, because I was longing for tenderness. My parents were
very strict. They had no tenderness at home, and they thought
it's the same for their children. I'm sure they loved
us, but I never heard a good word from them. I always
wanted to be praised, to be popular with my parents. So
my sister, who was very good-natured and never would have
hit me, I accused her to my mother, that she pushed me.
My mother wanted to spank her. And I threw myself between
the two and said, "Oh, no, don't do it to poor Ida. It
didn't hurt so much." And the whole thing was lies. She
didn't push me; I just wanted to be praised, that I did
this generous thing, took her part, and that she would tell
my father what I did. But my mother later on must have found
out. She always found out what I did, all those things--
I never would know how. Then once I asked her, "But how do
you know that?" And she said, "The little bird told me."
We had a canary bird, that was the only animal; so I was

kneeling before the canary bird every time I did some

mischievous thing, and said, "Please don't tell Mama."

WESCHLER: Was your mother more the disciplinarian than your

father?

FEUCHTWANGER: My father wasn't at home much. When he came it

was always a great event--he always brought something

from his trips--but he was tired, and I didn't have much

from my father. Only on Sunday, I could go into his bed,

and then he read the newspaper.

WESCHLER: He was gone for how long at a time?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, not long.

WESCHLER: A week?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was back every weekend, because he only

traveled with horses, and in the neighborhood, in Bavaria —

not farther than Bavaria.

WESCHLER: Did your mother become cynical, having lost two

children in infancy?

FEUCHTWANGER: She was very depressed. It was also the reason

why I had no childhood. She was terribly depressed after

she lost her first child, and then the second child; she

almost felt guilty also. But it was never her fault. They

did everything what they could. She had the best doctors,

but it was the meningitis, the doctors said--what probably

is not true--from the typhoid fever. But it just came

like that. Nobody lived in a healthy way. In summer we

were in the countryside, but the whole year besides this,
we were always in an apartment and not going out much.
Also we didn't eat so very healthy things, mostly wrong-
cooked fat things. Like people do in the cities.
WESCHLER: What part of Munich did you live in?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, that was very interesting. We lived in
the middle of the old town, near the famous Frauenkirche--the
Cathedral of Our Lady, it would be translated. My mother was
very good friends with an old teacher, a female teacher. This
teacher lived in this house, and my mother wanted to live on
the same story as her teacher. It was an old friendship, but
the teacher was double the age of my mother, a very old lady,
with a sister. A [second] sister of this [teacher] was a
court lady, from, the queen at the court. She was very proud
and always came with an equipage with horses. She brought
beautiful things to her sisters, because the queen, the queen
mother, was the mother of the mad king, Ludwig II,,.. Ludwig
II, you know, Richard Wagner's king. This was the mother of
Ludwig II. My mother lived through all those things with the
death of Ludwig II; she told me always that she had also a
piece of the bench where he was sitting before he drowned,
things like that. This court lady brought many things which
the king bought for his mother, beautiful Meissen porcelain,
and silver things. I inherited many of those things, but it
was all lost with Hitler. Very beautiful antique Meissen

which later you couldn't find anymore.

WESCHLER: I ' d be interested in a brief digression here.
The mad king was not still alive when you were a child?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, he was already drowned. Ja, ja. And
his brother came, who was even madder. Otto was his name.
He was also immediately confined, and he was even worse.
Ludwig was still in his senses, in a way.

WESCHLER: We might talk just a little bit about the sense
of government in Munich, having these two mad kings.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. The second mad king. Otto, was
replaced by his uncle, who was called the Prinzregent,
"prince regent." I knew him personally, because I knew him
when I was at the gymnastic club for children. I was twelve
years old, but I think we should come back, because it is
farther.

WESCHLER: Okay, we'll come back to that later. I was just
asking you where you grew up, and you might just describe it,
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. We grew up in this old house, which
was near the foot of the big church, the famous church of
My Lady. This church has two cupolas instead of spires.
Maybe you have seen pictures. This was because when they
built it — it was old Gothic, from the early Gothic times--
they ran out of money, and they couldn't put the spires on.
Then the rain came in, so they put those cupolas. No other
church in the whole world has those cupolas. That is a

sign of the city of Munich, and it was only because they
never had enough money to finish the church. It was very
windy, I remember. It's always — Rainer Maria Rilke writes
about Chartres, about the cathedral there, about the
terrible wind which goes around the cathedral. I could
never find out why. Of course, it was always in a little
higher place; might it be these high buildings that brought
out the wind? Anyway, my mother was small, and I remember
we were shopping, we were going home, and the wind was so
heavy that my mother went up in the air. Ja. They had
big dresses, wide, wired skirts, and the wind.... [laughter]
I was a child, but I could hold her; I really could. I
was very strong because I was so mischievous. I always
fought with boys and did everything what — for instance, I
had nothing to make gymnastic on, so I climbed up on the
doors; I would sit up on top of the doors and swing.
It wasn't very good for the doors. But I was very strong,
because I could get myself up on the doors, which is not
so easy.

WESCHLER: What did your house look like?
FEUCHTWANGER: The house was just a building, a four-
stories building.

WESCHLER: How many rooms did you have?

FEUCHTWANGER: First we had four rooms. Then we took a
room of the other one. When the old ladies, the teachers.

died, we took one of their rooms and broke through. That
was then my room. There was a bedroom, a dining room, and
a salon, which was called the drawing room. I think there
was more. Five, five....

WESCHLER: It was very spacious, since you were the only
child.

FEUCHTWANGER: It was--ja, ja. But it was dark, and there
were the narrow streets. I remember across the street there
were very old buildings, even older than our house, and also
lower. As long as those buildings were there, we had more
room, more sun, more light. But then a bank, a big bank,
which was on the end of the street. ... It was a very short
street, maybe six houses or so, and on the other end of the
street from where the shop of my parents was, there was a big
bank, the Handelsbank. And this bank wanted to add another
building; they wanted to expand, so they bought all those
little houses and just--what would you say? Finally it was a
big building instead of the corner building. And I saw this
building going up. It was built in red sandstone. When there
was a big scaffolding, there were two young men; and they were
Italians, because they always had the sculptors [come] from
Italy. It was near; it was not far, Italy, and most of the
houses were built by Italians. There were two young men, one
blond and one dark. I was always standing at the window,
looking how they made those ornaments out of designs, and I

couldn't decide — it was terrible--which one I liked more.
It was a great.... [laughter]
WESCHLER: How old were you at this time?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, about ten years old. But it was a great
tragedy. I just couldn't decide which one I liked better.
WESCHLER: Did they know they were being looked at?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, I don't think so. Yes, sometimes, when I
looked out more, then they greeted me from the other side. But
these were warm Italians, so they would not wait. [laughter]
WESCHLER: Before we get into talking a little bit about your
schooling, I thought you might talk a bit about the nature of
Judaism in your household. Was your family Orthodox Jewish,
or. . . ?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, my family were Reformed, but we had a kosher
house; rather, the cooking was kosher. My mother cooked, and
we had a maid, and a gouvernante for me.

WESCHLER: Had their parents been more Orthodox, or were they
also Reformed?

FEUCHTWANGER: They were also — but it was not Reformed, you
know; it was just a state of mind, more or less. My grand-
father who was the banker was a very mild and tolerant man.
He always said to his wife, my grandmother, when she was
busy with her four children and cooking and all that, "You
don't have to go to the temple. When you work at the house,
it's like working for God, too." Things like that, you know.

He was enlightened. Also, I think he read Spinoza. But my
mother was not bookish, and also her sisters not. Maybe my
uncle was, because he studied.

WESCHLER: So, in other words, there wasn't a conflict in your
family, as there was going to be in Lion's family?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, there was no conflict. No. But my father,
who wanted to have a very strict kosher household, when he went
on his trips, he always ate what he wanted. But he always said
he didn't like pork. It was not allowed for Jews; it was more —
I think it was for hygiene. They foiind out that it's not healthy
when there are those microbes, trichinas.

WESCHLER: How would you characterize, then, your own early com-
mitment to Judaism? It wasn't a major part of your life?
FEUCHTWANGER: I learned Hebrew, but not grammatically. It was
for me a great ordeal to learn it, because I liked to understand
what I learned, and I didn't understand what I had to learn. I
just had a prayer book, and on one side it was German, and the
other side it was Hebrew. The words didn't go together. I had
to learn the lessons at school. I had to learn what I read.
But it was only the whole phrase which I could learn, and not
the words. The words didn't go together. It was for me a great
ordeal. I remember every Sunday evening I had to learn for the
next morning, for my religious lesson. I always had very good
grades, but it was not interesting for me. I liked to be in-
terested in what I learned.
WESCHLER: Were most of your friends Jewish?

FEUCHTWANGER: No.

WESCHLER: Was there any problem about that?

FEUCHTWANGER: There were very few Jews anyway in Mionich.

There was not. . . .

WESCHLER: Later on, Munich will really be one of the

foundations for the Nazis, and there will be a great deal

of anti-Semitism there, I gather. Was this already the case?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. It was not so much. No, not much in

Munich. There was more a religious fanaticism. It was a

very Catholic town, you know. I remember that there was

one little newspaper which was anti-Semitic, and it was from

a priest. They hated the Jews because "they killed our

Lord." That's what the children also had to learn. But

it had nothing to do with the later anti-Semitism, the

Rassenhass. It was only religious.

V'/ESCHLER: But was it widespread? Did you feel it as a child?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, all Bavaria was like that. I felt it

in a way, because when I was at school, I was a good student,

and one of my teachers liked me very much because I always

knew my lessons. Then came a girl from a very, very rich

family. They came from Stuttgart, another town, and

she came every day in an equipage and two horses. She

was baptized. She was Jewish, a very beautiful girl, and

baptized. From this moment, I was just dirt for this

teacher--it was a woman teacher--because she was very

religious, also. Before, I was her favorite student;

now she didn't look at me. I was very unhappy about

that.

WESCHLER: Were there many Jews who were converting at

that time?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not many. I didn't know many. I didn't

know at all, I would say. Only this girl, I think, and

her family.

V'TESCHLER: Outside of that incident, were there other

incidents where you felt anti-Semitic things?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, when we were on vacation, in spas or

resorts, then we always went to the Jewish restaurant,

the kosher restaurant. Then the children around where we

lived, where we rented an apartment or a little house or

so, saw us going inside this restaurant. So once the

children — those kind of peasant children, you know, from

the little towns--called me "dirty Jew," and I said,

"Dirty Christ." [laughter] That was all, and then I said,

"Well, do you want to fight?" And then I fought, and I

usually was kneeling on their breast, so they didn't say

it anymore. [laughter] Even when they were bigger boys,

I was fanatic, you know; when they said those things like

that, I was stronger than I really was.

WESCHLER: But would you say that your main identification

with Jewishness was....

FEUCHTWANGER: It was not at all. Outside of [the fact]

that I had to go to the temple every Saturday, there was

nothing Jewishness.

WESCHLER: So mainly when people accused you of being a Jew,

it came out.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . No, and my father always, he liked

to sing. He didn't sing right, you know, but loud. And

so when this Pesach--how do you call it?

WESCHLER: Passover.

FEUCHTWANGER: Passover, yes. He sang the whole two days,

or whatever it was, and very loud. My mother was always very

self-conscious that the neighbors would hear this, mostly

when we opened the door when he'd say, "The Messiah is

welcome." You opened the door, and the whole neighborhood

heard everything. My mother didn't even want that the

servants would know. It was always a tendency not to let

people know that we were Jewish. I remember with my uncle

at the restaurant where we always met on Sunday to eat

out, he didn't eat kosher, but we always ate eggs or fish.

So somebody, another man, another cousin of my uncle, was

telling something Jewish, and then my uncle said, "I don't

like those synagogal expressions." He turned around so

that nobody would hear it. It was really more denying

to be Jews than to be conscious of Jewishness.

WESCHLER: I've read that in Vienna there were a great deal

of Hasidic Jews, Polish Jews coining in, but that that was
ve ry . . . .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . Yes, we didn't know those people.
WESCHLER: Those were not in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: Not at all. Later on, I have to tell you,
later on, when I was about twelve years old, there was a
terrible pogrom in Russia. It was in Kishinev, and I
remember in the synagogue, in the temple, the cantor sang,
improvised to an old melody, about this Kishinev. I
always heard the repeating "Kishinev." That was a big
impression, just when the Jews were killed there. It was
always when there was a famine in Russia, when it was not
a good year for grain, then they asked or encouraged the
people to rob the Jews and kill them. To have a--what is
it called?--a scapegoat?
WESCHLER: A scapegoat.

FEUCHTWANGER: So, many fled to Germany from there, and
part of them also came to Munich. My uncle, who was a cousin
of my father, was a leader of the commune, I think you
would call it--the Parnas: it was a Hebrew word. He was
a rather rich man, and retired. He was also a banker, and
he said, "We don't want those dirty Jews here. We will
give them money and send them away." I was about ten or
twelve years old, and I said, "But how could they not be
dirty, when they are fleeing the country with only what

they had on their body--nothing, no other things to change?"

And then this uncle looked angrily at me, but he didn't say

anything. He usually sent the Jews on to Holland, and they

came later to America. Mostly from Munich they sent them

to Holland--gave them money and sent them away. When I came

home, I had to stand in the corner, because I was fresh

against this uncle, who was the leader of the commune. That's

why I remember it very well. But it wasn't because I was

Jewish: it was just I thought it was unjust, you know,

to people who were fleeing. So I spoke out.

WESCHLER: Well, that is going to become an ongoing theme

of this story.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. But later on, I was about fifteen

years old, and there was a social club where my parents

were members. It was already kind of arriving at a higher

position. I was dancing there, and I met a young student

from the East--what's now East Germany, They were very

conscious of being Jews. They came all more from the East.

He told me about Jewish things. It was the first time I

heard that I do not have to be ashamed to be a Jew or so,

I should be proud, and things like that. So it made me

wonder.

WESCHLER: How did you respond? Did you start becoming more

interested then?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I was more interested then. But I was

never proud. I always said, "Why should I be proud to be
Jewish? The others shouldn't be proud to be Christian."
You see. "We are what we are," I said. "That's no
reason to be proud of it. Just not to be ashamed." So
I hated everything what smelled of chauvinism already as
a child. I didn't want to be better than others. I just
[wanted] the same. Equal.

WESCHLER: Well, we might go back now a little bit to your
education.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . Because my two sisters died, my parents
wanted to be overcautious and didn't send me to a public
grammar school, which were usually very good, but to a
private school, where the accent was on French. I never
learned good German grammar. I don't know it now either.
I just write like I hear it. It was, of course, small,
only with very rich and aristocratic students. And I
caught every sickness which you could imagine. My parents
didn't send me to the public school, so I wouldn't have--
but not only that, I got the scarlet fever, and the
measles, and others, and in a very dangerous way. I almost
died every time. Once I had pneumonia, and in those days
there were not antibiotics. Another time, my kidneys
were affected. So every time I was near death, and my
parents only wanted to do their best. But I recovered
always, because I was strong from my mischievousness .

WESCHLER: Were either of their families sickly?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. My father was never sick, and he

never had a cold, although it's a very cold country.

He only died, I think it was a kind of stroke, when he was —

but they were not old, ray parents. About seventy. My

genetics are not very good, because my parents died before

they were seventy.

WESCHLER: But you've done well, [laughter] So you went

to this school. What was the name of this school, do you

remember?

FEUCHTWANGER: Siebert Institute. Siebert was the old lady

who owned it. She was very elegant; she always had a big

train when she came to the class, and everybody was afraid

of her. Once she saw me before the shop of my parents

eating an apple. She spoke to me and said, "Aren't you

ashamed to be a student of my institute and eating an apple

on the street?" She was just furious. The next day she

punished me. I don't remember what she did, but I think I

got something on my hands, you know. In those days they

were still with the--with the...

WESCHLER: Rods and sticks.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja.

WESCHLER: Corporal punishment.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja.

WESCHLER: What's wrong with eating an apple on the street?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, you don't do that. You just don't do

that when you are in aristocratic institutes. But there

were also other things, for instance, that no man would

ever have carried a little package on the street. Always

the women had to carry the package. The men went sometimes

with their wives to buy things but never would stoop so

low as to carry something for a woman.

WESCHLER: So how old were you at this institute? For how

long?

FEUCHTWANGER: I was there until I was fifteen. The other

girls were seventeen, but I was two years younger because

I came right away into the second class.

WESCHLER: What were your major interests at that school?

FEUCHTWANGER: Everything, I think. I liked to learn.

And I was very lonely, because all the other girls were much

older. I didn't understand what they were talking about.

When I came to school, I didn't know that you had to sit

down and stay there in your bench; so I went running around

the classroom, bringing the teacher an apple or a flower

or so, and the teacher slapped me in the face because I

wasn't sitting down. That was my early experience at school-

we just didn't understand each other.

WESCHLER: Were you a disciplinary problem generally, or

did you quickly learn to sit in your place?

FEUCHTWANGER: I learned it quickly. I didn't have to be

slapped. And then the other children always had some

secrets before me. When they began menstruating, they didn't
tell me what it was. They always whispered when I was in
the neighborhood. When I asked, "What are you speaking
about?" they said, "Oh, you are too small; you don't
understand it." They did it just to anger me; I was so
much stronger and also was a better student than most of
them, and they wanted to have something special which I
wouldn't understand. And also the dirty things which
children learn, you know, mostly from the servants — so
I knew everything before my parents knew that I knew.
WESCHLER: Through the servants or through your schoolmates?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. No, the servants told it to the children.
And one of the children, who was the most stupid one,
she told me. The others didn't tell me.
WESCHLER: So that was your education?

FEUCHTWANGER: On a dark staircase, you know, very dark, we
sat in a corner and she told me everything. But I didn't
understand it very well, and it escaped also my mind
because I was thinking my parents were right, what they'd
told me. They told me, of course, that the stork always
brings the children. So I thought it was just to make fun
out of me. I remember when we were on vacation, there came
a woman who always brought berries. My mother bought
berries from her. She said that she's so glad that my
mother bought from her, because she has so many children

and she's poor. My mother said, "And now you're expecting
another child," I looked at how my mother could know that,
and I saw that this woman has a very big belly; so after-
wards I said, "Is it true that children are in the belly?"
She said, "Well, how could you think a thing like that?" I
said, "But this woman was here, and you said, 'And now you
are expecting another, ' and she had such a big belly,
so I thought she had a child in her belly." "Oh, no,"
she said, "it's not true." So I believed my mother, of
course.

WESCHLER: Did you ever have any confidential talk with
your parents, or was it just not done? After a while, did
you eventually have talks about "the facts of life" with
your parents?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, my mother only told me that I shouldn't
be worried if something happened like that, you know,
something on my trousers. That was all what she told me.
WESCHLER: And would you say that was fairly common at
that time in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Absolutely. And not only in Munich —
everywhere. The children learned it only from the servants.
And mostly not in a very elegant way. I remember also
that once on a Sunday, when my parents came home, and I was
with the maid, I heard terrible shouting. I was sleeping,
and I heard terrible shouting, and I said, "What's that?"

My mother said that there was a soldier in the room of
the maid; they sent the maid away, and the soldier away,
and.... [laughter]

WESCHLER: But you had no idea what was going on?
FEUCHTWANGER: No idea, no. I said, "Why not?"

TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE TWO
JUNE 17, 1975

WESCHLER: We're just talking about what life was like in
Munich at the turn of the century.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. On Christmas we had a little
Christmas tree for the maid, and also the maid always got
something for her dowry, mostly linen and a ten-mark gold
piece, which was about what is now a ten-dollar piece.
And she had it in her drawer. I always went to the girl's
room because I was so lonely, and she was the only younger
person I could speak with. I saw this piece, I took it
away, and I put it in my drawer. So after a while, the girl
didn't find her gold piece anymore, and she asked my
mother what she thinks about it. Then my mother found it
in my drawer. It wasn't very pleasant what happened after-
wards .

WESCHLER: What did happen?

FEUCHTWANGER: I was spanked, [laughter] I just liked
[the gold piece]; I didn't know that it was of any value.
I just liked the look of it.
WESCHLER: Did you have many friends?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. I had no friends, because
my parents were always afraid I could get some sickness or
catch some cold from other children. My aunt--that's the

sister of my mother — also had a daughter. She was at

school, and one of the children complained that she had

trouble with swallowing. Her daughter looked into the

girl's mouth to see what she had there, and she caught

the sickness and died. It was Diphtherie . So my parents

always didn't like me to play with other children. That's

why I was so lonely at home when my sister died. I had

only the maid, and they were mostly peasant girls who

were all from very pious families, peasants. And [their

parents] always implored my mother not to let them go

out, or dancing, or so--and then they had the soldiers in

their room! And I always took the side of the maid.

Always. Also when I was older. That was the

most [usual reason] when we were quarreling, my parents

and I. They couldn't understand that you can take the side

of a maid who was a proletarian and very much lower than

we were .

rIESCHLER: Would they have defined themselves as bourgeois?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes.

WESCHLER: They would call themselves "bourgeois"?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja.

WESCHLER: What was the cultural life like in Munich, and

to what extent did you participate in it?

FEUCHTWANGER: I didn't participate in any cultural life; I

wouldn't know. When I left school, I wanted to study

medicine. That was my interest because many of my cousins
were doctors.

One of those doctors, by the way, probably saved my
life. When I was so terribly sick, [because of] one of
these children — I think it was scarlet fever or so--he
came from Switzerland, where he studied, and he brought
some medicine from there. Switzerland was very great in
medical science. My doctor, who was a children's doctor,
said that this cousin of mine was a genius. He had never
seen such a talented man. He said also — he admitted that
he saved my life.

WESCHLER: Do you remember his name?
FEUCHTWANGER: The doctor or the cousin?
WESCHLER: The cousin.

FEUCHTWANGER: The cousin: Oberndorfer. He was later
Professor Siegfried Oberndorfer and was the head of the

anatomy at the university and also at one of the city

hospitals.

WESCHLER: You say you wanted to go into medicine. Were you

just being a tomboy, or was there a realistic possibility

for a woman to become a doctor at that time?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. I didn't know any [woman] doctor,

but I wanted to--I didn't care about that. In those

days, the children and the boys were separated at school.

But in my class was a girl who v/as a daughter of a dentist.

and she studied. She wanted also to be a dentist, and
so she went into.... Now then, for the first time, there
was a girl's gymnasiiim, you know--high school; it was
opened the first time. She went there and studied and
became a dentist. But until then, she had to go with
boys. And it was also not very well liked, you know, that
the girl would go to a high school with boys.
WESCHLER: Was there a likelihood that a woman setting up
a practice as a doctor or a dentist would succeed?
FEUCHTWANGER: She was a dentist later; she was my dentist
later.

WESCHLER: And she had a good practice?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, very good, ja. She took over the prac-
tice of her father.

WESCHLER: How was that looked upon?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, she was very exceptional. I know that
Mrs. Thomas Mann, who was older than I, said she wanted
to study, but her parents were very rich. Her father
[Alfred Pringsheim] was a famous mathematics professor,
from a very rich industrial family, so she had private
lessons from tutors. But she made her examinations in
the same college where my husband made them; it was about
the same time. But she didn't continue studying. She
married. So I didn't know anybody who was studying in
those days.

WESCHLER: Did your mother and father support you in
your decision to go to medical studies?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, they didn't allow me, because they
didn't want me to study with boys or to go to the univer-
sity. I was not allowed to study. So I was allowed to
take some private lessons in French and English. There
was also a kind of — what you would call "extension"
here, but it was in daytime, where you could hear lectures.
I went to lectures on literature and philosophy. I did
not understand anything of philosophy, but literature
interested me most.

There was another thing which prepared me for that.
When I was so terrible sick, the sister of this Dr. Obern-
dorfer (who was then only a student, a young doctor) was
a cripple. She almost couldn't walk. Maybe she had
poliomyelitis in her childhood--nobody knows. She was like
a dwarf and couldn't walk very well. But she was very
well read. In her family she wasn't liked, because she
looked like that. She was in the kitchen, always cooking,
and whenever she could, she read. When I was sick she came
a long way--she had to walk because there was no other way
there--to see me every day, and spoke with me and told me
all the fairy tales, all the Greek mythology. All that I
learned from her. I had no books — I never had books to
read. There were some books in a closet that my father

didn't allow me to read. When I found the key to the

closet and read the books (that was also one of the things

where the little bird always found out) I found out

those terrible books were Goethe and Schiller. But to read,

you knov\7, Faust, where this girl got pregnant- -that I was

just not allowed to read. So I never had books to read.

But this cousin came, and....

WESCHLER: Her name was?

FEUCHTWANGER: Anna Oberndorfer. She always came when I

was sick. I also hated to drink milk. I never wanted

milk, and when she was there, I drank the milk just so that

she would tell me the stories. This was the only way I

had any contact with culture: from her. She awakened

my interest in literature. When I came to school, or when I

learned something, I always had to write in the examination,

"I was sick," because I was sometimes for months not at

school. When I said, "I don't know about those questions,"

then I had to write on the question, "I was sick." But when

that was mythology, or history, or something like that, I

always knew everything, but just because of the tales of

my cousin. She was a cousin of my mother.

WESCHLER: Your parents had books in the house. Did they

read them, or did they just have them in the house?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, no, they just had them in the house.

It was not many--a very few books.

WESCHLER: Both of them could read, of course?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, of course. In those days, already,

everybody learned to read.

WESCHLER: Could their parents read?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes. Everybody read in Germany. It was

a very literate country. I wouldn't know anybody who couldn't

read. Even the maids, which came from the countryside, they

all read. You know there were so many monasteries and

Catholic schools where the nuns and priests taught; so

even in the countryside, all the children learned how to

read and write. Somebody told me once that people made a

cross instead of writing their name, but this was not the

use — not in Germany.

WESCHLER: In retrospect, what you now know about the

cultural life of Munich, was it--certainly , for instance,

Vienna was extremely exciting. Was Munich also, or not

much?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but it was.... No, not at all. But

there was a very good opera, and also a good royal theatre,

and an operetta, a musical theater. Musicals like [Jacques]

Offenbach were played there.

WESCHLER: One always associates Wagner, of course, with the

Mad King Ludwig.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. It was a fantastic opera, there.

WESCHLER: Mainly Wagner, or also others?

FEUCHTWANGER: Also others. Germany was a country of
operas. There were many opera theaters there, and they
played also French operas-- [Georges ] Bizet, and Carmen,
and later fGiacomo] Puccini.
WESCHLER: Did you attend any of these?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, my parents rented a box. And I
regularly went to the theater; that was also a kind of social
life. The only daughter had to do that. So I saw the
great plays, mostly classic plays, at the opera house,
which also was the [house for] the royal theater. Not
only opera. I saw all the Wagner operas; I saw also the
first performance of Richard Strauss 's Salome and Per
Rosenkavalier .

WESCHLER: The first performances?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was a little later. But I was not
married yet. They fell through, in Munich, you know.
WESCHLER: Let's go ahead a little bit and tell that story.
FEUCHTWANGER: I think we should go back before because
there is one episode I wanted to tell you. It
was in the nineties at the time of the [Alfred] Dreyfus
trial .

WESCHLER: Right.

FEUCHTWANGER: This was a great event, you know. Every-
body spoke about it. You wouldn't believe it--the whole
conversation, wherever you went, was about that. Our

maid had--they called it Hintertreppen--side stairways,
you know, rear stairways. There came always those dealers
who brought forbidden lectures, things to read, you know.
It was just small magazines that looked like that.
WESCHLER: What we would call the underground press?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, it wasn't underground. It was only for
the maid, usually. Kitsch ["trash"].
WESCHLER: I see.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , it was a little bit — there were illus-
trations where the women are a little more decollete than
usual. And there I read also the entire affair of Dreyfus.
Of course, there were many lies that they invented for
sensation. It also said his wife became mad and wanted
to throw herself out of the window, which wasn't true.
You see that it really occupied everybody, also the
"huckster" literature.

WESCHLER: What was the general response?
FEUCHTWANGER: The general response was that nobody be-
lieved that he was guilty, even when he was condemned.
Also then there was also another thing. Bernhard von
Biilow was then the prime minister of Germany, and of course
with one word he could have saved him, because what
Dreyfus was condemned for was that he spied for Germany.
Only after [Emile] Zola wrote his "J' accuse" in the newspaper
(a copy of which I have upstairs, you remember) was there

then a new trial. Everybody spoke about the Devil's

Island where he lived. It must have been terrible to live

there, but it was not even exaggerated, how terrible it

was there. So we were all--the whole fantasy was filled

with these tales of Dreyfus. And then when they found out

that another man with the name of [Marie Charles] Esterhazy

was the spy, the German government never told a word about

it. Of course, it is not the rule that you betray a spy,

but still it was — nobody could understand it.

WESCHLER: Was it mainly the Jews who were outraged, or

were the Catholics also outraged?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I think everybody was outraged. It

wasn't so much that he was Jewish, in Germany, but that

he was just an officer who was condemned for treason, and

then he was innocent. But he always said he was innocent.

He never really understood what happened to him. He was a

very mediocre man. But he was innocent. He was, I think,

too mediocre to be a spy. [laughter]

WESCHLER: How long did that affair go on?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know. I think that this "J 'accuse"

was in 1898. I was seven years old. I remember that.

WESCHLER: So you grew up with this being one of the major

things on the political horizon.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. In our family, of course, they

spoke about his Jewishness, but it was not in the newspapers

or so.

WESCHLER: What did your father, for instance, or your
mother, say about his Jewishness?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, nothing else. They felt uneasy about
it, you know. They had no Jewish conscience. They knew
that they were Jewish, and they would never have allowed
themselves to be baptized. It was a community, but they
didn't know very much about Jewishness. Nobody knew the
Bible in my family, not even the Old Testament. Later
on, I read the Bible, also clandestinely. When I was
out of school, we moved to more elegant quarters. The
teachers were dead, and so we moved along the river Isar.
It was the best quarters of Munich. The main synagogue
was nearer to the apartment where my parents lived first.
But then there was a very old school--it was called the
old shul--and it was near where we lived, then, later. It
was the Orthodox school. I later heard that my parents-
in-law paid for the rabbi and the whole thing; the whole
thing was only paid for by some rich Jews. One of my
father's cousins lived in our neighborhood, and she was
always very sicklish. She told my mother that we could
take her place. Everybody had to have a place in the temple.
Even before, in the Reformed temple, we also had a place,
which was rather expensive; my father had a place, and my
mother. She said we could use her place, because she is

too sick to go to the temple. And then there was a little

drawer at every place, and there I found a Bible. Instead

of having a prayer book in my hand--my mother didn't see it--

I always read the Bible, which for women is not cleaned or

whatever you say; it's very...

WESCHLER: ...bawdy, [laughter]

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. [laughter] Anyway, I learned a lot from

the Bible, [laughter]

WESCHLER: About how old were you then?

FEUCHTWANGER: I was sixteen years old--f if teen , sixteen

years old.

WESCHLER: So that in a Jewish family of your status, it

was common not to read the Bible at all, just a prayer

book?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, prayer books, but also that not;

we knew only about the Passover, and that we had to fast

on Yom Kippur . I had to do that, too, and I once fainted

at the temple because I wasn't used to that. It was not so

much not eating, but it was a very cold day and the woman

beside me had her fur coat, and this was smelling of this

antimoth thing. This smell went into my head, and I went

out. The women were sitting on the first story or so; the

men were downstairs. I went down the stairs, and I fainted;

I didn't know anything anymore. I woke up in the arms of a

lady who saw me going out, saw how pale I was, and followed

me. If she hadn't caught me, I would have fallen down the
whole stone stairs.

WESCHLER: Your childhood was definitely ill-fated.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , really. But there was another thing.
It was the next year, I think. It was the end of the
service. I came out down the stairs, and I saw somebody
turning something there, below. And there was this famous
Oktoberfest. I don't know if you know about it.
WESCHLER: Fasching?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. October. Fasching is in spring or
late winter. All those things have something to do with
Catholic holidays. Fasching is between this time of the
birth of Christ and Easter. There was a time where
pious Christians were not allowed to eat meat. But this
was in October. It was what they call here a fiesta.
There was a plague in Munich, and when the plague was over,
for two weeks they made a great fiesta with lots of beer,
and beer, and beer--and the big horses, which were famous,
and the big carriages with those big kegs. There they
wore always golden bells, and the coachmen were beautifully
dressed, and so they went through. Those horses were very
famous--big, enormous horses. Then there were tents outside
of the city, and there you ate — it was a kind of barbecue.
It was on little spears. There were young chickens, and
also herrings, over coals. There were also, of course, all

kinds of amusement, like Disneyland. And there somewhere
was written that there is a kind of cinematography. My
father said, "Do you want to see that?" It was very
expensive; it cost twenty pfennigs per person. So we
went in, and it began to flimmer on the toile, on the
screen, and here was I coming down the stairs. It was
the end of the Yom Kippur. You see, I told you I saw
somebody turning something, and they took me coming down
the stairs from the temple. The film was called The
End of Yom Kippur. So I saw my first movie star.
WESCHLER: Oh, my gosh.

FEUCHTWANGER: Isn't it amazing? I didn't know anything
about it, and I didn't know how it came. My parents
didn't know either. "But that's Marta!" they said.
WESCHLER: What was it like to see the first movie? Was
that tremendously exciting?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I was just amused, and I was wondering
how it came to pass. Without knowing anything.
^^SCHLER: About what year would that have been?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, about 1903 or so. No, a little more--
1904, I think. The sense that I have of Munich is that
there are these wonderful festivals that go on. That was in
winter, you know.

WESCHLER: Right, and there's also the Fasching.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. The time from the fifth of January

to — it was changed always, with the calendar — Ash Wednesday
was a kind of carnival. In Latin, carne means meat. It
was not allowed to eat meat in those times. But they danced;
there was a big costume ball.

WESCHLER: How did your parents react to you as a young
lady going to that?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes, they wanted me to, of course. How
could you find a husband if you don't go dancing? But I
was only interested in sports — not too much in dancing.
That's what I noted before. I was always going to this
gymnastic club. It was like this Russian girl, Olga
Korbut. We did the same thing.

WESCHLER: Gymnastics. That's called gymnastics.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. Gymnastics. I was already twelve
years old, I think, when I went there the first time.
That cousin, the doctor, told my parents I shouldn't
sit at home all the time, or just walk a little bit with
the maid or the teachers in the Hofgarten, the court's
yard, but I should go and do some sport. So my parents--
because what he said, that was followed--brought me there.
I was absolutely new — I never had seen a thing like that;
I was a beginner--but after a month I was already in the
first class. I became the best gymnast of the club,
then I became the best gymnast of Munich, and then I be-
came the best gymnast of Bavaria, and then the best

gymnast of Germany.
WESCHLER: Really?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja.

WESCHLER: In competitions that they had?

FEUCHTWANGER: They had competitions, once, only once, in
Mxinich. They came from all cities, even from Japan and
from Berlin--everywhere . I was in the first class--Rang
it was called--and we were on the big bar. I made this big
swinging around. And I got a prize. The Prinzregent
gave me the prize, and I had to give the Prinzregent a
bouquet of flowers. Behind him he had an adjutant, this
aide, who had a big helmet with big feathers, and so
he always made eyes to me from behind the old Prinzregent.
[laughter] And the Prinzregent gave me a brooch, which
was very honorable, and I was very honored. I think it
was "Frisch, Fromm, Frohlich, Frei. " Four F's. It means
fresh, pious, gay, and free. So those F's were--it was
a brooch made to look like a cross then. The Prinzregent
gave me that as a prize. And it was not silver; it was
lead, [laughter] Every year there was this kind of abturnen,
it was called, you know. But this was the only international
one, I was already fourteen years old or so. But before
that I had already got a tennis racket, and I got a book
of Adalbert Stifter, who was a classic. So I was always
very honored.

I had a crush on the teacher. She was a young teacher
and a very good gymnast. I was her favorite, and I had a great
crush on her. She was a great Alpinist and made some of the
first ascents of mountains. Once she fell down: the rope
broke. She was [lucky] --it wasn't that bad--but she broke her
thigh, and in those days it was a terrible thing. Very dan-
gerous; mostly people [subsequently] died of pneumonia and
those things. She had an old mother. She didn't know what to
do when I visited her at the hospital, and then I offered
myself to replace her. Because I had never made an exam-
ination, there had to be a bill in the government that I
could replace her because I was the best student of hers.
I didn't take any money. She got the money for it.
WESCHLER: What was her name? I'm going to drive you crazy
with these things.

FEUCHTWANGER: No. Her name was Lisa Fries. We called her
Miss Fries. For a whole year I replaced her.
WESCHLER: How old were you at that time?
FEUCHTWANGER: Fourteen, I think, ja. It was a great
responsibility. I had fifty students in my class, and
different kinds of classes, and different ages also. One,
the smallest one, was a little girl with blond hair, blue
eyes, and she was later--now she died--the first Mother
Courage of Brecht. She became an actress. When I was
in Munich, she gave a big party for me. When I told her.

"Do you know that you were my pupil?" she said, "Don't
tell me about gymnastics. I hate gymnastics!"
WESCHLER: What was her name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Her name then was Gift. And as an actress
she was Theresa Giehse. Very famous. You will know
probably the name. Along with Helene Weigel/ who was the
wife of Brecht, she was known as the best Mother Courage.
When I was in Munich, she invited me, of course, to the
theater.

WESCHLER: It sounds like you spent an awful lot of your
time doing gymnastics.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Twice a week I went there.
WESCHLER: Was that at the expense of your schoolwork?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, that was Wednesday and Saturday on our
free afternoons. We had school Wednesday only in the
morning. But usually we had seven hours. For four hours
in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, I had to go
to school. In the meantime I had to go home for lunch, and
then I had to go again to the school. Later it was
seven hours, until five o'clock, and then I had to make
my homework. I usually worked until eleven o'clock at
night because I liked, for instance, to make compositions,
and this was a very long thing. I was very proud when my
compositions were read publicly. Very foolish things,
you know, about ballads, classic ballads. You had to find

an excuse why you wrote about that, so I wrote a letter

to my aunt and said, "The other day I read a beautiful

ballad." And then I tell the ballad. Very dramatic.

WESCHLER: I don't want to forget to ask you now--maybe

you can tell us now about the Strauss premieres.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . Salome was premiered in Munich for

Germany, and it was terribly panned by the press. Terrible.

WESCHLER: What was it like being there in the theater?

Strauss was already very famous, wasn't he?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. No, he was — what do you call it? —

controversial. He was known. By the way, he was from

Munich, but he lived in Vienna, and also his performances

were usually in Vienna. I don't know if it was the very

first performance of Salome, but that's the first performance

in Germany.

WESCHLER: And it was not appreciated.

FEUCHTWANGER: It was terribly panned. Oh, terrible. You

know, the critic [Dr. Alexander Dillmann] was a famous

Wagner critic, and he only lived and breathed Wagner. Then

came somebody like that, and it was for him cacophonic;

he didn't understand it.

WESCHLER: How did the audience respond?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, nothing. They didn't respond neither

way. Munich was a little lazy town, you know. The beer

made people lazy, the drinking of beer, so they didn't

think very much. If you read Erfolg, the Success of my
husband, it's about Munich. They were musisch; they were
interested in theater; and they were interested in
paintings. For instance, in the countryside, the peasant
houses were often painted beautifully outside. It was
not bad taste. They were schooled on the paintings in the
churches, and these were of great painters. [Michael
Walgemut] , the teacher of [Albrecht] Dlirer, also was a
painter for the churches, for triptychs. So they were
very interested in art, but they were not interested in
learning very much. Very antiscientif ic, also.
WESCHLER: Well, we have you coming toward the later part
of your teens, I guess. You were not going to go on in
medicine or biology, but you were going on in literature and
philosophy.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but there was no other possibility.
Medicine, then I couldn ' t--there were no lectures about it,
you see, and I wanted to study. At the same time, I was
very much interested in literature.

WESCHLER: As a woman, as a girl, were you at that point
angry that you couldn't go on as a boy would be able to
go on, or was it just not even thought about?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, it wasn't thought about, because nobody
was doing it. The only girl in my class was the one who
became a dentist. I didn't know any female students who

really studied. In the north of Germany it was otherwise —
there were more girls who studied--but not in Bavaria.
WESCHLER: Of course, I'm getting at the whole feminist ques-
tion, and in a way, I'm just wondering whether there was
already at that point the beginnings of what later would
become suffrage movements and that kind of thing.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I heard about that, of course. But
we more or less found it very comical. There was in Munich
a woman called Anita Augspurg. That was the same time when
the Jugendstil--do you know what that is? It was before
expressionism. It was very stylized and in very bad taste,
in a way. And that was the same time as Anita Augspurg.
All those in fashion of — do you know the Swiss painter
who painted women with long dresses, blue and red? [Ferdinand
Hodler] It was all at the same time. They called it a
reform. There was an exhibition once here in Pasadena of
this art. Art nouveau. Jugendstil.
WESCHLER: Art nouveau. Okay.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . it was in very bad taste. Now it's
called quaint, and for a while it was even modern. It
influenced very much also the rock-and-roll people
now. And this was when I was becoming a teenager.
WESCHLER: How did you feel about it?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, I liked it. One house was painted green,
and there was something like a serpent coming from the

roof down. I remember this was the same time as Anita

Augspurg made her women's movement, and also these

kind of dresses which were--they were straight dresses,

like hanging dresses. They were called "reform dresses."

WESCHLER: How was Anita Augspurg met in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: People just laughed at her, you know.

Munich was always the enemy of everything progressive or

new; it should be always the old way.

WESCHLER: How did you, as a young woman, feel about it?

FEUCHTWANGER: I was interested in the painters very

much. [Franz von] Stuck was a painter in those times;

he was demonic. I knew him also personally, although not

very near; but still I met him once at a Masken ball.

He had a big neoclassic villa in a very beautiful part of

Mxinich, above the river. It was all at the same time;

it was a kind of awakening of art in Munich and also the

impressionist force. Expressionism was even founded in

Munich, because when the impressionists had their exhibitions,

there were many things refused, and those who were refused

founded their own movement--whatever you call it; a

direction, maybe you call it — and this was expressionism.

And this began in Munich, in a way.

WESCHLER: Which artists in Munich were..,?

FEUCHTWANGER: There were almost every artist. There was

also the Fauve, the great Fauve, and Franz Marc, who died

in the First World War, right away. These kind of groups

were there. But nobody was ever born in Munich or Bavaria;
they all came from the north or from everywhere. But
Munich was a big attraction for them. It was partly from
the carnival, from those costume balls, and this kind
of greater freedom. There never were so many children born
than nine months after the Carnivale, the Fasching.
WESCHLER: The storks were very, very active.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. And all, of course, illegitimate.
Those students and those painters made those big costiime
balls, and they decorated all that. It was very gay and
free, but it was never vulgar, you know. Later on, in
Berlin, they tried to do the same, and it was very vulgar
there. They didn't have this--maybe it's the nearness to
Italy, you know, this kind of natural tendency for beauty
and gayness.

WESCHLER: So it's strange: you're describing a city
which on the one hand is very reactionary, and on the other
hand is very. . . .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. Yes, but you know the sins, from during
Fasching, they went confessing, and then everything was all
right. It was over then. They had time then until next
year to sin again.

WESCHLER: In your late teens, what was your relationship
to the artistic movement? Did you know anyone at all?
FEUCHTWANGER: I knew some students, mostly because I was

always standing in front of those big shops where they had
those reproductions of the great works of art. I never
was in a museum before and saw everything only from re-
productions. I was standing there for hours to look at
those pictures, and usually the students talked to me. It
was very forbidden, of course, to speak with somebody whom
you didn't know, but I couldn't resist, and I met a lot of
painters--some from Czarist Russia, who had to flee there
because they were not allowed to be modern, and some
French, even Americans. All those kinds of people I met,
by standing in front of--Littauer ' s was the name of the
shop, a big shop. So I met a lot of people I never would
have met otherwise. They were not in the circle of my
parents. I made walks with them in the public gardens.
It was a kind of flirt, as you would call it now. Only
I never flirted; they flirted.
WESCHLER: Oh, I see.

FEUCHTWANGER: I was always hard to get. I never liked to
make any advances to men. The only men I liked were men
who were not good looking. I didn't like those good-looking
boys. It was nice to dance with them and to flirt with them,
but I never had any feeling for a good-looking man. I
liked people who were more lonely--like also my husband was,
very lonely.
WESCHLER: It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that you

yourself were very beautiful.

FEUCHTWANGER: I was good looking, but I never found myself

beautiful. I never understood that somebody could find me

beautiful. I was successful, I could say, but I never

found out--I couldn't. I had another ideal of beauty,

you know. I just didn't like myself.

WESCHLER: Well, those who will be able to look at photographs

of you may judge for themselves.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . But I had another ideal. I liked girls

with small mouths, and I had a big mouth--not very big,

but still bigger. And I didn't like black hair; I had

bluish-black hair. I didn't like that. I liked blonde

hair. So I just didn't like myself. Maybe that was also

a kind of attraction, that I was not conscious of myself.

Oh, of course, with men: some wanted to commit suicide,

also, and then they had to be watched by their friends,

that they. . . .

WESCHLER: You mean suicide over you?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja.

WESCHLER: I notice, by the way, somewhere in these notes,

that you weren't even kissed until you were nineteen.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. I never allowed anybody to kiss me.

WESCHLER: Do you think that was common?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. No. But the funny thing is

I was always--! had a very bad renomme , a bad name, because

I was so successful with boys. But I didn't like the young

boys; I thought they were silly. I wanted to learn from

a man; I wanted to hear new things. So I was always hard

to get, and I was not a flirt — not at all.

WESCHLER: Did you get into any conflict with your parents

over boys?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, they liked, of course, that I always

had beautiful flowers, and that they sent me always presents,

chocolate and books and so.

WESCHLER: The standard thing nowadays is for girls to

be getting always into conflict with their parents over

dates and that kind of thing. But you didn't do that?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, they didn't know about it. [laughter]

I usually--it was the time when I went, for instance, to

the gymnastic club. It was a long way to walk, so I

met somebody, and we walked together and walked home

together. When I was in the theater, there were always

some students around, standing there and waiting when I

came out. I got a letter about two or three years ago

from a former maid of my parents--she must have been ninety

years old--and she asked me, "Dear Miss Marta" (she called

me still "Miss Marta"; she didn't know that I was married,

or she didn't remember), "Are you still going around every

day with another boy?" [laughter]

WESCHLER: And you replied?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I didn't reply. But I wrote her,

TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE ONE
JUNE 17, 1975

WESCHLER: As I turned over the tape, we remembered

that there is one more little incident to tell about the

stonecutters .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. One day I got for Christmas, from

the German Consulate General here, a [luxury edition of

a Munich calendar]. V7hen I saw the jacket, it

looked familiar to me. It was a night picture, and on

the left I saw one building which I recognized as a bank

in Munich; it was the very short street where I was born.

At the right, there are two windows, a light in the two

windows, or behind the two windows, and that is the room

where I was born.

WESCHLER: And that is the window from which you saw the

stonecutters?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . From which I saw those stonecutters.

WESCHLER: Okay. I just wanted to ask you a few more

questions about Munich, and then I think since we brought

you up to this point, we'll go back and look at Lion's

childhood. First, in my preparation for the interview,

I was struck by two kinds of trends in the history of

Bavaria and Munich. On the one hand, it really seems that

one of the most liberal, progressive, constitutional

monarchies took place in Bavaria.

FEUCHTWANGER: I wouldn't know that. Wittelsbach [dy-
nasty], the family, were liberal, but not the government.
WESCHLER: Okay, but let me continue the question:
the other trend I get is that later the seat of fascism
will be in Bavaria.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, that is not a seat of fascism because
Hitler came from Austria, from Braunau. He lived in
Munich. It was just that chance because he lived in
Munich. He came back from the First World War and lived
in Munich. That was because he wanted to study painting.
He was not accepted in Vienna, at the academy. That was
the reason why the National Socialist movement came about,
because he was bitter that he wasn't accepted. If he had
had a little more talent and been accepted, the whole
National Socialism would never have happened, [ironic
laughter]

WESCHLER: Well, along that line, then, between liberalism
and fascism, how would you rate Munich in those days?
Was it an autocratic or an authoritarian regime?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, the Wittelsbachs were very liberal, the
whole family; it was a tradition in the family. But you
must not forget, it was a Catholic country, reigned by
the Catholic Church, more or less. The newspapers were
Catholic, and this was of course a very strict and

conservative way of life.

WESCHLER: Was there what we would call more or less

freedom of speech when you were growing up?

FEUCHTWANGER: Nobody said anything which wouldn't have

been allowed. We were all bourgeois, and a bourgeois

doesn't say anything which is a little bit daring or so.

It was not even missed.

WESCHLER: But in general were people satisfied with the

government?

FEUCHTWANGER: They were satisfied when they had their

beer in the evening, and their Radi , which was a kind of

root which they liked to eat with their beer. That was

all what they wanted. There was a little grousing about

things which were too expensive or so. Some said that

there must be a war because we can't go on like that, it's

too expensive to live life.

But the funny thing was that also the Church had
in a way a kind of light touch. For instance, in the
countryside, there was always the priest who had his
housekeeper. She was usually not alone a housekeeper;
it was just accepted by the peasantry that the priest
was usually very well fed, had a good kitchen and a good
cook, and that she was at the same time his girlfriend.
It was just accepted like that. Nobody found something
strange about it. Sometimes they had a child; then she

went away in time and then came back without child — the

child was given up for adoption or whatever. So it was

just a way of life: this kind of piety and also sin. I

think it had to do also something with the confession,

that they could clean themselves by confession; they had

their Holy Communion, the Eucharist, and then they could

begin again. Sinning. [laughter]

WESCHLER: So in a way the Catholics were no more Catholic

than the Jews were Jewish?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , that's true in a way. But in moral

things, of course, they were very strict.

WESCHLER: For example?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, how young people had to be brought up

and so. In the schools. But what they did privately,

nobody cared much about it. There was no gossip newspaper.

That was a good thing; if there had been one, it would

have been otherwise. News just went from mouth to mouth,

but it was not published. I think that was a very good

thing. People didn't make gossip about one another so

much.

WESCHLER: On the whole, judging from what will come later,

I would say that these were among the most stable years of

your life.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, absolutely. Ja , ja.

WESCHLER: It's often said that World War I just ripped

European society apart. Were there intimations of its

fragility already?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, there was only one thing. All of

Bavaria hated the Prussians and the emperor. What he said —

either they laughed about it, or they feared him, that it

couldn't end very well. They were for their own royal

family very much, but they hated all what the Hohenzollern

did. When the war broke out, I remember when we had to

stand in line to get something to eat--butter, for instance.

I heard the women speak about it, that we would have never

had this war without the emperor. "Our Ludwigl" — that was

a kind of diminutive of the king--"would never have made

war." And, "I must say I hate the Prussians more than I

hate the Welsch. " The Welsch were the French and Italians:

they were called the Welsch. It was more or less a critical

expression.

WESCHLER: A derogatory term.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. And they hated the Prussians more

than the French.

WESCHLER: About the Jews of Munich: would they have seen

themselves every bit as much aligned to the royal family

of Bavaria?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, absolutely yes. The Jews, didn't feel

Jewish. They did feel Bavarian. They were Bavarians.

They liked their beer and they liked their Radi . They

liked their Gemutlichkeit , if you know that, the wine
and the beer cellar. That was where Hitler later made
his big speeches. And when there was a new brew, in
spring, the Salvator beer, which was an extra strong
beer.... The Jews never got drunk, like the others, but
they liked to drink. I never saw a Jewish drunk in
Munich. Or in Germany, by the way. But you could see
many drunk Bavarians.

The same at night on the streets around. They
were very, very--sometimes very ferocious. I didn't
want to meet one on the street, you know. They didn't
know what they were doing. The first time I was afraid
was when I met a drunk. They had the knife always very
loose. At the villages, every Sunday there was a big
fight in the .village inn. That was their best entertain-
ment. They liked fighting. There was a playwright in
Austria named [Ludwig] Anzengruber--he makes one scene
like that: one man threw a chair into the lamp; it was
filled with petroleum, oil. So it was dark, and nobody
knew whom he was fighting or battling with. The morning,
when it was light again, they had to look for the noses
and ears which were lying around. Then there was always
a doctor who could sew them on. They only had to be
careful that they didn't sew the wrong nose or the wrong
ear. It was like your baseball, you know.

WESCHLER: Did you actually see fights?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes.

WESCHLER: Knife fights and with swords, perhaps?
FEUCHTWANGER: No swords.

WESCHLER: Did people walk around with knives and swords?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, they had the knife in their shoes.
WESCHLER: And that was very common?

FEUCHTWANGER: In their boots. Ja, ja. On the country-
side, mostly in the northern part of Bavaria, Nieder
Bayern, lower Bavaria. There was even more fighting
there than in higher Bavaria, in the mountains.
WESCHLER: Well, why don't we leave you at late teenage,
and go back now and talk a little bit about Lion's
life. I suppose this is a little bit more documented--
I've read little bits about his family — but you might
start by talking about his family origins, what his
parents and grandparents were. Also, of course, you
can tell any stories that he might have told you about
them.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , of course. But I thought it comes
later, because when we made our long trip to Italy, we
were for a while in Naples, and we had typhoid fever.
When my husband couldn't sleep--we both had great pains, but
I was a little better off because I didn't eat so many
vongole ["mussels"], this kind of shellfish we shouldn't

have eaten--then in his half fantasies, he told me about
his childhood. But we can also speak about it now.
WESCHLER: Well, why don't we speak about it now, and we
can speak about other things later on. What were his
grandparents? What did they do?

FEUCHTWANGER: I know from the mother that she came from
Darmstadt. That is more near the Rhine, in Hessen.
WESCHLER: What was her maiden name? Do you remember,
by chance?

FEUCHTWANGER: Bodenheimer. Johanna Bodenheimer. She
came from a very rich family. They had coffee export and
import and so forth. I remember that she told us that
during the war with France, her father had to brew a lot
of coffee for the army when the army came back from fight-
ing on furlough. Once they were not fast enough in making
the coffee, and the soldiers were furious because they were
thirsty and hungry. And they wanted to throw her father
into the boiling coffee. That's what she told us. They
were very rich, and every child had a million dollars as
a dowry. It was marks, of course, but it was about what
now is dollars. And two sisters married two brothers in
Munich, the two Feuchtwangers .

WESCHLER: How many children were there all together?
FEUCHTWANGER: I think twelve.
WESCHLER: That's a lot of millions of dollars.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. But it didn't help much. I don't

know. It vanished; it disappeared.

WESCHLER: Another Buddenbrooks .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , that's it. Absolutely. Ja, ja.

WESCHLER: So the two sisters married...?

FEUCHTWANGER: The two sisters married two Feuchtwanger

brothers.

WESCHLER: Okay. Tell us a little about the Feuchtwangers .

FEUCHTWANGER: The Feuchtwangers came from Feuchtwangen,

from this village in Franken that is a part of north

Bavaria.

WESCHLER: That was--I had it written down here--Elkan

Feuchtwanger was Lion's grandfather?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think so. How do you know? I wouldn't

have known it.

WESCHLER: A little bird told me. [laughter]

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know anything about it.

WESCHLER: Then I'll tell you. The bird told me that he

had a margarine factory.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I know that.

WESCHLER: Well, then, you do know something.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, and I know that the father of my husband

was not Elkan.

WESCHLER: No, that was Sigmund.

FEUCHTWANGER: Sigmund, yes. And I know only from him.

Now I remember. I didn't remember that his name was
Elkan, but I remember that they were the first people who
manufactured margarine in Germany--in the whole world.
But they didn't have the sense to have it patented or what-
ever it is. So then a famous firm in Holland copied the
whole thing, and they became very big, you know — enormous
manufacturers. Elkan was the first one who had a chemistry
student, or chemistry doctor, to help him with his inven-
tion. They made this kind of margarine, which has been
made mostly, I think, with oil and pork fat.
WESCHLER: Was Elkan himself something of an inventor, or
was it mainly the chemistry student who invented it?
FEUCHTWANGER: He was, in a way, because he was interested
in inventions, you know. He didn't do it so much for
money. He didn't know that it would bring money. He was
interested in the scientific way and the whole publication.
He invited a lot of people from hotels and restaurants
for a big dinner. Everybody was very enthusiastic about
the beautifully cooked dinner. Then he got up and told
them that they didn't eat butter. Because in those days
you cooked with butter. He said, "That was not butter. That
was margarine." Nobody would believe at first; they al-
ways were laughing about margarine. And this ruse brought
out that he could then manufacture it. They also had
a manufacture of soap and oil. It was very important during the

First World War. They made a lot of money with the army.
They also imported from Rumania and Bulgaria, which was
on the side of Germany, not on the side of the Allies,
because the king was a German, King Ferdinand. They
could import from there the pork fat and those things. So
they were among the very few who could have manufactured
all that. Oil and soap.

WESCHLER: My birdie told roe that there were factories
for this margarine in Holland and Rumania and even Egypt.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but this one in Holland was the com-
petition. It was their biggest competition. They took
their secret away because it was not patented or whatever
it had to be to--you know.

WESCHLER: But there was one in Egypt. Is that true also?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, I don't think so, but the father was
in Egypt. [For an alternative version see Hilde Waldo,
"Lion Feuchtwanger: A Biography," in Lion Feuchtwanger ,
A Collection of Critical Essays , John Spalek, ed. (Los
Angeles: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1972), p. 2 — Ed.] What he did
there, I don't know, but I think that he had a kind of branch.
WESCHLER: Well, that was Sigmund.

FEUCHTWANGER: Sigmund, ja, ja. But he was also more or
less a scholar, and not a....

WESCHLER: How many children did Elkan have?
FEUCHTWANGER: No--Elkan I don't know. Sigmund had nine.

But Elkan had. . . .

WESCHLER: Sigmund had how many brothers and sisters?

FEUCHTWANGER: He had a sister in Frankfurt and his

brother. There were two sons, Louis and Sigmund. They

had together the factory. But there were some sisters;

I don't know how many. I know that Sigmund lived the life

of a very Lebemann in Egypt. What would you call it?

A man of the world. He had a great life there. There

was not much spoken about it later.

WESCHLER: This was before he got married?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, before he got married.

WESCHLER: He was a playboy.

FEUCHTWANGER: Something like that, ja, ja.

WESCHLER: Later on, of course, we're going to be having

your husband writing a great deal about that part of the

world, Egypt and Palestine and so forth.

FEUCHTWANGER: Not much about Egypt.

WESCHLER: But Palestine, and I'm just wondering whether

he ....

FEUCHTWANGER: It has nothing to do with that. Josephus

was always in his mind because he saw a big book that

was lying in the drawing room about Josephus when he was

a child.

WESCHLER: Well, before we get to him, how, we have Coffee

marrying Margarine here. Do you have any idea roughly

what year that was?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was 188 3.

WESCHLER: But then their first child was Lion.
FEUCHTWANGER: Was Lion, yes. I remember that my mother
told me before I knew him, that.... Sometimes we met with
Mrs. Feuchtwanger in the Court Gardens, it was called.
It was near the residence of the king, a public garden.
On Saturday, mostly the Jews [strolled through the gardens]
when they came from the temple and the synagogue. The
Orthodox synagogue was called temple, and the Reform
temple was called synagogue. So we met, and we always
recognized the Feuchtwangers because they were so badly
dressed: always so gray and with very rough shoes. And
everybody knew they were rich. But they did that because
they were not allowed to carry anything on Saturdays, the
Orthodox Jews. Also not an umbrella. So on Saturday,
when it rained--or in case it rained, because it rained a
lot in Munich — they had always those kind of waterproof
dresses on. From far we could see those badly dressed
girls and children, and they were always the Feuchtwangers.
WESCHLER: So, this is before you....

FEUCHTWANGER: Before I met my husband, yes — long before.
They were still children. And my mother always told me
about the first child when she saw Mrs. Feuchtwanger. She
was very proud because she was so very rich, but my mother

knew her only very. . .

WESCHLER: ...fleeting...

FEUCHTWANGER: . . . f leetingly , ja. She told me they had

just had a beautiful little boy, with blonde hair and

blue eyes, and that was Lion. It was all I knew about Lion,

his childhood. Later on, there were so many children,

nine children. It was not a very happy family in those

days.

WESCHLER: All nine children survived infancy?

FEUCHTWANGER: They survived, yes, but now there are only

two sisters [still] living. One now is very old. She is

a year older than I, and she is not very well in her mind

[Franziska Diamand] . Another one lives in Israel, and she

is very active. She gives yoga lessons, and her son is

a director of the radio and television there in Israel. She

lives with him. Always when she writes me, she says how

busy she is; and she makes a lot of money.

WESCHLER: What is her name, by the way?

FEUCHTWANGER: Henny.

WESCHLER: Henny? And her son's name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Michael. Mischa.

WESCHLER: Last name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Reich--no, they were Reich in Germany,

but now the name is translated into Hebrew. Ohad. I

think it means Reich. Henny Ohad and Mischa Ohad.

WESCHLER: Again you pass your test. Well, let's take up

the cue: you said that they were not a very happy family.

FEUCHTWANGER: No.

WESCHLER: Why so?

FEUCHTWANGER: Too many in one apartment, you know; they

couldn't do very well. And Lion was very unhappy because

he was overworked. He was the first child. He had to

study Hebrew every morning before he went to high school

or college.

WESCHLER: One thing, before we get to his education: I

gather, of course, that with our Buddenbrook family here,

they are no longer as wealthy as previously.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. That's a story by itself. It comes

later. It's not so easy, you know. I have to tell that

one by one. It wouldn't make any sense if I would tell

you now why they lost their money. Later, much later it has

to be developed in the family. I think more important

is why he was so unhappy.

WESCHLER: Okay. Why don't we start there?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was a very good student. He was very

ambitious, and his parents were even more ambitious for him.

He was in the best gymnasium, which is high school and

college together, in those days.

WESCHLER: The Wilhelm Gymnasium?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , Wilhelm Gymnasium. It was the best and

the most strict. It was also the gyirmasium of the pages,
those sons of the aristocrats who were later aides at
the court. They were all together at this gymnasium.
It began at eight o'clock in the morning, and he had to get
up every day at five o'clock to go to the Jewish teacher
to learn Hebrew and Judaism. He worked every night until
eleven to make his homework. So you could see that it's
not healthy for a child. He was the only one who was not
tall. The others were all very tall and very strong chil-
dren. He was not developed so like the others--he was
developed in his mind, but not in his body. He was not
very good looking, but he had beautiful hair and blue
eyes. But he couldn't compete with these strong and rough
and raucous children. The sisters were even worse than the
brothers. I was nothing in comparison to them, [laughter]
WESCHLER: Really? These Munich girls really have a rep-
utation.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja--no, it was not the Munich girls; it
was the Jewish girls. I think it was a reaction--at
least it was with me — that because I was a good student,
I wanted to show them that I could also be a good gymnast.
I just wanted to show them, you know. I always liked, of
course, to climb and to fight, but this kind of gymnastics
I wanted just to show them. It was a little bit like that
with the sisters and brothers of my husband. So the next

brother was also a scholar.
WESCHLER: His name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ludwig. Called Lutschi. He was later
director of the greatest scientific publishing house.
They published all the great philosophers of this time.
Werner Sombart and so forth.

WESCHLER: What was the name of that company?
FEUCHTWANGER: Duncker and Humblot. Something like that.
He was also tall and good looking. The next brother
was tall and not so good looking, but a very great playboy.
WESCHLER: His name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Martin. He was also good looking, but
I didn't like his looks. The fourth brother was good look-
ing, too, and he took over the factory. There were four--
three brothers didn't want to take over the factory,
because they were interested in science or literature or...
WESCHLER: In the humanities, in the sciences, and in
girls .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. Girls was also [the interest of]
the fourth, but the fourth was the least intellectual.
WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Fritz. And there were sisters between all
these. It was like with Thomas Mann also.
WESCHLER: Boy, girl, boy, girl?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja.

WESCHLER: Just so that we can complete the record,
what were the names of his sisters?

FEUCHTWANGER: The oldest sister was Franziska. She
was also very sporty, very athletic. They were not as good
as I was, but they were maybe stronger than I was. We
were sometimes fighting together, because they didn't
like me — I was in the other sport club, you know. We
were fighting together because they wanted to show me how
good they are, but although they were stronger, I was faster,
I think. I was not as big and tall as they were, and also
not as strong with my bones, but in a way I was--they hated
me, because I was better, [laughter] I was in the pro-
letarian club; this sport club was very proletarian. They
were in the more aristocratic club where the high school
daughters were. The proletarian were of course the
better sports, the better athletes, because they were from
childhood out on the street; they were used to it, I
liked the proletarian better, and I hated these teenage
girls, who spoke--also at school — about actors, and wrote
their name and ate it with the bread and butter, you know.
And also manicures, and clothes. I was only interested
either in reading or in sport. The whole club, I hated
because they were so--we called them monkeys.
WESCHLER: What were the names of the other three sisters?
FEUCHTWANGER: Franziska and Bella. She died in a

concentration camp in Theresienstadt. Then came Henny;
then came Medi (her real name was Marta) . Four sisters
and five brothers. The brothers were Lion, Lutschi
(that was Ludwig) , Martin, [Fritz] , and Bertold. Bertold
was the hero of the family. He was a volunteer in the
First World War immediately. He was so fresh--we met
once on a mountain hut, his general or his major or some-
thing or other, and he said he never knew if they should
shoot him for insubordination or give him a medal, because
he was just a--they couldn't hold him, he answered
[back to] his officers in the field. But he was so great
in valor, so courageous, that he was even.... On the
corners of the streets, in Munich, every night there was a
day communication, you know, how the war is going on.
And he was named once as the hero of the day. He was
seventeen years old. When he came on furlough, he told
us that he didn't do that because he was so patriotic
but rather he just was so bored — it was so boring, so
he had to do something. Once he had a bet with this
officer. He wanted never to be an officer; they thought
maybe they could suppress his fresh mouth if they made
him a corporal or a sergeant. Jews were never officers,
only subofficers, or so they called them. But he didn't
accept that. He said then he couldn't do what he wants,
he would have to be careful with his subordinates. So

he had a bet that in the next trench, a French trench —
the officer said it was empty--he said there were soldiers
in it, and they made a very high bet. Then he took some hand
grenades and crawled, at night, on his belly until he found
a big hole from a shrapnel. He went into this hole, and
threw the hand grenades out from all sides to all sides, and
shouted terribly. Those French people thought there is
a whole company coming; they all came out of the trench
with their arms up and threw their guns down. He told
them, "So you go now back to my trench." He told them,
"Everyone has to carry his gun," and he went back with the
whole trench of French. And for that he got the Iron
Cross, First-class, which never a Jew had become until
that time. They had only gotten Second-Class.
WESCHLER: And it was all because of a bet?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. Then he did something else which
I don't remember, and there came one of his officers to my
mother-in-law and told her how proud they are: "He is
the pride of the regiment. " He would have wanted him to
give him the order of Maximilian's Knight of the Cross,
which is the highest order. But then he said, "But you
can understand, we can't give it to a Jew. So we gave
it to his officer."

WESCHLER: Just incidentally here, I hadn't realized that
there was that kind of problem for Jews in the German army.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. Only the doctors could become

officers. They were in the medical corps.

WESCHLER: That continued all the way through World War

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. But Berti didn't want it, because

he said he wants to be independent, and his superior got

this Maximiliam Ritterorden which he had earned. But the

funny rhirg is that--I must find somewhere something

his wife sent me — his widow is also living, in Florida.

He died of cancer. And she sent me some things from

this young boy.

WESCHLER: You mentioned that Lion was always getting

beaten up by his sisters.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he was not beaten up, but-- that was not

true, no.

WESCHLER: What generally was his relationship with....

He certainly didn't have a problem with being lonely.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was lonely because they didn't

accept him. He was not strong enough, you know, not like

them. They were loudmouthed and rough, and he didn't

want that; he wasn't interested in those things. It

disturbed him in his studies. I remember even chat his

brother Ludwig, who was not like Lion--he was also strong,

and he was more with the other brothers and sisters —

that he once gave his sister Marta a slap because she

disturbed him so much with her shouting that he couldn't
study. And that was in — the whole family, you know:
he slapped his sister. It was just not done. You can
quarrel , but. . . .

And then all of them had the same stomach ailment.
All of them. They always quarreled, when they were
eating dinner, and of course something happened. One sister,
Henny, who is now still alive, had bleeding of the stomach.
My husband was alone with her--the others were somewhere
else, in the countryside — and she was lying there on the
floor bleeding from the stomach. He was with her all alone,
until a doctor came. Usually people died from that.
WESCHLER: How old was he at the time?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he was maybe eighteen or so. But for
instance, I wanted to tell you an example of how he felt.
They made a tour. Every year they had a house in the
countryside, with the cook, and also the coachmen from
the factory came with them to help. And so they went
with a kind of van, you know. There was all the kitchen
utensils, because they cooked — they were Orthodox, you
know; they couldn't eat in a restaurant. So it was a
whole moving van which they took with them. Also the
sisters and brothers usually brought their friends. It
was a whole procession. Then they made great tours,
walking, hiking. Their father liked to hike on mountains —

not very strong, and not very high mountains, but still
every day was another excursion. Once they came through
a swamp, and Lion was always the last one. He was shorter
and had not the long legs. They were running, and he was
always the last one. And he became stuck in the swamp.
He couldn't come out anymore. He shouted and shouted,
and the others only just laughed and didn't help him.
He only sank more, till they finally helped him out. His
shoes were left in. He never forgot that anymore. His
whole life he went through with that: how they just
laughed when he was stuck in the swamp.
WESCHLER: How did he finally get out?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, finally I think they helped him at the
end, but they just--the laughing was.... it was not so
much nhe danger that he could sink in the swamp but that
they laughed at him.

WESCHLER: It's very unusual to hear that kind of story
about an oldest child.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. But he was not strong, because
he had to learn too much. He had not enough sleep. He
had to fight for his sisters and brothers. The others
didn't have to do that. They didn't have to go to the
Jewish school. They could go at eight o'clock at school
and not at five o'clock, and nobody was looking if they
did well at school or not, like with him. So he had to

break the ice for the others. He was the oldest, and that's
why it was so difficult for him. The others had it easy.
They did just what they wanted. When they were bigger,
their mother just couldn't get along — couldn't help to
supervise them all the time. But Lion was the oldest, and
he was supervised.

WESCHLER: I'd like to talk a little bit more about,...
FEUCHTWANGER: But he became very athletic, too, later on.
WESCHLER: Right. That's my impression. I'd like to talk
a little bit about his father and also his mother. You
said that in addition to managing the firm, his father was
also a scholar.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was a scholar, studied history
and also Hebrew.

WESCHLER: Had he been to a university or anything?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I think, but he never was — either
you were a student or not, you know. In those days,
nobody was really a student and made examination or grad-
uated or something like that. But he learned a lot.
He was in high school, and--in those days they went rarely
to colleges.

WESCHLER: His interests were in Hebrew studies and history?
FEUCHTWANGER: Hebrew studies. He had a famous Hebrew
library, which later on, when he died, the two brothers
sold to England, without telling the other sisters

and brothers. This was that kind of family, you know.

WESCHLER: Which were the two that sold it?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think it was — and I would — I don't want to.

WESCHLER: You don't want to slander them.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, because also there are still the

widows living and their children also. I don't want to....

WESCHLER: I should think that Lion would have loved to

have had that library.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , of course. Also, at least they should

have--it belonged to the whole family, not just to those

two. And the same was with the stamp collection, a famous

stamp collection, with the youngest son. It was more or

less the youngest son who collected them. But nobody

heard anything anymore about it.

WESCHLER: Was the father very strict?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was a nice man, in a way, but it was too

much. The mother was very strict, very bourgeois, from

a small town. And Munich was a big town, in a way; it was

the capital of Bavaria. So when she came from Darmstadt,

which was a small town, she was even more strict than

other people in Munich.

WESCHLER: Was the father henpecked, do you think?

FEUCHTWANGER: I wouldn't say that. The mother was too

much of a traditionist to henpeck somebody. But she had

a way to dominate the whole family without saying anything.

When she was angry, you couldn't hear it in her voice,
but you could see it in her eyes. She pressed her lips
together, and that was like shouting. They were more
afraid of her silence than they would have been if she had
shouted. The father also had lots of respect of her.
I don't think it was a great love between them. It was
a traditional wedding. But the mother in a way also
respected him as the father of the family. She became
angry with the children when they gave him answers. It
was very bourgeois. It was--what do you call it? High
bourgeois or something; not middle bourgeois like my
parents were. It was a little higher.
WESCHLER: Haut bourgeois.

FEUCHTWANGER: Not yet haut bourgeois, but almost.
WESCHLER: Presque haut bourgeois.
FEUCHTWANGER: Presque. Ja, ja. [laughter]
WESCHLER: Well, I think maybe we should stop for today.
When we begin next time, we'll do a little more about
Lion's education and bring it up to where you meet him.

TAPE NUMBER: II, SIDE TWO
JUNE 20, 1975

WESCHLER: Last time, we talked rather extensively about
Lion's relationships with his siblings. I wanted to talk
a little bit more extensively about his relationship
with his mother and his father. We might start with his
mother. We said that she was more or less the dominant
person.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, she was rather dominant, but she never
spoke loudly. She always spoke very slowly. She only
pressed her lip together, and everybody was pale. She
never did anything else. But she was a good representa-
tive for the family. She was a very ladylike woman. She
went along very well with her husband. But she also
heard once that her husband had a relationship with her
sister.

WESCHLER: True?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know. I wasn't there. I only
heard that.

WESCHLER: What happened?

FEUCHTWANGER: Her sister married the brother of her husband.
I don't know more about it; I just heard this rumor.
WESCHLER: This is really an example of oral history as
gossip.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja, absolutely.

WESCHLER: You had mentioned that her relationship with
your husband was not especially close.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all, because my husband did all
the things which he shouldn't do. First of all, he was
not a religious person, and they were Orthodox. Then,
he went away because he couldn't stand any more of this —
it was the orthodoxy which in a way made him leave the
house, because it was too time-consuming. He had always
to go to the temple when he wanted to study or go some-
where else. And then he didn't want to be in the family
anyway. He was interested in actresses since he wrote
very early for Die Schaubuhne . He [reviewed] the Munich

theater, so he met a lot of actresses and actors, and this
was the company he preferred, rather than that he should
always have to stay at home and sit there with the family.
Then he said finally, "I don't want to stay at home anymore.
I don't take even your money anymore." He earned his life
by giving lessons and took a room in a very cheap house
where he had not even water in his room. It was a single
room very high up in a house, in the attic. When he wanted
some water, he had to go to the neighbor, who was a court
lackey who didn't like Jews. And he knew by the name that
my husband was a Jew. It was very embarrassing always to go
every day to this lackey to get some water to wash himself.

WESCHLER: Well, again, that's going to be later material
that we'll handle in more depth. I'm at this point more
interested in--you mentioned his one childhood memory
about being in the swamp. Were there other stories from
his childhood? That one has more to do with his siblings.
Do you have any other memories about his parents?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, the parents were never unkind to him.
They just disapproved his whole life and his whole mental-
ity. There was always some nagging. They didn't shout
with him; they didn't quarrel with him. It was just that
sometimes during the meals, the mentioning of something
could upset him. He felt always that they were
disapproving of him.

WESCHLER: Was this equally on the father's and the. mother ' s
side?

FEUCHTt^ANGER: Yes, the mother didn't say anything, usually.
She just pressed her lips and closed her mouth. The father
sometimes--he was a nice and kind man, in a way, but he
was unhappy about my husband, probably, and made remarks
which my husband, of course, didn't like as a young man.
To be always disapproved of everything. He'd just say,
"Ach, der Lionl" or something like that. That was enough.
Then he knew. This was always during the meals. They
didn't see each other at other times; so the meals were al-
ways a terrible event for everybody. They all got stomach

ulcers because they ate the disapproval with the meal.
WESCHLER: That was true, you think, of all the children,
or of Lion especially?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, all the children, but my husband was
the oldest and had to break the ice. The others had it
easier. They did also just what they wanted, and the par-
ents couldn't do anything about it, so they made all these
remarks. It was always during the meals that those things
happened.

WESCHLER: You mentioned that the family was unhappy.
Is it unhappy for Lion, or was it...?
FEUCHTWANGER: For all of them.

WESCHLER: It was just an unhappy family--everyone was at
each other all the time?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , and also, everyone was such an individ-
ualist. Sometimes there are families where one likes the
other. One and the other form alliances. There was one
between the two youngest sisters a little bit, but still
they were quarreling also. There was always quarreling.
They disapproved of the parents and their whole way of
life, and the parents disapproved of the children. There
was no tenderness or feeling to be approved of, to be
accepted. I know that the biographer of my husband [Dr.
Lothar Kahn] , who now publishes a biography of him, a big
biography, wrote to my sister-in-law in Israel. I told him

the same thing when he was here, and she confirmed what I
said: that they didn't like each other, and they didn't
like their parents, and the parents didn't like them.
WESCHLER: It surprises me about the father having trouble
because I would think that the father, who in addition to
being a businessman was also a scholar....
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was not a businessman — he only
inherited the factory — and he would have rather done some-
thing else, more studying.

WESCHLER: Well, I would think that such a man would have
been delighted at the intellectual figure of his son.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was very proud about my husband as
long as he was in the gymnasium, studying, in high school,
and college, and university, and when he had made his
doctoral dissertation very early. But from then on, my
husband was on his own, and then he disapproved everything
what he did.

WESCHLER: But in the early days when he was still a child,
was there more approval?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was very proud of him, that he had always
good grades. In those days, also, I think it wasn't so bad,
because my husband was so overworked. He was not a very
strong child, and he had no sleep because he had to go
to the Hebrew school in the morning at five o'clock. Also
he felt the orthodoxy to be so humiliating for him. He

was not allowed to carry books on Saturday because it's
not allowed for Orthodox Jews to carry anything. They
are not allowed to carry their own key. They have a
key tied around the waist. They are not allowed to carry
a key in the pocket. When he went to school, the maid had
always to carry his books--going behind him, of course. It
was very, very humiliating and embarrassing for him when
the other children saw him coming with the maid bringing
his books. And then the Orthodox Jews have something which
is called--! don't know the English name. It was around
the neck, a piece of canvas, with some threads on it,
called an arbas Kanfes [tallit katon] . They had to wear
that always. Nobody knew--also my husband didn't know why.
In gymnastics class, when they had to disrobe themselves,
he had this thing on, and everybody asked what it is. He
even didn't know himself what it was. They laughed, of
course, made fun out of it. So that everything what had to
do with his family was embarrassing.

WESCHLER: Was it unusual for Jews in Munich to be Orthodox?
FEUCHTWANGER: There were very few Orthodox there. The
temple was very small and was supported by the family
Feuchtwanger along with another family, the Fraenkels,
who were also related to the Feuchtwangers . They paid for
the rabbi and for everything.
WESCHLER: About how large beyond that? How many people

were part of the temple?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, I don't know. Maybe thirty or fifty
families, if as much as that. When I was there--it's a
very small temple, and it was not full. People were older
already and didn't go out anymore. Not all of them had
children, or small children. Some came from little com-
munities where there was a Jewish community. They were
together; they didn't go to school with others in the
small towns. When they came to Munich, which was a big
town in those days, they were in school with others, and
the others didn't know about it. When they were in Jewish
school, then nobody would care about that.
WESCHLER: Well, you've mentioned two primary causes of
your husband's frustration with orthodoxy, the overwork
and the humiliations involved.

FEUCHTWANGER: Also, it would all have been easy if he
would have believed in it, you know. But he didn't believe
in it.

WESCHLER: That's what I wanted to get at. As a child,
did he just . . . ?

FEUCHTWANGER: He just didn't believe anymore. First,
I think it was just to contradict everything. And then
he read enlightened philosophers--Spinoza and all that.
In a way, he thought that he was right. And he had to do
all those old-fashioned things.

WESCHLER: At about what age was he reading the philosophers?

FEUCHTWANGER: I didn't know him then, but I think it was

about fifteen or so. He was very precocious and read

everything what he could lay his hands on. He studied

everything.

WESCHLER: There was never really a period in his life

when he more or less naively believed?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I don't think so. In my life, yes,

but not in his life. I think from the beginning. His older

cousins were the same. So he heard from them. They told him

about it, and he read about it, the whole thing. He was not

cynical, but he didn't believe this way of — he found it all so

hypocritical. For instance, there is a thing: the Jews were

not allowed to have their shop open on Saturday or on

holidays. But a factory cannot close down; you can't

lock down and say, "We'll come back on Monday," or so.

Sunday also was closed. And what with the fire, and all

that--and in those days there was not all electrical--

so somebody had to work. It always had to go on, the

work. So they sold the whole factory to the bookkeeper for

one mark. Every Friday, they sold the factory for one

mark to the bookkeeper, and then they took it back on Sunday

evening or the next Monday. Lion found that hypocritical.

He said that they cheated God, that also the factory

shouldn't work.

WESCHLER: What kind of answers would they give to something

like that?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, they wouldn't give any answers. That's

what also was a kind of reason to question or to quarrel.

He said, "What kind of piety is it when you do those

things which cheat when you believe in God?" They just

didn't understand it. It was so much tradition already,

and they didn't want to hear about it. They said, "We

cannot close down." And also it was true: all the workmen

in the factory, what should they do if they interrupt

the work? It couldn't just begin again the next week.

You couldn't do anything. Possibly they felt also that it

wasn't right, but they had to do it. Now I see it otherwise,

and also my husband saw it later otherwise. But then,

in your youth, when you are much more radical in your

judgment, you are not tolerant. So he only saw the

hypocritical side and not the necessity of it.

WESCHLER: Nevertheless, there were aspects of Judaism

which apparently were very striking to him. I'm thinking

particularly of the Josephus volume, for example. His

father had a very large Jewish library.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, very large. It has been sold later

to England. It was a famous library.

WESCHLER: Apparently, for instance, that Josephus volume

was impressive to him as a youth.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Of course, it has also been sold.

WESCHLER: But about his memories of that: did he study

Josephus very much as a young person?

FEUCHTWANGER: It wasn't like studying, you know. He read

it and he was enthralled with it, but he didn't feel that

it was studying.

WESCHLER: Was it an early edition of Josephus, or what?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know. I never saw it. But also

that is not important. Important is what's in it, the

content.

WESCHLER: Sure. What kinds of things about Josephus

interested him at that early age?

FEUCHTWANGER: He only read it, and it was always in his

mind, because it was also the contradictions of this man,

which were so very much like the modern Jews, also. And

then there was another time, but I don't know if I should

speak about it already now. When we were in Rome, there is

this — should I tell it?

WESCHLER: Sure.

FEUCHTWANGER: There is the Titus Arch in the Forum in

Rome. The Arch of Titus is where Josephus had to go through,

you know, to humiliate himself, to be freed from slavery.

He was a slave. There is also shown in a relief the

triumphal march of Titus, the Jews who had to carry

things to the emperor as slaves. And this impressed on

him. I think the resolution to write about Josephus came
then when we were going through this Arch of Titus.
WESCHLER: Given that there was an ambivalence about this
relationship to Judaism--we ' ve seen the darker parts--
were there any things that he did cherish of his Jewish
upbringing?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, there was nothing to cherish. It was
the same as whether you have blonde hair or black hair —
it was so natural to be Jewish for him. He never felt
humiliated to be Jewish, but he only saw the hardship.
And the hardship was not in being Jewish but in being
Orthodox. That was a great difference. He was interested
in Judaism very much. I don't say what is always the wrong
thing to say, that he was proud of being Jewish. I think
we cannot be proud of anything which we didn't do ourselves.
He could be proud if he had finished writing a book and
found it good, or even if he wrote his doctoral dissertation
and got his degree. But why should he be proud just
because his parents were Jewish, and he was--what is the
reason to be proud of it? I think it's too chauvinistic.
When you are proud of something, you are contemptible
of the others, who are not Jews. You shouldn't be proud;
neither the Gentile should be proud to be Gentile, nor the
Jews to be Jewish. He never spoke about that, but I think
it was his mentality also.

WESCHLER: Before we move away from this, you say he woke
up at five in the morning to go to Hebrew school. For how
long did that go on?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, until he was out of school.
WESCHLER: So, until what age was that, about?
FEUCHTWANGER: I think seventeen or eighteen, I don't know.
WESCHLER: And, of course, he was fluent in Hebrew.
FEUCHTWANGER: He was fluent in Hebrew; he was fluent in
Latin; he was fluent in Greek. He could even translate
from Greek to Latin and vice versa.

WESCHLER: Well, that brings me to the next question,
which is to talk a little bit about his other schooling.
FEUCHTWANGER: He was not only ambitious. He was am-
bitious, maybe because he was smaller than the others and
didn't look so well, and he wanted to show them what he
knew. In this way, he was very unkind to his sisters who
were less intellectual. When they asked him something, he
said, "Oh, you wouldn't understand it"--or something like
that. It was his revenge because they treated him so badly
when they were children. The next brother, who was a
scientist--! was a friend of his sister's; that's how
I know all these things--when they asked him something,
he was very patient to explain to them what they wanted
to know. But Lion never wanted to speak with them at all.
They had not a good relationship, and it was also partly

his fault. But how can you expect tolerance from a
boy of seventeen or so who is unhappy with his family?
WESCHLER: Was there no sibling with whom he had any close
relations?

FEUCHTWANGER: He had some cousins who were very good
friends of his. His best friend was a cousin, but a
second-degree cousin, I think, who later died of tuber-
culosis.

WESCHLER: What's his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Dr. Feuchtwanger , also. Igo Feuchtwanger .
His mother was Hungarian, and his father was one of the
bankers. He was a very intelligent and very kind man —
I knew him when he was younger — and he had a great in-
fluence on my husband. He was a little older. He was
also a nonbeliever, and he had a great influence on my
husband.

WESCHLER: In what way?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, the Spinoza way, you know. You have to
read Spinoza, so you know what it's all about.
WESCHLER: You think that it was through this cousin that
Spinoza became...?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I think so. And also against ortho-
doxy. Because my husband just suffered, but he didn't know
why. So with this cousin, it was easier for him; he could
make him understand.

WESCHLER: But of his brothers and sisters, there were none
that he liked more than the others?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. They were not nice to him, and he was
not nice to them. Later on, we were good friends with
his oldest brother, his next brother, Lutschi, but only
when he was married.

WESCHLER: Well, can you talk a little bit about what the
regular school was like, what classes he enjoyed, whether he
had teachers that were influential?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes. He enjoyed everything that he
learned, everything what he could lay hands on, even
shorthand. He was very good in shorthand, and it helped
him a lot in his work. He was, of course, most interested
in history and literature.

WESCHLER: Were there any teachers that were particularly
influential?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. They were all too bourgeois,
and too old-fashioned, and too far away from the children.
And also the headmaster — whatever he was called, the pres-
ident— he was a great scholar, they say, but he was very
strict and punished the pupils. When he was walking
through the Maximilianstrasse, where this gymnasium was
and where some of his students lived, when he saw one
on the street after nine o'clock, he relegated him.
You know, he was so strict. Everything was fear: in the

home it was fear; in the gymnasium it was fear. One teacher,
he said, was nice. I think it was a German teacher, and
his daughter was later an actress, and my husband knew her
very well as an actress later on.

WESCHLER: [Johanna] Terwin. She was married later with
Alexander Moissi, who was a very famous actor in [Max]
Reinhardt's theater.

WESCHLER: Did Lion show any interest in science?
FEUCHTWANGER: Not much, no. Maybe in anthropology.
WESCHLER: So it was primarily humanities.
FEUCHTWANGER: More in humanities, ja. He learned every-
thing what he had to learn. He was good in algebra. But
he was not very much interested in chemistry or in physics.
He learned it, what he had to learn at school, because he
wanted good grades; so he learned everything. But it was
not his favorite side of the study. He was very much
interested in languages.

WESCHLER: You mentioned Latin and Greek.

FEUCHTWANGER: Latin, Greek, and French, and Italian. Not
English.

WESCHLER: Getting out of the school: apparently the family
went to the country.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. During the vacation. They rented a
house, and had all the maids and a cook there.
WESCHLER: Where was this?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, different places every year, most
every year in another place. But very often on the
Kochelsee. That is a lake in the mountains. And all
their friends came there, mostly Gentile friends, and they
enjoyed the whole thing. They did everything what was
necessary. They said, "Now, it is Saturday evening. We
cannot make light anymore," because the maid had to make the
light. And they knew all the prayers. They were abso-
lutely at home in orthodoxy, and the Feuchtwanger children
didn't care, [laughter] It was very funny.
WESCHLER: Was that a period of respite for him though?
He didn't have to wake up at five in the morning....
FEUCHTWANGER: No, they were not allowed to sleep very
late. But what he liked most of all was when the father
made with them--not climbing but excursions in the mountains.
He liked that very much. Also he was allowed to have
friends with him.

WESCHLER: Do you remember any particular stories of those
hikes--things that impressed him, besides the swamp?
FEUCHTWANGER: Later on he had a friend with him, very often
two friends. One was a singer who studied voice [named
Monheimer] , and another was a musician from the orchestra
of the Royal Theatre; you know, that's the opera. This
was a very interesting man, but he was also a crook in a
way. He couldn't do anything else: that was his nature.

When he played cards with my husband he always cheated him
and won things from him.

WESCHLER: Who was this? What was his name?
FEUCHTWANGER: I shouldn't say his name, but I don't think
he has any relatives anymore. He has died, also. After-
wards, when we were here after the war, he wrote the most
admiring letters to my husband: how he'd read all his books
during the Nazi time — he tried to get them from everywhere —
and how he admired him, and mostly Josephus . He was very
proud to have had him as a friend. But when they were
friends, he always cheated him. They were good friends,
and he always said, "You are a genius, but you are so dumb,
I can cheat you. You don't even see it." [laughter]
WESCHLER: So are you going to give us his name, or not?
FEUCHTWANGER: Hartmann Trepka . He came partly from Poland;
and so Hartmann [was German] and Trepka was the Polish
part.

WESCHLER Although your husband wasn't athletic especially,
he was very. . . .

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he liked athletics, but not in competition,
He was a very good swimmer, and even diving--not diving
when jumping, but diving down to get things out of the
bottom. He could stay very long underwater. He was a
very good swimmer, even twice saved somebody from drowning.
And he was very enduring: he could carry very hard, very

heavy backpacks, also going on and on up the mountains
without tiring. But for instance, he couldn't learn
skiing. He tried to learn skiing and he was not agile
or skillful enough. He lacked every skill. But he was
very enduring. He could do it; he could outstand every-
body. We were once on a very high mountain in Austria,
in the Tyrol, and when the others had felt it — you know, from
the high, sometimes you feel heart beating--he never felt
it. He was without any dizziness. He could climb on
the highest peaks and also towers. Sometimes, in Spain,
when we were on the spires, very high--you go outside around
the towers and the fence was very low, not higher than your
knee--he could go around without feeling it, and I was
always so dizzy. But I was so ashamed that I was dizzy,
so I went behind him and didn't look down; I looked only
on his head. But I was so glad to be back, and I never
would have admitted it. But he didn't feel that. Also he
was never seasick. That has to do something with the same
thing, I think. He was never seasick in the greatest
storm when everybody else was lying around. So he had many
things which were very acceptable as an athlete.
WESCHLER: Was he at all sickly?
FEUCHTWANGER: No.
WESCHLER: He was small....
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. But he didn't look so small as he

really was. He was about as tall as I was, but, of course,
as a woman I had high heels, or something like that, so I
looked taller than he. He had broad shoulders, and he didn't
look sickly. He was very well built in his way.
WESCHLER: Continuing with a rather impressionistic
survey of his childhood and adolescence, were there any
early literary influences, writers that he liked partic-
ularly?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Oscar Wilde was a very great influence
on him, Salome, for instance. Lion wrote also plays.
He was very young, still. He wrote some plays in one
act. They have been performed in a theater which usually
has only volks plays, dialect comedies. This director
accepted his plays. There were three one-acts.
WESCHLER: How old was he at this point?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he'd be twenty or so. But in those days,
you know, twenty was not like now twenty. It was like
sixteen. No experience, and everything was provincial
and backward. So his whole family, of course, went to
the theater. One play was a biblical play [Konig Saul]
and another one was a medieval play [Prinzessin Hilde] .
Then before the performance started, the man who played
the bard who had to sing--he had to have a little beard,
because it was the time of those bards and singers; it
was Gothic or something--and the beard burned before the

first performance. This man had a very thick, plump
face, and he just didn't look like a bard without a beard,
[laughter] People already laughed when he came onto the
stage. So that was not a good beginning. The play was
called Prinzessin Hilde, and I don't know much about it
because it never has been printed. But I know what he
told me about it. In Salome, maybe you will remember,
there's always those repetitions. Lion's play was in the
style of Oscar Wilde, and Lion exaggerated it. "How
beautiful is the Princess Salome today!" It begins like
that. And Lion's said, "How beautiful is the Princess
Hilde today!" And it never ended; and finally the audience
said, "How beautiful...." [laughter] My husband was with
the director in the box, and he began to laugh himself. I
remember that the critic I read — you know I didn't know Lion
yet — said he bit in his handkerchief to hold from laughing.
So it was a terrible, just a terrible thing. It fell through,
With this laughing in the most tragic situations. Then the
family went home very angry with their son and brother.
But to crown this all, his grandmother lost her diamond
brooch; so that was unforgivable. That was even the worse
of all. So they went home, and he didn't come home. Lion
went out with the actress into a wine restaurant. He
liked actresses, and he was very glad that she accepted
the invitation. He didn't come home, so they thought to

100

ask the police to look for him. They thought he was a
suicide because he was unhappy about the play. Yet he
didn't think any more about the whole thing. He was
young and thought, "Oh, next time I'll make it better."

The next day in the best newspaper there was a critic,
Hanns von Gumppenberg. "Von" is aristocratic, you know,
and he was a very enlightened man. His family was older
than the Wittelsbachs , the house of the king. He was
the first critic of the Miinchner Neusten Nachrichten
paper. And he wrote a very nice critic about Lion, how
gifted he was. You could see that through: "Although
it was not very finished yet, the whole thing, and very
amateurish, you could feel that he is very talented."
So isn't that an amazing thing, that he could.'..? This
man just helped him as long as he could, always liked his
writing and praised it.

WESCHLER: Let's go back a little bit and take a look at
how Lion began writing. What were his earliest...?
FEUCHTWANGER: One of the earliest printed things was a
song about fishing. It was a competition for fishing.
So he wrote a poem about fishing, and he got first prize.
But he had never fished in his whole life, [laughter]
WESCHLER: How old was he at that point?
FEUCHTWANGER: Fourteen, I think.
WESCHLER: Was he writing earlier than that?

101

FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was about the time he began to write,
but just for himself.

WESCHLER: Had he decided already very early that he would
be a writer?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think so, yes. He never told me about
it. He never spoke about it. But I think it was in
him. He was obsessed with it.

WESCHLER: Well, presumably his career was not made by
the fishing poem.
FEUCHTWANGER: No. [laughter]
WESCHLER: What followed that?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know anything. Very early he began
to write critics about the theater for the very important
periodical in Berlin, Schaubiihne. That was like the
Saturday Review here. It had great renomme.
WESCHLER: How did that contact come about?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he just wrote a review and sent it in,
and it was accepted.

WESCHLER: How old was he at that point?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, about twenty or so. It was very important
because in Munich there were many first nights; many of
the great playwrights in Germany had their first performances
in Munich. So it was very important what he wrote.
It was a very funny thing that he always felt so humil-
iated at home, and then all those famous authors made so

102

much fuss out of him so he would write a good critic.

WESCHLER: Hot and cold.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. It was also not very healthy

like that.

WESCHLER: Sure. Well, a little bit about Munich here:

You mentioned that they had many premieres in Munich. So

there apparently was an established and thriving theater

there .

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, there was the State Theatre, which

was of course before the Royal Theatre, and then there

was the Schauspielhaus , which was the avant-garde theater

in those days. There were many, many first — for instance,

I think every play of Frank Wedekind has been played

the first time in Munich, in this Schauspielhaus. And

also some Gerhart Hauptmann plays, and all the Max Halbe

plays. Halbe was later on not so very well appreciated,

but in those days he was one of the classics. His first

play was Jugend (Youth). This first play made him famous.

Later on there are funny things which we have to say about

our experience during the war. Shall I speak about it

now?

WESCHLER: Sure. These things are open.

FEUCHTWANGER: In Munich there was a wine restaurant. It

was built exactly beside the Hofbraiihaus, the famous

Hofbraiihaus, where the people stand around kegs and had

103

those big steins of beer. But always one liter, not
less. They drank that — three, four, five liters a night.
But beside it was a wine restaurant, the Torggelstube ,
and this wine restaurant was in two parts, divided in
two parts. One was the bourgeois, and the other part was
the — Bohemians, I would say. There were also writers, and
also, for instance, a man like [Walter] Rathenau came there.
He was the foreign minister. There were two tables where
always the same man was at the head of the table. On
one table was Frank Wedekind, the playwright, and at the
other was Max Halbe. Everyone had his own friends, and
they didn't like that someone from their table went to the
other table. There was only one man who was allowed to
do that, and they didn't take him very seriously. It was
Erich Miihsam, who later has been killed by the Nazis.
There is a famous story about him. He was also a very
gifted writer. He was not a Communist; he was an anarchist.
But he was the mildest person you can imagine, and that
he was an anarchist, you couldn't.... You know that only
Munich had these people. It was only in Munich. Like they
say, "Only in America," but it was Munich. He was the
only one who was accepted on both tables. He had also
a little magazine. It was very gifted, what he wrote, but
sometimes crazy, about how the world should look. It was
called Kain, from Cain and Abel. He had a great red beard

104

and a very high voice. Later on he helped make the rev-
olution in Munich. He was one of the founders of the
revolution in Munich with [Kurt] Eisner. In Russia, he's
still very famous, also because of his death. One of his
best friends always told him, "You will end at the gallow."
And this best friend really became a Nazi later. But it was
not he, I think, who killed him. This man who later
became a Nazi fell in love with me. He was a hero in the
war and came back for furlough. He always kneeled before
me and cried that I didn't accept him. He was a big man,
strong and everything, and it just was so funny. Later he
became a Gauleiter; that's a leader of the Nazis who killed
many people.

WESCHLER: What was his name?
FEUCHTWANGER: [Bernhardt Kohler]

WESCHLER: He obviously wasn't making much of an impression
on you.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. You know, like Heine said, "His
name shouldn't be mentioned." "Nicht genannt soil seiner
werden." It should never even be mentioned, Heinrich
Heine wrote that in his poems .

WESCHLER: Well, what happened at that winery? You were
telling your story.

FEUCHTWANGER: At this winery we always were on the table
of Frank Wedekind, who was more progressive; he was very

105

liberal and enlightened. Max Halbe was a very conservative
man. Both were famous, and--it always changes a little
bit. For a while, Frank Wedekind was even in jail for
lese majeste. He was very successful and also always very
persecuted because he was so daring. Many of his plays
have been prohibited. Then he was less played for a while,
and all of a sudden he had a comeback, in Berlin, with
a very famous actress, a woman who played the heroine in
his plays. Usually his wife [Tilly] played, and he was
unhappy with this Maria Orska. He said to my husband,
"I cannot understand that this woman could perform my
play. She is too much of a demoniac, a vamp. My hero-
ines are in no way vamps; but they are vicious, childlike.
She knows too much. She has nothing like a child." She had
had such an enormous success, and he was so famous again,
that he came back from Berlin radiant. He forgot all what
he told us about Maria Orska.

Another time in the Torggelstube he met Max Halbe .
They were always friends from their youth on--friends and
enemies at the same time. And he said, "Max, I heard that
you had a first night in the meantime when I was in Berlin.
I was very sorry," he said, "I couldn't be here. Do you
think they will perform your play again?" Things like that
happened, you know. I heard that myself. [laughter]
WESCHLER: What a scene! Was that scene already there when

106

your husband was growing up in Munich?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was already like that.
WESCHLER: Was he part of that already from being a critic?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. From being a critic. He was famous,
you could say, as a critic, in those days, and also very
much feared. He was a very sharp critic. Later on he
didn't like that; he always said, "You know, a critic
can do very little [to help] somebody, but he can do the
greatest damage." Much more damage than he could do
help. So finally he gave up writing critics. He wrote
only critics when he liked something, to promote something,
some author or writer or actor.

WESCHLER: Do you feel partly responsible for this evo-
lution?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think so, ja, ja. I am also responsible
that he wrote novels, because he had been a playwright.

107

TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE
JUNE 20, 1975 and JUNE 24, 1975

WESCHLER: You were in the middle of a story about

Wedekind.

FEUCHTWANGER: About Wedekind. What I wanted to say —

I have a lot of anecdotes about Wedekind, but what I

think is important is that he was the predecessor of

Bertolt Brecht. He had great influence on him. Bertolt

Brecht never met him, but Wedekind' s writing and his

plays had great influence on him. Wedekind was often

singing those songs from his plays, what also Brecht

did. That I think is rather interesting to know.

WESCHLER: You might give some of your anecdotes as long

as we're on him.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, his wife was very beautiful, and she

was famous for her beautiful legs. He wrote plays where

she could show her legs, because in those days the women

had long skirts; you couldn't see their legs. That's

why in his Per Erdgeist, she had to play a clown with short

trousers, so you could see her legs. When she was sitting

beside an actor, he was terribly jealous. He was much

older than his wife, but she loved him very much. He

thought--! don't know if you know the word, that touching

the feet under the table? How would you say that? Footsie?

108

WESCHLER: Playing footsie, right.

FEUCHTWANGER: And he was afraid that she would do that with
a famous actor. So he said, "Tilly, did you lose something?"
and looked under the table. [laughter] And those things
happened all the time.

I met Tilly again when I was in Germany, and she
gave a party for me, a great party. She sent me also her
memoirs [Lulu, die Rolle meines Lebens] , with a beautiful
dedication. Her daughter [Kadidja] visited me here. I
brought her to the Huntington Hartford Foundation. She
lived there in a little house, with a little river beside
the house; she had a typewriter, paper, everything here.
It was wonderful.

WESCHLER: Why don't we come back for a while to Lion's
early literary career. At first, was it his intention to
be a playwright?

FEUCHTWANGER: A playwright, yes. He was only interested
in writing plays, not in writing epics. That's why he
write the first time those three one-acts.
WESCHLER: And those were the very first things he wrote?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yeah, they were the first things, at least,
which were performed.

WESCHLER: What came after that? Hopefully a little bit
more successful.
FEUCHTWANGER: No, he wrote then a novel which he later on

109

negated entirely and didn't want that anyone would know
about it.

WESCHLER: It was not published?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was published, but it was — I don't
know what happened finally. I think he retracted it. He
didn't like it.
WESCHLER: What was its name?
FEUCHTWANGER: I don't remember.

WESCHLER: I'm sure it's listed here [in the 1972 Collection
of Critical Essays] .

FEUCHTWANGER: He was very angry when somebody would
[mention it] .

WESCHLER: Was that Per tonerne Gott?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. I thought that nobody would know
it. I forgot that it's in here.
WESCHLER: You've got it listed.

FEUCHTWANGER: Gott is God, you know, and tonerne
is something like gypsum. You speak of tonerne feet.
WESCHLER: Clay, maybe.

FEUCHTWANGER: Clay, that's it. Ja, ja. The Clay God.
WESCHLER: Look, I'm going to give you this list here--
it's the chronological listing of his works....
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , I made this myself, I know it well.
WESCHLER: Well, maybe just looking at the early works
and listing them, you'll get some ideas, and you can tell

110

us some of the stories of the earliest things.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. [reading] Joel, King Saul, Das
Weib des Urias, Per arme Heinrich. Yes, but Prinzessin
Hilde is not there. Something is already lacking. Donna
Bianca, Die Braut von Korinth.

WESCHLER: Well, maybe you can tell us a little bit about
those early plays. Are they published anywhere?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, never. He didn't allow it. But that is
not all of it. We have nothing which could [establish a
complete list]. Even Die Einsamen (Zwei Skizzen) --I never
heard about them before. Somebody found it in Germany
after the last world war [II]. And I don't know what it
is: I never read it; I never saw it.
WESCHLER: So it's just a phantom title.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. It was published under the name
L. Feuchtwanger , so I thought maybe it could be somebody
else. His brother was also L. Feuchtwanger. And his
brother was already dead, so I couldn't ask him. I don't
know if he ever wrote that.
WESCHLER: I see, I see.

FEUCHTWANGER: I never heard — he never spoke about it. But
he told me about Prinzessin Hilde, which isn't even men-
tioned here. That is the play which I've told you about.
WESCHLER: Right, right.
FEUCHTWANGER: And Joel and King Saul. Yes, there was also

111

repetition in this play, you know. "Saul, you will die
on the heights of" — I don't know, Gilboa or something like
that. With always this refrain, all the time, ad nauseam.
WESCHLER: What was that play about?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think King Saul, but I don't know. If this
is not right, we have no proof for it, because it was lost.
WESCHLER: You don't have any of those early manuscripts?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, I don't know of any. I also never
have seen them. Because when I met Lion he already was —
you know, he didn't want them to be remembered anymore.
Maybe it was King Saul and Princess Hilde--one act.
WESCHLER: What do you know about the other ones that are
there? Anything else?

FEUCHTWANGER: The Fetish, a drama, I don't know if I
ever read it.

WESCHLER: We're speaking here, by the way, of the com-
memorative volume on Feuchtwanger that was published in
the use [Studies in Comparative Literature Series].
FEUCHTWANGER: Among the other early works were some short
stories .

WESCHLER: What were they about?

FEUCHTWANGER: There is a book called Centum Opuscula.
(They were printed there) . That means One Hundred Small
Works . But you wanted to know about his plays, or what do
you want?

112

WESCHLER: Well, just generally his early literary career,

how he began. He began as a playwright, you say.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but he began more as a critic. During

the time of the critic, he was also a playwright. The first

real thing which has been performed was the Die Perser des

Aischylos , which he adapted from the Greek.

WESCHLER: The Persians.

FEUCHTWANGER: But those are all in distichon, in hexameter

and pentameter, so it was a new work. When you translate

something like that in verses, you know, you have to write

it as a new work. This has been performed and was a great

success. It was right after the beginning of the First

World War. It was the first performance in Munich.

WESCHLER: Okay, well, that's after he meets you. Maybe

we should begin to get toward the point where he meets

you. We've talked a little bit about actresses and so

forth. Maybe you could tell us some stories about his

earlier relations with women.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. He wouldn't tell me all those things

probably.

WESCHLER: He told you some, and no doubt you'll act as

a further censor on the ones he told you, but maybe you

can tell us some stories of that kind.

FEUCHTWANGER: I know that he had relations, but how far

that went, I don't know-

WESCHLER: Well, how old was he when he met you?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was twenty-five.

WESCHLER: Do you recall his mentioning any particular

friends that maybe were important?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, of course, but I don't know how far

these relations went, you know. I just couldn't tell

you. He knew all the famous actresses of the time--

Irene Triesch, for instance, in Berlin, but what shall I

know about them? He was in Berlin studying there, you

know, and then he knew the actresses there, too. He

wrote critics, so he met everybody--Ida Roland, who

later married Count [Richard] Coudenhove-Kalerge , of Pan-

Europa. Ja, ja. But those names nobody would know.

WESCHLER: You mentioned Lion was in Berlin?

FEUCHTWANGER: He studied also in Berlin, ja.

WESCHLER: We'd better pick up on that.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I wouldn't know that, you know; it

was all before my time.

WESCHLER: Okay, when was it that he studied in Berlin?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think if you have read the biographical

essay, you must know that.

WESCHLER: You don't have anything more beyond the standard

biographical details?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I don't.

WESCHLER: Okay. Well, why don't we talk a little bit about

114

how you and he got to know each other. One story that you
told me the other day, which I think we should bring up
right now, is the story about Kenny's party.
FEUCHTWANGER: There were two sisters--! don't remember
their name [Streb] . We had an excursion in the sport
club, and one sister of those two girls said, "I cannot
come because I'm invited to a party of Henny. " Then the
others said, "Oh, this Jewish bastard." And I jumped on
her. She was about a head taller than I was, very broad
with strong bones, but I threw her down. She was so sur-
prised that I was kneeling on her and asking her, "Do you take
it back?" Then she took it back. But in the fight, my
coral necklace broke, and the pearls were all around.
Afterwards, when the fight was over, we all looked together
for the pearls, because we were more afraid of our parents
than of each other.

WESCHLER: How old were you then, about?

FEUCHTWANGER: Twelve, maybe. No, I was older — fourteen.
WESCHLER: Several times you've told incidents where you
knew of the Feuchtwanger family even as a child.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I knew because I read only bad things
about my husband. See, the newspaper didn't like him,
although this one critic was very much for him. But when
the newspaper heard anything about him, they immediately
took the occasion to attack him. I never found out why, and

115

he never found out, but he was always attacked in the news-
paper.

WESCHLER: In the Munich newspapers?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. He had ambitions to open literary
events and founded a literary club [The Phoebus Club] .
There he had famous writers coming, and he got one of the
ministers of the government to be a protector. This helped
him to get all the famous writers coming from Berlin and
from everywhere to make lectures there. One of his friends
[Livingston] was from a very rich and very noble family
from Cologne, on the Rhine. He was interested in literature,
but also he was kind of a Bohemian in a sophisticated way;
he was rich but still like a Bohemian. He was editor of
this--my husband also founded a literary magazine [Per
Spiegel ; Miinchner Halbmonatsschrift f iir Literatur,
Musik und Buhne] along with this literary club. Once, I
think it was a critic of Berlin, Alfred Kerr, who came
to lecture, and my husband had to pick him up at the station
with a taxi. And this very aristocratic young man, with
a very elegant suit and a monocle, ran after the taxi,
behind the taxi, and shouted, "Boss, Boss, I am hungry,
I am starving!" [laughter] Those things happened all the
time. Of course, all those things came out in the news-
paper. My husband was absolutely innocent about that.
He didn't know beforehand.

116

Then came an entrepreneur to my husband and told him,
"You have this literary circle, and I think you should make
a big affair, a big ball, with performances and so. It
is very good that I can do that. It would be a great
advantage for myself" — he was also, I think, a contractor
or something — "it would be a good advertising if I can
make that with your name." Because the name was a very good
name in Munich, not from my husband but from the factory.
So he said, "You have nothing to do. You just give your
name, and I make the whole affair as an advertisement for
my business." So he did that, and they rented a very big
hall and everything was very expensive and decorated by
the greatest artists in Munich. There came the most
elegant people; the aristocracy, the ministers, the pro-
fessors, and everybody arrived. And all of a sudden came
the workmen, and they tore down all the decorations. It
was a big scandal, and it was just — people ran away;
there was a fight and everything. Also the family of my
husband was there, of course. It was that this entre-
preneur was a swindler and he didn't pay his workmen.
WESCHLER: What was his name? Do you know?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, I never knew [Herr Huber] . I didn't
know my husband then, you know. It was in the newspaper.
I read it in the newspaper: "He didn't pay his workmen."
It said that Feuchtwanger had to pay that, that then they

117

tore down the decorations because they didn't get paid.
The minister--von Crailsheim was his name--left, of course,
in his equipage, two horses, and lackeys. It was a ter-
rible scandal. The Phoebus scandal, it was called. (Phoebus
was the title of the circle, you know, the literary circle.)
And my husband was absolutely innocent.
WESCHLER: It was just his name that was being used.
FEUCHTWANGER: Just his name. Lion didn't know that [Huber]
was a swindler. Then, of course, there was a big trial as
to who'd pay for all that — the hall which has been rented,
and the workmen, and so. And my husband's father had to
pay everything, because they didn't want the scandal.
Those workmen were not paid and so, although my husband
had nothing to do with the whole thing.... Later on,
this entrepreneur wanted to shoot my husband. My husband
was hidden in his office, and his friend, this man from
the Rhineland, was outside. He was very courageous and
shooed him away. At the trial this man said, "I was stand-
ing there working, until the blood stood in my feet. "
His whole behavior was impressing. The parents of my
husband were afraid of the scandal and paid for everything.
Later on he heard that, I think, at every meal where they
were sitting together; he had to hear that. They always
reproached him.
WESCHLER: I imagine. It was not the kind of thing that was

118

ideally suited to improve relations.
FEUCHTWANGER: Also the sisters and brothers said,
"That's from our money, too," and things like that. There
was another friend, Monheimer, the one who studied art and
voice--he was also of a very rich family--and they paid
also because he was a friend of my husband's and they,
too, had this promise from this entrepreneur. So they paid
half of it. But Monheimer didn't suffer. My husband
always had to suffer. Also they said, "This will be taken
off from your inheritance, this money." That's why he
couldn't stand it anymore. Finally everything came out,
and this entrepreneur had to go to jail. It was found out
that he was a crook and swindled also my husband.' He
used him, just his name, because his own name was already
known as a swindler. And he had to go to jail. But ray
husband said that for a long time he always had threatened
to shoot him.

WESCHLER: This was all before you met him.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. But you could read it in the news-
papers. His fame was only that of the terrible event of
the Phoebus scandal.

WESCHLER: So you're gradually hearing more and more
about him?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. I only heard bad things, and I was very
curious about him.

119

WESCHLER: Well, why don't you tell us the circumstances of
how you met him?

FEUCHTWANGER: When he was away from his parents, his mother
from time to time — maybe twice a year--came to his little attic
room and asked him if he needs something--she brought him some
underwear or so--and if he wouldn't come someday, for instance,
on the holidays, to eat with them. They lived very near to
where he was living. So sometimes my husband went there, but
it was always not very friendly, and it was uncomfortable.
One day his sister met him on the street and said, "You know,
I have a big party with music, a house ball with an orchestra
and all that, and I've invited a friend of mine, Marta Loeffler.
Maybe you would like to meet her." She liked me very much.
WESCHLER: How had you two met?

FEUCHTWANGER: I met her through another friend, whom I liked
very much. Pauline Feust was her name. She introduced me to
Franziska. And then I came sometimes to the family; I was
invited for tea. And there was a--ach! The stories that were
there! Another girl, who was very ambitious and who had very
little money, came to my father's shop to buy some lingerie,
and she didn't pay. My father wanted to sue her. I said,
"Don't do it. It's not worthwhile. She's a poor girl, and she
wants to go along in life. So don't sue her." So he didn't
sue her. But she hated me, because.... The Feuchtwangers
were always kind of--attracted her. She wanted to marry

120

one of the sons. So she asked one of the brothers of
my husband--Fritz , the one who took over the factory--
that he should invite her. She came and she said something
against me — she didn't even know me--that I was a girl who
was with every man, or something like that. Fritz was so
angry, because he knew me — he courted me himself and knew
that I was really very cool against men and hard to get —
and he threw her out. Just threw her out. Later on she
married another Feuchtwanger .

WESCHLER: So she got her Feuchtwanger after all.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but I couldn't say more than that.
There are so many Feuchtwangers that that's all what I
would tell about her. Anyway, that was her gratefulness,
that I saved her from my father's trial and then she did
something like that. I and my husband, we had always
those experiences. When we did something for somebody,
then they did something against us.

WESCHLER: So apparently you were going to these teas be-
fore the party. You had met the other brothers and so
forth.

FEUCHTWANGER: Not many, not all. One wasn't there. He
was in the north, in Prussia, in Halle. They were not al-
ways at home; they had their own lives.
WESCHLER: But you were gradually meeting the family.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja, because Franziska wanted me to meet

121

her parents also. I don't know why; she liked me very
much. We did a lot of sport together. We were swimming
together, and also ice skating with [Emanuel] Lasker, who
was a famous chess player later. Also athletics and things
like that we did together. That was the only way; we had
nothing much in common. She was also gifted; she played
piano and painted a little bit, but it was all a little
amateurish and superficial, but she was good-natured.
WESCHLER: Did she talk about her brother at all?
FEUCHTWANGER: She only said that her brother Lion isn't
nice, that only Lutschi is nice. When they want to know
anything, they go to Lutschi, but not to Lion.
WESCHLER: But were you curious?

FEUCHTWANGER: Well, she asked me to come to this party,
of course; and then when she met her brother, she said he
should come. He said, "Oh, those teenagers, that's always
so boring." He didn't know me, you know. But then finally
he came with his friend Hartmann Trepka, this musician.
He was the first violinist in the opera, in the orchestra.
When I came in, my husband was already there. Franziska
introduced us, and he said, "Oh, I don't like you." Lion
said that. "I know you and don't like you." I said,
"How do you know me, and why don't you like me?" Then he
said, "I saw you at the exhibition when there was a
promenade concert." The young people always made promenades

122

there, and I was with my parents. The young students
promenaded on the other side and made eyes to the girls--
that was all. And his friend Hartmann Trepka, the musician,
was absolutely — what shall I say?--fascinated by me . I
don't know — I have not seen it--I didn't know it. All the
whole evening, he went up and down during the concert and
forcing Lion to come with him, always behind me. And Lion
was not interested in me. He was interested not in girls
with good families or so; he was interested in actresses.
So he was very angry that he always had to go behind me all
the time, and so he found me very unsympathetic from the
beginning. Also he said, "And I don't like black hair;
I like only blonde hair." So I said, "I'm sorry, but I
keep my black hair." So he found me very ironical, and
I found him very unpleasant. Then he began to speak with
me and said, "Don't you think it's very boring here?
There's all those teenagers hopping around." I said,
"No, I don't think so." "I think we should go away, we three-
Hartmann Trepka, you and I. We should go to a wine res-
taurant." I was shocked that something-- just to mention
something to me like that.

WESCHLER: How old were you at this point?

FEUCHTWANGER: Seventeen or eighteen. I was not yet eighteen,
I was shocked, and I said, "How can I do that? I never go
in a restaurant with a man without my parents." So he said.

123

"Oh, you are bourgeois." And this challenged me. I said,

"All right, I go with you." So we went to a wine restaurant,

and he ordered. . . .

WESCHLER: This was on your very first date.

FEUCHTWANGER: First date. [laughter] No, I had had dates

before.

WESCHLER: But not with him.

FEUCHTWANGER: Daytime. Not in the evening. Not in a

restaurant. On the street. I mean, when I was at the

lectures, there were always some students waiting for me

when I came out. Also the brother Fritz was always there.

So I went with them, and he ordered wine, and then the

musician took my hand and began to kiss it, what I didn't

like very much. He began to kiss up the arm. I was in a

ball robe. So I jumped up and said, "You don't protect me

against your friend?" Anyway I jumped up and ran away.

My husband had just time to pay, and then they ran after me.

They couldn't catch me--it was about fifteen minutes,

or twenty minutes. I ran home, and they couldn't catch

me.

WESCHLER: Were you very upset?

FEUCHTWANGER: I was upset because you don't do something

like that.

Then my husband found out when my birthday was--I was
not far from, I think, my eighteenth birthday--and he sent

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me some violets. Later on, he told me how he could afford
the violets, because they were very expensive. They were
called Parma violets and came from Parma, Italy. In those
days--it was in winter; my birthday's in January--it was
very expensive to get violets from Italy. He had no money,
so he wrote a poem about me, and it was printed in the Jugend.
It was a famous magazine, which was made up mostly of
beautiful drawings, poems, and witticisms. Jokes, wit-
ticisms, things like that. We don't have anything like that
here. It was very famous. Thomas Mann wrote for it, and
Wedekind, and so. And they accepted this poem, which was
about me. He called me Gabler in this poem, and he spoke
about me that I am very good looking but not very bright--
or something like that--because I ran away, you know. The
money he got for this poem, he spent on violets.
WESCHLER: Had you read the poem?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes, I read it.
WESCHLER: Did you read it at that time, already?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja, because it was in this magazine, i
always read this magazine. Gabler: you know, Loef f ler
has something to do with spoon, and Gabler is the fork.
Gabler sounds very near, but it was not the same word. But
immediately everybody knew that. Of course, I was meant.
WESCHLER: Only after having seen you one time, he was
doing that already?

125

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. [laughter]

WESCHLER: Okay, well, here come these violets to your
house. What do you make of them?

FEUCHTWANGER: The violets came, and I called him — no, I
wrote a line — and I thanked him. He was away then. He
had made a trip or so to Italy, I don't know what. And
I didn't meet him again until the fall. Then he called
me and sent me flowers again, and so. We made an excursion
in the neighborhood, the outskirts of Munich, and we were
sitting there, under a tree in the daytime. There was no-
thing happened. Of course, we kissed, but it was--I didn't
have many kisses before. And then there followed what you
have read.

WESCHLER: Well, I've read the notes, but we'll begin to
talk about them now. It doesn't sound as though, outside
of a certain gaminess about it, that it was a difficult
courtship. You two seem to get along.
FEUCHTWANGER: It was not difficult.
WESCHLER: You got along very well right away.
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes. Ja, ja. He took me once also to
the Torggelstube. I had pretended that I was — I got a
ticket for the theatre. No — I went to the theatre. I was
always brought--the maid always came with me to the theatre
and also picked me up. But I left the theatre very early,
and we went together to the Torggelstube, where I met

126

Wedekind and all those people, already before we were

married. It was a great event for me, and they were very

nice to me. Very. They liked everything what was unusual,

and they felt that I was not fitting in. They were nicer

to me than to anybody else, you know, so full of respect

and veneration, I would say.

WESCHLER: How did your family take the attentions of Lion?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, my mother was rather tickled--she

didn't know what happened on our dates--because he was from

such a great family, and my family was not so great. But

when they heard about it, my father took it very hard.

My mother was--in a way, I never thought that she would

act like that: she went to Lion, and they went along very

well. She admired him enormously.

WESCHLER: Was your courtship in secret for a long time,

or was it pretty open?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was a secret. Until it was no secret

anymore. [laughter]

WESCHLER: Maybe we should stop now and tell that whole

story from the beginning next time.

JUNE 24, 1975

WESCHLER: Today, before we go on talking about your
courtship, we've agreed that first of all we're going to

127

have some corrections from the last session, and then we
are going to talk a bit about the ambience of Munich,
just the scene in Munich, and particularly about Max
Reinhardt and some other characters.

First, though, there were three corrections in partic-
ular that you wanted to mention. You had remembered the
name of Kenny's friends?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. Streb, but I don't remember the
first names. Dr. Streb was the father. He was a fascist,
what you would call now a fascist. The daughters liked
the family Feuchtwanger , and the whole kind of life there,
and particularly the humanity. For instance, they had
always somebody eating with them. A poor person was
always eating with them. That also had something to do
with orthodoxy. [The Streb girls] liked this kind, and
they were very happy to be always there. That's why there
was this quarrel between the two sisters, when one said
she cannot go with us on the excursion of the gymnastic
club, and the other said, "Are you going to your Jewish
bastard?"

WESCHLER: We decided that the word was "bastard" and
not "swine," which you first said.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja.

WESCHLER: Now, they were Jewish themselves?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, no, no, no. Fascistic Gentile people

128

and very, very Aryan--I suppose you'd call them--big

and blonde and blue eyes, and very violent. Germanic.

But they liked the atmosphere of this Orthodox family.

WESCHLER: Secondly, you wanted to mention the correct

title of the magazine...

FEUCHTWANTER: ...was Die Jugend.

WESCHLER: This is the magazine in which the poem that

Lion wrote about you appeared.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. It was a little like Collier's

here, with little short stories, and little poems, and

jokes, and things like that.

WESCHLER: You had mentioned about the Ibsen thing?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , once the cover was [a drawing of]

Ibsen running over a lawn with two little young girls,

without any respect for authority.

VJESCHLER: Being irreverent.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja, irreverent, because also Ibsen

had new ideas about love and all those things, you

know, that was very new in those times and very

avant-garde; and young girls were not allowed to go

into his place.

WESCHLER: And this was a popular magazine in Munich.

FEUCHTWANGER: Very popular, yes. Very popular,

ja, ja.

129

WESCHLER: Okay. Thirdly, you wanted to tell us how,
after the flop of the play, one of his relatives did
something.

FEUCHTWANGER: One of the relatives came to his parents and
said Lion should change his name and adopt another name,
because it was a shame for the family that he's always men-
tioned so unfavorably in the newspapers.
WESCHLER: How did Lion respond to that?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he laughed. [laughter] But he hated
this man from then on. He never said it, but I had the
feeling. Every time when we saw this man, you could see
it on his face.

WESCHLER: What relative was this, do you remember?
FEUCHTWANGER: He was a rather--not a very near relative.
A cousin, or second cousin, or something like that
[Felix Feuchtwanger] .

WESCHLER: Well, right now, I'd like to talk a little bit
about Munich. The more we talk about it--just now talking
before the tape was turned on--it really becomes a very
exciting and dynamic place. One way to get at that is
to talk a little bit about your husband's earliest re-
lationship with Max Reinhardt. As you were just saying,
this story begins with the theater that was started....
FEUCHTWANGER: The new [Kllnstler] -Theatre , yes. There

130

was a new theatre, but that was before Reinhardt. It was
founded in a new building in the Exposition Park, where,
I mentioned to you, my husband first saw me. This foun-
dation was rather reactionary with lots of money behind,
and very lightly anti-Semitic. You couldn't prove it, but
the way they made the engagements of actors, and also
their program, and all that.... Most of all, it was old-
fashioned, and it was not worthwhile to build a new
theatre for it. With so much money. So my husband had
been asked about his opinion, in a literary circle, and he
spoke there.

WESCHLER: This is what year?

FEUCHTWANGER: Nineteen hundred and eight. And he spoke
there, and he spoke what he truly felt, although he knew
that the crown prince [Ruprecht] was a patron of this
theatre. And when he spoke, he quoted a verse of Goethe,
which means roughly, "If you'll just praise everything
which is bad, then you'll immediately get your reward;
you're swimming in the swamp of nobody, and those who
protect you are the protectors of the nobodies." I have
to find a better translation.

WESCHLER: Do you have the German there? You might read
it.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja:

Das Schlechte magst du immer loben.

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Du hast davon auch gleich den Lohn.

In deinem Pfuhle schwimmst du oben

Und bist der Pfuscher Schutzpatron.
WESCHLER: So he had given that verse.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, and then the moment he began this verse,
all of a sudden, he saw before him, sitting in the first
row, the Crown Prince Ruprecht. He was not prepared, and
he was very dependent on his manuscript: he just couldn't
stop, and the whole quotation came out. He was terribly
embarrassed; he began always to sweat on his upper lip
when he was embarrassed. He took out his handkerchief and
dried himself, and everybody could feel his embarrassment.
But after that, when it was over, the crown prince came
up to him and told him, "If I had known the way this theatre
is planned, I would never have accepted the protectorate."
And then, it didn't last very long. They tried and it
was one failure after the other. Then they asked Reinhardt
from Berlin to take over the theater. This was the be-
ginning of an entirely new conception of theater in Munich.
WESCHLER: Was Reinhardt already very famous in Berlin?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes, he was very famous. But he was
not known in Munich, except when people from Munich went
to Berlin. But he was very famous; all the newspapers
wrote about him. He had all the great people who were part
of his plans, his program. In Salzburg, for instance.

132

he directed [Count Karl Vollmoeller ' s Das Mirakel] with
Lady Diana Manners as the Madonna. He made also those
famous Salzburg festivals. So he was really a very famous
man, except that he never made money, because he was not
calculating; he just had his big plans. If it were not for
his brother, who was a little more down to earth, the
first day, he would have made bankrupt, or something.

And the first thing what he performed in this theater
was La Belle Helene by Offenbach. I was there with my
husband. We were not married, but he invited me there. Oh,
I was so excited. I made myself a beautiful evening dress
with a long train. Everybody looked at me. I was the
only one with a train. I had a big hat with a long
pleureuse, it was called, and ostrich feathers way down.
On one side there was a large bang, and on the other side
was a big feather. Lion liked it very much; he was very
proud. But I think it was rather ridiculous. [laughter]
Everybody looked at me, and everybody thought I am an
actress from abroad, you know. And I was just the daughter
of a merchant.

But anyway, most important was the performance:
Reinhardt had brought in very witty people from Vienna,
who were great writers themselves, just to make the jokes,
because it was renovated from the old operetta, which was
rather old. And they made very actual jokes which had

133

something to do with the....
WESCHLER: Contemporary or timely.

FEUCHTWANGER: Contemporary. Ja, ja. So, for instance,
our kaiser in those days made lots of speeches; he was known
as "the speaking kaiser." That's why it was a kind of
remembrance of the kaiser when Calchas , who was the priest
in La_ Belle Helene. . . . When they decide to go to Troy a,
for the war, because Paris has kidnapped Helene, Calchas
began with the war speech by banging the big gong and
telling loudly that without tin you have no mass following.
[This is a play on the German word Blech, "tin" or "sheet
iron" and also "nonsense . "--Ed. ] Everybody understood
what was meant, of course. But the most interesting thing
was La Belle Helene, the Beautiful Helen, herself: she
was the famous singer, Maria Jeritza. She was a world-
known singer, very beautiful. She came over from Vienna,
and later on she sang also in the Metropolitan Opera. She
was the most famous singer of her time. She was very
young still, then. It was never before known that a real
opera singer would sing an operetta. But Reinhardt
could do everything. He was a magician. And he could
persuade her to come to Munich and take the role of La
Belle Helene, and she was.... And then she has this love
scene with Paris. She was lying on a golden bed, like
the Roman beds you see in Pompeii, and when she began

134

to be excited about Paris, she stood up on top of the bed.
And it was the greatest sensation. She had nothing on
but a golden net that was her shirt. And she was a
sensation. She was so beautif ul--golden hair, which was
natural blonde, and her golden voice, and everything--
that nobody really found anything immoral in it. But it
was absolutely unheard of. Then she sang, "Since it
was only a dream," and it was very exciting, this scene.
Then, when they decided to go to war, there was a younger
woman [played by Camilla Eibenschvitz] who was very gay and
very lively, and she sang "On to Kreta, on to Kreta, on
to Kreta! To the Kretins!" She played Ganymed. It was a
march melody, and everybody in the audience also sang with
it. It was a great excitement. She began to march around
the stage and all. And during the singing, there was
a big statue of Venus--she was so big that you could
only see her legs, nothing else--and this statue began to
dance also, the march. It was the greatest sensation I
ever had.

135

TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE TWO
JUNE 24, 1975

WESCHLER: We're in the middle of the story of this wonderful
performance of Reinhardt's version of Offenbach's La
Belle Helene.

FEUCHTWANGER: Lion wrote a review in the Berlin Schau-
buhne; that was the theatre magazine there — the period-
ical, you would call it, like the Saturday Review here.
And then he met Reinhardt several times, also of course
in the Torggelstube--I think we spoke about the
Torggelstube . . . .

WESCHLER: This was the wine restaurant.

FEUCHTWANGER: The wine restaurant, yes. Reinhardt came
there, too, and Jeritza came, and all of the big actors.

On good days, everyone went to the Starnberger
See; that is a lake near Munich, the lake of Starnberg,
There was a wave in the lake. . . .

WESCHLER: Now, we were talking about this before off
tape. This was an artificially produced wave.
FEUCHTWANGER: It was artificially produced waves, ja.
It was absolutely new, and nowhere else; that has been
found. And they met there. There was a cafe, a Kaf fee-
haus around--in the open, of course--and everybody met
there. Also they could eat the famous fish of the Starnberg

136

lake. They were Felchen, they were called, a kind of
trout but a little bigger. And there they flirted, the
big minds of Austria, mostly, and of Berlin. Everybody
was there in summer coming to Munich. It was really a
kind of center for artists and writers. The funny thing was
that not one, except for my husband, was from Munich itself.
WESCHLER: Who were some of the others who came?
FEUCHTWANGER: Rossler and [Franz] Marc. Karl Rossler
from Vienna and Roda Roda, who wrote a very interesting
autobiography. Once he sent out notices that he has
decided to live in illegitimate marriage with the Countess
of Zeppelin; he gave also a big party for this event. That
was the kind of mind you could find there. Also one man
[Dr. Victor Mannheimer] --a very big merchant who owned a
great department store in Berlin, but who lived in Munich
on a big estate, with a great park, where there were deer
around, and a beautiful library, and works of art--he
sent out invitations to say that "there is no stress on
moral inside, but more on amoral outside."
WESCHLER: What was the German of that?

FEUCHT^-JANGER: "Es wird mehr Wert gelegt auf un anstandiges
Ausseres als auf anstandiges Inneres." "Undecent exterior
is more appreciated than decent interior. " So that meant
there would be not many dresses, you know. It was a great
saving of material.

137

WESCHLER: Well, it begins to sound as if Munich was a

very exciting place.

FEUCHTWANGER: It was exciting. All the artists, all the

great painters came, and some of the painters lived there.

Except for [Franz von] Lenbach , who was the son of a mason,

and was from a little town in North Bavaria, all of them

were from other parts of the German-speaking. . . .

WESCHLER: Why did they come to Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: First of all, it was the environment.

There was this beautiful Isar Valley, the river there;

and there were the mountains, the high mountains, the Alps,

and the lakes around. And also the whole anbiente and

atmosphere of Munich itself. They liked living in it,

people drinking beer and not caring much and not being

very materialistic.

WESCHLER: Not commercial.

FEUCHTWANGER: Not very commercial, ja.

WESCHLER: What was the general response of the population

of Munich to this great,..?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, they were good minded — what do you call

it?--good natured. They had fun with it, but a little

contempt also. "Not serious people."

WESCHLER: But these were, after all, some of the great

artists of the coming years.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but you know, they had not much sense

138

for great art or great literature. They liked people who
made fun and had big balls, and they didn't mind.

Also, there were those big fraternities there, the
students who had colors. Color-carrying students, I think
they were called, with their hats of different colors.
They had big duels there, some rather dangerous duels,
with a kind of florett ["foil"] and sword and all that.
They were usually drunk, because it was part of their
initiation--but they had the initiation every day. They
shouted loud in the streets and threw stones at the lan-
terns so the light went out. They also sometimes beat
up the guards , and nobody ever did anything to them
because they were the rich sons of the rich fathers of
the great industrial--f rom the Rhineland, and so. And they
brought money to Munich.

WESCHLER: And there in the middle of this whole scene
were you, the daughter of a merchant, as you call your-
self.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, yes.

WESCHLER: It must have really been very exciting for you.
FEUCHTWANGER: It was, yes, and I saw all that. We
lived in the middle of the town, and we saw those drunken
students, and all those beatings, and the fun-loving. And
the carnival, you know, the Fasching: first of all, it
was something religious; it was during the time between

139

the first of January and Easter (Mardi Gras) . Carnival
comes from carne vale ; that's Latin; it means you cannot
eat meat. That was in the olden days, in the ancient
days, already; there was always dancing and making fun
during this time. I don't know why, but anyway it was
very nice.

WESCHLER: And you took it to great lengths in Munich.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Ja , and the masked balls were famous
because they were very artistic. The artists themselves
made the decorations. Everything was cheap; I mean, not
cheap in bad taste, but it didn't cost much money because
they did all of it themselves. At the same time, it
brought much money to the town because many people came
to see all that. At first they were a little stiff and
reticent and all that, but it was contagious, the whole
atmosphere there. Everybody took part in it, and later
you couldn't find any more difference between the Prussians
and the Bavarians.

WESCHLER: What was the population of Munich at that time?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, about half a million, maybe--if it was
that much.

WESCHLER: Now, I wanted to ask you a few questions about
Lion before we proceed on to your courtship in more detail.
First of all, we haven't really talked about what his
early politics were.

140

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he had only contempt of politics. It
was things that had been done by the higher-uppers in the
government, and it was usually very bad, and you couldn't
do anything about it. In those days, during the kaiser,
you couldn't speak out politically, or you went to jail.
But this was not the case alone; it was just not done.
The politicians were people who were considered not
worthwhile. Except there was a man with the name of
Harden who was in Berlin, and he brought out a big trial
because one of the friends of the kaiser was homosexual,
a Count [Philipp Furst zu] Eulenburg. He denied it.
Because he was a count, he thought he could deny everything.
Then Harden found out that he was in Bavaria and had lovers
among the peasants, among good-looking young peasants.
They found one who spoke out who was too stupid to deny
anything. Then this poor count had to go to jail for perjury.
Everybody disliked the whole thing very much, but Maximilian
Harden--he was a great columnist, and he also published
a magazine called Die Zukunf t ("The Future") — he took this
whole thing very seriously. He said that Count Eulenberg
was part of the Kamerrilla, the round table around the
emperor, and that they had a bad influence, mostly for
war. In a way he was right. But just this count Eulenberg
was a very aesthetic man who wouldn't think about war, or
so. He was a good man, in a way. And he was the victim of

141

the whole thing, which maybe was necessary because the
kaiser was really known to be a menace for the peace of
the world in those days.

WESCHLER: Roughly, what year was that?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, the trial was, I think, in 1910 or
so. I think that could be looked up. It was a famous
trial. [1906-1909]

WESCHLER: Was there any really viable socialist movement
in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: Not in Munich. Not at all, no. We heard
about it. They were called "The Reds." Socialists in
those days were much nearer to communism than socialism
was later on. Now, socialism is the greatest enemy of
communism. But in those days there were no communists;
there were only socialists. I remember that one man in
Mannheim was the leader of the socialists. He was also a
delegate of the government, a member of Parliament. They
were always called the "Vater lands lose Gesellen. " The
emperor called them that: "the boys (guys) without father-
land." But this man--his name was Ludwig Frank — was
one of the first to die during the war. He was a volunteer
and died during the war against the French. So he was not
a man without country, but rather he was a real hero.
I once asked one of my cousins, who was from Mannheim and
who was a little more literate than most of the other cousins

142

who came to see us, and he told me that this man Frank

was a Jew and that the only way [for a Jew] into politics

was to go with the socialists. There was no way for a

Jew to have anything to do with politics, except when

you were a socialist. But I don't think this was the reason

for this man Frank, because he really was an idealist.

And it proved it that he died for his fatherland.

WESCHLER: Did you yourself know any Jewish socialists?

FEUCHTWANGER: I knew only Muhsam, but that was later,

during the war--Erich Muhsam. He considered himself not

a socialist, not even a communist; he was an anarchist,

but he was the mildest person you can imagine. He couldn't

kill a fly. And nobody could ever understand why he was

an anarchist. But he was. He published a little magazine,

and in very intelligent arguments he defended anarchists.

WESCHLER: Is this the man who could go to both tables at

the wine restaurant?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, that's the one. And he also was later

killed and terribly tortured by the Nazis.

WESCHLER: Generally, to recapitulate then, what was Lion's

attitude towards the socialists who were around?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was not interested in socialism. Also

he was an aristocrat in the arts. He considered politics

something below his dignity.

WESCHLER: This is again an influence of Oscar Wilde.

143

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, Oscar Wilde, and the whole literature

in those days--Hof fmannsthal .

WESCHLER: Art for art's sake.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. Art for art's sake.

WESCHLER: This, of course, is gradually going to change in

his life.

FEUCHTWANGER: It has changed with the First World War,

yes.

WESCHLER: Okay, we'll catch it again at that point. I

also wanted you to describe his lodging, where he lived,

when you first met him.

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, it was just terrible. He lived in a small

street, on the top in the attic. When you went into the

house there was an inn, a very low inn, and it smelled

of beer and urine. That was terrible. Then you had to go

up these very steep stairs. But every step up, more advanced,

the air became clearer — cleaner. And he lived there. And

why he found only this quarter was that in those days it

was not allowed to have visits of ladies for a man who

rented a room in an apartment. A roomer, I think it's

called, ja. But this room had a special entry. It was

between two apartments, one apartment to the left, one

on the right; and in the middle there was only one room--

maybe it was considered a storeroom or something like that —

and this room he could rent. They have a special name, those

144

rooms. I don't remember now, but I think we'll find out

again [Sturmfrei] . But those rooms — everybody could rent

such a room and have visitors, any kind he wanted. And there

he had a little room with a small window and no water. To

get water to wash himself, he had to get it from the

apartment to the right; the owner of this apartment was

a court lackey, very anti-Semitic, who disapproved of the

whole life of my husband very much. But it was in the

contract with the landlady that he had to allow people who

rented this room to get some water from him.

WESCHLER: So it sounds like a rather dark and dingy

place .

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but the room itself was light and had

much light and sun through the attic window. You could

see over the roofs.

WESCHLER: How did you react when first going there?

Were you shocked?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, I found it very exciting. [laughter]

WESCHLER: I mean, were you shocked that he was living in

such quarters?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, on the contrary, I found it exciting.

I found it daring to do such a thing--to be independent.

WESCHLER: And his living there had to do with the fact that

he couldn't stand being Orthodox.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. And also now to be independent, of

145

course.

WESCHLER: How long had he been living there?
FEUCHTWANGER: Later on, because he thought it was not a
good house for me to come in, he rented another room.
It was near a very old castle, a big, famous, old castle
with inside a big courtyard. It was from the Gothic times.
There were two big arches, entrances, and near the second
entrance there was a house which was leaning against the
old castle — also a very old house. And there he found a
room on the first floor. But you had to go around the house
through an old arch, and it was very dark there. In the
arch was the entrance to his room. The room was leased
by a waitress of the Torggelstube . And there, of course,
they knew him, and he could do what he wanted. Sometimes
he couldn't pay his rent, because he went out of money, and
she let him stay also, without pay for a while. One evening
he was standing at the window, looking down on the street,
and there was drunk man below. Under his room was a little
store, and the owner had the name of Wollenweber — that
means "wool weaver." This was in big letters above the
little store, the name of Wollenweber, and this drunk
man took down his hat and said, "Good evening, Mr. Wool
Weaver," with big bows to my husband. [laughter] Across
the street, there were windows, and there was a little
tablet on the wall, and it said that Mozart composed the

146

opera Idomeneo there. That was just across the street,

also on the first floor. It was all very old and with

many corners. The street was not straight; it made many

corners and went directly to the middle of the city to

the Marienplatz, the place.

WESCHLER: What was the name of the street, do you remember?

FEUCHTWANGER: Burgstrasse. Burg--that is to say, the castle,

WESCHLER: What was the name of the street that he was

first on?

FEUCHTWANGER: Gewurzmuhlstrasse . [laughter]

WESCHLER: You pass your test.

FEUCHTWANGER: Gewurzmuhl means mill of condiments,

like pepper and spices. Probably before, in the medieval

times, there were people who milled the condiments.

WESCHLER: Now at that time, did he have a library yet?

FEUCHT^^7ANGER: He had two books, or three. [laughter]

WESCHLER: So that had not yet started.

FEUCHTWANGER: There was no room in those. His second

apartment was still the State Library.

WESCHLER: So he was there a lot, at the State Library?

FEUCHTWANGER: All the time, ja, ja. When he wasn't at

home, he was there.

WESCHLER: And what was he making his money on at that

time? Was it just his reviews?

FEUCHTWANGER: First, in the beginning, he gave lessons

147

for retarded children, or for [students] before they had
to make the examination. But he was not a good teacher.
He was not patient enough. And he hated that: it was a
loss of time, he thought. He would rather have written, so
he gave it up. And then he began to write critics, reviews,
WESCHLER: And he was able to live on that?
FEUCHTWANGER: Not very well, but he tried. Also then he
wrote a novel, and he got an advance. Later he was much
ashamed of this novel. He didn't write it for making
money, but he didn't know better.
WESCHLER: Per tonerne Gott?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, that was it. And he got an advance
for that. But this was a very bad deal, because later
he had to give back the advance and even more than that.
It was a suit. The man made Lion sign something which
was very much against his own interests, but he didn't
understand it. And the man who had this publishing house
was a very wily man, and so he [Lion] lost the trial and
had to pay back. He always went to one of his uncles,
or his father also, and borrowed money and said he would
give it back, of course. Then he tried to win it back.
He went into a coffee house, the Prinzregenten cafe,
and he played poker, or whatever it was, and always lost.
He always thought that he would win the money he owed
to other people. So he had always to borrow from one

148

person to pay his debts to another one.

Once we decided that we would make a little trip to
Italy, to Venice. I would say it was a trip from my
sports club, my gymnastics club.

WESCHLER: How long had you known each other at this point?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was always about the same time, because
it was only a year afterwards that we married. Ja , and we
were ready to go to this trip. I had already packed and left
a note behind — I didn't ask my parents for permission
because I was sure they wouldn't give it to me. I said,
"I go with the club to make an excursion." We had an ap-
pointment at this cafe, and I was there with my little
valise. Then my husband came out after a while and said
he lost everything. So I had to go home again with my
little bag. [laughter]

And it was always this friend who cheated with the
cards. He cheated also with another man, who was a
very rich agent. But the other man didn't cheat my
husband; he cheated people who were richer, so it would
be worthwhile. And this man, this friend of my husband--
Hartmann, who always cheated my husband--f irst he got his
golden watch and then.... When the agent was playing
he always said, "Mr. Frankfurter, did you lose a card?"
[laughter]
WESCHLER: And he would reach down and get a new one.

149

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . It was just a comedy. And my husband
always thought he could win. His friends told me that
they could see on his face when he had good cards or bad
cards. It was easy--he never could lie. He never could say
a lie. You could see it immediately on his nose when he
lied, I always said. So also he could not change his
face; when he was pleased, he looked pleased.
WESCHLER: You might want to tell us some more stories of
your courtship days before your marriage. Any memories
you might have?

FEUCHTWANGER: I wouldn't say. I think we've already said
enough.

V'/ESCHLER: Well, then let us pick up with the way you
phrased it yourself: that the engagement had been a secret
one until it could no longer be kept secret. We might start
there .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. And then my husband told me I
should ask my mother to come to his room, because he wanted
to speak to her.

WESCHLER: How long had you known each other at this point?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, don't ask me those questions! I never
knew how long--it must have been a year and a half or some-
thing. But I wouldn't know the dates; I'm not very strong
at dates. And my mother came; she was rather flattered
that he wanted to speak with her. But of course, the news

150

was not very pleasant. I wasn't there, but he must have

done it in a way that it was very--she was rather pleased.

At first it was a great shock, but also she was pleased

with this man. She liked him immediately, and they went

along very well.

WESCHLER: This was the first time she'd met him?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . She only saw him once [previously]

when he was a little boy at the hand of his mother. She said

that he was very kind to her. She also said that they

wanted to give me a dowry, but he didn't want any part

of it. He doesn't marry me for the money; and if there

is money, it should be only in my name--he doesn't want

any part of it. And this, of course, was very impressing.

Then there was another thing: then my father-in-law,

my future father-in-law, when he heard that my husband

wanted to marry me, he went to my father and said, "I

heard that your daughter wants to marry my son. I only

can tell you my son is a bum, and if she wants to marry

him, she is nothing better." [laughter] That was the

blessing.

WESCHLER: How did your father react?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he reacted very much. First of all,

there was a very big dowry for me in the future. My

mother insisted--! was the only child--that I would make

a good parti , as they called it, a good marriage.

151

She wanted to have people know what a lot of money I
would get for dowry. Then my father said in this case he
wouldn't give the dowry. My mother insisted that he has
to do it, because he gave her his word. So finally my
husband said he doesn't want anything, and my father found
that very advantageous; and they finally decided that the
dowry is mine, but my father is manager of it. I couldn't
take anything out of it except, I think, some of the dividends,
the interest. And that was the end of it. And then my
husband asked his parents if they could lend him something,
to marry. They said, no, they wouldn't give any money,
but they would give a silverspiel . That is a big box in
leather, very big, with everything what you need in a
household in silver, all the cutleries, but always for
twenty-four people. Every kind, a big thing--it was worth
10,000 marks, which would now be $10,000. That's what
they give us, and we couldn't do anything with it. But
we sold it afterwards.

WESCHLER: How soon afterwards did you sell it?
FEUCHTWANGER: When we needed money, we sold it. Then my
father-in-law said to my husband, "You cannot marry in
this suit you have on. It's too threadbare. You have
to have a new suit. Go to my tailor and have him make
you a suit." My husband, of course, was very glad and
did it. I have to tell you this: much later, after two

152

years, when we had to come back for the war and my husband
had to go to the army, the tailor sent my husband the bill.
My father-in-law never paid for the suit. That was the
first welcome we had when we came back to Munich. Then came
another letter, a very insulting letter, from the brother
of my father-in-law, who was also his partner in the bus-
iness. My husband had before [borrowed] some money from
him. I didn't even know about it. My husband forgot,
probably. And he said, in a very menacing way, "If you
don't pay immediately, I'll sue you." That was the other
blessing. This was his real uncle. Well, my husband was
very proud, and he immediately took what we had together,
everything together, and paid it back. And he said, "And
I pay also the interest of it." [laughter] Too proud--
nobody had asked for it.

WESCHLER: Well, we now have you engaged. Were there any
receptions or anything before the marriage?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, we had a big reception. Everybody came,
all the friends, and all my courtiers brought flowers and
books. Although it was rather obvious already, my...
WESCHLER: Your condition.

FEUCHTWANGER: ...my condition, nevertheless, they found it all
very exciting and courageous. Also my husband said that
even his brothers and sisters admired me very much. I
thought they would be very shocked, but they were not.

153

WESCHLER: Do you think that you would have gotten married

soon, anyway?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I didn't want to marry, except when I

find somebody--of course, many, many times I could have

married very rich men and also good-looking men. But

I didn't like them — they were not of my taste--and so

I refused to marry them. I had also one man who considered

himself already my fiance, but I always said, "But how

do you consider yourself my fiance? I don't want to marry

you." "I will go to your father and tell him," he always

said.

WESCHLER: But do you think that you and Lion would have

gotten married if your "condition" hadn't...?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, we didn't want to marry yet. We were

kind of gypsies in those days, and we said marriage is

just a bourgeois custom. We wanted to live how we lived

until now. I was very amazed that my husband immediately

said, "We have to marry." I didn't even think to ask for

it.

WESCHLER: But you didn't mind.

FEUCHTWANGER: I didn't mind, no. [laughter] I was rather

glad, I must say, but I would never have asked for it,

never even have shown that I wanted to be married.

WESCHLER: Now, up to that point though, you had not been

living together? You had just been seeing each other in

154

secret.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja.

WESCHLER: Maybe you can talk a little bit about the wedding

itself, what that was like.

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, the wedding was on the Bodensee, that

is, the Lake of Constance, the biggest lake of Germany.

It's on the border of Switzerland, Austria, and Germany,

those three countries together. It was in a very old

castle where a medieval city council was, and the mayor.

I was again very elegant, but in black. All in black.

WESCHLER: At your wedding?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . I did always the contrary — and also

I was not in a condition to be in white. [laughter]

WESCHLER: I see.

FEUCHTWANGER: So it was very elegant, with a long train,

and in black. It did me good service later on; I had an

elegant evening dress.

WESCHLER: Was everyone there, both sets of parents?

FEUCHTWANGER: There were only my parents and my husband's

parents, and one friend [Monheimer] . We needed somebody

to witness, and he came, and he was very misgiving about

the whole thing. He was a friend of my husband. He

didn't like the whole thing. He thought it's not dignified.

Later on, when we had no money at all, after we lost

everything in Monte Carlo, my husband wrote him to try to

155

get something. I had some money coming, later on, in two

years or so. He asked him to go to a usurer and tell

him that I have proof, that I have to get some money,

and [to ask whether] he would advance the money — which

he did, but he kept half of it for himself. And then the

friend of my husband kept another half of it, so very little

came to us .

WESCHLER: Well, shall we send you on your honeymoon,

now?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. We immediately went from there to--

there was an island in the middle of Lake Constance with

the "Insel Hotel" — the "island hotel." It was a very old

hotel--it was once a monastery with enormous rooms. Not

every room had a bathroom, but there was one bathroom

which was like a hall, you know, so big because it was an

old monastery. The emperor used to live there always

when he was in Bavaria. We were there for a short time,

and then we left, went to Switzerland and made mountain

climbing and all kinds of things like that. I had almost

a too early birth on the top of a mountain.

Then we went to Lausanne. I went to a hospital, and
I got the puerperal fever.

WESCHLER: How soon after you were married was this?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, half a year, or not even so much. When
it was time to get the child. I was very sick and near

156

death, because I had the puerperal fever, and the child died

also.

WESCHLER: What are the symptoms of that fever?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, a high fever. It never went down.

It was an infection which I got from the hospital probably,

from the nurse. In those days, it was always deadly, this

fever.

WESCHLER: You had not had that before the child was

delivered?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. You get it only after birth. Puerperal

fever, it's called. This hospital was only for women, and

the doctor said probably the nurse brought it from one

patient to the other.

WESCHLER: The child died afterwards, or was it born dead?

FEUCHTWANGER: I was unconscious, then, for a long time.

And the child died.

WESCHLER: But it was not born dead; it died afterwards?

FEUCHTWANGER: It died afterwards, yes. I wanted to nurse

it, and probably that wasn't good for the child. I

didn't know that I was so sick. It came out later, after

several days. I was always in fantasies and fever. I

only heard at night once the two nurses say.... The

doctor I had, he had to go to the militia. You know, in

Switzerland they have to make military service every year.

And he was there. Then an older doctor came in his place.

157

When he saw the terrible fever I had--I couldn't move;
I couldn't move my head anymore — he said I had to take very
cold baths (it was in the winter, in November, in
Switzerland) to get the fever down. Of course, the only
thing what I got was rheumatism, which was even worse.
Anyway, I heard the two nurses say, when they made me
ready for the bath again, "Oh, this night will be the
last night we will be here." I heard that, but I couldn't
speak anymore; I only heard that they said that. But in
my mind I said, "I don't think I will do that." [laughter]
Anyway, at night I woke up, and I saw the young doctor,
the young doctor whom I had before, sitting on my bed.
At first I thought, "It's a hallucination." But he was
really there. He was so worried about me that he asked
for permission to go to see his patient. He had heard
of a new medicine, or a new treatment against high fever,
which was an injection of silver--silver lotion or some-
thing. Half a pint of silver lotion in the side--it was
terrible, and very expensive. He had to ask my husband
if he allowed to do that. My husband said, "Of course.
Everything what is necessary." And he gave me those
injections. It helped. They were shots, you know, in the
side. And it helped. Maybe it would have been by itself,
but anyway, from this day on, the fever went down.
WESCHLER: How long had it lasted?

158

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, several weeks. I don't remember. Then
my parents came for my funeral. [laughter] When I could eat
something, I asked for a good soup. I got always a soup
from a restaurant, because it was very bad in the hospital.
But also the soup from the restaurant was just water, so
I asked my mother if she couldn't make soup like she did
always when somebody was sick. That was the only thing
I wanted.

WESCHLER: The child had been a girl-child?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was a girl.

WESCHLER: Had she lived long enough to be named?
FEUCHTWANGER: I don't remember. [She had been named
Marianna. ]

WESCHLER: One of the commentaries I was reading mentioned
that later on, this showed up in your husband's fiction,
in terms of his interests in father and daughter re-
lationships .

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. That's true, ja, ja. I think so.
WESCHLER: Well, I suppose we should just go on from there.
What happened afterwards?

FEUCHTWANGER: Then when I was better, we had to leave for
the Riviera because the doctor said I had to go where it's
warmer and not to stay in Switzerland.

WESCHLER: Had you originally planned to have such a long
honeymoon?

159

FEUCHTWANGER: We had no plans.

WESCHLER: I wanted to ask one question before that.

About your attitude about having the child: had you been

worried about how you were going to raise the child, in

your relative poverty?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, we were not worried. We never were

worried. But I had always a feeling I would die when I

gave birth--long before. In those days it was not so rare,

you know. There were no antibiotics or penicillin or

anything like that.

WESCHLER: And you were fairly small.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I was not.

IVESCHLER: Okay, so now we have you on the Riviera. What

was that like?

FEUCHTWANGER: On the Riviera we had again some money.

My husband sold his dissertation to be a professor, the

habilitation work, to the newspaper, to the Frankfurter

Zeitung, and got a lot of money. It was in installments.

Then we went to Monte Carlo. First we were in a little

place, just to recover; we had a little house there, and

it was very beautiful. Also it was rather cold on the

Riviera. And I saw for the first time the ocean, the

Mediterranean. It was a great....

WESCHLER: You had never seen the ocean before?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, never before. In Germany, there's

160

only the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and we never were there,
in the north. I was never in Berlin either. The first
time I saw the ocean was the Mediterranean. We went
sometimes at night there, with big waves and thunder
during a storm. So we liked it very much. The little
house had no real heating, only a fireplace. But it was
a little eerie, because the wood was down in the base-
ment; it was so dark. And the water was outside in the
garden, with a pump. But it was very poetical and very
picturesque .

WESCHLER: In which part of the Riviera was this?
FEUCHTWANGER: I think it's the French Riviera — no, the
Italian Riviera. Pietra Ligure, it was called.
WESCHLER: And then you went to Monte Carlo, and you
blew it.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , that's true. Ja, ja. But first we had
a lot of fun there. We also went to the opera in Monte
Carlo. There was a famous opera there. When I was once
interviewed by Mr. [Albert] Goldberg here, the critic,
he knew of the man who was the conductor of the opera.
He was a famous man, Ginsbourg [?]. He was very famous.
I saw Rigoletto there. And I saw the famous [Feodor]
Chaliapin there, the Russian singer. Then he had a very
adventurous program. He wanted to play Parsifal , Wagner's
Parsifal, which was not allowed. It wasn't free to be

161

played anywhere but in Bayreuth. It was in the will of
Wagner.

WESCHLER: Really?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. In the will of Wagner it was that
this holy play, you know, which he considered very holy,
could only be played in his own theater in Bayreuth, and
Cosima Wagner, his wife, should supervise it also. But
Ginsbourg wanted to play it in the Casino. Imagine, the
Casino, where they are gambling I How he did it, how he dared
it, I don't know. He just--he thought nobody would know,
or whatever. Anyway, my husband wrote all the reviews
about the theatre, so Ginsbourg invited us for the first
performance of the Parsifal . Lion wrote in the Schaubuhne
about it. It was just awful, the performance. It was
ridiculous, you know. There came the Gralsritter , the
knights of the Holy Grail, and they all had mustaches with
very upward, you know, like the kaiser, you remember--
the picture of the kaiser, with this mustache. They had
black mustaches like that, and when they came from both sides
toward each others when they kissed each other as the
knights of the Holy Grail, with those two mustaches to-
gether, it was just--we couldn't--we almost couldn't
stay seated, it was so funny. And then there was Kundry.
She was the great vamp, you know, who wanted to seduce
Parsifal, the holy man. She was lying on a big bed on

162

the ground, a big bolster. And she was so fat you cannot
imagine. I always said, "I think there are specks of fat
underneath her, I am sure." She was sweating. She was
a famous singer [Felia Litvinne] . And everything was so
comical. But the singer himself was very good, also a
Russian singer, I think. A very good singer. And my
husband wrote just about the performance, you know, as
it was. And there were no free tickets [offered us]
anymore afterwards. [laughter]

WESCHLER: That was one of your last big swings before you
lost all your money.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja, it was.
WESCHLER: How did that happen?

FEUCHnVANGER: Well, we never played together. My husband
played on one table and I on another table, and I usually
won, because I didn't dare much. I was looking a long
time until I set money. It was all in gold, in those
days. I was more interested in the other players. There
were lots of Spaniards, and also the great duchesses and
dukes from Russia, who had lots of money. The duchesses
were always in fantastic dresses with diamonds; it was
very interesting to see them, how excited they were.
My husband always wanted to win, and when you want to
win, then you lose. Sometimes he won a big sum; but he
wanted it bigger, so he lost again. I always had won

163

just enough--and it wasn't ii:iuch--so that we could go back

to our hotel; we lived in Menton [and returned] by train.

That was the only money — that we could still pay the hotel,

That was all that was always left, and in the end that was

all that was left.

WESCHLER: You had modest expectations.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . I was not interested in playing. And

also not in money. My husband always thought that this

is a way to get money.

WESCHLER: Was this true all through his life, or did he

get over it?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he got over it. Ja, ja. Later on, he

didn't play anymore. Oh, yes, he played once in Cannes

again, I think. But it was not like that anymore. He

didn't take so much money with him.

WESCHLER: Well, he learned his lesson because in Monte

Carlo he lost everything.

FEUCHTWANGER: Everything. Except what was left, what I

had to pay in my pocket.

WESCHLER: So what did you do?

FEUCHTWANGER: We paid the hotel, and then we took our

backpack and left for the mountains.*

WESCHLER: What season was this?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was spring. Ja, ja. But I remember--

because we were in Nice also, and it was snowing there,

* For additional details about this stay in the south of
France, see Tape XXVII, Side Two.

164

which was very rare — it was a very cold winter. But now it
was the beginning of spring. And we went over the
mountains to Italy.

WESCHLER: Well, we have you now without any money, taking
your walk into Italy. Let's turn over the tape.

165

TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE ONE
JUNE 24, 1975 and JUNE 27, 1975

WESCHLER: We're continuing with the bankrupt Feuchtwangers
walking across the Italian Alps. What happened then?
FEUCHTWANGER: Then we went again to this little village
of Pietra Ligure, where we were before, because we knew
nobody would ask us to pay. We couldn't pay them--
we had no money for paying, for eating or living--until
we got this money from the usurer which we had ordered.
It wasn't very much, but still it was more than nothing.
And as soon as we got this money, we took into our back-
packs again and went on to our wandering into Italy.
WESCHLER: Either this was an awful lot of fun, or it was
terribly desperate.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was only fun. It was not desperate,
not a moment.

WESCHLER: Well, these are really the green days, I guess,
the salad days.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. We hocked everything what we had.
We pawned everything: my husband's watch, which he had
got again--a golden watch, after the one which he lost
before--and my watch, and our wedding rings, and a diamond
ring. Everything, we hocked. [laughter]
WESCHLER: You don't have your wedding ring now?

166

FEUCHTWANGER: No, we never had it back.
WESCHLER: What a life! Was he writing all this time,
still, or not as much?

FEUCHTWANGER: Not very much, because we were usually on
our way somewhere, walking, hiking up the mountains or
in other villages. Then we went hunting with the son of
the proprietor of the little house we lived in. It was
very beautiful. He didn't shoot; we just went hunting.
It was the first time I did something like that —
eating the berries of the mountains, and the picnics
there. It was very steep and tiring, but it was life.
WESCHLER: What did your parents think of this?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, they didn't think of it. They didn't
even know where we were. We didn't even tell them. Only
on Christmas I sent them some hazelnuts. That was all.
They have very big hazelnuts there. They didn't cost
anything because we picked them ourselves.

Then we waited for the money; and when we got it, I
made myself a very vampy dress, which was very clinching
and not at all the fashion of the time. But I always
wanted to do something other than other people. Then we
went on; from Pietra on we took the train, because then
we got this money from the usurer. We went to Florence.
But part of it we always walked also. We sent our baggage
ahead, and we went out of the train when we thought it was

167

nice and walked. Then we took, the train again, and we

were in Florence. We saw everything what was in Florence.

We lived in an old castle there; this was an English

pension, a boarding house in the old castle — very interesting,

very beautiful. And when we had enough of Florence, we

went on to the other small cities.

WESCHLER: Were there any things in particular that

impressed you about Florence?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes, the David of Michelangelo, of

course, and all the other.... We liked the Schiavoni

[Slaves] of Michelangelo best. And the old bridge, the

ancient bridge. T^d all those buildings there. And the

Uffizi, where the paintings are. And one room where —

the rotunda, it's called — where the most famous pictures

are, like the Mona Lisa.

Then we went on to all those little places, usually
walking or hiking. Pisa, Perugia, Siena, and all those
old, old churches and cathedrals and castles--f rom one
to the other, you know. Every one is a jewel by itself.
And then we went to Rome.

WESCHLER: Now this was summer, spring and summer.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , spring, ja, ja. In Rome we lived
in a very cheap quarter. But we were never at home, of
course; it was just to sleep there. We were always on
our way to see things. My husband always kidded me--even

168

long afterwards--when we came out from the station, the
first thing I said was, "Oh, look, there is already
something ancient!" And he found this so amusing. But
I was so excited to arrive. And it was ancient; it was
an old fortress, but that I said, "Schau, da is schon
was Altes!" You know, it was in my Bavarian accent:
"There is already something old." I didn't say "ancient."
And he always kidded me, long afterwards.
WESCHLER: What were the kinds of things that Lion most
prized seeing in these towns? Did he enjoy art galleries?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, always. We saw all the art galleries,
and all the monuments, and also the old palazzi. There
is also this old fountain there where they toss coins--
the Trevi Fountain.

But there was something else. When we came to Rome, we
heard that the pope [Pius X] was very sick and they ex-
pected him to die. We came to the Vatican, to this enormous
piazza in front of St. Peter's, with those galleries,
those columns from [Giovanni] Bernini on both sides. In
the middle is an obelisk. Then on the other end is the
cathedral of St. Peter, and on the right side is the
Vatican. It goes back to the Vatican gardens. And there --
almost the whole population was on the big piazza, to pray
for the pope, for his health. They were all crying,
because they said, "He's near death." And all of a sudden.

169

on the right side, high up (because there already begins
a hill) was the room of the pope. And the window opened,
and he was at the window in his white robe. And he blessed
the people. It was already at night; it had become night,
and everything was only lighted by candles. The whole
arch — between the columns there was always a kind of luster
with candles. At the rear was the St. Peter, and only
the front was lighted, where also these columns were. But
not the cupola, the big cupola, which had been made by
Michelangelo. And on top of the cupola there was a cross,
and then this was lighted. So the people fell all on
their knees and cried, "Miracolo! " because they thought
that this cross was in the sky. They didn't see the
cupola, which was dark--they were blinded by the candles
below--and they thought that the cross was in the sky
because the pope felt better. It was a fantastic situation.
And very unexpected, because nobody thought that he would
be better.

WESCHLER: It was during this stay in Rome also that your
husband first saw the arch of Titus?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, It was in the Forum. That is a city
by itself, the whole Roman ruins and all that. And he
told me about Titus. We went through it also, and we
saw the relief of the procession of triumph. They carried
[the spoils] of the temple — the jewels and the candelabra

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of the temple. That was all on this relief. Then
Lion told me the story of Josephus. I didn't know about
it. I think that was the time when he decided to write
the novel about Josephus. But it took a long time until
he really did it, because this was about 1913 and he
began his Josephus novel in '28.

WESCHLER: In general, in these explorations, would you
say that your husband's interests were more aesthetic
or historical, or does that distinction make any sense?
FEUCHTWANGER: Both. I think both of them.

WESCHLER: In light of the fact that he becomes a historical
novelist. . . .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. But he was not interested in
politics, but in individuals. He was interested in the
being — in the human beings, in the personalities--and also
in the relations to other people, in human relations in
history. But not in politics, not at all.
WESCHLER: Did he enjoy--was he a great storyteller in
talking, speaking?

FEUCHTWANGER: Usually he was not, but when we were to-
gether, when we were all by ourselves and didn't know
anybody else, when we were wandering, he always told me
about the history of the country where we were, and of the
cities. I even learned a little Latin and Greek in this
way, from the inscriptions. He translated the inscriptions

171

for me, and I learned. He quoted about the old plays of
Aeschylus or Sophocles or Euripides, and I learned. And
also what the senators in Rome said in their battles.
And Julius Caesar and all that. All that, I learned just
by seeing it. It was the best teaching.
WESCHLER: Well, we've covered an awful lot of ground
today. Maybe we'll stop with you in Rome and we'll
continue from Rome at the next session.

JUNE 27, 1975

WESCHLER: Before we get to Naples, which is what we'd
agreed to start on today, we have a couple of flashbacks,
and then we're also going to tell some stories of your child-
hood when we are talking about Naples. To begin with,
you were just now telling me a story of a servants'
ball in Munich at the time before you and Lion were
married.

FEUCHTWANGER: This was an occasion when the famous actors
and opera singers of the Royal Theatre and Opera made
a ball for charity; and everybody, for fun, had to come
as a cook, or a chambermaid, or an upstairs maid, with
little lace bonnets on the girls' heads, and dusters,
and always with high hats on the men as cooks. But I
had another idea. I thought that everybody comes like
that, and I would like to come as another servant. So I

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came as an Egyptian slave, with a costuine--very clinching,
in green and violet colors--and with a golden hairband,
and without stockings, and in sandals, which was already
shocking in those days. And I made a big sensation,
but they had to let me in because I was a slave and thus
a servant at the same time. And my husband brought me
to ....

WESCHLER: He wasn't your husband yet at this time,
though.

FEUCHTWANGER: No. Lion brought me to a friend of his,
who was a famous writer and also publisher, a very elegant
man, pale and demonic-looking. The girls were mad about
him, and he had always the jeunesse doree, the young,
rich people, around him. He was sitting in a box....
WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Waldemar Bonsels. He had just published a
book which was a great success. At the same time, an
actress waved at Lion. She wanted to introduce him to
her fiance, who was later a very famous actor, Alexander
Moissi. He played with Reinhardt. So my husband left
me for a moment, and I was sitting with Bonsels and his
jeunesse doree. After a while--my husband didn't come back
right away — Mr. Bonsels asked if I would come with him to
eat a bite in the restaurant, which was on the side of the
big ball hall. So there we were--there were little booths —

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we were sitting there, and he had caviar and champagne, all
the elegant things. (I never ate that before.) He bought
all the flowers he could get, and he made advances, of
course. I didn't believe he would do that, as a friend of
my companion, which Lion was. I was very reticent, and
cool, and reserved. He finally got tired of that, and he
said, "Let's go back to the ball." But he didn't bring
me right away back, rather through side doors and staircases,
where the pairs were lying and petting and kissing; he
thought that there should be a lesson for me, that this
is the way to do on this occasion. But it didn't help.
So when we came back I asked if Lion was there, and they
said, yes, he had been there, but he had left again.
Lion didn't come back, and I was looking for him. I didn't
want to sit with those people so long. I was looking for
my parents, and my parents were tired and wanted to go
home. Finally we saw Lion when he just stepped out. Since
he had invited us, he also accompanied us back to our house,
but he didn't speak a word with me. He behaved very strange,
and I couldn't find out why. The next day, I went to him
and asked him what was his behavior, and then he told me
that when he asked for me, the friends of Bonsels said to
him they didn't know where I was, although I told them that
I would wait for him in this restaurant. They didn't tell
him that; they only told him they didn't know where I

174

was--and with a grin, so he would understand what would

have happened. Also, what he told me much later, Waldemar

Bonsels showed everybody who wanted to see it, or not

wanted to see it, my shirt, which was a black lace shirt —

which I never possessed, but he said that it was my shirt.

He used to have always the shirt of the girl with whom

he was sleeping. And that also came to my husband's

knowledge. But he never told me about that. When I told

him that there was nothing to it, that I was waiting at

the restaurant as I had told his friends so that he would

me, in a way. Later on, of course, when we knew each

other better, he believed that it wasn't true; and from then

on, there was never any doubt, because what we did,

whatever we did, there was always complete frankness. We

never lied to each other.

WESCHLER: Off tape, you said that even though you didn't

follow, necessarily, the bourgeois....

FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was not always the right thing what

we did, both of us. [laughter]

WESCHLER: But at least you were completely frank with

each other.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Ja, ja.

WESCHLER: Another story I wanted to pick up concerned

the reaction of your gymnastics teacher when it was announced

175

that you and Lion were going to get married.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Then I went to the club and told them
that I couldn't come back anymore because I'm marrying and
going abroad. The president of the club, who was my
teacher--! was his favorite student--was also the teacher
of my husband in the gymnasium. The only thing he said —
his reaction to the announcement of Lion's marrying me —

was "I never would have believed it of you, Fraulein Marta,
that you would marry such a bad gymnast." [laughter]
WESCHLER: But you did. And gradually, now, we've covered
a good deal of the months after your honeymoon. There's
one other story you just told me, before we turned on the
tape, about the incident at the power line. You might
tell that, too.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. We made once an excursion on a smaller
mountain, and on top of this mountain was a big electric
high-power mast. There was a sign: "Danger. Don't Touch.
Danger." And my husband didn't see that. I was afraid
he would touch it, so I yanked him away and showed him this
sign. Then he said, "What would you have done if I had
touched the mast and fallen down dead?" I said, "I would
have touched the mast, too." And this was in a way like
an oath for both of us. He often reminded me of that later.
WESCHLER: Okay. I think that brings us up to Naples,
which is where we were last time. You might talk a little

176

bit about what you did in Naples, where you lived, some of
the places you went in Naples.

FEUCHTWANGER: We lived in the slums because we didn't have
much money. But still there came some money, from some
articles my husband wrote. So we could at least stay in
a small boarding house. Although it was in the slums--
it was absolutely only one block away from the port of
Naples--there were those little restaurants where we got
excellent little dishes for almost nothing to pay. And
we ate some vonqole--they are little shellfish. We heard
that you never should eat the shellfish at all--for
instance, oysters also. But those were cooked as a soup.
So we ate it, and my husband ate more than I did. We
became both very sick, but probably he became more sick
than I. The lady of the boarding house had the doctor
coming for us. He was a Swiss doctor. He said that there
is no doubt that we both have typhoid fever. It was the
law that nobody could stay in a house, in a private house,
that everybody who had this fever had to go into the
hospital. But he said that not many people came out alive
of this hospital. It was very dirty in those days, and
people were not well taken care of. He took it on his own
that we stay at this boarding house; but we shouldn't
leave the room, and only--I had to take care of my husband,
because I was less ill as he was. He had a very high fever

177

and was rather endangered. It's very painful. We had always
cramps, stomach cramps, and we couldn't sleep. So at
night we told each other stories of our childhood, just
to pass the time.

WESCHLER: In a way, this is the first time you heard a great
many of the stories you've told us about his childhood.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Ja , ja.

WESCHLER: We were talking, before we turned on the tape,
about some of the kinds of stories that you told each
other, and we might just turn to some of those. Many
of them had to do with your relationship to Judaism.
These are other stories besides the ones that we've al-
ready talked about. You might start out telling, for
instance, the story about your mother and her teacher.
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes. My mother lived in the same house
as her teacher because they liked each other so much. So
they took the apartment besides her teacher's apartment.
She always cooked Jewish dishes, which this teacher never
had tasted before, and she was always very much keen about
eating those things. Once, on Passover, my mother made
some matzo balls and brought it to her, and she found it
delicious. After she had eaten it, she asked, in a very
hushed voice--and it was obviously in bad conscience —
if it is true that on Passover, the Jews always killed a
Gentile boy. My mother was terribly upset, and she almost

178

couldn't speak. Then she observed that she--the teacher —
smoothed it over and said, "Of course, I never believed it."
So my mother forgot it absolutely, but I never forgot
this incident. I was with her, and I just couldn't be-
lieve that something could happen. So I remember it so
well, until to this day.

WESCHLER: You were also talking before about some of
your cousins, the two Siegfrieds.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. One of my mother's cousins was
a doctor, and a very gifted young man. He went to Switz-
erland, and there he found many new treatments (of
sicknesses) which were not known in Germany, and he brought
all those new inventions back. I was very sick, and no-
body could find out what it was. It was an infection.
I was near death. And he had brought a medicine with
him from Switzerland which made the turn of this sickness,
it seemed. We had a doctor who was only for children, and
he said this young man is a genius. Later on, this
young man became also....
WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Siegfried Oberndorf f er . And later on, he
was assistant of the greatest anatomy teacher in Bavaria.
He himself then was his successor at anatomy, got to
teach, and all the students had to hear his lectures.
WESCHLER: Was that unusual for that period?

179

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, that was unusual. He was the first
Jewish professor of medicine in Bavaria. There was a
gossip that he converted to Catholicism because otherwise
he never would have become this position. Also he was
director of the greatest hospital in Munich, the State
Hospital. But he never converted; it wasn't true. Only
people couldn't understand that he got this position
without being converted.

WESCHLER: What about the other cousin?

FEUCHTWANGER: The other cousin of my mother was in the
finance department of the government.
WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Siegfried — also Siegfried — Lichtenstatter .
The name Siegfried was very popular because in those days
the opera of Wagner has been played for the first time.
He was a high official in the finance department and was
asked by the royal court if he would convert; then they,
or the Prinzregent, would make him minister of finances.
But he didn't want that. Although he would have liked to
be minister of finance, he wouldn't convert himself.

Both of them were not religious persons, but they
wouldn't do that. It was not the point of view of
religion, it was the point of view of belonging.
WESCHLER: In these conversations that you were having
with your husband on the typhoid bed, you yourself were

180

talking about your temptations to conversion as a young
girl .

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. At the school where I was, the teacher
of the Catholic religion was a young priest, very good
looking, and all the other students had a crush on him.
I couldn't follow his lectures, his lessons, so I was in
the corridor, and he saw me there. He asked me to come and
take part in his lessons. But I had the feeling that this
was not right, although I liked very much to hear about
Christ, and mostly about the child Christ. I had no
brothers and sisters, and this was very tempting for me.
But I had the feeling it wasn't right, and I didn't come
back anymore. I went to another class, where there was
mathematics, and that was the reason why I had later such
good grades, because it was a higher class. I was never
very good in mathematics, but since I heard all those les-
sons which are repeated endlessly until everybody understood
them, so finally I was one of the best in mathematics
without even knowing it.

WESCHLER: As a Jewish girl in Munich, did you go to the
cathedrals very often?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. The niece of this teacher, my mother's
teacher, she was a kind of maid there, and she used to
go with me on long walks, and also to a place which was
an imitation of Florence (the Hall of Lancius, it was

181

called there) the Hall of the Field Marshal [Feldherrn-
halle] . There were lots of pigeons, like in Venice, and
we fed the pigeons. And they were sitting on my shoulders,
feeding out of my hand, and it was a great sensation.
Then we went from one church to the other, mostly at the
time which is from the Day of the Magi until Easter. And
we saw the "cribs" they were called. These were [replicas]
of the manger, in those niches in the churches; it was
rather dark, only with candlelight. And this was very
beautifully done. Everything in Munich was very artistic —
even the people were. It has something to do with the
neighborliness of Italy, because there are many Italian
workmen there; also many of the churches were built by
Italians. I think these very colorful things, like those
cribs and those mangers, were influenced by the taste of
the Italians. They were all hand-sculptured little fig-
urines, with the ride of Maria on a donkey with Joseph,
and the manger itself, and the Magi. All that was
beautifully done: little trees, and little animals,
little sheeps . It was just fantastic, and I never had
enough, could never have seen enough of that. It was
almost like a theater for me.

WESCHLER: Did you feel guilty about liking it so much?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, about that I didn't feel guilty. No.
It was too colorful, and for me it had nothing to do with

182

religion, because it was very strange. It was more like

going to the theater or hearing those fairy stories.

WESCHLER: You had also talked about going to the cathedral

for consolation?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, that was when I was older. We lived near

the big cathedral of Munich, the Frauenkirche , the Church

of Our Lady. This was a very high and tall and Gothic

building inside. It was very dark, with only some candles.

Sometimes you could hear a choir of children singing.

When I was unhappy I always went there and found relaxation

and consolation.

WESCHLER: Again, these are all things that you were talking

about with Lion.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. And also the difference between

the very severe religious service of the Jews--where

the rabbi made all this very long and loud, was preaching

longly and loudly, and it had nothing of peace in it--

and this kind of religious service.

WESCHLER: The difference of that and the Christian, you

mean.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja.

WESCHLER: How did Lion react to that?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he could understand that very well.

But the funny thing was that later on, when the teacher

died, my parents changed their apartment, and we lived in

183

better quarters near the Isar--that is the river which
went through Munich. This was a very good part of
Munich, because my father was rather wealthy then. And
there my mother went always to the old temple of the
Orthodox, because it was too far to go to the synagogue
in the neighborhood where we were first. We went on
Saturday to the old temple, which was a very small building,
also dark like the churches of the Catholics, and very
simple. The rabbi spoke with a hushed voice and didn't
preach loudly. There was only a choir, but no organ;
the organ was so loud, always, in the synagogue, and
filled the house with drumming on our ears. [But in the
temple] it was much more like the Catholic service, ja,
ja.

WESCHLER: The Orthodox service.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. And it was not the service, but
the atmosphere. It was dark and simple and small: that
was, of course, not like in the Catholic churches. But
mostly the darkness impressed me, and all those many
candles. Also that there was not so much--the ladies in
the other, the Reformed synagogue, were very elegant on
Saturday, and sometimes they made gossip instead of pray-
ing. All that upset me, even if I wasn't — in those days
I still was religious, I think. It upset me; they spoke
about their dresses and things like that instead of

184

hearing the priest. But then in this little synagogue
there were not many people there, because the Orthodox
were not numerous. And this temple was supported by the
family Feuchtwanger , and the relative family Fraenkel.
The whole thing was very small and was much more apt to
awaken religious feelings. Also I discovered something
which was very important for me. In the pew, there was
a real Bible. I had learned only some excerpts of the
Bible. But this was a real Bible, unabridged. Ja, ja.
For me, it was absolutely sensational what I read there.
It was very interesting, and it made me much more inter-
ested in the Jewish religion. Until now I didn't know
very much, except that I knew that you had to fast on
one day, and on another had to eat a lot of good things.
And this was--I knew something about the history of the
Jews then .

WESCHLER: What were some of the stories that Lion told
you that night?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he spoke about his childhood at home.
He said it was--for instance, since his parents were
very Orthodox, there was always a young student there who
was poor. Every day he was there for the meal. And for
Lion it was always so disturbing that their quarrels were
always fought out during the meals. Even he was ashamed
before this stranger. Everybody in the family finally

185

had ulcers because they always were quarreling during

the meal, with each other and with the parents.

WESCHLER: This was the time when he also told you the

story about the swamp.

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes, that was all there, ja.

WESCHLER: Do you remember any of the other stories he

told you on that night?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he only told me that he couldn't stand

it anymore, to sit always on this table. And that's

why he also had, until his death, always trouble with

his stomach, something. His sister also once had--one

of the sisters, Henny, who's still living in Israel — bleeding

ulcers. It was terrible; she fell over. It was on a

Sunday, and he was alone at home with her. The others

were all on an excursion. She fell over and had terrible

bleeding, vomiting blood. He was all alone with her and

didn't know what to do. The only thing was that he had

heard once that some ice is good. So he went to the

pharmacy to get some ice, because there were no iceboxes

in those days. He went to the pharmacist [and got] ice,

and there he was the whole day. No doctor was at home.

He was sitting with her. He was afraid she could die,

but she still lives. She is one of the two who are still

alive. There are only two sisters, and she is one of them.

WESCHLER: You had also wanted to mention a couple of the

186

other stories that you told him--in particular about your
father being accused of perjury.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. My father had to sue one of his
customers because he didn't pay for the merchandise.
My father was a wholesale dealer then and made more money.
But he sold him a lot of merchandise, and the man didn't
pay anymore. The man then made bankruptcy, but in a fraud-
ulent way. And to cover that, he accused my father of per-
jury. My father wanted money from him, but he said that he
paid money for merchandise my father never delivered. So
my father was accused of perjury. I remember--! was about
five years old--that the whole night nobody slept, and it
was like a nightmare. The next day my father had' to go
to court. He had no lawyers. He only asked some people
who would know about law or something. He defended
himself. He was not a very literary man; he was a genius
in mathematics, but he was very illiterate in other things.
But he defended himself so acutely that the judge com-
plimented him on his logic and also acquitted him. And
I found, when my father came home, that his hair turned
white in this one night.

WESCHLER: And another family story which we called the
Lolita story. . . .

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. A cousin of my father [Abraham
Landauer] , who was also related with my mother--he wanted

187

to marry my mother, and she rejected him — it seemed to me that
his love for her attracted him to me. He came always on
Sundays with his equipage, his carriage, with a coachman
and a coach and beautiful horses. And we went into the
countryside. He was sitting in the rear with me, and my
parents were in the front, and he always kept my hand in
his hand, and it was a strange relationship. I wasn't
conscious of it but I had the feeling it was not right,
what we did.

WESCHLER: How old were you at this point?
FEUCHTWANGER: About five years old. No — I was a little
older: I was about ten years old, I think. I felt it wasn't
right, but I wasn't sure about it. It was in the sub-
consciousness. This man--I called him Uncle--was very
astute and also very rich. He advised my father always
in his affairs. He also gave him good advice for this
trial when he was accused of perjury. *

Later on, his wife, who also liked me, had a literary
circle in her winter garden, where there was a basin,
a little pool, with fishes and a fountain, and beautiful
dishes were served, and fruit. And everybody had to speak
French. There was a professor of literature who was
guiding the whole thing; we had to speak French, and it
was something absolutely new and also unknown in Munich. I

* Mrs. Feuchtwanger ' s notes detail that Abraham Landauer
was the model, at least as far as physical appearance, for
the character Isaac Landauer in Jud siiss .

188

don't know how I came to this, because all the others were

older than I was and more [worldwise] ; I felt rather like

from the provinces. But they liked me and I profited a

lot from that, and also I enjoyed it very much. [pause in

tape]

WESCHLER: Well, I think we've now covered a lot of the

stories you talked about that night. But we still have

you very sick. Now you have to tell us how you recovered.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. When we felt better, the doctor told

us to go to the island of Ischia.

WESCHLER: How long were you sick?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, about two weeks at least. We were still

very weak, but we had no fever anymore. So he told us to go

to Ischia, which is an island bigger than Capri but was

not very well known then. It was a real paradise. When

you came there with the ship, there is the old fortress.

Very beautiful. I think it plays a role also in the life

of Michelangelo. It's called Colonna--he was a friend of

the Princess [Vittoria] Colonna. We had also the

address of a kind of peasant who had a little inn, a little

house, in the vineyards — very little house, only one room

always. We were in the middle of the vineyard, where the

vine was hanging--not on wooden poles, but from one tree

to the other; they were hanging down, the grapes, and the

trees were peach trees. So we had everything what we

wanted in this garden where our little house was, which was very

189

primitive. But the food of .this peasant was excellent.
He fished it himself. There were fishes, and lobsters,
and everything. The funny thing was that other people
were there who were very high society. For instance, there
was a German consul general there who knew all about this
paradise. This island had also something special. It had
hot sources, a kind of earth source. It was called
f ango.

WESCHLER: Springs?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was not springs, it was thick like
earth.

WESCHLER: Mud baths?

FEUCHTWANGER: Mud baths, yes. It was called fango. And
there people came who had rheumatism or sciatica. The
funny thing is that the word Ischia is the same as
sciatica, but it didn't mean sickness; rather the shape
of the island was like a lying goat. And this man, this
consul, was a very interesting man, very cultured. He
knew my husband; he read his critics in the Schaubiihne or
so. At the same time, I found out that he was also homo-
sexual. That was the first time I saw a homosexual. There
were very interesting people coming always to see him,
mostly of the Italian aristocracy. So in this little
peasant inn, there was the most funny company you could
find anywhere. And it was very interesting, and we heard

190

a lot about the social life of Italy.

There was also a most funny thing: one Italian count
could speak in gestures, like a mime. That was the
Italian way to speak. He could tell or show with his hands
what means beautiful, or if something was not true--all
that he could explain with this Italian, this Neapolitan
way of speaking. Before they spoke, already with their
gestures, they could explain everything. It was very
amusing.

It was the first time we had a real warm ocean;
we were already bathing in the north of Italy, but there it
was very cold. Here the water was warm. We were lying in
the sun, and my husband got such a terrible sunburn that
the whole skin of his back came off. It was like a big
blister, and then the whole of it came off. I dried it,
and I always had it with me--until Hitler came; then we
lost it. I had it in an envelope on which was written,
"Skin of Lion." [laughter]
WESCHLER: God. The things you left behind!

191

TAPE NUMBER: IV, SIDE TWO
JUNE 27, 1975

WESCHLER: We're talking about the island of Ischia.

FEUCHTWANGER: On Ischia, there were no cars, for instance.

WESCHLER: You can tell us other stories about the island.

FEUCHTWANGER: There was also a young Dutchman at the inn.

We were complaining about the fleas. That was the only

black thing in our whole life there. They came only at

night. And he said, "There is a very simple thing. Each one

of you takes a basin of water, and then you wait. Then the

fleas come from everywhere in the room, from the floor and

from the bed, and want to jump on you; but instead they

jump in the water. " And so every night we were free then

of the fleas. It was a very good recipe.

WESCHLER: During this period, you had more money.

FEUCHTWANGER: "More money" is too much. But we had

some money.

WESCHLER: Where did that come from?

FEUCHTWANGER: That came from articles my husband wrote

for newspapers, and also for the Schaubiihne . Then again

came some money. I think I got also some money from —

I had something left from my grandmother, and some interest

came. So we went to Capri also, which was more elegant

and more known than Ischia. For instance, Goethe was there

192

and wrote about the Blue Grotto of Capri, and how dangerous
it was. It was really a funny thing: this grotto was
on the outside of the water, of the island, but there was
no way to go there except with a boat. It was very steep.
This Blue Grotto was very famous for its blueness: the
blue light was like electric light, but it was the blueness
of the grotto itself, of the water. And you had to wait
with the boat until there was a wave which retired.
WESCHLER: The tide went down.

FEUCHTWANGER: So, in the morning, when the tide was out,
you could slip into the grotto, because the entrance was
below the water. Inside, it was very quiet. It was a
rather big grotto .. Everything was blue, and in the
Baedeker there was another funny thing. It said that
little boys offer to dive into the water, and their body
looks silver, absolute silver, in this blue water. But
this is expensive--it costs one lire--so you should rather
put your hand in the water, that's the same effect,
[laughter] And we swam ourselves. Our guide allowed us
to swim in it. But usually it's not allowed.
WESCHLER: Were you just there by yourself or with a group?
FEUCHTWANGER: I don't remember. I think there were other
people also, but very few.

WESCHLER: Were there many people on the island of Capri
at that time?

193

FEUCHTWANGER: Later on. When we came, it was not the season
yet, but then came the bathing season. The Italians
always said you have to have fifteen baths in the ocean
[each day]. This was a standing question, "Have you
already had your fifteen baths in the ocean?" This was
during the time of the vacation. There was a fashion: the
aristocracy of Rome went every year to another spa or
resort. Sometimes they went to the north, to Viareggio,
which was very elegant and international. And this time
they came to Capri, which was much more simple, and
less known, and also not so elegant. They came and were
bathing there, too, taking their fifteen baths and swims
on the small marina (not the big marina, which was on the
port, but the very small bay) . We lived above this small
bay in a house which was absolutely like glued against the
rock. You wouldn't even know how it was hanging there.
Only by very steep little steps, very high up, could you
come into the house, and it was all very little rooms.
But you were never in your room except for sleeping. We
were always wandering around, climbing on the mountains
there. Sometimes we went at night on the mountain to see
the simrise, and also the whole day we were on the beach,
which was just below our house. There was a balcony — more
a terrace, with columns. It was all like the old villas
of the Romans. But it was not to imitate them; it was

194

the style of this country.

When we were swimming down there, there was always--
the cousin of the owner was a priest, a Kanonikus , a kind
of higher priest. When we were swiniming--there were no
little huts where you could change. We had it very easy
because we could change in our room and go down in our bath-
ing suits. But the aristocracy who were there came by
boat usually from the Grand Hotel on the other side. The
other side was not so good to swim. There was not so much
sun. So they came around the island, in boats which looked
like the gondolas of Venice. So there were lying beautiful
ladies with umbrellas, lace umbrellas, and with pants,
lying there, very voluptuous. The men were usually with
the girls--! was one of them--f lirting with the girls.
The ladies were outside and looking, very sophisticated, at
what their men are doing there. It was very funny. One
was very much in love with me. I always said to him,
"What do you want from me?" You have this beautiful lady
out in your boat. What do you want from me? She is so
much more beautiful than I am." She was a princess. But
he said, "Oh, I know her such a long time." Finally, when
it was very warm, the ladies also wanted to take their
fifteen baths, and they came on the shore. There was nowhere
to change, so their maids came with them. They had big
sheets, and they held the sheets, and the ladies changed

195

there. And they had always a corset on, even when they

were swimming. They were beautiful, very voluptuous

looking ladies, and the corsets later on were hanging

to dry on a strip. Of course, nobody could see them when

they changed, because the maids held the sheets, but

the Kanonikus on top, at the terrace, he was looking with

binoculars. And when we came up, and he saw us coming,

he was not ashamed. He said, "Oh, what a voluptuous

air it is today." He was a real Italian. [pause in tape]

The old industrialist, Krupp , had had a villa there.
It was called the Villa Krupp, and a little path went there
between those rocks. There was no way to really make a
street there with all those rocks, so this path went to
the Villa Krupp. It was said that he had come here
because he was homosexual and he liked the Italian children,
boys, very much. The boys were still all clad and dressed
in very showy [clothes] because they made a lot of money
with that. The parents had allowed that, that the boys
came to Mr. Krupp. They had red silken shirts and looked
beautiful, of course, those Italian boys. And the old
man loved those boys.
WESCHLER: Which Krupp was this?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was the Krupp, you know, the real--
the founder of the family fortune, and also of the heavy
industry [Friedrich Alfred Krupp] . [Actually, Friedrich

196

Krupp died in 1902; his successor, Gustave, would have
been forty-two in 1912.] He was not young anymore then.
But everybody knew about it. And there was also this
story — I think I told you — about Gorky.
WESCHLER: No.

FEUCHTWANGER: When we climbed around this Villa Krupp,
not far away, it was very beautiful there, this view.
You could see to Ischia. So we climbed around, and then
we heard somebody writing on a typewriter. We asked some
people who was writing. That was very unusual that some-
body was--first of all, that somebody was working at
all on the island of Capri, because it was like from
Greek mythology: only gods lived there. So we heard this
man, and somebody told us that this was Gorky, Maxim
Gorky, the Russian writer. My husband had read all his
books, and also knew his plays. He even wrote about him
already. But Lion was too shy — Gorky was so famous, more
famous out of Russia than in Russia itself.
WESCHLER: Was he an exile at the time?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was a kind of--yes, it was a voluntary
exile, because it was during the Czarist regime. For a
while he was banned to Siberia, and when he was free then
he went out of it. Also he had acquired tuberculosis, so
he had to stay in a southern climate. My husband was too
shy to visit him, so we were sitting underneath this little

197

house, just listening to the typewriter, and this was for

us the greatest event we could imagine.

WESCHLER: And you never did go to see him?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he never did go to see him. Then when

Lion was in Russia--Gorky had died shortly before he was

there — Lion met his wife. And his wife told Lion a very

interesting story. Gorky had read my husband's book

Success — it is about the beginnings of the Hitler time,

the first Hitler Putsch — and she said her husband, Gorky,

was so impressed by this book that he said to her, "Now

I can die in peace, because I know that I have a successor."

That's what he said she said to my husband. That was the

best he ever received.

WESCHLER: Well, are we done with Capri? Should we go on

from Capri now?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think that's all. Ja.

WESCHLER: So what happened then?

FEUCHTWANGER: Then when we had our strength back, our money

was always less and less, so we went again back to the

continent and began to walk again, to hike again.

WESCHLER: Now, did you go to Vesuvius or to Pompeii or

any of the places around there?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, we were in Pompeii, of course, and that

was a fantastic experience. There is also a villa which

was very well conserved, but people were not allowed to go

198

except when they had the permission. This was where the
very pornographic paintings were. They were murals, more
or less, ja, ja. My husband went in, but I didn't dare
to go in. All the other ladies went in, but I didn't want
to go. [laughter]

WESCHLER: What did he think of it?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he knew about those things, of course.
He had studied all that before. He was not very surprised
about it, but it was interesting to see it. And also
those murals are of high artistic value. [pause in tape]
Perhaps if I could have gone with my husband alone, but
there was a guide, and I didn't want to be in the presence
of a foreign, strange person.

So we began hiking again. Later on, it was the rainy
time, even. But at first it was very beautiful, and some-
times very hot, so hot that the air was like flimmering
on the beach. It was the movement of the heat. But it
was all very beautiful and untouched. There were no roads
and no cars.

WESCHLER: Where was this general area?

FEUCHTWANGER: That was from the south of Naples, it began.
WESCHLER: Now, you'd run out of money by this time.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. We ran out of money. We had just
as much so we could sometimes eat. I remember that we came
first — there was lots of rain, already, fall rain. But

199

we didn't mind; we sang in the rain and came absolutely
wet sometimes to a little inn, or a house, where they
took us in and we dried our things, you know, one after
the other. Then the next day we went on again. Sometimes
there was not much to eat, but sometimes we got eggs or
tomatoes, or eggs with tomatoes. It was very adventurous.
Later on, we wanted to go also to the mountains, from
one side of the Italian boot to the other. So finally
we came to a mountain group which was called the Sila.
There are two; there are the Abruzzi, which are higher
mountains, with the Aspromonte--that ' s the highest
mountain of Italy--and the Sila, which are more wild
and unknown, absolutely unknown. So we wanted to see the
unknown. We went up to the mountains. We didn't know much
about the distances, how long we would have to walk to
go to the other side. When we came up, we found out that
it was forty-eight hours we had to walk. We found that out
because when we thought we were on the top of the Sila,
there was on the other side a valley and another top. We
saw up and down the tops and never saw the other side
of the Mediterranean. It was already cold; there was
snow lying. We heard the wolves howling, and there was
nowhere to go overnight. There was no house — nothing.
Finally my husband saw--we saw a shepherd with his flock.
That was all what was alive there, except the howling of

200

the wolves. And my husband said maybe he could tell us
where to go, what to do. "But I don't know if he will
understand us." Because we learned the Florentine
Italian, which is the best Italian; and in those parts
they spoke a dialect. When we spoke with our German
accents, our Italian, they thought we are the real Italians,
but they are. [laughter] Anyway my husband said, "Oh, I
don't know how I should explain it that we have lost our
way and don't know where to go." But then he remembered
from Dante, from La Divina Commedia, where it is all sym-
bolic, that he says,

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
che la diritta via era smarrita.

That means, "In the middle of my life" — but it's all sym-

bolic--"I was in a wild forest, and I had lost the right

way." That means in the soul; but the word "smarrita"

was the word for "I lost my way." So my husband said,

"Oh, I know how to ask him; I just say ' smarrita. '" And

that was the right word, and he understood it. He said,

which we understood half-and-half, that it is forty-eight

hours to go to the other side, but we could stay with him

in his little lean-to. It was a little hut. There we could

stay for the night, not to be eaten by the wolves. Then

we had nothing to eat. He had nothing to eat, but we

had some sardines in our backpack, and he had some nuts

201

in his hut. So we exchanged our delicatessen, and it was
very nice. Then we went on the next day; we were for-
tified. And could at least sleep. Then we came to the
other side, which was also rather unknown by foreigners.
But it was very funny that it helps when you know literature,
You have to know La_ Divina Commedia . [laughter]

Then on the other side, it was a long time until we
found something to eat, a village or so, but there was
a funny thing: when you saw a shepherd with black porks,
very little porks, in big masses — it was just full of
those little black porks--then you knew that you would find
some chestnuts, because the only food for those little
porks were chestnuts. So we followed the flock of the
little porks and we found some chestnuts, which we ate,
and then we found some berries, and it was all very nour-
ishing, [laughter]

Then finally we came to a village. It was a very
simple inn, and we were glad to wash ourselves and sleep
in a bed again. Then the waiter came and said, "There is
a man outside who wants to speak with you." My husband
thought he wants to sell us some souvenirs or something.
He said, "We don't buy souvenirs." But he said, "Oh,
no, he ' s a riccone"--that means a very rich man. So my
husband let him in. He c-ame with handfuls of gold, threw
thera over the table, and said, "I want to buy your wife."

202

So we were horrified, because we thought if we were near
the coins then he could say, accuse us, that we took
something. He threw it in every corner.' My husband said,
"I'm sorry, she is not for sale." [laughter] Then he went
away, very angry.

Outside were a lot of people standing--there was a
little balcony, like a Spanish balcony — and shouting that
they wanted to see us. We didn't know why, and then this
waiter, who was also the maid and everything, he said, "You
know, they think you are circus people, and they ask, 'When
do you make the play? When do you show us the circus?'
So you have to go out to this balcony and show yourself. "
So we went out and the people went away, thinking that the
next day we would make our presentation, but we were already
away the next day.

Then at the next village where we were, we couldn't
find anything to sleep, so somebody, a young man, came and
said, "You can sleep in my house." It was a little hut also.
I said, "Are you married?" He said, "Yes, but I sent my wife
away to her sister's, and you can sleep with me." Then I
said, "We cannot sleep with you. My religion does not allow
it." So he said, "Oh, we will see." We went into his house,
and then he really didn't go away; so we had to go away
because he just wanted to stay there. Then he began to shout
with us; he must have drunk a little bit. Anyway, he looked

203

dangerous to us; they had always knives on them. So we
began to run. We took our backpacks and began to run
down the hill and up the next hill, and then we were in
another village and he didn't follow us anymore. Since
he was drunk, he couldn't run so good, [laughter].

But this man who wanted to buy me, he followed us
with his car--he had a car and a chauffeur — everywhere.
How he found us I don't know, because in those parts
there were no streets or roads. But he found us when we
were on the other side, and he followed us everywhere
we were . When we went in a restaurant to eat, there was
this man at the other table, always sitting and looking
at me. My husband reminded me of a story which he knew
from Hermann Bahr, an Austrian writer. He told of a
wife who was always so sorry that she had no more courtiers
since she was married, so her husband paid a beadle, a
church servant, to sit always at the next table and look
at her, and she was happy. Now my husband said, "There,
that's your beadle again!" [laughter]

Then we came to Catania, but not the big Catania.
There's a big Catania on Sicilia, but this was a smaller
village of the same name. We went to the post office,
because we thought there would be some money again. But
we had great difficulties because we had German passports
and they couldn't read German, of course. They didn't want

204

to pay us out. There was a gentleman, an older gentleman,
with a younger gentleman. He saw the whole story and saw
how we tried to persuade thean that we are we. So he said,
"You know, you have to have an identification card, but
you have to have two witnesses to get that. I and my
nephew here will be your witnesses." We never had seen
this man before. "We will be your witnesses; we will
testify that you are what you say on your passport, and
then it's easy to get your money." So we went to the
mairie [the town hall] , and he and his nephew testified
that we are Feuchtwangers. Everything was all right from
then on. But then, of course, we couldn't right away go
away, and he wanted to invite us for dinner to a restaurant,
I was with him, and my husband went with his nephew.
And then he said, "Why don't you come with me? I have
a villa in the suburbs, outside of the village. What
does this young man, your husband, do for you? I am
rich and you can stay with me." So everywhere we came
they wanted to marry me. [laughter] It was so difficult
because we always owed something to the people because
they did something for us.
WESCHLER: But you didn't owe than that.
FEUCHTWANGER: No, that was too much.

WESCHLER: A general question, just about walking around:
I don't want to show all of our cards yet, but this, after

205

all, was a year away from World War I, a war in which
Italy is going to be fighting Germany.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but not right in the beginning.
WESCHLER: I was going to ask: was there any tension at
all from being German in Italy?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. The Italians were very
much in awe of Germany, because sometimes they saw their
battleships coming. I remember that once, in the be-
ginning, when we were still on the Riviera, there was a
schoolteacher who came up and said, "That's the German
navy." You know, to tell us. Full of awe. Italy was
a rather poor and small country, and they were honored to
be the allies of Germany. There were three allies:
Germany, Austria, and Italy. But then when the war
began, they knew that it is not possible to win the war,
even with Germany, so they went to the Allies.
WESCHLER: Would you say there was tension for French
or English people in Italy?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, that was later. That was in Tunisia.
There they were against the French and for the Germans also.
Also, Krupp, for instance, couldn't have stood there
except that Germany was the big brother of Italy.
WESCHLER: In general, in 1913, were there any indications
that international relations were getting tense?
FEUCHTWANGER: No. In Italy they were not so much interested,

206

maybe. But before, when we left the French Riviera, I
tried to change something at the bank. I had some kind
of German bonds, from my grandmother, seme hundred dollars
or so, and I went to a bank in Nice to ask if I can change
it into francs. But they said they cannot do that because
it has no value in France. Then this director said, "I
want to speak with you as a German." He asked me into
his private room, and he told me, "You know, we are very
much afraid of Germany. You have there a man, your emperor,
who just has to push a button and there is a war." Because
the emperor always made those speeches about the jump
to Agadir. He spoke out, always menacing against the
French. That was in Morocco. He spoke about the jump
to Agadir, the tiger jump to Agadir, or something like
that, because in Morocco was the Mannesmanngesellschaf t ,
a big factory for arms and heavy industry. Mannesmann
had a big interest there, and the emperor was always
menacing to do that and that if the French didn't do that
and that. I don't remember the occasions, but I only
remember these kind of speeches he made.
WESCHLER: Well, you really seemed to be living a very
Bohemian and luscious life. Could you conceive, in 1913,
with the life you were leading that the world was on the
edge of war?
FEUCHTWANGER: Not at all, no. We thought he just was

207

speaking, you know. We laughed about the emperor. There
was a wordplay which is difficult, maybe, to translate:

the old first emperor, Wilhelm I, he was called the Greise
Kaiser; that means the "Old Man Kaiser." His son, who
was Friedrich [III] and was only emperor for ninety days
because he died of cancer, he was called the Weise
Kaiser; he was a wise and very mild and peaceful man. And
Emperor Wilhelm II was called the Reise Kaiser . That means
he was always on a trip, to get allies or so.
WESCHLER: Reise means traveling.

FEUCHTWANGER: Traveling. Ja, ja. The Greise Kaiser,
the Weise Kaiser, and the Reise Kaiser. So in Bavaria
we always laughed at him. Also, there was a dish in
Bavaria, which is made out of eggs and flour, a kind of
omelette. And that was called the Kaiserschraarren.
In the dialect, Schmarren means "stupid speeches" or
something like that. The speeches were called Schmarren ,
but you could also say to somebody, "Oh, don't speak this
Schmarren. " This nonsense. So when the kaiser was making
his speeches, they always called it the Kaiser schmarren.
WESCHLER: So your emperor's speeches were scrambled eggs.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , scrambled eggs. Ja , ja, you could say
that. [laughter]

WESCHLER: Well, let's get back to you in Italy, and the
end of your trip.

208

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Then we were there in this little town,
Catania. Of course, everywhere we went to eat, the other
people, who were pharmacists or doctors, all those
n6bile, the noble people of the little village, they were
at the other table. When they heard there's something
like that, like we were there, some foreigners, then they
came to look at the foreigners. It was the only thing
which happened in years. They spoke with us; then they
spoke about literature. When they found out that ray
husband was a critic and a doctor also, they spoke
about [Gabriel] D'Annunzio. D'Annunzio was the greatest
poet in those days in Italy. Someone spoke about a certain
plant which plays a role in one of D'Annunzio 's works--
a I honeysiickle] plant in the garden. My husband said,
"I never saw this plant. What is it? How is it looking?"
And then a man got up--it was in the middle of the night
so he took his flashlight — and he looked for this plant
and brought one so we would see what this plant is.
WESCHLER: D'Annunzio was very much appreciated at that
time in Italy.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but he was also somewhat ridiculed
a little bit. His ways as a playboy and all that, and with
this famous actress Eleonora Duse — he didn't treat her
very well sometimes. So he was not very popular. He
was admired but not popular.

209

WESCHLER: What did your husband think of him?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he thought him an interesting poet but
also too refined. He didn't say that, that there's any-
thing to say. But it was already the time when my husband
began to doubt about 1 'art pour 1 'art .
WESCHLER: Art for art's sake.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja.

WESCHLER: Okay, well, let's continue with you. I would
think at this point you're getting near Christmas in Italy.
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes. Then we went around the southernmost
part of Europe. That is on the sole of the boot of Italy.
It was already beginning to get cold, and finally we
arrived at Scylla and Charybdis — that is from the Odyssey,
you know. Ja, ja. We arrived at Scylla, and this was
Christmas. Our money was always less and less, so we
had to take what we found. It was in a little inn;
below was the inn itself where people were sitting and
drinking wine. We had the upper story where our room was,
but this room had a big crack in the middle, and we could
see down to the people who were sitting there and drinking
wine, and hear what they spoke about us. It was a terrible
night; it was a tempest. This little inn was on a rock,
and the sea was attacking the rock, you could say, and
the sprays came through the windows inside. It was howling,
and there was no light except candles. And below in this

210

roam they had only candles, and it was very eerie. That

was our Christmas.

WESCHLER: It was a Christmas worthy of the epic location.

Well, you're about to go between the Scylla and the

Charybdis of 1913 and 1914.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, and from then on we went to Sicily.

Sicily is known as the warmest part of Europe, so we wanted

to go to Sicily during the winter. We went first to

Messina; that is the port. When we came by ship, there were

beautiful Renaissance palazzi or baroque palaces, and it

was very imposing. Then we arrived and wanted to look

at those palaces. But there were only the fronts; in the rear,

it was all ruins from the earthquake which was several

years before. But it had never again been built up; they

had no money. Nevertheless, the whole front on the side

of the ocean was intact.

WESCHLER: Was it because it had not been taken down by

the earthquake or because they had built up just the front?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, they didn't build it up; it was just

standing. It must be that the front was more solid than

the rear. And everything was down. We had to go a long

time through the ruins until we came to an inn, where we

then lived. We came to a church, where a goat was grazing

the grass which came out between this rubble. And a

priest was kneeling before something which before was

211

probably an altar. It was all so very exciting — and, at
the same time, depressing. But the blue sky was above,
and the ruins were very white; it was beautiful and
depressing at the same tiane.

WESCHLER: That site is an eerie site to have in 1914;
it's almost like a symbol of the coming year.
FEUCHTVJANGER: Ja , ja. But this earthquake, I think,
was in 1906. And nothing had been built up. It was a
very poor country. Mostly Sicily was poor. In Capri we
met also a count who had a big estate in Sicily. He said,
"Nobody can go to Sicily, of the rich people, on account
of the Mafia." It was absolutely — as if — it was almost
official that the Mafia was governing Sicily. But he said
he could go because every year he paid a very large sum to
the Mafia so he would be protected, he and his children.
He had to buy his protection there. He could go to his
estate.

WESCHLER: What kind of contact did you have with the
Mafia, if any?

FEUCHTWANGER: We had no direct contact with the Mafia,
but we saw a lot of what they did. In those countries,
there is still the old Greek custom that the foreigner is
holy. The foreigner was not in danger. Sometimes when
we walked and hiked, the people told us, "You can do that,
but we couldn't do it." For instance, on one street, we

212

were on the wrong road. We went through, and there were
workmen working on the roads. They were very sorry that
I, as a woman, had to hike. And they said, "Can we buy
some fazzoletti from you?"--that means handkerchiefs,
to sell from our backpacks — "So you can buy your wife a
donkey, that she shouldn't have to go always on foot."
People were very humane there, but you never knew what
they were also in the other way. People were very poor —
also the Mafia was not rich there. They became only rich
when they went to America to make some money. Sometimes
they came back with their money. But there nobody could
get rich. It was a very poor country, and also not very
fertile. On one road we were, they told us that yesterday
they killed a milkman there. But they found only a ten
centesemi in his pocket. For everything, they killed. They
were so poor .

And then, when we wandered in about the middle of
Sicily we came to the town named Sperlinga. Lion always
told me a story about this Sperlinga which he heard in
his Latin class: "Quod Sicilia placavit, sola Sperlinga
negavit." That means this little town, this very old town,
from the ancient times, did always something else than
the others: "What all Sicily liked to do, only Sperlinga
didn't like to do." This little town or village was on
the top of a hill, and the road went below. And there were

213

two carabinieri — that is, policemen — who had very beautiful
uniforms with long feathers, very colorful, and those hats
which look like Napoleon hats. They were waving to us and
shouting nice words of welcome. We passed, and when we
came to the next village, somebody said, "Did you hear
about those two carabinier is? " We said, "Yes, we saw them."
"Well, they are already dead; they killed them." Some of
the Mafia had killed those two men.
WESCHLER: Do you have any idea why?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. There was always vendettas, they called
it. . Maybe some of the police killed one of the Mafia, so
the Mafia killed them. The vendetta was the only thing
which reigned there.

WESCHLER: Did you climb Mount Etna when you were there?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, we climbed Mount Etna, and that was
also a very funny experience. It is a very high mountain.
It's about 10,000 feet high, but that doesn't mean like
in Yosemite or somewhere, because it began from the ocean.
When you go to a mountain here, you are already about
1,000 feet high when you begin to climb. So it was a very
long climb. We had to have a guide, because there are so
many little mountains around and you never know which
one really goes to the top. We had a guide, and the guide
had a mule with him, but we had no mule. We went beside the
guide. It was very tiring, because when you made one

214

step, you rolled two steps back because all is volcano;

it is all . . .

WESCHLER: ...pumice.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . Something like that. It was rolling

back, and it was very tiring. There was an osservatorio ,

almost on top, where you could stay overnight, to go to

the top later, the next day, because it became always already

dark, even if you began very early. And the osservatorio —

it had no heat, and there was snow around it. There is

always snow, eternal snow, around the top of the Etna.

There was nothing: nothing to eat and nothing to heat,

not even covers or something like that. We were very cold,

and we tried to get up very early to the top; what [else]

could you do when it's so cold?

Then, as soon as we were on the top, there was a terrible
trembling. The whole mountain jumped up and down. We
heard also rolling noises from inside of the crater. There
came smoke out, and it smelled of sulfur, and there was
a great earthquake. It seemed like the beginning of an
eruption. So our guide, who was beside us, all of a sudden
jumped on his mule, and away he went; we didn't even
see him anymore. We were alone on this mountain. But
we knew about where it goes down: it's easier to go down
than to go up. Anyway, we found our way to a village, but
not where we came f rom--another village. And when we went

215

to this village, it was all dovm. There was no house stand-
ing anymore. A big crack went through the cemetery, and
the bones of the dead had jumped out.

WESCHLER: What do you mean? The bones actually...?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . The sarcophagi — everything had broken
open.

WESCHLER: The coffins had broken open?

FEUCHTWANGER: The coffins had broken open, and the bones
jumped out during the earthquake. We saw the bones lying
there. All the women and children died in the houses.
The men were out in the fields. They didn't die. Only
the women and children.

WESCHLER: Then there was a great deal of mourning going
on.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, of course, ja. We came then to the
next, bigger village, and there the church had a big
service for all those dead. Very beautiful are those
villages. They are all built of the pumice stone, which
is not porous, like you think, but black and white. And
all that is like a checkerboard. The houses are built
in black and white. Also the churches.
WESCHLER: Had there been an eruption at that time?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was not an eruption. It was only
an earthquake. But it sounded, it felt like an eruption,
because inside there was so much movement and the thick

216

clouds of smoke came out, and the sulfur.

WESCHLER: Do you have any idea how many people died during

that time?

FEUCHTWANGER: It wasn't so many, you know. It was just

in these little villages. The cities far away felt the

earthquake, but nobody died there. But the people are

used to that. Also they build their houses again on the

same place where the earthquake was.

217

TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE
JUNE 30, 1975

WESCHLER: Today we're going to do a very brief backtrack-
ing, and then we're going to come to the Sicilian spring
of 1914. But you might start with some stories about
Melilli and tell us what that is.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. We had again some money, which we
had got at the post office with our new legitimization
card, and we came through Melilli, which was an ancient
town. There was a famous battle there during the Greek
times. Greater Greece, it was called. Sicily was part
of Greece.

WESCHLER: Magna Graecia.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja, that's true. We went to the
cathedral because from far away you could see very high
up this cathedral . There were an immense amount of steps
going up to the cathedral. We saw women coming with ves-
sels full of water, and on their knees they washed the whole
steps and dried than with their long black hair. The next
day, when there was a big celebration of this holiday,
they brought out all the animals which they had into the
cathedral--the dogs, the oxen, the donkeys, and
the cocks--and all had to bend their heads down to the
floor and get blessed by the priest.

218

WESCHLER: This was almost more heathen than Christian.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I think so, too; it must be an old
custom. Then later we came to a little village, and when
we left the next day to go farther on our adventures,
a man followed us and asked us if we would buy some old
coins. My husband said, "We don't have the money for
that." But he insisted and showed us one which was
actually the medal of the cattle exhibition from the year
before. That was all what he had. My husband didn't tell
him that he knew that it was a fake; he only said,
"I'm sorry, we don't buy any souvenirs because we don't
have the money. That's why we're hiking." But the man
muttered something like: "There are still knives in Sicily."
So my husband said, "Yes, your knives; I have a gun in
my pocket." And he patted his pocket where the Baedeker
was. And the man disappeared.

Some days later, there was another adventure, which
wasn't so good. When my husband left the inn, he overturned
his ankle, but he managed to go to the next village, which,
I remember, was called Vittoria. We said alv\:ays he was
victorious with his ankle. But the ankle began to swell
terribly and was also very painful. So I went to the
pharmacy to get some liquor alum in acetat is [Burow's
solution] . It is a medicine to make compresses, for an
astringent. In those days in Germany, everybody used that

218a

for everything, whether it was a head cold or whatever.

Anyway the pharmacist, who was usually the only literate

man in those villages (except the doctor), he understood

ray Latin, and I got the right thing. But when I wanted

to go back to the inn, there was a whole bunch of young

people, young boys, who surrounded me and pressed me against

the wall. I always boasted that I could defend myself,

but those were a little too many. Anyway, I began to

shout in German, mixed in with some Sicilian bad words,

and they let go of me and ran away. I think it was not

so much my German or the bad words, but they remembered

probably the hospitality which was there still fron the

times of the Greeks.

WESCHLER: Before we turned on the machine, we were saying

that it wasn't that you were courageous; it's just that

you lacked the fantasy to see how dangerous a situation

it was.

FEUCKTWANGER: Yes. And also, I had to be courageous:

There was no other way to be. There was no merit in it.

[laughter]

WESCHLER: Okay. Well, we might proceed now to the story

of Count Li Destri.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . After we went to Sperlinga, where they

killed those two policemen, we arrived at another village

[Gangi] , which was high up on a hill, and very steep. I

219

think we spoke about that. We went again to the post office,
as usual, to see if there was some money. Before that we went
to a vedova; that is a widow who usually had one bed for rent.
So we asked for a vedova, and the kids brought us to a
vedova . Then we went to the post office. A man came in to
send a telegram, and he saw us standing there. The man
absolutely didn't fit into the whole landscape. He had
English plus-fours, riding pants, and a monocle, and a
black-and-white sport coat. He was absolutely out of
another world. He immediately saw that we are also not
belonging there. He spoke with me, and the first thing
what he said were angry words. He said, "A lady like you
shouldn't be so tanned. Your face and your neck are
tanned; you should take more care of your skin. " Then he
asked me what we are doing here, and we said we are just
wandering around. Then he found that my husband spoke
Italian and that he was a rather literate man, and he
said, "Have you got a good stay for overnight?" So I said,
"Yes, we have a room with a widow." We had our backpack
with us still, because we didn't leave it: it was all we
had in the backpacks. So then he motioned to a policeman,
the only policeman of the little town, and told him to
carry our backpacks. We went, and he said he is looking
[to see] if it's well enough, this room. So when we came
there, the landlady began to cry and said, "I knew imme-
diately those were no good, and now comes the police. What

220

did they do? Are they criminals?" Then he said, "Shut
up," to the woman, and said, "Those people are not staying
with you. They are my guests in the castle." He paid her
something. We didn't want him to pay, but he didn't accept
it. He said we are his guests, and he paid. So we went
to his castle, which was even higher up on a rock, an old
Spanish castle, and very forbidding from outside. But inside
it was rather comfortable, and the count went with us to
our bedroom. He even looked under the bed [to see] if all
the commodities were there. He ordered the policeman around,
that he had to be our servant. Then we had a meal, and
for this meal all the people from the little town brought to
their master and governor — I think he was a kind of gov-
ernor there also--all what he needed to eat. The peasants had
blue long coats and looked very, very picturesque.
One brought a basket of artichokes; another brought some
chickens — it was absolutely a procession — and [they brought]
also vegetables, tomatoes, and everything, and put it down
before his feet, just like in ancient times. Then the
policeman was also the cook. He cooked a very good meal.
He asked how long would we stay there. We said, "I think we
go on tomorrow to Palermo." He said, "No, you have to stay
a little bit longer here, because tomorrow there will be a
big procession. We've had a long drought, and all the
vineyards" — which belonged to him; he had a beautiful wine.

221

which he offered us--"and all those things are in danger.
There is a procession to pray for rain." And we have to
see that. So he ordered us to go higher up on the tower
of the castle. There was a little balcony; a wrought-iron
balcony. So there we stood. And below, on this very steep
and also forbidding little street, the procession went
through, with the priest, of course, before. Then came the
maids, the girls, and then came the boys, who had no shirts
on and were naked to the belt. They beat themselves with
chains until blood came out from their back. Then came the
count with the policeman, who held an umbrella above his
head; so that was a kind of palanquin. So they went up
and down those steep hills, and lo and behold, there came
some drops of rain. Everybody said it's a miracle, and they
said it is only the strangers brought this miracle. It wasn't
much of a rain, you know, [laughter] but still a gesture.
WESCHLER: Was the count completely part of the ceremony,
or did he feel it was strange?

FEUCHTWANGER: Absolutely, he had to be there.
WESCHLER: Did he feel it was strange?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, no, that was the tradition and all that.
He didn't feel strange. Also the Italians are not inhibited;
they are very outgoing, and they like the showing. This
whole thing was so beautiful and colorful--all the costumes.
So he was just proud to show it to us, you know.

222

Then we went on, and later we went to the Segesta,
which is in the middle of Sicily, a beautiful ruin of a
temple. You see it from higher up, and then there is a
big valley around. In the middle of the valley there is
again a hill, and there is Segesta. It looks a little bit
too — what should I say? — ornamental, maybe. I have seen
much more beautiful ruins which were much more impressive
than this one, but still it was very beautiful to see.

Then we came to Palermo, and we forgot all about the
count. My husband had the first pajama that existed in
those days in Munich. But this pajama was too much in use,
so it began to go apart. We lived at the house of a beadle,
and his wife had a sewing machine. So I said I will try
to make pajamas myself. There was nothing to buy like that
in Italy. So I went into a store, where there are some
materials to buy, and before I came to the store, I met the
count on the street. Oh, he was so happy to see me, and he
asked what I am doing, and I said, "I am just going to buy
some material for pajamas." He said, "I accompany you so
you woiald get the right thing, and also so that everything
will be all right and helpful." We got some violet material
[laughter] of which I made then a pajama, which even fitted.
The count invited us into his city palace for dinner. There
was a maid there, and it was very, very noble and quiet.
It was quite something; absolutely different than this village,

223

Here he was really the count. After our dinner--it was
the use in Germany to give always a tip to the cook — my
husband went into the kitchen to give the tip. But the cook
didn't understand that, and she gave my husband her hand;
it was a handshake. He didn't dare to insist that she take
the money because he was afraid that Sicilian hospitality
would be wounded, [laughter]

WESCHLER: And there are lots of knives in Sicily.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. But a kitchen knife was not so dangerous.
[laughter]

WESCHLER: What was Count Li Destri the count of, all of
Sicily or just that area?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was just a rich man. He was very rich.
He owned all this land around, and most of all he had wine.
The wine was called Monte Corvo. Really it was not just
a noble wine, as the French or Rhine wines are, but it was
a very, very pleasant wine, and rather strong, also. The
funny thing was that forty years afterwards I found the same
wine here in a wine shop. So it must have become rather
famous, that it came even from Sicily to California.
WESCHLER: Well, any other stories of life in Palermo?
FEUCHTWANGER: Palermo was just--we went to.... [pause in
tape] It has a very famous monastery and also church there,
and this was very interesting. We went also up to the
Mount Pellegrino, because it's a beautiful view there. This

224

town where we went was rather well known [Monreale] . There
were even some strangers we met there, some English. It
is all very influenced by Moorish, a Moorish-Gothic mixture.
The roofs were all golden there. But it was a little too
pleasant, you know? It was not what we have seen before of
antique cathedrals or so. It was a little playful, I would
say. Also it was imposing with this golden roof.

But then we went to the other side of Palermo, back
to the east, and there is a town which is called Cefalu.
This is also a very old town. There it was rather difficult
also to get something to sleep, but we finally found a room.
But there was a funny noise. When we came into the room, it
was droning; and we looked on the ceiling, and there was
about ten inches of flies around, which made this noise.
Absolutely--they were sitting one on top of the other. It
was absolutely covered with flies. We said we couldn't sleep
there because they would be attracted when we sleep. I
told them, "But we cannot sleep here; it is impossible."
So they said, "You take the kerosene lamp out from this room
and put it in the next room and leave only a little opening.
The light will attract the flies." And really they came in
thick bundles, the flies came out. It was such a noise, you
know, this rrrr-zzzz. Finally there was not a single fly
anymore in there, and we could sleep. People really know
what to do even without poison and chemicals.

225

But why we came there was also the cathedral, and this
was one of the greatest impressions I had, we both had. It
was a Byzantine Christ, very big, only mostly the head, as
usual in those Byz [antine works] --like the icons, but enor-
mous; the whole wall of the church. It must be one of the
most beautiful paintings, or murals, which exists, and it
was still in very good shape. And just the right light, not
too dark, so we could still see. It's a fantastic impression,
this Christ. Cefalu, it's called: that means in Latin, I think,
hat. There's a big rock there which looks like a hat, and
it goes out to the Mediterranean. So this was a very funny
combination of flies and the greatest, most beautiful Christ
that we have seen.

WESCHLER: Did you go then on to Syracuse?

FEUCHTWANGER: Then we went just across Sicily to Girgenti.
From there we saw Segesta, and we went also to Segesta to see it.
From there we went to Girgenti, which is Agrigento in
Latin, an old town, a Greek town also. The whole town is
still in very good shape, also many, many houses and temples.
There you could see again some Swedes and foreigners, not
like the unknown Sicily. In the neighborhood of Girgenti
is Selinunte. This also was the greatest one of--there are
three things which impressed us most: one was Paestum,
which is near Pompeii, this old Greek temple which is still
standing there (there are two temples, but one is the

226

biggest one; they are in the Dorisch style, the oldest
kind of Greek temples); secondly, this head of the Christ;
and then Selinunte, because Selinunte was the biggest Greek
temple which ever existed, but from an earthquake it had
fallen down and all the columns were right in the shape of
the temple. It came all down on one side and, when you went
on a little hill, you could see the shape of the temple
lying down. The columns were very big columns and crenels,
and all was yellow, burned yellow from the sun. There was
nothing but little palmettos, little wild vegetation, and
the hot air, and this beautiful temple there.
WESCHLER: Would you say that Lion's sympathies were more
Latin or Greek? Or does that question make any sense?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, I think Greek was — of course, it was of
greater value, because the Romans imitated the Greek. But he
was also a great admirer of Cicero and all the Roman
writers — Ovid. The plays, the dramas, were the Greek dramas.
WESCHLER: Were his Greek interests primarily the playwrights?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, Socrates, for instance, Plato, all the
philosophers, and Aristotle. He was at home with them.
They were a kind of--as if he had studied with them. They
were so natural, so near to him.

WESCHLER: And that just came up in common conversation?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, and in conversation I learned every-
thing about that, even a little Greek, if it was necessary.

227

Even the Greek alphabet, and also how it is written.

It helped me when I was in Russia: I could read a little;

I didn't understand what I read, of course, but at least

r could then use the letters.

WESCHLER: Okay, well, let's continue on.

FEUCHTWANGER: Then when we came from there, then we wanted

to go more to the west. There is a madeira, a very good

wine for the pope, which is made there in a winery.

But then we saw many people coming toward us, mostly
peasants on these donkeys, with silver bells and beautifully
dressed, and also the donkeys were in colorful embroideries.
We asked one where they are going and what this is all
about. They said, "Oh, we are going to the fiesta of St.
Aeschylos." He was a saint, Aeschylus. So we heard that
there is a great festival that was [celebrating] , I think,
2,000 years that the amphitheatre [at Syracuse] has been
built. The first time, the Agamemnon played there. And for
this occasion they played Agamemnon again. And this, of
course, it was something what we had to see.

WESCHLER: Now, Aeschylus had become known as St. Aeschylos?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, the people didn't know: why should there
be a fiesta or a feast or holiday, if it isn't for a saint?
They didn't know anything about Greek or Latin. They only
knew about saints. So that, of course, there just was
the fiesta, the feast of St. Aeschylos.

228

On our way we heard about something else. We heard
about the Cava d'Ispica. That is a cave more to the middle
of Sicily, and it's very difficult to find. We had to have
a guide, who had also his mule with him. We walked and
we came to this cave. It was a valley. What I remember is
something which has nothing to do with antiquity and all
that, but he gathered some wild asparagus on our way. I
said, "What are you doing?" He said, "You will see." Then
we came to this valley which was very narrow. Both sides
were very steep walls of the mountains, and in these walls
were cut those caves. You had to go up on rope ladders.
My husband was a very good rope climber, so he climbed up,
and they were all lived in. There were people living there.
It was from the antique times, and maybe it was even
from the very early Christians who were there, hidden. Any-
way, the people were so poor they were glad to live there.
They had no houses. They lived there, and they had always a
hole in the ceiling and could go from the upper story to
the lower story with a rope. And the whole thing went to
the sole of the valley with those ladders, those rope
ladders .

WESCHLER: What was your response at that point to all that
poverty? Did it make you angry?

FEUCHTWANGER: It's a funny thing that with people so poor
as they were, they were all happy. They were singing, and

229

had something to eat, and they had not to — you know, the
climate is very good. Of course, there are maybe two months
where it is cold or rainy, but the whole year they didn't need
heat, they didn't need much clothes. Things were growing.
They had a lot of corn, or so. No wheat at all! Corn was
the only thing, and some macaroni. But the macaroni was
for the feast, for the holidays. But they had goats which
they could eat, and then there were wild hares there. And
mostly fruit was growing there because around the Etna it's
very fertile, this lava. It's very fertile ground. So
they were all happy, and they didn't know better. The
children didn't have to go to school if they didn't want,
and there were no teachers and no schools there. They
were just happy. While we couldn't say that they were--
their clothes were whole: they were not torn--but, of
course, all was simple. You never had the feeling that
people were really poor in those days. Maybe they didn't
know better: there was not television where they could see
how the rich lived.

WESCHLER: For you, who did know, though, was seeing this
poverty in any way a politicizing experience in terms of
its making you angry?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. We envied them because they were so happy,
and they didn't need anything. It was more like when you
go to Indian philosophy: you don't need so much luxury.

230

Also in those days we were away from luxury. We had seen
that in Monte Carlo and all that, and we liked much better
the nature and those beautiful things from the antique
times that we could see. We were just filled from that.
Also the people were very glad to see us, and we were im-
mediately welcomed.

Then we saw also why our guide had gathered this
wild asparagus: he brought some raw eggs with him, and in
the middle of the valley he made a little fire. He had also
a pan, and so he made some omelettes with wild asparagus.
That was the best thing I ever ate. I envied the people who
had all those things growing around. They had nuts and all
that. It was real — they were in those back-to-nature times.
So we didn't think that they were poor, really.
WESCHLER: I'm just thinking of Jud Suss. There is this
sense of the serenity of poverty that comes through there.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. I think so, too. Also Rilke, in
one of his poems, writes about that. There's a great shine
of poverty, or something.

WESCHLER: So, although it is true that in the next several
years Lion is going to become more and more political,
it was not in response to this?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was just — you heard probably of the
Sicilian spring, the spring of Sicily: it was so beautiful
then in spring, all the almond trees were flowering, and it

231

was all pink — the whole landscape was pink. It was just
beautiful. We forgot all about that Christmas when we were
in this terrible weather, you know, where the crack was in
the ceiling and all that; we forget about that immediately.
WESCHLEH: Well, we're in the Sicilian spring, and by August
of this year. World War I will begin. What happens in .
between?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but then we went again across to the
other side, to Trapani. From there, we took a boat. That
is on the western side of the island, and from there--a
little more to the south--you could see from far already
the coast of Africa. On a clear day. So we went to Africa.
WESCHLER: Before you leave Italy — this is again a question
leading to World War I — on the other side of the Adriatic
were the Balkans, and it was in the Balkans that the war
was going to begin. Was there any sense of that tension
in Italy?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all.
WESCHLER: It wasn't talked about at all?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, the Italians were not very political,
and we were even less political. We just didn't like the
emperor. He was always talking. But we were so far away.
Prussia was so far away in the north somewhere, you know,
and we always tended to the south, like Goethe, and all
those people.

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Oh, yes, I have to tell you something else: I
had the intention to follow Goethe, who wrote The Italian
Journey, I think it's called. I thought we should go there
where he was and [note] what were his greatest impressions.
He tells about a villa, which in those days was also a
kind of castle, a country castle of the Prince [Ferdinando]
of Pallagonia. He said this Prince of Pallagonia was a
madman, absolutely mad. One of the funniest impressions
was when Goethe went to his castle, because when you enter
the courtyard, there were some columns around, arches. And
on top of the columns, on the roofs, there were the most
bizarre sculptures; they were almost frightening in their ex-
tortions and contortions. He speaks a long time about it,
and I wanted to see that. So we went, and it was difficult
to find anybody who knew about it. But finally we found this
villa, and it was really impressing. Not too much fright-
ening, but still I could see how it impressed Goethe. Then
we went on, and all of a sudden we came to a rather — not a
very elegant-looking house, made of wood. It was in the
same neighborhood, inside the wall. The door was ajar,
and we looked in, and we were really frightened. There was
a monk standing inside, pale like death, not moving. We
didn't know if we can go in or not, and he didn't say any-
thing. So we opened the door more and went in, and then we
found out he was of wax. It was so eerie: it was half-dark.

233

just so you could see his face. Then we went on. There was a
very narrow corridor; on both sides were cells, and every-
where were monks. One was kneeling before an altar; one
was sleeping; one was studying. And it was a whole monastery,
but all of wax. And this also this Prince Pallagonia made.
WESCHLER: And that you didn't know about?
FEUCHTWANGER: We didn't know anything before, but it was
really fantastic.

WESCHLER: Where was this, exactly?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was in the neighborhood of Palermo. So
we found always things which were interesting, and nobody
knew about it. If I hadn't said I wanted to see the castle
of Pallagonia, we wouldn't have seen that. But Goethe
doesn't speak about those monks; he only speaks about the
contortions of those sculptures.

WESCHLER: When people read this interview, you may have
started a rush of tourists to that haunted house. One other
general question, before you go to Africa: you say that Lion
was doing some writing of articles.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. For instance, he wrote also an article
for the Frankfurter Zeitung about an election in a little
village. It was the most beautiful thing you could imagine.
It was on the other side of Calabria, on the lonisch coast,
which goes to the Balkans--that side. This little village
had a market place; it was absolutely steep. It was difficult

234

to go up and down on this place. It was this day of the
election, the first election that they had there, and they
had all kinds of things hanging out from their windows
which were in all colors. Later I saw that in Spain during
a bullfight. .They themselves had beautiful costumes.
The most beautiful costumes you imagine were in this part.
Also, in this Albanian [section of Calabria], where we were,
the people couldn't read or write; so they could not make
elections with programs, only with the picture of the man
who has to be elected. But there was no competition--it
was only one man--so it was very easy.
WESCHLER: Vote for this picture.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. For this picture. The whole thing —
everything what they made in Italy and mostly in the south
is a big fiesta, a big feast with dancing and singing and
drinking. But they were never drunk. That was the funny
thing. They all had wine, because they cultivated the wine
themselves, but you never saw a drunken Italian there.
Although they were not spoiled with eating, we found what
they ate very good. Some things were even excellent. They
had pigeons there which they had--maybe it was very inhuman,
but we didn't know how it was: they held the pigeons in a
dark room, so they wouldn't develop any feathers and became
very fat--very big and very fat. Later, I saw the same
thing at the big delicatessens in Germany, also, and in

235

France. They made barbecues with them. They turned them

around, over wood mostly, wood which was very well scented,

all that wood from old vineyards. So it was the greatest

delicatessen you can imagine. They had that, and they

didn't even know how good it was. But for instance, you could

find one day those pigeons, but the next day they had some

old lamb meat which you couldn't eat — it was like shoe

soles. But they didn't care; they ate the one and the

other.

WESCHLER: Getting back to this question about Lion....

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. Then he wrote about these elections, and

all the color, what a great fiesta that was, that they didn't

care who was elected, they didn't even know what it was. It

just was an occasion to be gay, to sing and to dance, and

to have beautiful colors.

WESCHLER: I'm trying to imagine him writing. Did he have

a typewriter with him?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, no, that was not invented yet. It was

invented, but a very rare thing.

WESCHLER: So he would be writing these out. Would he write

at desks, or was he outside? I'm just trying to get an image

of him writing at that time.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , wherever he found a table he was sitting

down writing. We had not always tables in the rooms where

we lived. I told you once we were in a pigeon coop. So

236

he couldn't write there. Sometimes he wrote when we were on
the beach. We ate our sardines when we didn't have anything
else. There were very cheap sardines there, so we ate sar-
dines, and he wrote then.

WESCHLER: About how much of each day did he write?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he didn't write every day. Just when he
had some mood or he thought, "Now I have to write because
we need some money. " [laughter]

WESCHLER: At that point, was he a laborious writer or did
he write easily and quickly?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he didn't write easily. He was very
conscientious when he wrote. Of course, he wrote a long
thing about the theatre in Syracuse, about Agamemnon.
We came there during the rehearsals; they let us into the
rehearsals. Then there was a man who was sitting there.
We were like little insects in this big amphitheatre. The
man who directed saw us and was asking us what we are doing
there. My husband told him that he's a critic and he wants
to write about it. So he told us more about his intentions
and also that--they both were of the same opinion, that that
doesn't need much scenery because there was the ocean in the
back. That was intended, when it was built then — building
the amphitheater--that the ocean was in the rear. There was
already so much there from nature. So he had only two small
buildings in the middle, where the choir came out, and things

237

like that. But the funny thing was — it was the. most important
rehearsal, and every actor who spoke you could hear twice.
There was an echo. So the director didn't know really what
to do. But my. husband said, "I know that Reinhardt"--
you know, the famous director--"he had the big cirque filled
with soldiers once. Maybe you should try that." So he went
to the Kaserne, the barracks, and asked there if they could
have the soldiers. The soldiers came, they filled the
[stage], and then it was the right acoustics.
WESCHLER: That was true at the performance as well?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, absolutely. And my husband wrote about
it. When you know German, you can read the critic. Some-
body found it in Germany in some library.
WESCHLER: Were the soldiers in their Italian uniforms?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, they were soldiers just sitting there
enjoying themselves in the sun: they didn't have to go
exercise .

WESCHLER: They could be echo shields.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja .

WESCHLER: Well, I suppose we should go across with you to
Africa now. How did you do that?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . Oh, we took a ship — because my husband
got some money--and went to Tunisia. It was very hot already--
it was July — so hot that people didn't go out during the
midday time! But we liked the heat. I remember I had shoes

238

with not-too-high heels, but still they were heels and
they got stuck in the asphalt. It was so hot that the
asphalt became soft. (Maybe it was not the right mixture
in those days, also.) Anyway, we found those little res-
taurants, and it was just delicious, those French kitchens —
very little portions, but a different kind, and very cheap.
WESCHLER: At that time, Tunisia was a French colony?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was a French colony. My husband went to
the German consul because he wanted to know where we could
go for bathing, where we could find a shore to swim. The
consul said that it is not very easy to find there, because
nobody bathes in the ocean, and mostly not women. There was
no possibility.

V'resCHLER: Because of the Moslem morality?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was just... yes, also maybe that, but it
was more that nobody went. They had big baths in the palaces,
and the others didn't wash themselves, only the Jews.

[Years later] in Catania, where we were, we always
went for breakfast in little cafes. It was very hot, so
the most beautiful thing we ate was caf fe chiaggio, that
is, ice with coffee--just crushed ice with coffee. It was
wonderful. On the other tables were mostly officers,
because there was a big barracks of a whole regiment there.
Of course, when they saw me there, that was something un-
usual, so they came and asked us if we would try the

239

different dishes--they sent us different dishes. One of
these officers came just from Tripoli. Mussolini had made
war in Tripoli and conquered Tripoli. That is to the east
of Tunisia. He said that they were quartered in private
houses, and they all preferred to go to the Jewish quarters
because they were more clean. It was cleaner from their
religion, but still it was more formal. But the Jews were
really more clean also in their apartments. So they
always were glad when they had quarters with the Jews.
WESCHLER: Was there a large Jewish community in Tunisia?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, everywhere in North Africa, more even
in Morocco than Algeria. Everywhere.
WESCHLER: Was that an Orthodox community?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I think so. We didn't know them. But
we saw them, because people told us that you can see the
difference: the Jews were also in costumes, in Arab
costumes, but the women had no veils. The only difference
was that the Jewish women had no veils and the Arab women
had veils.

WESCHLER: Did all Arab women at that time have veils?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, all the females. Also, there were whole
streets which had Jewish shops in the bazaars. There is a
bazaar which is covered, and this had little shops inside —
dark, you know. People sitting on the ground. They were
called bazaars or suqs. The Jews were mostly goldsmiths,

240

made beautiful things from gold — also gold wire, wire things.
In the streets were always the same artisans, in different
streets. So when you were in the goldsmiths' street, then
you knew they were all Jews. That was the only thing,
because we couldn't speak with them if they didn't speak
French. We had not the language, didn't speak Arab.
WESCHLER: Did the Jews speak Hebrew?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, Arabic. Ja, ja. Probably they spoke
also Hebrew, but more for a religious purpose. But the
language was Arabic. And they went along very well with
the Arabs; there were never any difficulties.
WESCHLER: Well, you're still looking for a place to
bathe. What did the German Consulate tell you to do?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. They told us that the only thing is to
go to Hammamet--that is in the south of Tunisia, on the
Gulf of Hammamet--and there maybe there was a possibility
that we could find a place which is very deserted where
we could do what we wanted. But there was no official
place for bathing. And that's what we did, also.

241

TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE TWO
JUNE 30, 1975

WESCHLER: As we turned over the tape, we were talking
about not quite remembering whether things are true, or
rather are things that are told so many times that we think
they're true. And this brings up Goethe.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. Because Goethe wrote one book
about truth and fantasy, and another book, which I told
you about, about his Italian journey. And in this book
about his Italian journey, he writes about the Blue Grotto
[in Capri] .

WESCHLER: What is the name of the book? In German?
FEUCHTWANGER: The Italian Journey. [Die italienische Reise]
WESCHLER: And the book about truth and fantasy is...?
FEUCHTWANGER: That's another book, a more important book,
Dichtung und Wahrheit. This is one of the most important
books ever written. Anyway, he writes about the Blue
Grotto, how terrible it was, because they had to go around
the island with a barque, and it was a terrible storm.
They couldn't find the entrance to the grotto because it
was underneath the water. You can only go there at low
tide, and just for a moment. Then you rush in with the high
tide. You have to duck down so you wouldn't hit your head or
lose your head, [laughter] So anyway, he writes about

242

this terrible storm, how dangerous it was, and how much he
was afraid that they would drown. And then people in Italy,
mostly scientific or literary people, made a study about it,
because he was known so much in Europe, of course. Every-
body knew about Goethe. So they looked at a geological
yearbook and they found out that in this year there was no
storm, and not at all in Capri. That's what I tell you
[laughter] about truth and fantasy.

WESCHLER: Well, we'll hope as many of these stories as
possible are true about Tunisia;, and the ones that aren't
true, we hope they are at least good stories.
FEUCHTWANGER: I try my best. I think also they couldn't
be invented, because they are so near to our whole trip
that it couldn't be very well invented. I could exaggerate,
maybe, sometimes, but I didn't even do that.
WESCHLER: As long as it's a good story, we'll allow you
to keep telling it.

FEUCHTWANGER: Before we went to Hamamet, we went to
Carthage. There was great solitude there. There was nobody
there. Maybe it was the heat. Sometimes in Tunisia, they
came more or less during the winter, in those days, the
French people. It was the heat, probably. We went there,
and we found it beautiful, because this landscape looks
better in great heat. It needs the atmosphere of heat.
There are not many great ruins of Carthage, but the whole

243

atmosphere and the landscape are so beautiful. And we
really found a place where we could bathe in the ocean, in
the sea. When I came out, we saw — in the rear, there were
hills, and just as the sun came down (the sky was red and
the hills were black already) — there was a man with some
camels. He was riding on a camel, and other camels followed
him. It was like a silhouette: you didn't see more than
the black silhouette. And slowly he went. Then the man
began to sing. It was because he saw that there were people
here bathing, and so as not to embarrass us, so we could quickly
cover and dry ourselves, he began to sing, just out of
discretion. But the thing was very beautiful.

Then the next day we went to Sidi-bou-Said. This
is a little place, more to the west. It is also on a hill and
very white, also bleached out from the sun. Everything is
white, of course, and with flat roofs. This little place
was so steep that there was only one street, and this
street was only steps. We went from below high to the top
of the village, only on steps. When you went up, there were
women going up and down with their beautiful costumes and
veils. On their heads they had vessels with water. They
had to bring the water from below, down to up: only the
women had to do that; the men never carried anything.
But it was so beautiful, the whole costumes and also how they
carried themselves, their movements. It's so old, you'd

244

think it was a Greek dance, almost, the way they move.
And when you looked up, you saw the stairs, those steps,
and the steps went right up to the blue sky. I was always
saying it's like Jacob's ladder, because it went absolutely
into the sky. You didn't see anything but sky, white steps
and sky.

Now there is a German consul there, and we are very
good friends. We have a correspondence. She's a lady,
a doctor [Irene Weinrowsky] , and she lives in Carthage —
against the will of the consul general in Tunis because
they said it's not secure enough. But she likes that,
and she's not afraid. She sends me always cards from there,
because I told her how much I liked it there, and when she
can, she finds postcards to remind me again what I have seen
there. She said nothing has changed.
WESCHLER: What was Lion's familiarity with Islam?
FEUCHTWANGER: He liked the Arabs very much. He admired
them also. They are an old culture, and they were good
doctors and astronomers. They were the first to dig those
artesian fountains deep into the [ground] . Lion admired
them, and when you know his book. The Jewess of Toledo —
I think the Arabs who are in this book are most sympathetic
of all of the characters.

WESCHLER: Was it already before he went to Tunisia that he
had his interest in Islam?

245

FEUCHTWANGER: Always, ja, ja. He read very much. He
also learned a little Arabic; he knew a little Arabic.
Every time we went into another country, we tried to know
a little — at least the numbers, so we wouldn't be cheated
too much, [laughter] But he was very much interested in
Arabs.

All those people we met there were wonderful people.
Through the German consul, we made acquaintance with a man
who worked for the German consulate, because the Germans
were very much liked in Tunisia. The French were hated
because they were for so long colonists. They considered
the Germans, first of all, more powerful, with all those
battleships, which were to be seen in the Mediterranean;
and they also thought that Germans someday would free them,
liberate them from the French. So we were very welcome.
Very much welcome. This man whom he introduced, he was
called a kawash; that was a kind of employee, a translator,
also. The consul gave him free time so he could always
come with us and show us everything. This kawash, which
is not a very high position at the consulate, he was a
German. He was married with a German, and he took the
German citizenship because he worked with the consulate.
Afterwards I found out that in the Arabic world, he was a
high personality. He was there more or less to find out
what happened (a kind of spy--not a dangerous spy) in

246

the German politics against the French. He invited us
everywhere to the Arabs.

WESCHLER: What was his name? Do you remember?
FEUCHTWANGER: No. I think I will remember later. [Abdul
El Kader] . First of all, he invited us to a wedding, an
Arabic wedding. This is also something very remarkable.
It was a rich family. The women are together and alone,
in another house even, because they are not allowed to be
without veils with other men. Also the bridegroom has never
seen his bride before. The wedding is the first time he
is seeing his bride. I knew I was invited to the women
for tea, but my husband was invited by the men, and they
said I shouldn't go there while my husband went there, so
they allowed me as a sole woman to come to the men's
marriage festivity. We were sitting there on cushions, and
there were funny things to eat which I didn't like. Either
they were too sweet or too spicy. Now wine, of course,
because they were still Mohammedans. Then came a kind of
theater. There came belly dancers. They were very -tall,
and rather — I wouldn't say fat, but they had good, well,
good proportions.
WESCHLER: Voluptuous.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. And they belly danced, and the men
clapped with their hands, always faster and faster. There
were musicians, and the musicians had to be blind, because

247

there were women and no other men should see women, except

as his own wife. So they had only two blind musicians.

Then they clapped always faster and faster, and finally it

was almost like an orgy. It was a little wild, and my

husband and I, we decided to go. So I don't know what happened

afterwards. [laughter]

The women were also in those carriages which were all
hanged with drapes so nobody could see them. But; they
shouted. Wild shouts came out of those carriages. They
drummed with their hands against their lips, and the shouts
were broken by this movement, very fast. It was very
shrill. It was frightening. And so they went through
the whole city. That was a kind of--probably also from
ancient times.

WESCHLER: This was in anticipation of the marriage, not
in grief.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not in grief at all, no. It was just
the way of feting.

Then we were invited at the suiruner palace of the
sheikh. The sheikh was the king of Tunisia. There was also
a French consul there, because the sheikh had a kind of
autonomy. There was a king there, and the French had their
consul there as a politician, a diplomat. And we were
invited. There is a museum outside of [the palace] . We
saw the museum, which was interesting because most of it

248

was brought from the ocean, from way down in the ocean,
from shipwrecked Greek ships. From those shipwrecked
Greek ships, they found all those things of the ancient
times .

Then we were in the summer palace, and that was also
very funny. The gardeners had always bells so the women
could quickly put their veils on when they came across.
Then we came into a big yard, in the palace, and it was
like in those fairy tales of A Thousand and One Nights .
There was a courtyard, and they were lying there on, kind
of — not beds, it was more like couches. They were lying,
the beautiful slaves, half-naked, and all that. Mostly
they were turned to the wall, sleeping, and we thought
how beautiful they looked; also it all was very colorful.
But when they turned around, they were all old. [laughter]
Very old. Only one or two were young. All those half-
naked women were old. Then they brought us inside, and I
thought, "Now I will see some beautiful old furniture."
But it was all from a Berlin department store — the cheapest
things you can imagine. One big table, and everywhere
mirrors. Everywhere. All around. But the cheapest
things what you can imagine'. On a big table there were
little knicknacks, for example, porcelain frogs with
a wide mouth open, things which in Germany only children
liked, or which you could buy at those fiestas where the

249

people were selling on the ground and the children would

be buying those things. Those were the beautiful luxuries

which we expected.

WESCHLER: This must have been certainly the most exotic

culture you had come in contact with up to that time.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja.

WESCHLER: Did it have any kind of what we call "culture

shock" effect on you?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I was just curious and astonished. I

was a little disappointed that I didn't see more beautiful

things in this palace. But then I thought maybe in the

winter palace there are the beautiful things, and maybe

at the summer palace they had only vacation things.

WESCHLER: But this idea of harems and things like that, did

that shock you in any special way beyond that?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. We knew that from childhood, those

fairy tales from A Thousand and One Nights. That was all

too familiar to me. But there was usually one woman who

was the real wife. The older women were there--they kept

them there even if they didn't like them anymore. Then came

the son of the sheikh, and he kissed all the women around,

and then he kissed me too, "I am not one of them."

[laughter]

WESCHLER: How did the French consul general and the German

consul general get along?

250

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know.

But there was something else. We went to Hammamet,
where he told us to go. There is a little train, a very
small train, which goes through the desert. But we wanted
to walk again. We wanted to walk through the desert like
the children of Israel, and feel the desert sands. But it
was so hot, you can't imagine. The sand was so hot you
could cook eggs in the sand, so hot it was. So first we
went barefoot, but then put on our shoes again. We were
very, very glad when we came finally to Hammamet, because
it was really too hot — even for us. Then before we
came into the village of Hammamet — that is on a little bay,
farther south--we passed the cemetery. The cemetery was
in the middle of the sand. It was the end of the desert
which then went down to the sea. Down a hillside was the
cemetery, and all the monuments, or gravestones, were
fallen down. You know, the sand is always moving. It
looked so deserted, but so beautiful, these fallen down
tombstones, and also very simple, like Jewish tombstones--
only round white stones. It was a great impression.

Then we came into the little town, and there we found
out that there was only one place where we could stay, at
the house of the French consul. He was the only European
there. There were only Arabs. We went there, and he had
a kind of dude ranch. We were paying guests in this house.

251

He was a little man, very quiet and unassuming. We lived
there, and it was beautiful. They always arranged some
excursions. One woman was there; she was the wife of the
man who had the biggest newspaper in Tunisia [La_ Depeche
Tunisienne] . She looked like a peacock. How do you say
those birds which are so many colors? No — it's another
bird. Cockatoo?
WESCHLER: Parrot?

FEUCHTWANGER: Parrot, yes. She had always dresses like
a parrot. Every color what you can imagine was there,
loud colors. It was so funny, in this yellow sand; she
always sang, she had red hair and was very loud and full-
figured. But they were very nice, all of them. And this
lady, she was full of life; she always arranged some
excursions.

Once, we all had little donkeys, and we went a little
farther to some ruins. The donkeys were real small, and
one of the men was very long and thin. He had long legs,
and--I don't know how — he had the smallest donkey. We
had to cross a little river, and all of a sudden the donkey
went away from between his legs, and he was standing with
wide legs in the middle of the water. The donkey was already
on the other side. [laughter] So we had always to laugh
a lot of things.

Then one morning, this lady began to shout, "Elle est

252

acquittee, elle est acquittee!" That means, "She is
acquitted." And this was a sensational trial in Paris.
Every newspaper was full. Also in Italy we read about it.
It was a minister of, I think, finance, and his name was
[Joseph] Caillaux. His wife killed a newspaperman
[Gaston Calmette] because he wrote against him. It was
a big trial, and it could only happen in France. She has
been acquitted. She killed out of love. And this lady
was so full of jubilance that she was acquitted that it
was the first time, I think, I felt something like women's
lib, you know--because she was so glad about this, that she
was acquitted. This was a very interesting story. In no
other country could that have happened. The crime of
passion!

WESCHLER: Well, we must be getting close to the beginning
of the war.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Yes, and then was the Ramadan, the
highest festival of the Arabs. It's mostly a whole month
in those places because they were still very religious
there. They couldn't eat during the day. They ate during
the night. They ate and danced and sang, with big drums.
You could hear from far the drums and this Arabic singing.
Singsong. In the daytime they were hungry and didn't
know what to do with themselves, so they came all to the
French Consul [ate], where there was a little terrace.

253

I was sitting there, and they were all around me sitting
in a crouching position and looking at me. Some spoke
French, and that was all right; but others spoke only
Arabic (at least, they pretended to speak only Arabic
because they hated the French). One was a wonderful,
beautiful man. He was the son of the mayor of Hammamet,
and he fell terribly in love--because he was so hungry,
probably [laughter] — and he was always sitting there
with crossed legs looking at me.

Then right after the Ramadan, one day, the consul,
this little old man, came to us and said, "I'm sorry,
I have to arrest you." "What happened?" He said, "We
are at war with Germany." That's the only news we had.
WESCHLER: You had no idea there was a developing crisis
at all.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, nothing. We didn't even know about
[Gavrilo] Princip and the murder of the Archduke Francis
Ferdinand at Sarajevo. So we didn't know anything be-
cause the newspapers came so late always. He said, "I
have to arrest you." My husband said, "What does it mean?"
He said, "You know, you are free. I just had to tell you
that." But the next day it was something else. He said,
"Now that I have arrested you, I thought if you gave me your
word of honor, that that [would be] enough. But you have
to go to Tunis; they know that you are here. Probably

254

you will be prisoners of war." So we went with the little
train to Tunis, and this train — that was another period
of fear — was filled with... they were [ironically] called
"les joyeux," that is, an army of criminals, captive
criminals. They were in a whole army together. In Germany,
for instance, no criminal could serve in the army. But they
had a special army of criminals. The whole train was full
of them. They spoke about the Germans, and that they go
to war, and one said, "Oh, I'll kill every German I see."
We spoke French rather well, but we were afraid our German
accents would give us away. We didn't speak much. Anyway,
we arrived in Tunis without being killed.

WESCHLER: Were you under guard, or could you have escaped?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, he said he trusts us; there was no guard
there. He brought us to the train, and he said, "You go
to Tunis, and then you will see what happens there. I
can't do more than say you are my prisoners, and you give
your word not to escape." So when we got there, we went to
the hotel where we lived before already, and...
WESCHLER: You were picked up at the station by someone,
or you just went?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, nobody was there. Nobody knew anything.
It was a great chaos. It was great chaos because many
people left. All the people left who were foreigners--
English, or so, and probably many German women. There's

255

a big German colony there.

But we were in the hotel, and we didn't know what will
happen, of course. The next morning, before dawn, the
soldiers came and picked up my husband and took all the money
we had. It was all in gold coins because we wanted to go
to Egypt afterwards. So when we left one country to go
to another, we never had to change money because gold
was everywhere currency. But they took everything away,
and took my husband.

WESCHLER: These were the French soldiers?
FEUCHTWANGER: French soldiers. They took my husband
away; that was all. When they knocked on the door,
I opened immediately, and this made a good impression,
as though we had nothing to hide. I was in my nightgown,
and my husband was in the pajamas which I had made. But
still, I thought it best to open right away; we didn't
take any cover, or so. That made a good impression, and
they were very polite. But still I was alone finally,
in my room, and I went to the owner of the hotel--it was
a small hotel--and .told him that I have no money: I cannot
keep the room; I cannot pay for it. I said, "Maybe you
have somewhere an attic where I could sleep. I'm used
to that." But he said, "No, no, you are my guest now.
You stay in your room for the time being, and you don't
pay. That's all." He gave me also something to eat.

256

I told him, "I don't know what to do . I would like to go
to the German Consulate." Then I found out that the German
consul had already fled. He left immediately when he
heard that. Then I went there, and there was a Swiss
consul there who took over. But he was absolutely with-
out any — he didn't know what to do. He was out of his mind.
So many people there wanted something from him, a visa or
whatever, and help, and all the Germans were there, and he
just didn't know what to do. That never happened before,
that there was a war.

WESCHLER: Only German men had been arrested, not German
women?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja, only German men, for the moment at
least. Then the next day there was no bread in Tunis,
because the bakers were all German. They were all in
prison.

WESCHLER: Roughly what day is this? How many days into
the war are we right now? A week into the war or some-
thing like that?

FEUCHT^VANGER: No, it was the first day, and the second
day, and the third day, not more. I had some money
always sewn in the seam of my dress. It was not for the
war; but in case we would be robbed or so, that's some-
thing. I had something. This was the only money I had.
So the first thing I did with the money was to buy two

257

tickets to Italy. So even if I didn't know what to do,
r thought the best thing what can happen is that we go to
Italy if it's possible. So I had two tickets for the next
boat. But that was all.

Then I went looking for my husband. This was not well
known, not liked, that women run around alone in Tunis.
I was young, you know, and good looking. I had a duster,
and I had also a shawl, which was like against the dust
and the sun, and I put these around my head so nobody
could see really if I was old or young. And I went
from Pontius to Pilatus--do you know that expression?
Finally I found some barracks where I thought they could
tell me what happened to the prisoners. I came into the
barracks, and there was a very nice young lieutenant who
said, "I wouldn't know anything"--I spoke rather well
French — "but I give you a soldier to accompany you. Maybe
you will find the headquarters. We don't even know ex-
actly where the headquarters are, but I heard as much that
it is in a mosque." I knew the mosques were all holy,
and that nobody but an Arab or an Islamic could enter a
mosque. But anyway, they didn't hear, the French, about
that, and they really took a mosque for their headquarters--
very beautiful mosque. And this soldier brought me there.
But when he saw the two guards--they were from Martinique,
probably, enormous mulattos with naked chests and round

258

scimitars, round swords; they looked just forbidding —
the soldier was so frightened (he was probably from the
French provinces) that he ran away and left me there
between those two enormous guards. What shall I do?
I went in. And they were so astonished they didn't
even move. So I went from one room, big room, to the
other, and nobody bothered me.

WESCHLER: This was the French military headquarters at
that time?

FEUCHTWT^GER: Ja. Nobody was there. From one room to
another. Finally I met a gentleman in uniform, and
he said, "What can I do for you?" I said, "I want to
speak with the general." He said, "I am the general."
[laughter] He said, "Come in." And I said to him,
"I wanted to tell you, my husband has been taken. We
are German, and my husband has been taken as a prisoner.
But you have to know that my husband and I , we are paci-
fists. My husband also writes for newspapers, and I heard
always from other wars that the correspondents of news-
papers are exchanged." Of course, I didn't know that;
it was just a bluff. "We love France, and we would never
say or do anything against France. We lived a long time
there, and liked it so much." And he said, "Yes, that's
all very well, but what shall I do?" I said, "Ja, I have
to tell you something. You are always called the nation of

259

culture. But now my husband is in jail and has not even
a toothbrush." He said, "This, of course, is very serious."
[laughter] He said, "Yes, what shall we do about that?"
He said, "Now you have to go home, go to your hotel. I
will see to it that your husband gets a toothbrush."
[laughter] That was World War I. Ach ! I went back to
my hotel, rather dejected, and... knocks on the door...
and there is, outside ... Lion. He says, "I'm coming to get
my toothbrush." [laughter] So I said, "Yes, that's all
right, but I don't give you your toothbrush. We go now
to the Italian boat. I have already the tickets." (My
husband had got some papers--I don't know--from the waiter
in the hotel, false papers or so.) But my husband said,
"You know, I have given my word of honor not to escape.
I just came here to get my toothbrush." So I said, "Yes,
but that was under stress, under duress. And your word
of honor is not binding. So we are going to the port."
And that's what we did. We took a taxi and went to the
boat, to the Italian ship.

There on the border, first of all, we saw a whole
row of young men who were chained to each other. It was
the first thing we saw there. I asked them what they
are doing--what ' s the matter? They said, "We are German
students, a fraternity. We were on our way to Egypt, and
there came a Muslim up to the ship and told us we have to

260

go down to get our papers stamped. So we went down, and
we immediately were arrested, because it was a ruse
from the French Arabs." They were standing there all in
chains in the heat, and I took their names very clandes-
tinely, so r could do something for them--wrote down their
names.

My husband was in the meantime occupied with the
luggage which we took with us; they opened everything, of
course, at the customs, and we were very much afraid.
We had a kind of basket, a woven thing, where we had the
dirty linen things and things like that when we were
traveling, and there I hid my husband's military document
which he had with him. He had to have that. It was the
law.

WESCHLER: In Germany.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . He was a reservist, and everywhere he
went he had to have his German [military] passport with
him. No other passport was necessary. We had no passport,
neither of us, but he had to have his German military iden-
tification papers. If not, that was really a kind of de-
serting and was punished with death, if he had not....
So I had hidden that in this little basket, woven luggage.
They took out everything. They didn't find anything, not
even money or so. But still we were frightened because we
didn't know what happened to this passport. Then a man

261

came. He was tall and black, with a little beard. He
said, "The gentleman with the lady can pass." Nothing
else.

WESCHLER: Were you making believe you were French?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, we couldn't make believe that; it would
be wrong. That would be dangerous.
WESCHLER: So they knew you were German?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, we didn't show anything. What people
didn't ask, we didn't tell them. We just put our luggage
there and they opened it, and then this man came and
told that. I would assume that he was sent by the general,
that it must have been immediately known that we were flee-
ing, and that he thought--like the French are, he was a
gallant man — that we should escape. He didn't know that
my husband was a reservist, of course. That would have
been another thing.

Anyway, we went to the ship, and we ran inside. We
left all our baggage there, because we took the occasion--
maybe he takes back his word, you know. So we ran into the
ship, and there was the captain of the ship with a big
beard, and very solemn. They were our allies, the Italians;
it was an Italian ship. We said, "We are German. We
want to be taken on your ship. But we left our luggage
there. Maybe we can get that luggage." So he said,
"You are secure here. You are on Italian territory.

262

Nothing can happen to you. "

At this moment I turned around and saw already the
French soldiers coming after us. They said, "We heard
that there are Germans here, and we want to get them.
There was a steward who heard that and took my husband and
threw him down the stairs. He went rolling down into the
lowest ship parts. I didn't see Lion anymore. I didn't
know what happened. He hid him under the coal sacks.
Then he came back and took me by the arm and threw me into
a cabin with a lot--about twenty Italian women. Terrible
noise, you know, when Italian girls are together. I had this
duster on, and I took it off, and I was another woman,
of course, without this. So the soldiers came in and said,
"Here are GezTnans!" The Italians said, "What Germans?
We are all Italian!" They shouted with the soldiers until
they ran away. Then the steward took me out and said, "I
have to hide you two in a special compartment. Your hus-
band is safe." Then somebody threw our luggage onto the
ship. And this special basket, this woven thing, was full
of cuts from bayonets. They had cut into the basket,
to see if we had something of value or whatever. So we
knew that they meant business. But the funny thing was
that even though the captain didn't want to allow the sol-
diers to come in, they just pushed him aside and went
through.

263

It took two hours until we went out of the waters
which belonged still to Tunisia. And those two hours —
it was really something until we came out. There are two
fortresses on both sides, and only then were we in the
international waters. So as long as it was--even though
soldiers were not allowed to go in, it was war and they
just did what they wanted to do.

WESCHLER: A couple of questions: about how many Germans
were in prison? Do you have any idea?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, many prisoners. It was a big colony,
mostly businessmen. My husband told me that he was im-
prisoned— not in a house but in a cage. It was a big
cage where all the people were. The ceiling and the
sides were only from iron stakes, and that was all. In
the open air.

WESCHLER: In the sun. That must have been very hot.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. And then the next day they had
to free all those who were bakers. They had to free them
because there was no bread. My husband told me always
that partly it was funny because every time another German
Icame in], they said, "Good morning." "Good morning."
"Good morning." [laughter]

WESCHLER: This was in the city still, or was this outside?
FEUCHTWANGER. It was outside the city, where the prison
was. I wasn't there; I didn't know that.

264

WESCHLER: What were some of his other stories about?
FEUCHTWANGER: The only thing was that on the ship itself
one man who was a German had only one arm. Another was
a big, tall, and very imposing-looking man; he introduced
himself to us as general, a Prussian general. He said,
"And I am the only spy." He was a spy. He bragged with
that. He was so proud of being a spy that he bragged with
it, and then he showed us all his passports. Different
passports: French passport, Italian passport, and all
kinds of passports. He wanted to be a good friend, but
we didn't want to be--with a spy, you know. In those
days a spy was not a hero as we later learned in the movies.
A spy was something which you don't make company with. He
wanted always to sit and drink with us. He invited us to
drink wine or champagne.

WESCHLER: Before we leave the shores of Tunis behind, did
your husband tell you any more stories about what happened
to him during the time that he was in the prison?
FEUCHTWANGER: He wasn't long in prison.
WESCHLER: It was just--what, two days?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I think it was not more than that.
WESCHLER: Was he maltreated at all?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, they were just very narrow together,
mostly younger people. My husband was also young. So they
were dejected, but at the same time they made always jokes.

265

like soldiers do.

WESCHLER: And do you have any sense of what happened to

the ones who were left behind?

FEUCHTWANGER: I heard that those of which I took the names--

when we came to Zome I gave the names to the ambassador.

I don't know. Because in those days there was so much

news which was not true...

WESCHLER: Rumors.

FEUCHTWANGER: Rumors, yes. For instance, in a Tunisian

newspaper, there was a story, a headline, that the German

emperor raped the czarina, the mother of the czar of

Russia; when she went from England to Russia, he raped

her. Those things were in the newspapers; so we didn't

believe anything. We hoped that it wasn't true, but they

said that those fraternity students had been used for work

on public roads and so, and that all died from exposure.

But we don't know it. I never heard from them again, any

time.

WESCHLER: And you don't know any of the other people,

what happened to them?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I don't think that the civilians had

anything to fear. It was only those who were soldiers, you

know, or the age of soldiers that they kept.

WESCHLER: Also, you said that you were pacifists to the

general. Was that just a story, or was that really...?

266

FEUCHTWANGER: No, that was real.

WESCHLER: That was the case. Was it common for people of
your generation to be pacifist?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, there probably were many pacifists,
but they didn't dare to say it, to tell it, because
Germany was a military country. The military was the big
thing there. They were not very well paid; they usually
had to marry rich, the lieutenants and so. But there was
nothing which was higher than a military man, an officer.
WESCHLER: Was your pacifism something that you had really
thought out and talked about a great deal, or was it just
more or less how you were?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was just — it was so natural to us.
WESCHLER: Would you say it was primarily based on —
you've talked about 1' art pour I'art; was it more an
aesthetic viewpoint?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I don't think so, no. It was human
feeling.

WESCHLER: It was a humanistic feeling.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja.

WESCHLER: Just very quickly looking ahead, would you say
that you remained true to those feelings your entire life,
or did they change?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, they didn't change. But we were patri-
otic, in a way. I cannot deny that. We were glad when

267

there was a victory. At first, not long. But at first

we were at least--I don't think that we were glad, but

we were imposed to hear about how the soldiers went

so far. Also so many Jews were volunteers, like this

Ludwig Frank from Mannheim, the parliamentarian. And

he was once of the first who went as a volunteer. We didn't

know exactly, but we didn't think much about it. We

were German, and we were at war, and we had to shut our

mouth like we did before. But we had to do that before

already, because when somebody wrote something against

the king, he went to jail.

WESCHLER: Getting on the boat, again: it probably is

the first moment you have to think about what was taking

place. What did World War I look like as it first started?

Did it seem as though it was going to last four years,

or did people...?

FEUCHTWANGER: At first we had to go through Italy. We

arrived in Palermo. We had no money to buy tickets to go

to Germany, so we went to the German consul there. It

was still peace there. And he said, "Oh, that's fine,

that you are here. But, money?" He opened his safe, and

there was not a cent in it. So he said, "You know the

banks all closed immediately in the panic. There is

no bank open. We cannot have any money." So he said,

"But I write out for you a ticket." My husband--it was

268

again good that we had this military passport. "Since
you are a soldier, you can ride home with your wife with-
out paying for it. At least you have the trip." We had
some small money. Outside of the consulate, there were
lots of women and children there, and they all were veiry
hungry, and we shared with them whatever we had. It was
just natural that we couldn't eat when others are hungry.
So we had always less and less.

Finally we came then to Rome, and went to the ambas-
sador, and said, "Can we have some money?" He opened his
safe, "Look in." [laughter] But it was a little better
then, and we got a ticket for riding every train. There
was nothing to do. Rome was empty and quiet because all
the foreigners went away. The hotels were empty. We
went into the museum. We went to the famous Venus, which was
there — the Venus de Milo. It was on a turntable, and the
turntable was already full of spiderwebs. The turntable
was affixed to the wall with spiderwebs, so solitary it was.
And then there was the Roman gladiator. It is a famous
sculpture of a dying Gaul. He was lying there, and Gaul is
France, you know. And one of the big toes was lying on
the pedestal where he was, where the sculpture was. My
husband had the feeling he should take this big toe as
a souvenir. It was so symbolic, you know, that he was
lying there dying, the symbol of France. But Lion left

269

the toe there.

WESCHLER: Did you at that time feel that the war was going

to last as long as it was going to, or did it seem to be...?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, we thought we will be victorious.

Of course, the German army was so well known, and the

great battleships, and so. For what had we paid all the

taxes? Or at least a part of them.

WESCHLER: What did the war seem to be about at that

point?

FEUCHTWANGER: First, it was only victories. Victories,

victories.

270

TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE ONE
JULY 3, 1975

WESCHLER: We are going very quickly to get into World
War I but first we have a couple of stories to tell;
we have already told part of them, but we want to tell
a little bit more. One of them is a good ways back,
and that has to do with Monte Carlo. We have talked
already about the pirated performance of Parsifal which
took place there, but you had some interesting anecdotes
to tell — about the long intermission, for example. You
might just tell that.

FEUCHTWANGER: And also about the terribly fat singer who
played Kundry. She was so fat that nobody could sit still.
Everybody laughed. She had a beautiful voice, but she was
so fat, it was just grotesque. She was there to seduce
Parsifal. It was not long before a very long intermis-
sion was called and everybody rushed into the casino to
gamble. But even those who stayed there at the tables
where they gambled could hear the opera going on; and vice
versa, the people at the opera could hear the chips falling
at the tables.

WESCHLER: And this is particularly true with some of the
lyrics.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . Because, for instance, Wagner said.

271

"Let sanctity be over us."

WESCHLER: And in the background you heard the chips.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, in the background you heard the chips,
[pause in tape]

WESCHLER: The other thing we wanted to pick up on was
Erich Muhsam who, you remember, was the anarchist who was
able to go between the two tables at the Torggelstube.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. He was liked by everybody because he
was such a mild man. And this mild man called himself an
anarchist; also he wrote anarchistic articles and even
had a little magazine or periodical which was called Kain —
[the name was from] Cain and Abel--and it had a red cover.
WESCHLER: You just told me about his Villon-like exis-
tence .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. He was from a very rich family, but
he went away. He was from Hamburg, where there are very
strict people, and he went to Munich and lived the life of
a very poor Bohemian. He never had money because he did
not work much; he wrote, but this was only for his own
periodical, and he didn't make much money. People bought
it usually just to help him. He always borrowed money from
his f riends--that ' s how he lived. He reminded me a little
bit of Francois Villon because he too wrote poems. He was,
I think, the very first man I met who was for women's
liberation. It had something to do with the equality of

272

people. In those days, it was anarchistic. He could

go to every prostitute, and they did it for nothing for

him because he was so nice to them and treated them like

ladies .

WESCHLER: What was the feminist movement like in Munich

at the turn of the century?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, there was no feminist movement. He was

the only one and the first one. There was no movement.

He didn't even know that he was a feminist. It was more

about the equality of people; he was for those who were

condemned by society and who were sometimes just poor

girls who didn't know what to do. He treated them like

human beings, or even like ladies, and that is why he was

so popular with them.

WESCHLER: You were going to tell about this man, Lieutenant

Kohler.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Miihsam had a friend who was a lieutenant

who came from the war, and I didn't like him at all. He

looked rough. He was good looking, tall and blond, and he

had something which — something "beefy" maybe you could call

it--and he was a great friend of Miihsam. Nobody could

understand how the two could get along. He always said

jokingly to Miihsam, "You will end on the gallows." But

everybody laughed about it, and it was just a quarrel

between friends. But in the end, when the Nazis came....

273

I should tell you that Kohler fell in love with me and
always kneeled before me and cried because he had no
success. I had more disgust about that than I was against
his roughness. He was a sadist and a masochist at the same
time. Later, under the Nazis, he became a Gauleiter,
a leader of a great district, and he had great power.
Mlihsam was already then in jail, because he was always in
and out of jail. During the [First World] War they said
he was crazy and they couldn't use him as a soldier, so
he was always free and nobody took him seriously as an
anarchist. But when the revolution came, he went to every
barracks and told the soldiers not to follow anymore the
commands of the kaiser. Everyone said, "Oh, our Muhsam,
we like him," and they carried him on their shoulders,
[laughter] They never took him seriously: they just liked
him. This was the "bloody anarchist." [laughter] Since
he wrote always those things against the king, he was
several times in jail, but not for long; they just considered
him crazy. But under the Nazis, they took him seriously.
His friend knew that he was in jail, and had him murdered —
assassinated. He was found hanged in his cell.
WESCHLER: This was Lieutenant Kohler.

FEUCHTWANGER: And this was his friend Kohler who was a
Gauleiter in the district where he lived. Later on, during
the Nuremburg Trials, he was condemned to death. So he

274

must have been someone important. They didn't condemn
the little people to death, just the leaders.
WESCHLER: What did Miihsam look like?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was tall and thin, very pale, and had a
long thin red beard and very bushy red hair. He had glasses
which did not always sit on the right place; they were
always crooked on his nose. Even with his red hair and
all his speeches, nobody believed him that he was danger-
ous .

WESCHLER: But now, you say, he is a little bit better
known .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. His writings have been printed again.
He wrote a beautiful German, the language; and although
some of his ideas are, of course, influenced by great
anarchists and great communists, he could describe the
ideas very well. Also he made poems, and that's why he
reminded me a little bit of Francois Villon, [pause in
tape]

WESCHLER: Let's start now where we left off. We had you
in Rome without any money. How did you get to Munich?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. The ambassador had no money either
because the banks were closed. But we had a little money,
of course — not enough to buy the ticket but just enough
to eat. With the other Germans who were around us, we
divided what we had, and we ate just bread; that was the

275

only thing we could buy. Then the ambassador gave us a
letter of recommendation so that we could at least go on the
train without paying for the tickets. Italy was still our
ally, the German ally, and he wrote in this letter that
my husband had to go into the army. So we could go to the
Austrian border, and there the letter was also honored by
the Austrians. Then we arrived in Munich, finally.
WESCHLER: You arrived in Munich in mid-September.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, about that time.
WESCHLER: What happened when you arrived there?
FEUCHTWANGER: When we arrived, we took the cheapest quarters
we could find, very near the station so we didn't have to
pay for the tram. Then we walked to my parents' house,
which was on the other side of the city. They had just
come back from a walk; and, of course, you can imagine —
they hadn't seen us for such a long time — they were
absolutely speechless. Also, they didn't recognize the
danger that my husband had to go to war, so they just were
glad that we were back. The family of my husband was not
very pleased, because my husband had been so long away with-
out earning any money, and also everything was in an uproar.
All of his brothers were already in the ainny. One was on
the front.

WESCHLER: Which brother was on the front?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was the third one, Martin. He was already

276

before in the army as an einjahrig. Those who had studied

had only to serve one year; others had to serve two years.

He was one of those who had only served a year, but the

first day [of the war] he was sent to the front. The

next brother [Ludwig] was a reservist and was also in

uniform already. The third brother [Fritz] had the factory

and was indispensable because the factory was important

for the nourishment of the people. The fourth brother was

also in the infantry and was soon to be sent to the front;

that was the youngest who later became this hero.

WESCHLER: Had any of the families yet experienced any

tragedies?

FEUCHTWANGER: The one who was the first in the army became

a prisoner of war and had a very bad time. They were

starved to death as prisoners because France itself had

not much to eat since so much was invaded by the Germans and

destroyed by the war. So, of course, the prisoners were

not well treated.

WESCHLER: Did you know any of the ones who were early

prisoners?

FEUCHTWANGER: Who came back, you mean? Oh, yes, lots of

people. But that was four years later.

WESCHLER: So gradually people were beginning to realize

the gravity of the war.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja.

277

WESCHLER: You mentioned that the Social Democratic party...
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, my husband was very disappointed in the
Social Democratic party. They were known as against the
kaiser and against the military, and they had a very good
leadership; and Lion was hoping that they would oppose
the war. But they immediately rallied around the kaiser.
Only in France, their leader, Jean Jaures, was against the
war, but he was assassinated immediately. So there was
nobody who could prevent anything.

WESCHLER: Had Lion been a member of the Social Democratic
party previously?

FEUCHTWANGER: No. He was very apolitical. Not only he,
because every intellectual was apolitical. I could even
say the whole population was apolitical. The Germans
were working people, and they were learning people. Even
the simple people liked to learn and read. But in the
newspaper no one would ever read anything about political
events. They read what was londerneath the important things-
in the feuilleton, they called it, the critics about the
theater or about art or stories or short stories. Politics
was just not known and not interesting. That was also a
great danger. There was nobody who could oppose it. Then
there was, of course, also censorship, and those like
Frank Wedekind, who wrote many poems in the Simplicissimus--
this comical periodical, more comical than serious, a

278

satirical newspaper with beautiful illustrations by
great artists; it was a magazine, nore or less, and came
out once a week.... Wedekind made some poems which were
considered lese majesty, and he was sent to jail. But not
to a "real" jail. In those days — for instance, when a
military man committed something wrong in his profession —
they were sent into a fortress. And so Wedekind was
also sent into a fortress as a prisoner. It was a kind
of honorary prison.

WESCHLER: You mentioned that your husband was upset
with the Social Democratic party. What was the Social
Democratic party in German politics at that point? Did
it really matter what they said? They weren't in power.
FEUCHTWANGER: They were finally a lot of people. You
remember maybe that [Otto von] Bismarck had already great
trouble with the Social Democrats. I remember that
before Bismarck died--but I was still a child--he did
some things to get some of the power from them [by backing]
a socialist edict which was kind of [social] security or
insurance. That was a great deed of Bismarck. But he
did it because he was a great politician; he didn't do it
just for humanity. One of the best known socialists in
those days was a young man in Mannheim, which was in the
principality of Baden in South Germany. He was a deputy
of the parliament. I had a cousin [Sally Loffler] who

279

came sometimes to visit us from Mannheim, and he was the
only person I have ever met who was interested in politics
in those days. Everybody else spoke with great contempt
about the socialists — everybody--they were very unpopular.
They were called "the Reds," only "the Reds."
WESCHLER: This is the Social Democratic party?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. I asked him why and he told me
about this man in Mannheim. His name was Ludwig Frank.
He was a deputy at the parliament, and he was a Jew, a
young Jew. I asked my cousin, "How could it be possible
if you say he is an intelligent man and that you have met
him and were impressed with him--how could he be a Red?"
The Reds always had red ties on, you know. Everybody was
so much in contempt of them. I, of course, just repeated
what I had heard; I was still just a child. Then he said
a very funny thing: he told me when somebody wants to go
ahead in politics, he cannot go ahead except if he goes
to the Socialist party.
WESCHLER: What did he mean?

FEUCHTWANGER: He couldn't go into politics except through
the Socialist party.

WESCHLER: But I should think that in the Socialist party,
you still didn't get very far ahead.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but still--oh, yes, he was a deputy.
He was a deputy in the parliament of Baden. (I think

280

Mannheim was the capital fhen of Baden.) But anyway, he
iiTunediately became patriotic like the others and was one
of the first who volunteered and went to the front, and also
one of the first to die in the war.

WESCHLER: You mentioned that he was Jewish. What was the
response of the Jews? Did they become very patriotic?
FEUCHTWANGER: They were absolutely the same as the others.
As I say, they too spoke only contemptible about the
socialists. That's why I asked my cousin how a Jew could
become a socialist, and he said that was the only way
to go ahead and get into politics. Frank became a member
of the parliament, but he was also like the others and
became a patriot. He was one of the first to die. The
Jews always mention that so many Jews died during the First
World War in comparison to their [number in] the popu-
lation as a whole. Only 1 percent of the population
were Jews, and about 10 percent became soldiers--and also
died in the war. But it didn't help them: they thought it
would help during the Nazi time, but it didn't. Except
my husband's youngest brother: he had some protection in
the beginning because he had the First-Class Iron Cross.
Hitler later pretended to have it, too, but it was not
true: he had only the second-class cross.

WESCHLER: You talked about the green garlands of the soldiers
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, the first impression. We were desperate

281

when we saw this. The soldiers were all in trucks going
to the station--to the war--and they sang. Green garlands
were around the trucks, and the population was jubilant.
The whole thing was absolutely frightening, because we
knew that they went to war, they went to their death.
They were just singing. Loud singing and jubilant. I thought
it was to forget the danger, but later we heard that it
was that they were ordered to sing. This was one of the
most terrible things I had ever seen until then. My hus-
band also spoke about the Roman times of the Emperor Nero,
when the slaves who had to die--either they were torn by
the lions or they had to battle each other with the sword
as gladiators--when they came into the circus, how they had
to go before the emperor and speak in chorus, "Morituri
te salutant," which meant, "Dying, we greet you." That's
what Lion mentioned when he saw those young boys being
driven to the station, [pause in tape]

Soon one cousin of my husband [Markus] came back from
the war. He was very seriously wounded, and his parents
[Louis and Sophie Feuchtwanger] were allowed to go to
the city where he was at the hospital. He died before their
eyes, shouting and cursing in the most terrible ways,
in words that his parents had never heard before.
WESCHLER: t"7hat effect did this have on the parents?
FEUCHTWANGER: They came back. They were almost not human

282

beings anymore. They were absolutely destroyed from the
experience .

WESCHLER: So gradually the war was becoming more real for
you.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was, of course. Very soon you saw
people going around with bandages or without legs. Also,
the funny thing was that right when the war became real,
there was this terrible fear of spies. Once--we had two
hats, both of us had white felt hats, like stetsons, and
we wanted to use them still before the winter (in those
days everybody had to have a hat) , and they needed new
ribbons. So we went to the shop, and the saleslady saw
inside, "Geneva."

WESCHLER: The label said, "Geneva."

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, and this is French Switzerland. As
soon as she saw this, she ran to the door and shouted
into the street, "Spies, spiesl Arrest the spies!" Lots
of people came and surrounded us, and it was rather dan-
gerous— they were menacing and threatening to beat us.
The police came and asked my husband for his passport, and
he showed his military passport. They recognized his name
because they read about our experience when we escaped as
prisoners of war. They could tell the people, "Those are
good people. He even escaped from the French 1" All of
a sudden, the whole thing turned around, and they began to

283

sing and shout and wish us well. They accompanied us
back to our house where we lived. First it was so
dangerous, and then it was so comical also.
WESCHLEP: Well, let's get back to that. We. haven't
yet talked about how--I take it Lion enlisted immediately.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he had to enlist immediately, but
because he had this experience with escaping and so, he
got a furlough for a while, and he used that to begin to
work right away.

WESCHLER: Well, how was it known? You said it had been
mentioned in the newspapers.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was in the newspapers about the
whole thing. That's why all those policemen knew about
it. For that he got an immediate furlough, because they
thought he deserved it after his experience, and he used
it to begin with his work right away.
WESCHLER: What work did he begin at that point?
FEUCHTWANGER: First he wrote some theater critical reviews
for Berlin, for the Schaubiihne, where he had written before.
Also he was interested in hatred: all of a sudden, people
hated each other who until then went along real well.
Most of all, it was the hate against England. There were
hate songs written — the English were the most contempt-
ible people; they were all criminals--and this was all there
was in the newspapers. So my husband thought, "Isn't it

284

funny?" He didn't know much about the English--he was
never in England--but first we went along well. We admired
the writers; Shakespeare was played in no country so much
as in Germany — and now..,. He began to be interested in
the whole people and why they should be hated so much. He
began to look more at their historians, [Thomas] Macaulay
and [Thomas] Carlyle, and he read about what happened during
the colonial times and also about Hastings. Warren Hastings
was one of the colonialists in India, the governor of India.
This interested him very much, because it was the history
of England. But he also was interested at the same time
about what Warren Hastings found in India. So he began to
read Indian cultural writings and most of all the plays
and the literature. Then he found also that Goethe liked
one of the plays that was called Sakuntala. Goethe had
even written verses about this indisch play. So Lion read
Sakuntala and found at the same time a play that was not
known before and was called Vasantasena. So he wrote two
plays, one after the other; but that was not all at once,
of course. No... I think it's a little too far where I go
now.

When he first thought about the English and about
this hate against England, he remembered that he read a
play by Aeschylus called The Persians. So then he read
again in Greek this play. Aeschylus had been at war

285

himself, had even invented some war machines. Then Lion
found in this play that the Persians, who were the enemies
of the Greeks, were treated so fantastically well and
humanly by Aeschylus; he never said a word against the
Persians. Finally at the end of the Persian Wars, the
Greeks were victorious, and there was not a single word
of contempt or hate against the Persians. Lion thought
he should put that as an example of how you have to be-
have even against an enemy. So he began to translate
from the Greek into German; he had to do that in distichen,
hexameter and pentameter, and that was, of course, more or
less a new play. He was very satisfied to have found that, to
have seen how an enemy should be treated with more dignity.
WESCHLER: So this was the first thing he did.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was the first. He sent this to the
Schaubiihne in Berlin, this periodical. They were very
enthusiastic about it, and they printed the whole thing
at once in a serial.

WESCHLER: How did people react to that?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was printed there and also in another
periodical called Die Zukunft ("The Future") . They
printed part of it, and it made a great splash through
the literature in Germany. Maximilian Harden, the editor
of this periodical, was a famous politician and essayist
before already. He went around lecturing about politics.

286

He was rather conservative and a great admirer of Bismarck,
[pause in tape]

WESCHLER: So it was printed in both of these journals.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. And everybody paid attention because
Maximilian Harden was a literary giant in those days,
politically and as a writer. So the theater in Munich, the
avant-garde theater [the Schauspielhaus] , became aware of
this Persians and asked my husband if they could perform
it. Of course, it was a very great event for us. This
was the first performance in a serious theater for my
husband, and it was just when he was at the military
service. Everywhere on the streets was propaganda, the
posters about The Persians , adapted by Lion Feuchtwanger.
This was very funny: once, when he was in his shabby
uniform, he was very tired, and he came home; and he was
sitting in the electric streetcar, and a general came in.
Of course, my husband jumped up to make room for him;
the man must have seen how tired my husband was, and he
said, "Oh, keep seated, my boy." It was just when they
passed this poster of The Persians . So there are many
contrasts in our lives.

WESCHLER: The period when he wrote this was when he was
on furlough.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. He wrote it on the furlough. But in
the meantime, it has been printed and accepted.

287

WESCHLER: How long was the furlough?
FEUCHTWANGER: Not very long, about one month.
WESCHLER: And then what happened?

FEUCHTWANGER: After the furlough, he had to go into the
army. In the beginning they were allowed to go home to
sleep. He had a uniform which was absolutely — it was
threadbare. He had bronze buttons and black boots, and
he had to polish them every day. They were usually very
muddy. So he came home and was so tired that I had dif-
ficulty getting his boots off him. He immediately fell
asleep when he came home. Then I polished his buttons and
cleaned his boots; he got shoe polish which was so hard
and dry that he had to spit in it to get it softer,
[laughter] That was our lives then.
WESCHLER: Which regiment was he in?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was in the Regiment Koenig. It was the
best regarded regiment: "King," it was called. His
sergeant always said they had to be very proud to carry
the coat of the king--this was the uniform. It was thread-
bare, and my husband's mother once said, "I think you should
have a brighter uniform." But Lion said, "If the coat is
good enough for my king, it's good enough for me." That
was his kind of rebellion: if he had to be a soldier, he
didn't want to have a nice uniform.
WESCHLER: The training sounds like it was quite brutal.

288

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was really brutal because it was
also so cold. It was the coldest winter for many, many
years. Munich has a cold climate already, and it was
always frozen or very wet. His sergeant always said,
"A soldier has to be trained in the dry and in the wet, and
they have to throw themselves in the biggest puddle. "
It was so cold that when they went back to the barracks,
the uniform was frozen hard onto their bodies. Also he
had a hernia; he became a hernia from this, and later on,
he had to be operated on. But as soon as he was better,
he had to stay as a soldier. Even when he was on furlough,
every month he had to go there and be examined. For four
years he was always a soldier.

But once when it was so cold--they always got their
breakfast in the yard because there was not enough room
in the barracks; he had to stand in the yard in line for
the so-called coffee. It was served in tin cans, and there
was no warm water to wash the vessels. For dinner they had
had very fat pork. In Bavaria, people always ate fat
pork. This was in the same tin can, and they couldn't wash
the fat out. The next morning the pork fat was served
on top of the acorn coffee. So his stomach, which was never
very strong, rebelled, and his ulcers became bleeding ulcers,
and he vomited blood. Then he had to be sent into the
hospital. But nobody told me where he was or so. Nobody

289

told me anything; I just didn't know where he was. Bust
after two days there was a soldier before my door who said
he is sent by Mr. Feuchtwanger to tell me he was in the
hospital. This soldier was a peasant who never was be-
fore in Munich, and he had looked for two days to find
the street on which I lived. So finally, at least, I
heard where I could find him. When I came to the hospital,
the first thing I saw in the bed ward was that a lot of
nuns were kneeling in the middle of the ward because a
soldier had just died. They left everything and just
kneeled down and prayed. They all came from the war,
the soldiers, and there was no rest at night: they were
shouting and screaming and also drinking sometimes.
WESCHLER: When you arrived at the hospital, what condition
was Lion in?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he was very weak. The doctors finally
thought it would not be good for him to stay in the hos-
pital with all this noise. So they told him he could go
home and I could take care of him, with a doctor. But not
before he had signed a document that he was not asking
for any pay or damages because he became so sick. He would
have a right to a pension or so, but he had to renounce it.
WESCHLER: What happened to the regiment?

FEUCHTWANGER: When his comrades had been sent to the front,
the first day they all died. There was a combined artillery

290

attack: they went out by train, the train was shot at, and
they all died the first day. It was the first day when
they were sent out that my husband came to the hospital.
So in a way it saved his life. [pause in tape]
WESCHLER: We paused for a couple minutes and remembered
some other stories from this period, before he got sick
even, so you might tell us some of those.
FEUCHTWANGER: There was something else: first, he was
allowed to sleep at home, and it was a blessing in a way
because at least he had a clean bed. But it didn't last
long. My husband was nearsighted, and in every case he
saluted everybody who had a cap, or what looked like they had
a military cap. So either it was the mailman or the porter
of a hotel or whoever had a cap — he saluted them. Just
to be sure. Many of his comrades were from the countryside,
and they didn't care about that. So soon one lieutenant
was not greeted in the right way, there was a big scandal,
and this permission to sleep at home was canceled. So
everybody had to stay at the barracks overnight [every night
thereafter]. It was a terrible thing; that's why he became
ill later.

My husband also told me about this sergeant, when he
was target shooting. Since he was nearsighted, he never
found the target; and the sergeant was very angry about
the loss of so much munition. He said, "What are you in

291

private life?" My husband said, "I am a writer and a Ph.D."
So the sergeant said, "Try it again." He tried it again,
and the sergeant said, "What did you hit?" My husband said,
"The first circle." And he said, "You hit the target, you
stupid idioti"

WESCHLER: So, he had a hard life. You also mentioned a
story about an actor who was an important officer.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . That was also a very funny story.
Once, it was terrible weather, very icy, and they had to go
through the whole city with their rifles. My husband had to
carry two rifles--he came back from this exercise--because
one of his comrades who was lying beside him was injured
and he had to take the rifle. He almost couldn't walk
because the ice was so slippery. The man in front of him
also slipped all the time and always hit him over the head
with his rifle. So finally my husband thought it best to
go a little slower and found himself all alone behind the
whole column with his two guns. A little old lady came up
to him and said, "You poor soldier; here, take a pretzel."
But my husband--f irst of all, it wasn't allowed to do that,
and even with two rifles, he couldn't take it. Then one
of the soldiers hit him over the head, and he lost his hel-
met. He didn't know what to do: should he pick up the
helmet, but then he would fall out of the row, or should he..
He thought that he would let it go, and there was no helmet.

292

So he was even without a helmet. He came through a main

street in the neighborhood of the Torggelstube, where

all his friends always were. Some were just outside, and

they saw him coming there, and they had to hold their sides

from laughing to see my husband stumbling behind the whole

army.

WESCHLER: Off tape, you told me the story of his coming

upon a former friend of his, an actor, who he saluted.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, that was also.... This actor [Gustav

Waldan, Baron von Rummel] was not a former friend; he

was always a friend. He was from the royal aristocracy,

and he was a colonel immediately. My husband had to stand

at attention before a colonel. This actor just didn't

know what to do: here he was, this very feared critic--

everybody was afraid of his sharp wit — and he was standing

so poor and so shabby. The actor was in his beautiful

uniform, and it was a very awkward situation. Later he

apologized to Lion and said, "What could I do? I couldn't

tell you, 'Come with me, my friend. Let's go together.'"

llaughterj

WESCHLER: Do you think that Lion's sickness was partly a

result of--first of all, he had always been fairly weak....

FEUCHTWANGER: He was not very weak, but his stomach was

weak.

WESCHLER: I see. That's attributed to the great fights

293

that he used to have at the family dinner table.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was very much, because the whole

family had those. But he was much better in Italy. I

think it was because we had so little to eat; it was

probably very good for him.

WESCHLER: Also I'm wondering whether in a way it was

also his horror at the war.

FEUCHTWANGER: Maybe it contributed to that, but it was

mostly really the stomach which could not digest this

pork fat which was swimming, resting, on top of the coffee.

It was also, of course, rather disgusting to drink that.

But since he was used to all kind of hardships, it wouldn't

have been so bad. But it was really that his stomach

couldn't stand it. He tried his best: he never excused

himself. His sergeant, for instance, told him once, "Tonight

we have a bid exercise, a great march. Are you coming

with us?" Because he knew that my husband was not as

strong as those other boys from the coimtryside . But

my husband never excused himself. He always went with them,

and of course it was probably too much.

294

TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO
JULY 7, 19 75

WESCHLER: Today we are going to continue to talk about
World War I. We might begin with one more story of the
shenanigans of the German Army, and this one concerns
a rather pompous sergeant.

FEUCHTWANGER: Well, [this sergeant was going] to intro-
duce the men into military life. He said, "It's a great
honor to carry the king's coat. No serious criminal had
ever been admitted to the army. You could say the whole
army consists of only slightly convicted men."
WESCHLER: And he meant it seriously.

FEUCHTWANGER: Of course, he meant it seriously. He just
was not a good speaker.

WESCHLER: Moving from the army — we talked fairly extensive-
ly during the last interview about how Lion had his first
leave during which he wrote The Persians, a furlough
before he entered, and that then he was in for a while
before he took ill and was on leave again.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but I should tell you before some-
thing which is also rather comical. When they had been
sworn in, everybody had to go in front of the company,
stand at attention, and shout loudly, "I am a Catholic
and a Bavarian," or, "I am a Protestant and a Prussian."

295

My husband had to go there and say, "I'm a Bavarian and
a non-Christian."

WESCHLER: It wasn't anti-Semitism?

FEUCHTWANGER: Absolutely not. You just had to tell, be-
cause it also was for the church. It was so everybody
would oe sent to the right church.

WESCHLER: He was sent to the non-Christian church.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. [laughter]

I-resCHLER: Today I'd like to start by talking a little bit
about the literary community in Germany and how they were
responding to the war. I'll just mention a couple of names
and you can perhaps tell any stories that occur to you
about them. The first that comes to mind is Frank Wedekind,
He was still in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was always in Munich, except that
he went to Berlin sometimes when he had a first night at
the theater. And at the Torggelstube one day, after they
invaded Louvain--this is a city in Belgium, you know;
and when they invaded Belgium, this city, which is an
ancient city and the pride of Belgium, was destroyed by
artillery--we were all sitting very dejected around the
table, and all of a sudden Wedekind said, "I'm afraid the
Germans will lose the war, and that will be a blessing for
humanity." Also he said, "How terrible would that be
if it were Germany above all of us."

296

WESCHLER: "Deutschland liber alles." Germany above every-
one.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . It could not be in the interest of
humanity that Germany would win the war.

WESCHLER: Do you think that was a common feeling among
the intelligentsia?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, very few felt like that. And also
those who could have felt it, they didn't dare even admit
it to themselves. Patriotism was the word of the day.
WESCHLER: Could you give some examples of alternative
examples? For instance, did you know Heinrich Mann?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, Heinrich Mann also was very much against.
He was also at our tables. He wrote Per Untertan [The
Subject] , which was a novel which was immediately forbidden
by the censors. Heinrich Mann and Thomas Mann were
not in very good standing because Thomas Mann was rather
conservative and Heinrich Mann was very avant-gardish, also
in his political thoughts. Thomas Mann even wrote a book
against Heinrich Mann, against his brother.
WESCHLER: Reflections of a Non-Political Man. [Betrach-
tungen eines Unpolitischen] .

FEUCHTWANGER: And there he speaks about civil culture. It
was against Heinrich Mann. Civil Literatur. They didn't
speak with each other. There were two kind of camps, one
around Thomas Mann, including Bruno Frank and Wilhelm

297

Speyer; and, for instance, when Gerhard Hauptmann, the
playwright, came to Munich, he belonged to this part.
The other, around Heinrich Mann, was our circle; Heinrich
Mann and Wedekind were good friends and they belonged
together.

But my husband told me about his friendship [with
Heinrich Mann] , which dated from long before we knew
each other, about when they were together in the Torggel-
stube and Heinrich Mann lived very poorly in a poor
street. They went together--my husband accompanied him
home because they still had not debated enough during the
evening — and all of a sudden Heinrich Mann stopped and
said, "How about letting our water now?" So they went in
a corner and did this business. In those days, everybody
could do that in the middle of the street, except that
people would look; it was only if it was a very deserted
street. They finally arrived in the room which Heinrich
Mann had rented, and there was one single chair except
it was full of books; so they had to sit together on this
iron bed and continue the whole night to speak. He
said that it was heartbreaking to see this great man —
and also this great gentleman--in so much poverty. It
smelled of poor onion soup and things like that. And he
was the son of a great senator.
WESCHLER: Were both of the Manns in Munich during this

298

period?

FEUCHTWANGER: They were both in Munich, but Thomas Mann

married into a very rich family and so he lived as a great

monseigneur, and Heinrich Mann lived so poor.

WESCHLER: Were you also familiar with Thomas Mann personally

at all?

FEUCHTWANGER: We knew him and also his wife, but since we

belonged to the Heinrich Mann part, so we were not

very well — we were not near as friends; they met us only

socially.

WESCHLER: I'm trying to think of some other people who

were important politically, not necessarily just in Munich.

We were talking before about Hermann Hesse in Switzerland.

FEUCHTWANGER: But he lived in Switzerland, and he didn't

care anything about what happened in Germany.

WESCHLER: The image today of Hermann Hesse was that he was

against the war....

FEUCHTWANGER: He was against the war, yes, but he never

spoke out against it, never made any statements against the

war.

WESCHLER: How was he generally received?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know. In our circle they rather

laughed about him because they found him petit bourgeois.

But he was required reading in the schools in those days.

WESCHLER: And that already was one stroke against him.

299

FEUCHTWANGER: I wouldn't say that, no. We were very-
much in awe of authority in Germany. It was not like
here. We were not skeptical at all.

WESCHLER: The other great pacifist of literary figures
of that time was Remain Rolland.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. He was, of course, hated, but nobody
spoke about him. He was French, although he lived,
I think, mostly in Switzerland. But a very funny story
happened much later: when we couldn't go back to Germany,
during the Nazi time, the great woman writer from Sweden,
Selma Lagerl6f--she was world-famous — she wanted to know
what happened to Lion. She didn't know where he was or
where to find him. She only thought that hopefully he
could escape and she wanted to write to him. So she wrote
to Lion Feuchtwanger , care of Remain Rolland, Geneva,
Switzerland. And it arrived there. We lived in the south
of France, but we got it. No. She said, "Lion Feuchtwanger,
ecrivain celebre "--which meant "famous writer" --care
of Remain Rolland, Geneva, Switzerland. [laughter]
WESCHLER: At that time, though, even people like Wedekind
and Heinrich Mann and so forth did not like Rolland?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes, very much, of course. But he
was not available, you know. He was just in a country
with which we were at war. There was not the least pos-
sibility for correspondence, even to write letters.

300

WESCHLER: Who were some of the others?
FEUCHTWANGER: [Walter] Rathenau came once to the
Torggelstube . He knew Wedekind from Berlin from his
plays. He came once to the Torggelstube to meet him
there. They didn't go into the houses or apartments;
they just met at the Torggelstube, or at a certain
coffee house which was called the Cafe Stephanie where
all the Bohemians and the writers and the actors were
there: rich ones and poor ones, everyone was there who
had something to do with art or literature.
WESCHLER: The other important figure to talk about, I
suppose, and his views about the war, is Lion. This
brings up the subject of his poem, his antiwar poem.
FEUCHTWANGER: The poem he wrote in 1915 and it was
published in the Weltbuhne .
WESCHLER: What was it called?

FEUCHT^-JANGER: "The Song of the Fallen" ["Lied der
Gefallenen"] . I have it translated and can give you a
version.

WESCHLER: How did that come about?

FEUCHTWANGER: It has been translated when the play Thomas
Wendt has been translated; it has been published here
[linder the title 1918] in Three Plays.

WESCHLER: I mean, how did the poem itself come about?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was called the first revolutionary poem

301

which ever has been written in Germany because it was
about the fallen who rot in the dirt in the earth. And
it says, "Woe to those who made us lie here"--something
like that.

WESCHLER: I'm surprised that that was allowed to be
published.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, in Munich it wouldn't have been al-
lowed, but in Berlin they were a little [more lenient] .
Also I don't think they understood what it meant. So
those who would not like it, they didn't understand;
while those who liked it, they wouldn't denounce it.
Also this periodical was only read by theater people
mostly.

WESCHLER: I believe it was already early in 1915 when that
was written.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja, in 1915. Later on, this periodical
was taken over by [Karl von] Ossietzky after the founder,
[Siegfried] Jacobsohn, died. Ossietzky later on was in
a concentration camp against Hitler; he was a nobleman
and was against Hitler, but he didn't leave Germany. He
said, "I cannot leave Germany. I have to stay here."
Since he was not Jewish, he thought at least he wouldn't
go into a concentration camp, [that] he could do something
against Hitler, at least in the underground. But he was
sent into the concentration camp and tortured; they let

302

him out just before he died because they didn't want....
He got the Nobel Peace Prize during his stay in the camp,
so they let him out to die. This was the man who took
over the Weltbiihne. And it still exists. His wife was
until recently also the publisher, but she died last year,
over eighty years old. I visited her twice in Germany.
We were very good friends, and she sent me some of the
letters her husband wrote out from the concentration camp.
WESCHLER: Which you still have?

FEUCHTWANGER: I have them, ja, ja. And also a picture of
him.

WESCHLER: Could you talk a little bit about the operations
of the censor. Who exactly was the censor?
FEUCHTWANGER: The censor was above everything, even above
the police. Everything what my husband wrote was first
forbidden. But he had some admirers in the Bavarian
literature who were more or less very Bavarian--not known
outside of Bavaria, but they had a great role socially and
also politically in Bavaria. They had by chance read —
one of them, Michael Georg Conrad was his name; he was
rather "an old libertine," as they called them, from
1848, and he had read this play, Warren Hastings, which
also was forbidden. He wrote to the censor and said, "It
would be a political good deed to perform this play."
Nobody really understood what it meant; first they thought

303

that it could not be played because it was about an English-
man, and it was also full of admiration for this English-
man. Finally, Conrad had such a good influence, also such
a good name, that what he said has been followed and the
play let free.

WESCHLER: V7as this censor a military censor? Who was
it? Part of the civilian government?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, the whole government was a military
government. Well, you couldn't say "A military govern-
ment," but it was the same. The military depended on the
government because it was still a kingdom.
WESCHLER: But what exactly was the method? When a book
was about to be published, or a play about to be performed,
it had to be mailed to an office somewhere--or what exactly
was the method?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, when the theater director accepted
this play, he had to send it to the censor. He couldn't
perform a play without the censure before. This was always
the use.

WESCHLER: And the censor was someone in Munich, a Bavarian?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, in Munich. Because Munich was the cap-
ital of Bavaria.

WESCHLER: We might just go ahead slightly here--a "flash-
forward," I guess you could call it — to discuss the ef-
fect that this "Lied der Gefallen" had.

304

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, later on, here in America, when my
husband wanted to become a citizen, during a session with
the immigration department — they came even here to have
a hearing with him — they said, "In 1915 you wrote a poem
called 'Song of the Fallen.' This is a premature anti-
fascistic poem which is considered here as [the work of
a fellow- traveler, and somebody like you cannot be a

citizen. "

WESCHLER: And he was then never to gain American citizen-
ship?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he never did gain American citizenship.
Also because he was a friend of Bertolt Brecht who was,
who admitted that he was a communist: that didn't help,
of course. And when my husband died, the next day they
called me and said, "We are terribly sorry, we just wanted
to make him a citizen. And now you come...." The next
month it was my birthday, and they said, "You come on your
birthday and we will make you a citizen."
WESCHLER: Going back from nineteen-f if ty-some-odd to
1914: After Lion in effect had his deferment for health
reasons, the army apparently asked him to direct plays?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, for the soldiers when they came on
leave. It was a very big theater called the Volks
Theatre which was not so very literary, more folk plays,
sometimes in dialect and so. This was always full of the

305

army. There was never a seat free, and there he had to
direct those plays. The director asked him to choose his
plays, and he chose a play of Gorky's, The Lower Depths;
it was an enormous success, not so much with the soldiers
but with the newspapers and also those who still had the
possibility to see. It was absolutely new, and also, in
a way, it was not with elegant people; it was a play with
poor people, so it fitted in this whole ambience. Then

[he staged] another play which was by Count [Eduard
Graf von] Keyserling, who was a great poet, a playwright
but a playwright-poet; it was called Ein Friihlingsopf er

(that means Sacrifice of Spring) . It was about the love
of two young people in Eastern Germany, in the Balticum.
And this was also the landscape of this part of Germany —
a very great artist had been asked to make the stage and
the sets, to draw the drawings. It was so beautiful be-
cause in those parts there are beautiful birch forests
there, young birches with white barks and light green
leaves, and the whole stage was full of those birches,
and when the curtain opened, people applauded before even
a word had been spoken.

WESCHLER: What was the name of this artist?
FEUCHTWANGER: The artist was Baron Rolf von Haerschelmann,
He was a dwarf and a great lover of books, a bibliophile,
and had a beautiful library. He was really a dwarf, was

306

so small that everybody looked at him. And he had a brother
that was a giant. And this was also a part of the Bohemian
life of Schwabing, those two brothers going through the
streets — like from the circus, you could almost say.
WESCHLER: You might talk a little bit about Haerschelmann ' s
house, his household.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , where he lived. He had an apartment
that was so full of books that he invented a new method
to store books. He had books not only on the walls but
also partitions which went into the room which were also
full of books. You had always to go around the partitions.
They were all antique books and very rare books, great

books, and he found them very cheaply where they have
been sold at fairs. There were fairs always for the
church; when there were church holidays, there were
always fairs on the outskirts of Munich. There you could
find on the tables all these rare books, and he found the
most beautiful things there. In the same house lived a
man. Dr. Ludwig. He was descended from a famous classic
playwright, [Otto] Ludwig. And because he was from a
famous family, he thought he should marry somebody from
another famous family; so he married the descendant of the
philosopher [Friedrich] Schleiermacher , who was one of the
great philosophers of Germany. Also in the same house was
a little man [Ludwig Held] who was very sturdy; he had a

307

long beard like a Capuchin monk, and he was a Capuchin
monk: he was a renegade of the Capuchin order and was
very worldly. Mostly he was very much for women and
very chivalrous. He kissed every woman, the hand. He
seduced the wife of Dr. Ludwig, the descendant of
Schleiermacher, who was a very pious philosopher. He finally
married this very slim, big, tall woman; and he was the
little, little monk. They married, and both were living
in the same house, and the friendship with Dr. Ludwig
continued like nothing had happened.* That was Boheme.
WESCHLER: Before we turned on the tape, you said that as
far as the war was concerned, nothing really changed in
the Bohemian life.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. On the contrary, they
were even nearer together because the whole Bohemians were
against the war. We were all intellectuals. It was like
a conspiracy: you knew without speaking that every-
body was against the war. Also against the kaiser, many
even for France, which was terrible — dangerous even.
WESCHLER: Let's talk a little bit more about the Bohemians
during the war. Perhaps let's start with the painters.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, there was one painter who was not so
young anymore and always starving, and all of a sudden he
had a great success because he had adopted this new pro-
cedure of the expressionists, using thick strokes of paint,

*In her notes for this interview, Mrs. Feuchtwanger also
notes that Held was later active in the Munich Revolution
(of 1918-1920) and became a councilman.

308

what is called the spachtel technique. He painted some
portraits this way.
WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: [Joseph] Futterer. He became very rich all
of a sudden because his portraits were the big fashion.
He rented a studio, also in Schwabing, very near to the
Siegestor (which was the Arch of Triumph) , and he was very
proud of his new studio in an elegant house. There was
even an elevator there, because he had to have his studio
on the roof, for the light, the north light. For the first
time in his life he had a telephone, and he was so pleased
that in the evening he wanted to use it. But he had not
many friends who had a telephone. So he took at random some
numbers, and there was an answer, "Hello, City Morgue."
He was superstitious and ran away, and for days he did
not go into his studio anymore. Finally he got himself
again to go back. He wanted to paint my husband, because
my husband was a public figure as a critic, and so he painted
him and sold his painting to the Museum of Mannheim, which
was a kind of avant-garde museum. My husband saw this
painting before it was finished, and then it was sold
already. When the painting arrived, the director asked
the painter what he should write underneath, and Futterer
gave him the name and said he was a famous critic. But
the name had been lost--nobody knew by who or how--so

309

they looked in the newspaper, and the first critic in Munich

of the first paper was Richard Elchinger. So they wrote

underneath, "Richard Elchinger, Critic of Munich." And

when my husband was in Mannheim for the first night of one

of his plays, he went to the museum to see his own portrait

and there he saw "Richard Elchinger" under his head. But

he was very glad it was not his name because his teeth

were painted green and all kinds of--a very modern painting.

So it probably still hangs there under the name of Richard

Elchinger.

WESCHLER: That's something for archival research to follow

up. Speaking of the painters in Munich, did you know any

members of the Blue Rider movement?

FEUCHTWANGER: I only fleetingly met Franz Marc just before

he went to war. Immediately he died in the war. It was

a great loss.

WESCHLER: Was the movement essentially disbanded during

the war?

FEUCHnVANGER: Yes, I don't know, because most of the painters

weren't in Munich anymore. [Wassily] Kandinsky, I think,

went to Switzerland; he was Russian. There were not many

members in this movement left.

WESCHLER: You might talk about some other people of that

scene. [pause in tape] We have one more Wedekind story.

FEUCHTWANGER: Once a very young actress had a great success.

310

she came very excited into the Torggelstube , and she
jumped on the table and began to dance. Everybody gave
her a glass of champagne, and all of a sudden she was
very tired and laid down on the table; she was almost
asleep. And Wedekind said, "Now, gentlemen, who begins?"
Another time, we were in a very elegant--it was after
a premiere of Wedekind himself — wine restaurant where even
telephones were on the tables. All of a sudden somebody
called him and said, "I just send you the waiter with a
bottle of champagne because we admire you so." Wedekind
was very upset, and said, "I don't need to be paid a bottle
of champagne by a foreigner, a man I don't even know J"
He was so upset, it was very difficult to subdue him.
WESCHLER: What was your living situation like in those
years?

FEUCHTWANGER: In the beginning it wasn't so bad because my
husband wrote those plays and he got the royalties. But
later on it was always very difficult because the royalties
didn't go directly to the author; they went to the pub-
lisher who also printed the books. And until it came to
my husband, what was due to him — when in the morning it
was still possible to buy something with it, by the
afternoon you couldn't even buy a piece of bread anymore.
WESCHLER: But this is later, much later during the in-
flation.

311

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . It was in the inflation. But also at

the end of the war, there was nothing to eat. There was

nothing to buy.

WESCHLER: Before we get there, though, in what section of

Munich were you living?

FEUCHTWANGER: We were living in Schwabing in the part which

was near to the Arch of Triumph and behind, in the rear,

of the Akadamie. There were two streets, the Georgenstrasse ,

which was our street, which was directly going from the

Arch of Triumph (which was an imitation of the Paris one) ;

and on the other side of the Akadamie was the Akadamie-

strasse where Brecht lived. From our gardens, we looked

out to the gardens of the Akadamie, and on the other side,

from the kitchen, we could look in the garden of the palace

of Prince Leopold. So it was very nice to live there.

Mostly it was wonderful because it was near to the State

Library. My husband's second home was the State Library.

Most of his work he wrote there, even when we had our own

apartment; because it was allowed only to heat one

single room and in this one room I usually had to write

on the typewriter what he wrote at night in longhand.

Because it was noisy, of course, when I used the typewriter,

he went to the library and wrote almost all his works there

in longhand.

WESCHLER: Was this going to be fairly standard procedure

312

all through his life, that you would type his works?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, later he had a secretary. Also he learned
himself very well to typewrite, but he abandoned that
because it made him nervous, the noise or so. So he rather
wrote notes and dictated from his notes to the secretary.
WESCHLER: At this early stage, what were his handwritten
manuscripts like? Were they heavily worked over?
FEUCHTWANGER: We have still two handwritten manuscripts
from his novels; the one is Jud Siiss (Power) and the
other is The Ugly Duchess. They are all in big leaves —
"octavos "--and all handwritten. He gave them to me, those
two manuscripts. They are still here.
WESCHLER: How did they survive?

FEUCHTWANGER: Somebody kept them for us; we don't even
know how they survived. One day we got them sent; I don't
know how they came here. I think it was a friend of Lion's
who was Gentile and who tried to save something from the
house. He just could take those things. He couldn't take
any bigger things, of course.

WESCHLER: Well, what did the manuscripts of the early plays
look like? Was he someone who heavily worked over his...?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, he wrote everything many, many times.
Those manuscripts which I spoke about, they are here at
use in the safe. They have offered $6,000 each, but I
didn't sell them. But he wrote everything many, many

313

times. He had a technique to dictate in different colors.
For instance, the first draft was written by the secre-
tary in orange, and then he looked it through overnight and
made corrections. Then he dictated it again in blue; then
that was the same procedure. Then he dictated it again
in yellow; and the last thing, it was white always. But
even then that was not the last. He was never really
satisfied; he always polished his language.
WESCHLER: Was that already the case, this color-coding,
that early?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, in those early days he just threw the
things away and did another. It was only when he began
to dictate. Also he could see from the color how far he
had gone. For instance, sometimes he didn't want to polish
it--when he was in the stream of thought, he didn't want
to interrupt it--so he only dictated on and on. Then
this was in blue, and of the yellow there was much less, so
he had to go back again to the yellow and. . . . But he knew
from the first look which one was more polished or less
polished. Of the one that was less polished, there
was usually more.

WESCHLER: Was even the first draft dictated?
FEUCHTWANGER: No. He made notes himself, and he knew
shorthand very well; many of his notes are in shorthand.
And then, mostly here but already in Europe, in the morning.

314

after we made our walk.... We went jogging and making
calisthenics, and then we would go swimming in the ocean;
we jogged up to the hill and went into the ocean. One
day we jogged up, and one day we did calisthenics. Then
we swam in the ocean, and then my husband took a shower
and I prepared breakfast. After that, he read to me what
he had written the day before, and we discussed it. Then
came the secretary, and then he made the changes which
came out sometimes from the discussion. Sometimes he
was very angry with me. He always called me his most
serious and strictest critic. He would say, "I never
read to you again," and throw the manuscript in his
drawer, but the next day he would say, "I think you were
right." [laughter] [pause in tape]

WESCHLER: Getting back to the literary works of that
first period, we might just tell a little bit about each
of the first plays. We talked a good deal last time about
The Persians, but we haven't mentioned at all his next
play, Julia Farnese.

FEUCHTWANGER: That was a Renaissance play. When he wrote
it. . . . For the first time we had better quarters--at
first we had such a poor boarding house--on the English
garden, with a beautiful view of the gardens. We invited
the publisher and also Wedekind and some of his friends
from the Torggelstube to read the play. I was lying — I

315

made a very clinching robe for myself, a dress with a
housedress maker. You couldn't get any material anymore,
but I had from my parents a lot of linen, and I had the
linen dyed in yellow, and I made this dress from yellow
linen. It was a long dress with a slit on one side. I
was lying on a recamier (an antique couch named after
Madame Recamier), and Lion read to the people. The pub-
lisher was immediately so taken of me that he said that
I have to play Julia Farnese, who was a Renaissance prin-
cess. Finally it has been also played in Hamburg.
WESCHLER: Before you get to this, you might tell us how
the story was first thought of. It was a play that had its
origins before the war...?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was interested, of course, in
Roman morals and life during the Borgias. For a long time, it
was the great fashion to write about this time. There was
a Swiss writer by the name of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer; he
wrote this kind of novels or short stories, and I hated
them. I didn't like them. But I didn't dare to tell
it, you know; I considered myself not an expert, so I
never told my opinion. But my husband was still very taken
with this kind of work, and he read a kind of legend
about a painter who wanted to paint the crucifixion.
WESCHLER: This is while you were still in Italy?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was in Italy; it was a little bit

316

also from the impressions of Italian art. When we were on
our wandering in Calabria, I got blisters on my feet, and we
had to stay for several days in a little village which was
called Castelluccio. It was a godforsaken little place,
but very beautiful, in the middle of those mountains. I
remember how my husband was sitting in our very little
room. He was sitting on our little balcony, an old
iron balcony, and he was writing, and a shepherd went
by into the sunset with his flock, playing his bagpipes.
Always when I think of this play, this scenery comes to
my mind. He made a draft there about this play.
WESCHLER: You might tell a little bit more now about the
legend, what it was based on.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. This legend was that a painter in those
times wanted to paint the crucifixion. He wanted to
paint it very naturally, so there was no other way to do
that but to crucify his own friend, who then died on the
cross. That was the plot of the play. He did it to impress
the Princess Julia Farnese because he was very much in
love with her. She came and saw the painting, and she was
already thinking of something else--she had been in love
with him but it was only fleetingly. First she was the
lover of the Pope Alexander Borgia. Of course, he was an
old man, and that's why she had this affair with this young
painter. But then she heard that the pope was dying.

317

and she left the young painter and went to the dying pope.

And this is the end of the play, as much as I remember.

My husband hated the play, too, incidentally. He didn't

want to speak about it anymore. But it was one of his first

plays to play in Germany, in Hamburg but not in Munich.

WESCHLER: It was played during the war?

FEUCHTWANGER: During the war. It was very much sought

after, because the part of Julia Farnese was a very

beautiful part, the story of a beautiful and vicious

princess and how it was of no avail that the painter did

his best, even crucifying his own friend: she went away

to the old pope who she really loved.

WESCHLER: And the publisher thought you would be a good

princess.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. [laughter] It was all very childish,

how I behaved, but it was all so new for me.

WESCHLER: This was the first original work of his that

was being played in serious theaters.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, this is true.

WESCHLER: How was it received?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was an enormous success with the audience,

also in other cities — I don't remember which--but the

critics were divided. Some were very good and some were

very not so good. That's all I remember.

WESCHLER: And in retrospect, the official Feuchtwanger line

318

is "not so good. "

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, that's true. [laughter] It was this

period of "1' art pour 1 'art, " that a painter who considers

himself a great painter is allowed to do everything. Or

as Oscar Wilde said, "A real poet, a real writer, can

even write about cheese and it could be a great poem."

It doesn't need any more great ideas; it needed only the art,

great art.

WESCHLER: But gradually. Lion was moving away from that.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, when he saw what came out of this whole

mentality, that the war came out, he was doubtful, and

he changed entirely.

WESCHLER: How did he feel the war came out of that

mentality? Do you mean the intellectuals had not been

paying attention to...?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, that's true. The intellectuals were

not interested in any politics; they only were interested

in their own art or in the art of others, which they

usually didn't like.

There was also another thing which my husband had to
go through in Munich: it was a little later, during the
Rateregierung, this Soviet in Munich, the revolution. All
the artists in the Schwabing group, the good and the bad
artists, the rich and the poor, they were all against the
war and all very avant-garde and very much for the revo-
lution. There was an older man who was a critic for a rather

319

conservative Berlin newspaper. He wrote critics about
art and the theater. And he didn't like my husband very
much. Most all the critics didn't like him because they
found that he betrayed them. He was a critic himself,
and all of a sudden he abandoned criticism and became a
writer. That was a betrayal: he wanted to be better than
them-- that's what they thought. So he didn't like my
husband very much. (I have also to mention that he was
not young anymore, but all of a sudden he married a very
young girl who was a shopgirl. She didn't look like any-
thing, but he was artistic, and he made out of her a very
good looking woman who looked like a Malaysian beauty. She
was also very nice. All of a sudden, she got a baby. In
the Bohemian circle of Schwabing, the baby was called "the
umbrella baby." It was from a story that Haerschelmann
brought out, you know, this painter: there was a story
of a man who walked in the desert, and all of a sudden a
lion came. The man was very fearful; he had only an
umbrella with him. He opened the umbrella as a weapon,
and the lion fell down dead--somebody else had shot the
lion. That's why the child had been called "the umbrella
baby.") [laughter] And this man....
WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Meyer. We called him "the soft Meyer":
he had something soft. He was without bones, an older man,

320

and he was always called "the soft Meyer." He didn't like
Lion because he said he wanted to be better than they were.
And vhen the Rateregierung came, he said to everybody
(and we heard it, of course), "Aren't you astonished
how Feuchtwanger is reacting in this Rateregierung , that
he is so indifferent to all these things? Isn't it
amazing?" He said it with a smile, "I am very sorry about
that." That's how much he thinks it is a pity he
behaves like that. But in fact my husband just didn't
tell that he was very upset: mostly he was upset because
he saw that nothing essentially changed. There was no
censure anymore, and there was the vote for women, but....
WESCHLER: Well, let's save a detailed discussion of the
revolution for later.

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TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE ONE
JULY 7, 1975 and JULY 10, 1975

WESCHLER: We are at this point proceeding with a catalog
of the plays that were written during this period. We've
talked about The Persians and we've also discussed the
Renaissance play. The next major play that he wrote was
Warren Hastings. You mentioned a little bit about the
origins of that play before, but you could perhaps talk
in a little bit more detail right now. In particular,
you said that he was angered by anti-British songs that were
popular in Germany at that time.

FEUCHTWANGER: He was not only angered; he couldn't under-
stand that all of a sudden a big people which we had
always admired, the great English empire, and also their
literature--that all of a sudden they are only perf ide
peoples. He just couldn't understand the change. And
also that we had to change so much to hate them.
WESCHLER: What were some of the examples of that hatred?
FEUCHTWANGER: There was one great poem which was written
by a man named Ernst Lissauer; he wrote the "Hate Song
Against England" ["Hassgesang auf England"]. It was very
popular and recited everywhere and quoted. My husband
didn't want to write anything against Lissauer; he wanted
to make another example. He thought it would be better

322

to know the enemy, because without hatred you could conduct
much better to peace. Also he was interested all of a
sudden — he read Macaulay and Carlyle, and he was interested
in the history of the great men of England. He found the
story of Warren Hastings, who was governor of India. He
studied that, made research; and when he made research,
he wanted to see what he did in India. It was told that
Hastings had a very difficult time: he was considered a
very good governor, but he was also accused of all kinds
of misdeeds by his own English politics who came, like the
people of the Congress, to see what was happening there.
He had a very hard time later also in England, but he was
acquitted in the end. It seems that Warren Hastings was
also interested in the mentality of the Indians and meant
very well, although it was a colonization. My husband
also made research into Indian literature, and he found
some plays which interested him, for instance, the play
of Sakuntala--which was so much admired and praised by
Goethe--by a man named Kalidasa. He found another play,
which he even found better, by a legendary king named
Sudraka. He began to read this play and wanted to make it
into a play for Germany. He had to write it in verses —
it was much too long, so he had to shorten it — and really
to adapt it. It was an enormous success.
WESCHLER: What was it called?

323

FEUCHTWANGER: Vasantasena.
WESCHLER: Did Lion read Sanskrit?

FEUCHTWANGER: He read Sanskrit, yes, because he was
studying antique philology, also antique German philology;
and since German is one of the family of Indo-Germanic
languages, so he had also to study Sanskrit. And that helped
him a lot, of course.

WESCHLER: What essentially is Vasantasena about?
FEUCHTWANGER: Vasantasena is about a bayadere, a dancer.
In India, those dancers were kind of holy women who danced
in the temples. This is a kind of a mystery story because
it has been told that Vasantasena has been murdered. A
man who was from a high family but was impoverished,
he loved her and she loved him. But another man, who was
a prince and a very grotesque figure--a little bit like
Caliban in The Tempest--he was jealous, and he kidnapped
the dancer. He told everybody that this man — Tscharudutta
was his name — had killed her. And this is the whole thing.
It's called also. The Little Carriage of Clay. That's
the subtitle. Finally when he is about to be hanged, she
comes out and says, "I live! I am here!"
WESCHLER: Did this play have any direct political con-
notations or was it more of a return to 1 ' art pour 1 ' art?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was not, because it had many--what
shall I say? For the poor, it had revolutionary ideas.

324

Some of those people who are friends and also subjects to
the man who was from a great family, they utter very
revolutionary things in verses. That was very much in
my husband's sense. He was attracted by these things.
VffiSCHLER: We've mentioned that Warren Hastings and the
Indian play got through the censor with the help of others,
[pause in tape] What was the name of the man who helped?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was a writer by the name of Michael
Georg Conrad. He had a great renomme as a writer and
was also socially greatly accepted, and he was very
enthusiastic about the play. He knew everybody in Munich,
and he went to the censor saying it would be a crime not
to show, not to perform this play. And so it was freed.
WESCHLER: So it was performed. How was it received?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was a great success.
WESCHLER: Both critically and with the audience?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was critically, but also divided because
there were always political things. For instance, conserv-
ative papers were not so much for it, but the more liberal
ones were. The first, and greatest, newspaper wrote a very
good critical review of it. Also the public was crazy
about it. Some princes came into the theater; during
the first night there, one of them came backstage to
speak to my husband about what a beautiful play he wrote.
Also this prince, I have to tell you about. He was a

325

very funny personality; he was a musician and a doctor.
WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: Prince Ludwig Ferdinand. He was one of
the Wittelsbachs . He was a doctor, and everybody--the
very rich bragged that they were treated by a prince. He
made atrocious bills for them, but the poor people he
treated for nothing. So he was a kind of Robin Hood, we
called him always. He was also a musician, and he played
in the opera orchestra conducted by the famous [Felix]
Mottl. He played second violin. My husband's friend
[Hartmann Trepka]--! spoke about this friend earlier,
the one who was the first who saw me--was the first
violinist. They were sitting together, and one day the
prince said to him, "I have to go. I have to see a patient
who is very sick. Don't tell Mottl anything about it."
He disappeared, and very soon he came back and said, "He
has already gone down the drain." And he fiddled again,
[laughter]

WESCHLER: So, back to music.

FEUCHTWANGER: The musician has always put soap on his bow
so he wouldn't be heard so much. And this same prince
was a very great friend of the theater. He came to my
husband's first night and congratulated him for the
wonderful performance and wonderful play. And from then
on, of course, the play was accepted socially, not only by

326

the people who were interested in literature. One lady,
the most elegant lady of Munich, who was the wife of
a big brewer and very rich, fell in love with the actor
who played Warren Hastings. He was a very good actor,
very good looking and had a beautiful voice. Very elegant
and a little superficial. My husband was not quite so
satisfied with him as the audience was enthusiastic.
WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: [Franz] Scharwenka. He was the son of a
Berlin musician. In Barlin, there is a big hall called
Scharwenka Hall, a music hall. And this lady went every
day. I counted until fifty. I always came by — the actors
always wanted to see us, and we didn't live very far away--
so at the end of the play every day I came backstage to
see all the actors. I counted until fifty, and then I
gave up. The first fifty times, she was every day in the
first row. And that continued.
WESCHLER: So this play had a long run.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. For Munich, a very long run.
WESCHLER: Were these plays beginning to be shown in other
cities?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it has been shown also in Berlin. But
there it was a very unfortunate performance because my
husband was not satisfied with the cast. Warren Hastings
was played by a very popular actor [Walter Abel] , but he

327

was not very juanly. He was very elegant and light,
but he had not this manhood which the Munich actor had.
And the girl who played his wife iJohanna Ziramermann] ,
she was taller than he was and very strong. So it wasn't
the right mixture, and my husband was too — how should I
say? — too shy to tell the director [Georg Altmann] that
he thought it was not the right way, that the cast was
not right. He didn't want to disappoint the girl and
take her out. Nevertheless, the play had very much
attention. One of the greatest Berlin critics had even
written an article about it before the premiere, and it
was expected that it would have a great success. But
during the performance, there came the news from Vienna
that the prime minister [Count Karl von Sturgkh] had
been killed by a man named [Friedrich] Adler (he was
Jewish) . The news came and spread immediately, and all
the critics who were to write about this also had to
write about that--these were the first-class critics
who also wrote about politics--so they all left the
theater, and everything was finished. There did not even
come a review out the next day because they all had to
write articles about the murder. It still was played,
but it wasn't the sensation that was expected because
so many articles had been written before about it.
WESCHLER: But that's a very dramatic example of the

328

political intensity of life that was beg inning --that it
was no longer a time of 1 'art pour 1 'art. How had these
two plays, Warren Ha st ing s and the Vasantasena, stood up
to the retrospective criticism of Lion himself? How did
he later feel about them?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he liked Vasantasena very much because
it was really some of his revolutionary ideas in a very
subtle way. Warren Hastings, he found a little bit
too superficial. Later on, he wasn't interested in the
theater, so he abandoned his plays in a way. They were
too theatrical.

WESCHLER: How about continuing with this catalog of
plays? Let's go to Per Konig und die Tanzerin.
FEUCHTWANGER: Per Konig und die Tanzerin was a splinter
of Vasantasena. It was also an Indian play. It was very
well performed because the actress [Elisabeth Kresse]
was a very beautiful girl and she was almost nude. The
painter who made the sets told her to bathe — she was
absolutely almost black because she bathed in something
with crystals which made the skin almost black. She had
very little clothing on. She was very slim and very
beautiful. It was a great success on account of this
actress. It was not sexy, just beautiful. Ubermangan-
saureskali — that's a kind of little violet crystal.
When you put them in the water, it becomes violet, but
your skin becomes almost brown — like iodine.

329

WESCHLER: But that play was not a major play.

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, it had no great following. Vasantasena

was played everywhere in every great theater; also

Hasting s played in many other theaters. But in those

times we did not have much money or much to eat, and we

didn't hear much about what happened. Sometimes we heard

from the publisher that it was played in such and such a

city, and we also got sometimes the programs which were

on the walls of the houses.

WESCHLER: How about moving, if that play is not that

important, to one which I think is more important. Die

Kr ieg sg ef ang enen .

FEUCHTWANGER: Die Kr ieg sgef angenen could not be played.

It was never allowed by the censor. But it was the first

play after the war which was translated into French, right

after the war, and has been in a Paris newspaper in

installments.

WESCHLER: What is it about?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was against the war, of course, and also

about the prisoners of war, how they had been treated so

badly, about one who had an affair with a girl and has

been shot.

WESCHLER: What is the plot?

FEUCHTWANGER: It's not much; it's very difficult about

the plot because it's more atmosphere than plot. It's

330

just about two prisoners of war; one a Frenchman, very
light and not very deep but chamiing; the other was a
Russian, heavy and deep thinking and melancholy. Those
two were together because they had to work together,
against the right of the people (it's not allowed to have
prisoners of war working). In the evening they went together-
each one spoke about his pays, his country. I say
"pays" because it's French. But the important thing is
that when they speak, they don't speak together; everyone
speaks for himself.
WESCHLER: Soliloquies.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja. But they are sitting together. And then
comes a young girl who is the daughter of a rich estate
owner, and the Frenchman falls in love with her. There
develops a tragedy, and the fiance of the girl then
kills the Frenchman, shoots him to death.

WESCHLER: For obvious reasons, this play was not performed.
A question about that in principle: when a play was
censored, was there more political harassment of the author
than just the fact of the censorship?

FEUCHTWAN3ER: No, nobody knew about that. If it was
censored, nobody knew.

WESCHLER: But the government knew that he was writing
plays like this.
FEUCHTWANGER: No, I don't think so. It was war, and a

331

writer wasn't taken very seriously in those days. When
it was censored and was not allowed, then it was all right:
he could try it again, and it could be censored again.
WESCHLER: So we are relatively early in a century which
was going to see a lot more repressive things.
FEUCHTWANGER: Also, Wedekind was censored all the time,
even before, in peacetime. He was always forbidden and
always censored. It was very funny: one play which has
been censored and couldn't be performed, he gave a reading
to invited people in a hotel down in the basement. There
was a kind of bar there, a very big room, and he invited
all his friends; all kinds of people were there, but only
by invitation. During the reading of this play, which
was considered very revolting and sexy, there was an
earthquake, which was not often. So the people, of course,
said that--God has spoken. They were all very Catholic.
WESCHLER: God was censoring that play.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. [laughter]

WESCHLER: Well, moving along the list here, we come
upon a 1917 entry for an Aristophanic play.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . It was also a peace play; it was called
Peace iFriede] . It was actually two plays: one was the
Eirene, the other I don't ranember now [The Acharnians] .
They were two plays by Aristophanes. The most important
thing of it was that the funny verses of Aristophanes had

332

been translated by my husband and made into funny verses
in German, which is not very easy. Some of the verses
have often been cited or quoted in newspapers. It was
not a play which could be called good for the audience.
It had the chanting choruses; it would have been a good
musical because of the choruses. But it was a literary
success when it was printed and it received good critics.
Reinhardt wanted to play it once, but then Hitler came.
But now they played it in Germany after the Second World
War several times.

WESCHLER: Was it not allowed to be played during the war?
FEUCHTWANGER: No! The title already was bad.
WESCHLER: Another play which was not played was the
John Webster translation.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , Appius und Virginia. My husband even
did not want it to play; he just wanted to translate it.
He was interested in the plot, which was a little bit
like another play, by [Gotthold] Lessing. It was more or
less an exercise in translating from English into German.
WESCHLER: Did he at that time see that his vocation would
be primarily translating and adapting?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he was only — he was a theater fanatic
in those days, an aficionado. He also went to the re-
hearsals. I was very good friends with all the actors.
In those days it was difficult to get material, and I had

333

myself made many things with a seamstress who came to

the house — I had my mother's sewing machine so we could

make all kinds of things — so I always lent my clothes to

the actresses.

WESCHLER: So you were both theater fanatics.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, we both were.

WESCHLER: But you don't think he would have seen his

primary vocation as that of a translator?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. It was just that in other

countries there were good theater plays, so he wanted to

translate them, to see them performed. He was only for

the theater. Like Brecht also, who only seldom wrote

his own plot. He always had--for instance. Threepenny

Opera was also in a way a translation, an adaptation.

WESCHLER: The next play that comes up is a play that in

a way is a transition from the dramatic to the novel, and

that's Jud Siiss, which was originally a play and was being

written at this time.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. But he didn't think of the novel

when he wrote it.

WESCHLER: What was the situation? Why was he interested

in writing that?

FEUCHTWANGER: When he was very young, he heard a lot about

Siiss, who was a historical personality. And it was an

historical plot. He found this very interesting, also

334

because he studied the whole time. It has been found out
by many serious scholars that Jud Siiss was innocent--
he has been hanged — but he was not innocent morally.
WESCHLER: Well, first tell us who he was.

FEUCHTWANGER: [Joseph Siiss Oppenheimer] was a courtier —
it was a little bit like [Henry] Kissinger — of the Arch-
duke of Wiirttemberg. He was his minister, and he helped
him to rob the people in a way — that's why he was morally
not innocent. But he was innocent of crime. He was
very ambitious as a Jew to be in the highest position and
have such a great influence. He also was very elegant and
very rich. That was what interested my husband, but
mostly what interested Lion was that he entirely changed
before he was hung. That was also the changing of my
husband which came through. Siiss was a widower, and his
only child had died because of the archduke. He wanted
to seduct the child, but she ran away on the roof and fell
down. And this changed Siiss' s whole life: the child was
the only excuse for his life, in a way. He had an uncle
who had misgivings about the whole thing and brought up
the child. The uncle was not always satisfied with him,
and of course Siiss' s conscience was therefore not very
quiet. When he saw what happened to his life, that he
had lost the only thing which was worthwhile, Siiss changed
entirely, and his only ambition was to revenge his child.

335

And the moment he had his revenge (because he made a
political turn to the disadvantage of the archduke: he
did it intentionally, so when the archduke heard his
Jew has betrayed him, he fell down dead, he had a stroke)
in the moment when Jud Siiss knew that he had wreaked revenge,
he let himself gor that was all what he wanted, and he
didn't want to live anymore. He became a recluse and
was imprisoned. He was visited then by his uncle. He
was already out of the world before he was; hanged.
WESCHLER: Was that the center of action in the play as
well as the novel?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, only when he had finished the play
and had seen it on the stage--the same actor [Franz
Scharwenka] who played Warren Hastings also played Jud
siiss, very effectually; it was a great success--he was
horrified about the whole thing because he felt that he
only made the outside, the superficial of the character,
story, and the situation. Afterward he didn't want to
have anything to do anymore with the play, and he de-
cided to write a novel where he could write about his
ideas.

WESCHLER: Was this performed during the war?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . That was also performed during the
war .
WESCHLER: Was there a political ground for this too?

336

It doesn't sean immediately to be a political allegory

of anything in the present.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, there weren't any political disturbances.

WESCHLER: I notice that it's really the first of this

series of plays of his maturity to deal with Jewish themes.

FEUCHTWANGER: The only disturbance was in the family.

My mother-in-law came once to ask me why Lion is always

writing about Jewish things.

WESCHLER: Always? It seans to me that this is the first

one of this series.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he wrote short stories about Jewish things,

But that was later.

WESCHLER: But this is the first of this series of things

where he employs Jewish thanes, in this play.

FEUCHTWANGER: Not only Jewish thanes, but also he abandoned

his attitude about art and against life. From then on

he changed entirely his attitudes, also [coming out] against

war — not against the war, but for peace and for the articles

of peace.

WESCHLER: How so?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was that he was against power. It was

called Power here because it was against power. His attitude

was against power and for the inner life.

WESCHLER: So this marks the beginning of some serious

political changes.

337

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. Most of all when he saw the play —
not so much when he wrote it — he thought that nothing
what he wanted to explain and to be a witness [came] out
in the play. It came out only that there was a very
good looking actor who the ladies liked very much.
WESCHLER: Well, I think we'll stop for today. The next
session, we'll begin to go in several directions. We'll
discuss the transition from the play to the novel, but
we also have a very important play still to talk about —
Thomas Wendt .

FEUCHTWANGER: Thomas Wendt is most important. That is the
turning point.

WESCHLER: And we will also move from the war to the rev-
olution.

JULY 10, 1975

WESCHLER: We ended the last interview by doing a catalog
of your husband's plays during the war. Now we're coming
toward the end of the war, and today we're going to talk
primarily about the end of the war, the Soviet revolution,
and then the revolution in Munich, all of this as a prelude
to talking about your husband's play Thomas Wendt, which
we'll talk about at the end of the session today. We
might start with the Soviet revolution. That took place
in the fall of 1917. How was it seen in Germany?

338

FEUCHTWANGER: First, since the war was still going on,
it was considered as a victory for Germany. There was a
General [Max von] Hoffman who dictated the peace to Lenin
in a very humiliating way--he hammered on the table and
so forth. That was known. Also it was, of course, thought
it would be easier now that they had no front against the
Russians, against the East. The only front was against
France. In a way it was not so much militarily that Germany
lost the war, but rather that they didn't have anything left
to eat anymore and everything was disrupted. It was a
relief for the military that Russia made their revolution.
So it was not at all anything that would have frightened
the people. They welcomed it.

WESCHLER: How did the people in the Bohemian community
in Munich feel about it?

FEUCHTWANGER: They were very happy about the falling of
czarism. Everybody--not only the Bohemians — I think the
whole people in Germany were very much against czarism and
against the cruelties which they had heard: against
starvation, which was known, in Siberia; against those
prisons in Siberia where people, mostly the intellectuals,
had been sent. Also Gorky was there. Everybody knew that
in Germany. So Russia was very unpopular, and mostly the
government. Remember also, once a prime minister was shot,
and nobody was unhappy about it. After the war with Japan,
when there were bad times in Russia, they always had pogroms.

339

So of course the Jews were very happy that no one was there

anymore to start pogroms. Although the other people

were indifferent to the Jews, they were not against the

Jews; and those cruelties, of course, were spread all

through in the news. I remember when there was Kichinev,

there was a song, a Jewish song, which always repeated

"Kichinev," which was a Russian town where these terrible

pogroms took place. When people came fron there, all

starving and in tatters, then we knew they came from

those pogroms, and they were usually sent to Holland and later

America. Mostly the Russian Jews who are mostly in

America all came before the Revolution; they came from

the pogroms. And so everybody considered it a blessing

that this regime had fallen.

WESCHLER: It's interesting that even those who supported

the kaiser were against the czar.

FEUCHTWANGER: Absolutely, ja, ja. Even the kaiser himself.

The czar was his cousin, but he hated him. There were

three cousins: Edward, the king of England; the kaiser;

and Nicky (as he called him), Nicholas fron Russia. They

were all cousins, and they hated each other. It

was amazing that those three monarchs had made war between

themselves. But I don't think that Wilhelm hated Nicholas

because of the Jews or anything like that: it was just

that he found Russia too big and he felt there is a kind

340

of danger. Only Bismarck had not spoken about this danger.
Also they were afraid that someday it couldn't end very
well because there were too many poor and unsatisfied
people there. Even [ErichJ Ludendorff tried. When he
invaded Poland--Poland was for a long time German prior
to our time — he wrote a letter, "An meine lieben Juden"
("To my beloved Jews"). He wrote a Yiddish letter —
which he wrote not himself — and the Jews were on the side
of the Germans in Russia because they were against the
czar. That's why Ludendorff, who was the highest marshal
of Germany, made friends with the Jews — to have then help
against the Russians.

WESCHLER: Well, the czar had been disposed of already
in March 1917, and the Communist revolution was in
November.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, [the first one] was not the real
Communist revolution. You can't say it was no revolution
because [Aleksandr] Kerenski, who came to power immediately,
was not a Communist.

WESCHLER: Right, well, that was in March. What I'm
wondering now, given that the czar wasn't there, how did
the citizens of Munich — and particularly the Schwabing
district--f eel about the turn that the revolution took with
Lenin's ascendancy?
FEUCHTWANGER: Lenin wasn't known to many in Schwabing

341

because he always lived in exile either in Paris or in
Switzerland. Oh, there is a funny story I have to tell
you. In Vienna, the prime minister went to the very old
emperor of Austria. It was long before the revolution--
[Franz Joseph] was no longer alive when the revolution
came; he was replaced by his nephew Karl. The prime
minister said, "Do you know, your majesty, there could be
a revolution in Russia when the war goes bad for Russia?"
Then the onperor said, "But who could make a revolution in
Russia, maybe Mr. Trotsky of the Cafe Central?" And this
is a true story. So we didn't take than very seriously.
They were like Gorky and all those; they were intellectuals
who had ideas and ideals but were not considered dangerous.
WESCHLER: But then they did turn out to be much more dan-
gerous.

FEUCHTWANGER: They turned out... they were so well
organized. It was all organized in their mind. It
turned out there were not much killings in Russia,
except when the White Army came.

WESCHLER: Okay, that's later. Let's keep that off for
a second. But once the revolution actually took place,
did the Bohemian community--and now I'm talking about the
people we've been talking about in Munich — did they look
at the revolution as a model for something that could
happen in Germany?

342

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. Not at all.
WESCHLEU: What was their attitude in that context?
FEUCHTWANGER: They were all so unpolitical and apolitical.
They didn't think this could happen here. They may have
thought maybe that it would be good to have it here,
because the intellectuals were all pacifists, of course,
except Thomas Mann and maybe Bruno Frank, who in the
beginning was also a patriot and wrote patriotic poems.
But we all were pacifists and all would have welcomed an
end to monarchies. They wouldn't have wanted real com-
munism, but a republic, I would say, like America. Some-
thing like that.

WESCHLER: So they were more or less benignly happy about....
FEUCHTWANGER: Also, France was a republic, you know.
They said France had a revolution long ago, but we never
had a revolution here. They tried in 1848, and this came
to no avail. [pause in tape]

WESCHLER: While we were off tape you said that they thought
Kerenski was too weak.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, they thought he was too mild, let's
say. They all learned about the French Revolution, that
a revolution cannot — and also it didn't work out in 1848 —
go so peacefully. But of course they wouldn't have liked
it to happen in Germany. They just thought that Russia
was ripe for the revolution, with the serfdom and the

343

terrible hunger and starvation every year.

WESCHLER: So the Marxism of that community was not a

very. . . .

FEUCHTWANGER: No, they were not really Marxists; they were

not really Communists. There was not even the name

"communisn"; that came after the war only. It was Marxism

and socialism. Socialism was what anbraced everything. They

were, of course, socialists, but that was a very vague

thing and they never thought about practicing it. It

was just an idea. It was something which Mr. [Kurt]

Eisner wrote about in his newspaper, you know. But not

what should really come to pass. [pause in tape]

WESCHLER: We were just now talking about the status of

their Marxism.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, those who were socialists — "Marxism"

and "communism," these expressions were not used at those

times; they were called "socialists" — they were all in

a way socialists. But other people who were against than

called them "Salon Cominunists, " or "Salon Socialists."

That means that they would never practice it; it was just

ideas. Later on, there is now also a difference between

Communists and Marxists. I regard that Cominunists are

the activists, and Marxists the theorists.

WESCHLER: The way you phrased it while we were off tape

was that "Marxists are those who don't really want it to

344

happen, whereas the Coramunists do want it to happen."
FEUCHTWANGER: I don't really ranonber what I said.
WESCHLER: Well, that's what you said. [laughter] I
will also admit that you were reluctant to say it on tape.
FEUCHTWANGER: I didn't say that, because that's really
not me. I said that only in relation to [Theodor] Adorno.
You couldn't say so silly things about the Marxists. Mr.
Herbert Marcuse would have your head, because he is a
Marxist. [pause in tape]

WESCHLER: Well, during the last months of the war — and
now I'm talking about the period between the Soviet rev-
olution and the final collapse in 1918 — was there any in-
creasing politicalizat ion of life? This is before the
[Munich] revolution actually takes place. Was there any
kind of active peace movement? Was there any kind of
active dissent movement?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, you know that was too dangerous. People
in a peace movement or a dissent movement would have gone
to jail immediately. There was still the emperor, you
know; we had still censure and very strict discipline. The
people were so starved and so tired that they wouldn't have
even had the strength to do anything of this kind. It
was only when the soldiers began to rise or turn around,
to mutiny — and mostly the mutiny in Hamburg of the sailors
in the navy. Of course, you could hear about it. It

345

was suppressed as much as possible in the newspapers,
but still it sneaked through.

Then, the first time I saw a dononstration was when
ray husband had an operation on the hernia which he got
when he was in the army. I came back--frQm seeing him--
on the streetcar, and I saw a procession or demonstration.
WESCHLER: This was very near the end of the war.
FEUCHTWANGER: But nobody knew about that, you know, and
neither did I. We were only very starved and very tired and
very desolate. I thought that those must be people who —
in those days there were no signs. I didn't see any sign
carriers; I just saw the people very quiet. It was a
little eerie — no noise, they went quiet, no shouts, no
menace or violence. They just went very quietly and slowly
through the streets. What amazed me most and attracted
my attention was that there were soldiers in the masses.
This was so dangerous because they were in danger to
be shot as deserters when they would be in a demonstration
like that — that they dared that! So I thought there must
be something happening. Then I saw a man in the middle of
this--almost alone--in the middle of this demonstration.
He had a frock coat on, which is usually a very elegant
cloth; but it was very shabby, almost green instead of
black. He had also a backpack which was empty on his
back. It was very grotesque. He had red hair and a snail

346

red beard. He was very pale. And I knew that this was
Kurt Eisner. I had never met him before, but I had seen
him sc3mewhere--someone had showed him to me at the cafe
in the Hofgarden'. I knew that he was a socialist, but
I never thought that he would be a revolutionary. It
was theoretical in a way. He was a very learned man, a
knowledgeable man, and he wrote theater critics.
WESCHLER: Before we talk about him, what happened with
that procession?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know what happened. I followed it
for a while, and then I went home. But it was very eerie,
mostly because it was so quiet. What astonished me most
were the soldiers, that they would risk their lives to go
in a demonstration.

347

TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO
JULY 10, 1975

WESCHLER: We've just been talking about the peace dem-
onstrations that were taking place in the weeks before
the armistice, and you might continue with the story of
what happened after that in Munich.

FEUCHTW21NGER: After that, a very few days afterward —
much as I recall, it was the twelfth of Novanber--the
newspapers brought the headlines, "Armistice, The War Is
Over." And then there was much gaiety. People were very
happy, although we still had nothing to eat. But of course
the nightmare was over. And then very soon came the soldiers
back from the front. They just turned around and left in the
middle of the battle. I talked to some colonels or so
I knew, and they said, "They just turned around and left.
We stood there, and then we followed than." When they
arrived at the station and met all their superiors, nothing
happened. The superiors were very much afraid that they
would be slain by the furious soldiers and that there
would be violence. The worst that was, and it was very
much also in the newspaper stressed, was that they tore
the epaulets away from some of their superiors. That was
the only thing that happened. And they were so very
upset about that instead of being glad that nothing worse

348

was.

Then the critic [Richard ElchingerJ of the Miinchner
Neusten Nachr ichten, that is the great newspaper in Munich,
called us and said, "Let's go on the street and look at
the revolution." It was like a circus. So we went with
him, and we saw the big trucks full of soldiers. It
reminded me of the beginning when the soldiers were with
garlands, going singing into the war, but there were no
garlands this time. They had rifles, but they shot the
rifles only in the air because they were so happy about
the whole thing. They were drinking beer; all of than had
a bottle of beer and were drinking. Everybody was happy,
and the people were winking and waving and were very glad
about everything that happened, that everything is over.

And then we went on and came to the Residenz — that
is the royal castle — and at the [gate] where usually the
people were at attention and a soldier went up and down
with his rifle, there was no outside guard; inside they
were sitting and playing cards. We went through the Res-
idenz, which had big courts where you could go through to
the other side. In the meantime, it became night. We saw
a coach there and a carriage; then came an old man with
a lady and several younger women who obviously were his
daughters, and they went into the carriage and left.
And this was our king.

349

VVESCHLER: This was an escape of the king?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was his escape; he went to Austria.

Ja, ja.

WESCHLER: What would have happened to him had he not

escaped? Was he hated by the people?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he was very much liked. They didn't

like him that he assisted the kaiser in the war; they

would have much better liked if he had made war to the

kaiser. [laughter] But he was popular because he was

unelegant, you know. He had these famous king-trousers;

everybody when they had bad-fitting trousers which were

not creased, they called it "the king's trousers." And he

was simple, and he was rather rich because he had a gin

factory. His wife inherited great estates, and they had

lots of potatoes and made gin out of the potatoes . [laughter]

WESCHLER: So that made him popular.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was very popular in this way, ja,

ja. So there never would have happened something. But

of course I'm sure he didn't like the whole thing.

IVESCHLER: What about the feelings about the kaiser?

Do you think he would have been in danger?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, they were very cynical about him;

they said, "Now, he made the war, and now, instead of

being here and trying to save something, he runs away to

Amerongen, to Holland." But there was another one who

350

was -ve-TY popular; that was Prince Max von Wiirttemberg .
He was a nephew of the great duke of Wiirttemberg who was
deposed; but he was before already a socialist, so he
took over. Only, he was not a very efficient prime minister,
and later on he had to leave, too. But he saved a lot
of trouble because he was prepared in a way, spiritually
prepared.

WESCHLER: The sense I'm getting from all of this is that
the violently political revolution that we imagine happening
at the end of the war wasn't really that violent at all.
FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. It was just that the kaiser
ran away, and we were glad to have peace. That was all.
Everybody was glad. And then Eisner has been elected —
there was a parliament then and he was elected as a prime
minister. . . .
WESCHLER: Of Bavaria?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. And there was a Peasant and Soldier
Council, it was called. They went together and made the
revolution and the government. I remember we lived in
a house; v;e had the apartment of a general who was in the
war, and he wanted that somebody lives in his apartment.
This was in the house of his father-in-law and mother-
in-law, and she, the lady, came to us and said, "Oh, we
are so glad that now everything went so well, no violence
and this emperor.... They all lied to us, they were all lies.

351

They always said we will be victorious, and now we see what
happened. But this man Eisner seems a very decent man,
and we are very glad to have him. Nothing serious
happened, and everything goes on all right."
WESCHLER: Let's talk a little bit about Eisner. What
kind of relations did Eisner have with your husband, if
any?

FEUCHTWANGER: Eisner had a newspaper which was called the
Munich Post and was a socialist paper.
WESCHLER: He was a journalist to begin with.
FEUCHTWAircER: He was a journalist, but he was very know-
ledgeable— I shouldn't say "but" [laughter]: and he was
very knowledgeable--and intellectual also, a writer, but
he didn't like my husband.
WESCHLER: Why is that?

FEUCHTWANGER: When my husband had this affair with the
Phoebus Club, he wrote about the scandal in his newspaper
and called him "the little margarine baron." He thought
Lion was a very rich nan and that he should have paid those
workmen; instead it was in the contract that the contractor
paid the workmen. But he didn't know very much about it;
he was just glad to have an occasion to attack somebody who
was rich. He didn't know that ray husband was always hungry
and was not at home with his rich parents but lived rather
in a single room.

352

WESCHLER: Speaking of your husband's poverty of that
period, we were talking before the session of a couple of
other examples of his poverty which you might mention now.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . We had a sign — when he was at home, that
he had always his drapes closed on his window; and when
he went away, he had the drapes open — so I would not have
to go up and speak with his landlady, who was not too
friendly with me. But one time when I had time and could
see him, the drapes were always open and so I couldn't go
up. Finally I was afraid something had happened, so I
went to the landlady and asked if she knows where Lion is.
She said no, she hasn't seen him for a while. Just then
I saw him coning, and he said now he can go back in his
room. He had had no money to pay his rent and was afraid
she would turn him out, so he ran around the whole night and
didn't know where to go. In the morning he went looking
for his youngest brother and [borrowed] some money from
him, who said, of course, he had to pay it back in double.
So he could at least pay the rent and could go back again
into his room. But I saw an article lying on the table;
it was a critic about the [most recent] first night in the
theater. I said, "Why didn't you send it to Berlin to the
Schaubuhne?" He said, "Oh, I forgot about it." And then
I noticed that there was no stamp on it, and he had ob-
viously no money for the stamps, so I took the letter with me

353

and sent it to Berlin.

WESCHLER: So this was the life of "the little margarine
baron." Did Eisner ever become more friendly?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes. Later on then we had a friend [Adolf
Kaufmann] who was a lawyer and also the owner of the avant-
garde [ Kamraer spiel ej theater. He was always a socialist,
although he was a very rich man, and he was a friend of
Eisner. He once asked Eisner, "What do you have against
Feuchtwanger?" And Eisner said, "Oh, that's an old story:
he is too rich," or something like that. And then this
man, this lawyer, told him that in those days, at least,
ray husband was not rich at all, and also told him how the
story was, that he had nothing to do with this scandal.
We didn't know that this had happened later, but when
my husband had his premiere of The Persians--it was really
a great success and it was very beautifully performed--
Eisner wrote a glowing article about it.
WESCHLER: Eisner was also the theater critic.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was the theater critic. He was
everything in his newspaper; he wrote the whole thing
from beginning to end. He had an assistant who was a
student then, an admirer of Eisner and also socialist
in a way. He was also a son of a very rich man. His
mother was a Feuchtwanger. This young assistant is now a
professor in Berkeley. He's retired, of course, but his

354

name is Professor [Karl] Landauer. This was a relative of

mine. But I never met him since he was a child, [laughter]

WESCHLER: How was Eisner regarded? How was his paper

regarded?

FEUCHTWANGER: His paper was regarded as the best theater

newspaper; the best critics were printed there. Those

who were in the know, the literati and the intellectuals,

read his — not his paper, nothing about politics, but his

theater critics. He could make good or bad weather in

the theater, in a way. He was influential.

WESCHLER: But he himself was not, during the war anyway,

considered a major political force.

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, not at all.

WESCHLER: And at the time you saw him he was in his green

frock coat.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he was very poor and nobody took him

seriously, also not his newspaper, except those who were

already socialists.

WESCHLER: Well, how did it come about that he became the

head of the government of Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: Because there was nobody else there, [laughter]

Nobody else could make the revolution.

WESCHLER: And what actually took place? Did he proclaim

it, or . . . ?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he proclaimed it. It was a great affair.

355

and my husband and I were invited at--it was still the
Royal Theater, and then it became the State Theater. He
spoke there. There was a performance of a classic play,
which was Pes Epimenides Erwachen . It was by Goethe. It
was a very classic play in verses and with great gestures
and so. And all of a sudden, then, the curtain fell and
opened again a little bit, and a little man came out. He
said, "We are socialiths and we are dthemocrats . " He
lisped a little bit--that was Eisner. That was his first
performance, before a full house, you know, an enormous
theater.

WESCHLER: What was the reaction?

FEUCHTWANGER: "We are socialiths and we are dthemocrats."
The reaction was great, great applause, because every-
body was glad that somebody took over and that the war was
over. There was nobody there: all the [government]
people, they went all in the ratholes, those who had been
there before. [laughter]

WESCHLER: So this was the revolution in Munich.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, and we had the apartment of a general
who was in the war and wanted to have somebody living in
his apartment. It was a very beautiful apartment in
Schwabing also; the house belonged to his father-in-law.
One day his mother-in-law came to us and said, "I wanted
to speak with you. I know that you know this kind of

356

people like Eisner, and I wanted to speak with you, Mr.
Feuchtwanger, about the things we have to expect. We
think we are very glad to have Mr. Eisner now. All the
others, they have lied to us. They spoke always about vic-
tory, about those French who are not good soldiers, and
everything was lies, lies, lies. Now we are glad to have
this man who seems a very quiet man and not violent."
That's what she said.

But after he has been assassinated, which wasn't
very long afterwards.... It was when he was on his way to
resign because he couldn't hold the radicals anymore. He
was only an independent socialist, which was between
socialist and communist, and the radicals made too much
noise. He didn't want to go with them — he was always in
the middle — so he resigned. He was on his way to resign,
to the parliament, when he was assassinated by a Count
[Anton von] Arco [-Valley] . When the funeral was, the
funeral procession went through the whole city, and all
the people who applauded him when he came and when he
was first seen, they were all so glad that he was mur-
dered. And this was already a bad sign, you know. It
was an omen, a bad omen.

WESCHLER: I want to talk a little bit about his administration
in Munich. To begin with, I wanted to ask you about
certain particular literary figures and whether you know

357

how they felt about Eisner.

FEUCHTWANGER: They were very much for hira.

WESCHLER: How did Erich Muhsam feel?

FEUCHTWANGER: Muhsam was a friend of his, but he was

against him, because Muhsam was an anarchist and, of course,

he thought Eisner was much too mild and that it was nothing

what he does and it will never come to anything. But he

was — you know, anarchism says that everything has to go

worse and worse and only then can it go better. But they

were still very good friends.

WESCHLER: How did Heinrich Mann feel?

FEUCHTWANGER: Heinrich Mann was very much for Eisner, for

the whole revolution.

WESCHLER: Thomas Mann?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't think so." We didn't speak with him

then; but he was not for it, of course.

WESCHLER: Are there any other particular people whose

reactions are relevant?

FEUCHTWANGER: Wedekind was already dead. He died in

1918. But he would have welcomed the whole thing.

WESCHLER: Okay, well, let's proceed to what actually took

place. Eisner's administration was only a couple of months

long.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, and also, you know, the trouble was that

everything that was good of socialism in those days--and

358

was good — was its undoing. Eisner introduced the vote
for women--that was the first time in Germany--and also
he abolished censorship. And both those things were
his undoing because immediately then--not long, at first
it was like a honeymoon, but then they attacked him viciously.
The vote for women was the greatest mistake because all
the women were Catholic and were directed by the Catholic
Church against everything. The Catholic Church was always
for raonarchism, and against anything revolutionary.
And the peasant woraen--even they voted, of course. It was
a very funny thing, we were invited to an estate on the
Chiemsee with friends, and there were those placards about
the next election. There was "KPD" on some of the signs,
and an old woman asked the gentleman [Deffner] at whose
estate we were invited — during the war he was himself in
Russia as a soldier; he was the son of a very rich manu-
facturer, but he was to the left. (All those who were in
the war were very much to the left.) He was very upset
about the whole thing. An old woman asked him, "What does
it mean, KPD? What party is this?" And he said, "It's
the Catholic party." And everybody in this village, they
voted for communism, because, of course, it was actually
the Communist party. He said it was the Catholic party,
and everybody read KPD.... [laughter]
WESCHLER: How did the Communist party get along with Eisner?

359

FEUCHTWANGER: Not at all. They found him not severe ■\
enough, strict enough. But still they were in the government
together. That's why he wanted to resign, because he
thought it wouldn't come to any good when he stays longer.
WESCHLER: What concrete program did Eisner want to pursue?
FEUCHTWANGER: All he wanted was that people had enough
to eat, mostly. But you cannot stamp that out of the
ground all of a sudden, you know; it would have taken time.
And also the peasants took advantage of the plight of the
cities and asked enormous prices, usually. This also was
very bad.

WESCHLER: This is still the winter of that year.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. And no coals, nothing to heat.
Every family was allowed only one room to heat. And only
one room for light.

WESCHLER: What was that winter like? Was it a hard winter?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was a hard winter, a very hard winter,
ja.

There was also — it was a little later, already after
he has been assassinated — some friends of ours had a little
bread and butter, you know. That was a party with bread
and butter. Usually everybody brought himself something
to eat because nobody had money; and also everybody who
could afford it brought a bottle of wine. And there we
were at this party. She iMira Deutsch] was a friend of

360

the publisher of ray husband. The publisher died also in
the war. She had a child from him. She wasn't married
with him, but she had a child. And she lived together
with a baron who was also a writer [Renato von Hollander] , a
very elegant and good looking young man. She looked like
a Creole, you know, like a South American beauty. She
was known as very free living, and it was always very
amusing. I, for instance, only looked at it, but all
those people were more active. There were not enough
chairs, so they had mattresses on the floor and they were
lying there. For our experiences now, it was harmless;
nothing worse than kissing happened, or a little petting.
And there were famous people there: for instance, the
General intendant, the director of the State Theatre,
Albert Steinriick, a famous actor from before, Reinhardt's
actor. And some people who were really with great names:
Bruno Frank, who was a great poet then; and we were there;
and [Karl] Wolfskehl, who was also known as a poet. And
all of a sudden there was a noise on the door, and we looked
out, and there were lots of soldiers outside. They said,
"You have to all come with us. You make here those orgies,
and we don't allow that in our revolution." It looked
a little bit dangerous with the rifles and so. But I had
the idea. "How about calling Miihsam?" He was something
like the police chief then; he worked in the police. So

361

we called Miihsam, and he was really at the police station,
and he said, "Let some soldier come to the telephone."
So I called one, and they spoke together, and Mvihsam
said, "Let those people go; they are my friends!" So
they left again. Everything was over. But afterwards,
when the Ratereg ierung was over, when the whole thing was
over and it was counterrevolution, then it had an
afterplay which was not so simple anymore. But I have
to tell you another thing when....

WESCHLER: Why don't you finish? What was the aftereffect?
FEUCHTWANGER: That comes a little later. Because first
I wanted to tell you something which happened then. Miihsam
sent a soldier to the apartment of Rainer Maria Rilke,
and there they had to put a sign on the door which said,
"At the apartment of Rainer Maria Rilke, there is no
pilfering!" [laughter] And nobody touched anything.
WESCHLER: So these were very aesthetic revolutionaries,
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . Ja, ja. [laughter] Rainer Maria
Rilke, who was such an aristocratic poet, he loved the
whole thing, you know; he was very much with it.

Then the afterplay of this evening was after the
counterrevolution, when the Ratereg ierung was put down.
It was a terrible bloodshed during this time; it was not
like the revolution we did. This was a revolution which
came from the north then, a counterrevolution. The blood

362

came out underneath the doors of the — what do you call
it where they kill the animals? — the slaughterhouse.
Ja, they slaughtered people there who were in the army
or so, or who were suspicious as socialists. Many were
absolutely innocent. For instance, the soldiers of the
counterrevolution came into the basement of a palace,
and there were about eleven young men. They thought they
were communists because they were hidden there, so they
killed thera one after the other and danced in a kind of —
they were drunken of blood, you know, and danced on
their bodies. Our friend, the lawyer, found out what had
happened, and he was then called when there was a trial for
the murder of those young people. They were not communists;
they were anticomraunists and were afraid of_ communists;
that's why they were hidden there. They were kind of
apprentices in a very Catholic union, you could call it.
They were hidden because they thought that's the best
place to be hidden if communists would come. But those
soldiers of the counterrevolution killed them because they
thought they were communists. And after that there was
a trial, of course, because the Catholic party didn't
want their own people slaughtered. And this lawyer, who
was our friend, you know, and the friend of Eisner, defended
those people.
WESCHLER: What was his name?

3 63

FEUCHTWANGER: Kaufinann. He was the owner of the avant-
garde theater. He defended those murderers. He said to
us, "Although I am from the other side of the party, I
think we have to be just and also defend those people who
don't know, who have erred and are left in their wrong
opinions and didn't know better." So he defended than, and
they were not very much punished.

But this was not the end of the whole thing. The
end of the whole thing was that Mrs. Deutsch, who was the
owner of this apartment who made this party, she was called
to court and should have been deported. She was accused
of having a house of ill repute, and also that she had a
light in more than one rocm and heated more than one
room — which was not true. My husband and Bruno Frank have
been called as witnesses against her, because we were there.
We were present when this party took place. There my
husband has been asked, "Did you think that people at this party
were communists?" And my husband said, "There was a daughter
of the baron from a very right-wing family in East Prussia;
she was there, but I didn't think it was an East Prussian
aristocratic assembly." [laughter] And then they asked
him, "We heard that there were mattresses on the floor.
Was it for the purpose of sleeping with the women?" My
husband said, "I resent that. My wife was with me." And
things like that. So finally she couldn't be condemned for

364

ill repute: there was nothing which would help to this
accusation. But she has been condananed for being against
the law of coals and light, something like that. And
she had to pay also for that, but this wouldn't have been
I bad except thartj she was then deported; she had to leave.
WESCHLER: She was deported.
FEUCHTWANGER: Deported, ja.
WESCHLER: Out of Bavaria?

FEUCHTWANGER: Out of Bavaria, ja, then out--I think out
of Bavaria, ja. But I think she went to Berlin; I'm
not sure. She was Austrian. And then my husband and
Bruno Frank, they said, "Now that we had to go this long
way, and we couldn't even help her" — because she was im-
mediately arrested and had to go to jail until she wa;s
deported. So my husband said, "Let's ask at least what
is due to us. We had some fee coming to us as witnesses."
So they asked. My husband was asked what he is doing [since
the fee is based on] the profession. So he said, "I am
a writer." The official said, "What do you want?" He said,
"I want ten marks for ray time." "You don't get that. Not
even a doctor would get that. You get two marks." And
then Bruno Frank said, "Yes, and I was in the war and I have
a maimed leg" — or something like that — "so we had to take
a taxi; we couldn't take the streetcar." He was replied,
"You are not allowed to take a taxi. I don't pay a taxi;

365

I pay you ten cents for a streetcar." {laughter] After-
wards, when we met Mrs. Deutsch, after the whole thing
was over and we met her later, I think in Berlin, she
told us that she was not badly treated in jail, but it
was terrible because she was the only woman there. She
was so much guarded that she could not even go to where
people usually go alone. The guard was always with her,
and she, of course, had great misgivings about that. But
then the man said, "Oh, sit down finally! I'm a married
man." [laughter] This is Munich, you know.
WESCHLER: I wanted to go back to the time of Eisner's
assassination and take the political events a little
bit more slowly. I must say, for instance, that I am
surprised to hear of Erich Muhsam as a police chief.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . I don't know if he was a chief, but
he was at the police always; he was supervising the police.
WESCHLER: Okay, well, we might take that a little bit
more slowly and flesh it out. First of all, tell a little
bit about what happened with Eisner's assassination. Who
was this count?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was a young man, a Count Arco of a very
old aristocratic family, and he thought he has to do that.
It was mostly what I told you, how after the censorship
was abolished, the articles about Eisner were then so
vicious that he thought he has to do that.

366

WESCHLER: What kinds of articles, what kinds of things
were said about Eisner?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, that he is a cciTmunist and that every-
thing is wrong and nothing is better since he is there,
that there is no money there and nothing to eat there, and
that everything was his fault. And, yes — no, I forgot
that: [Count Arco said that] the real reason was that
Eisner had made a speech and said, "We have to admit that
Germany is guilty of the war; we began the war." There
was an enormous scandal immediately. Eisner thought that
[since] the Treaty of Versailles was [just being formed],
maybe the conditions would be better if the Germans admitted
that they did that, and that it was not their fault because
it was the kaiser and this government, and the people were
innocent of all that. That's why he thought it would be good
for the conditions of Versailles peace if the Germans
would admit their guilt. I think it was the reason why
he has been assassinated, and also because the newspapers
iiranediately attacked him viciously.

WESCHLER: Let's pan for a second and talk about the Treaty
of Versailles. How did people...?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, people were very upset about it. It
was also very strong and strict. The people were already
so poor and they had to pay so much and now also lost some
country, Alsace-Lorraine, and so. They were very upset about

367

it.

WESCHLER: Was that also true of the Bohemian community?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think yes; in a way, yes.

WESCHLER: How did you feel?

FEUCHTWANGER: We didn't speak much about it, but we felt

that it was tough. But on the other hand, we always thought,

all those people around us thought, that maybe it's better

that we had to have these tough conditions so people would

think longer before they would make another war. So they would

see that when a war is lost, then you have to pay for it.

WESCHLER: How did you feel about the War Guilt Clause?

FEUCHTWANGER: Of course we found out that we were guilty

of the war,

WESCHLER: Did you feel, did the people...?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . You ranaember what Wedekind said.

WESCHLER: Right, right.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja . That was always our opinion. But

it was not so much the people, and it was not so much

Bavaria. There was a very great difference. It was

really the emperor who did that.

WESCHLER: Okay, well, Eisner is then assassinated. What

happened? Who took over?

FEUCHTWANGER: There took over then the communistic side

of the government. One man [Alois Lindner] who was a

real communist--he was a navy man, you know, those who

368

began already to make the revolution — he shot the socialist
parliamentarian, the deputy [Erhard AuerJ , and he was very
badly wounded. He wasn't dead, but very badly wounded.
And I think another one was shot. He went into the parlia-
ment, right away when he saw the blood, when he saw Eisner
lying in his blood — that was in front of the parliament —
he ran into the parliament and just shot blindly. He
loved Eisner — all those people liked him very much — and
he was absolutely mad, you know, and insane, by this ex-
perience. He just shot....

WESCHLER: Was he aiming to kill the right-wing people?
FEUCHTWANGER: No, it was a socialist who he [shot] . But he
was a communist, and the socialists and the communists were
already not on very good terms. But Auer was saved later,
this socialist deputy.

WESCHLER: Count Arco , however, was right-wing.
FEUCHTWANGER: He was to the right, ja, ja.
WESCHLER: Well, what then happened? First of all, where
were you at the time that you heard about the assassination
and how did you react?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was a very sad story. We were at
home, and somebody called us and said, "Let's go and see
what happened in the street." You never knew in your
home what had happened. So we went around and came to a
place, a kind of open park, and there we saw terrible

369

things. There was a man who was standing directly beside

me, and the soldiers — they called them the White Guards,

the counterrevolution — they shot at people just without

any reason or so. And the man beside me was hit. He

was hit from a bullet which ricocheted off a nearby house

and then ricocheted also off the watch which was in his

pocket; so he was not wounded. The bullet fell just down

before me. But then, on the other side of the street,

we saw a small man, an older man, running terribly with

his arms up. The soldiers shouted, "Arms up! "--you know,

so he wouldn't shoot or something. He was a very poor man.

He ran, and they ran after him, and then they just hit him

with their rifles until he was dead. We saw that before

our eyes.

WESCHLER: That was at the time that Eisner was assassinated?

FEUCHTV^JANGER: Ja, that was when the White Guard came, when

they made war against Bavaria, against Munich.

WESCHLER: But that was not the same day that Eisner was

assassinated; it was later on.

FEUCHTWANGER: No, no, when the counterrevolution came.

WESCHLER: Okay. Let's talk a little bit about the period

between Eisner's assassination and the counterrevolution.

FEUCHTWANGER: It didn't take long, you know.

WESCHLER: How long did it take? Eisner was assassinated

on February 21, 1919, and then what happened, in terms of

370

days? Did the conmiunists take over after Eisner's assassi-
nation?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, in a way they took over; they also took

over the newspapers. But it wasn't much different. There
was still nothing to eat, and people were afraid, and we
were not afraid, [laughter] and that was all. But I
recognized that people were very much afraid. But when the
funeral of Eisner was, they were all jubilant that he was
now dead, the same people who welcomed him so much.

And then came the White Guards. There were bitter
battles on their way from the north, from Prussia; they
killed a lot of people on their way, a lot of peasants
who were suspected of being communists, because there were
these Peasant and Soldier Councils, you know. They just
killed the people.

Then there was another thing. After they had killed
so many people, a kind of [left-wing] terror group was
organized. Another group, which belonged to the side of
Ludendorff — they were kind of mystic, ant i-Sanitic, and
antiliberal — this group [the Thule Gesellschaf t] had been taken
prisoner by the communists. They were imprisoned in a
school. And the others who heard about that, when they
heard that their friends had been killed by the soldiers
who came to Munich, they broke into the school and killed
those people, their hostages. [pause in tape] The

371

hostages [were being held] so that nothing else would

happen; so that the soldiers wouldn't kill too many

people, they held this group as hostages. But this

other group of ruffians, the soldiers from the revolution,

they invaded the school and killed all those people,

all those hostages. Everybody was terribly upset; the

government, even the communists, were terribly upset. It

had not been in their intention to do that; they just wanted

to keep them as hostages so that the others wouldn't kill

so many. And this was a turning point for the whole thing,

because then, of course, this has been made up enormously

that it was the government who did that, and there ensued

an enormous bloodshed afterwards. That's what I told

you about, when the blood came out from the slaughterhouse

under the door. And the denunciations. It was a terrible

thing .

WESCHLER: Who was this, what you called "the White Guards"?

Were they the Freikorps? Is this the same group?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not the Freikorps; it was the socialist

array.

WESCHLER: The White Guards were the socialists?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, we called them the White Guards. But

they were not those people who were with the Nazis. The

Freikorps were the Nazis, but this was the German government.

WESCHLER: And they were the ones who came down to put down

372

the comniunists?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , because they were socialists. It was

[FriedrichJ Ebert.

WESCELER: Ebert sent them down to put down the communists,

and the communists...?

FEUCHTWANGER: The Rateregierung , ja. It was very near the

communists. But nothing would have happened if they wouldn't

have come. Probably it would have been very bad because

no money was there, no taxes came in, and things like that.

The people were very unfriendly to the government and didn't

pay their taxes probably. But nothing of bloodshed would

have happened except for this man--Lindner was his name--

this sailor who killed the socialist deputy.

WESCHLER: It sounds like total chaos.

FEUCHTWANGER: It was a little bit. But not so chaotic

as you think, because you had to find out who was who.

After Eisner was killed, his party and the party of the

communists took over. The only thing which happened was

that two people were killed in the parliament from this

mad sailor. But this has nothing to do with the government.

A man who wanted to avenge Eisner: all right, he saw him

lying in his blood and ran into the parliament and began to

shoot there. That was the whole thing what happened during

the Ratereg ierung , nothing else, until the soldiers came

from the north. They were called by those who were against

373

the Eisner government or the successors of the Eisner
government; they called than in Berlin to send troops.
When the troops came, they killed everybody who was suspected
of communism.

There were terrible denunciations, and I want to tell
you about it. For instance, I had a help who came to me.
She was living far out in Schwabing also, in a little house,
and there were several very little houses around a court.
The landlord wanted one of the little houses back, and
there was somebody living in it. And it was a law, which
also was from the Rateregierung , the Soviet, that they
could not put anybody out who had not another apartment.
So he couldn't get those people out. He wanted this little
house for his daughter. So all what he did was he took a — there
was also a law from the government, from the Ratereg ierung ,
a law that nobody could have arras. All the arms had to
be delivered to the armory; everybody had to bring their
arms there. (For instance, in our house, in our apartment,
there were lots of rifles because the general was a hunter
and he had a lot of arms. He lived in his estate in the
country, and he came and took all the arms out of his cabinet
and buried them in the English Garden because he was
afraid for himself, and also for us. It wouldn't be....
Achl We were always in the middle of that!) Then this
landlord of our help, he wanted the little house for his

374

daughter, and because he couldn't put out this man, he took
a rifle--which didn't belong to this man; he just found a
rifle some way — and he buried it in the courtyard and called
the police. He said, "This man is a communist. He has a
rifle buried in the courtyard." And this man has been
arrested and shot. Just so he could have the house for his
daughter. Things like that happened every day.
WESCHLER: About how long a period are we talking now?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, I wouldn't know that anymore; I'd have to
look in the history books. [laughter]
WESCHLER: Is it months, or just weeks?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, a very short time. And then what happened
in our house, our apartment: we got two eggs, what was then
a great rarity. To make it bigger, not to just eat them as
eggs, I wanted to make a big omelette out of it with flour
so it would get more. I wanted to make it bigger, so I
separated the egg yolk from the white and beat it so it would
be higher. I went to the balcony, which looked down--I told
you that this view from the kitchen was to the gardens of
the palace of the prince, the brother of the king. And in
this palace was stationed this White Guard, the army of the
soldiers who had to put down the Rateregierung. When I beat
the egg white, all of a sudden soldiers came and said, "You
have a machine gun hidden!" Because it makes a noise like....
WESCHLER: I see. They thought this noise was a machine

375

gun.

FEUCHTWANGER: I beat the egg white for snow — you call it
"snow, " too, I think--and they came and were looking for
the machine gun. It was very dangerous, of course. So
they looked everywhere in the apartment. We had in those
days big stoves, enough to heat the rooms, made of tile —
tile stoves, high, not stove to cook but to heat — and
they looked in the stoves. They looked everywhere, on the
toilet and everywhere, and they couldn't find the machine
gun. So finally they were ready to leave, and then one
opened up a drawer of my husband's desk. And what was
there? The first thing. . .Spartacus. [The Spartacists] were
a terror group in Berlin. It was much more serious in
Berlin than in Munich, and this was a terror group in
Berlin who burned, I think, the newspaper houses and things
like that. So that was of course a very dangerous situation
we were standing there, and here is Spartacus. This was
a manuscript of the play of Brecht which later was called
Drums in the Night ; but at first it was Spartacus. My
husband didn't want to betray Brecht, because Brecht lived
in the neighborhood. One of the soldiers said, "What is
that? Did you write that?" So my husband said, "Yes."
And then another soldier came and looked at it and said,
"Oh, that's a play. Ah, now I know,'' he said. "You are a
playwright, I have seen a play of yours in Dusseldorf . . . . "

376

TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE ONE
JULY 10, 1975 and JULY 14, 1975

WESCHLER: We are waiting breathlessly to find out what
happened: a group of soldiers have just found Brecht's
play Spartacus inside your husband's desk.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , and this one said that he has seen a
play of my husband with the title of Warren Hastings.
He was very excited about it — he thought it a great play —
and he said to the other people, "This man is all right.
Let's go. He just writes plays." And so the danger was
over. But if he hadn't known that, we would have immediate-
ly been arrested, and you never knew what [might have]
happened. They didn't make any long trials or so; they
just shot the people.

I didn't quite finish this thing where we saw this man
slain in the public park. We had been with friends. One
was Alfred Wolfenstein, who was also a poet, and rather well
known, and another was Friedrich Burschell, who was an
essayist. Both were very well known writers. We were with
them together, but when we saw this man slain, we lost our
pleasure and our curiosity. It didn't bring us much peace,
so we went home and left the other two there. And we were
home not long before there came a ring. The bell rang, and

377

a man in uniform was standing there. He said, "I am from
the Reichswehr . " (It was the Reichswehr who made what we
called the White Guard.) "But don't be afraid. I have
nothing to do with this invasion from the north. I came
back from the war, and I had nothing to eat and nothing to
do, and it was the only thing to do, to go to the Reichs-
wehr. I am not an anticommunist or antisocialist; I am
without any.... I sympathize with them. But I am not a
politician at all." (He was an officer, a lieutenant.)
And he said, "I wanted only to tell you that your friend
with whom you were at this public park has been arrested."
Wolfenstein. I don't know about Burschell, I only know
about Wolfenstein. They both, I think--no, it was only one
who has been arrested, since they separated also right away.
Somebody shouted, "This man is an intellectual.'" He had
black-rimmed glasses, and that was always the sign of the
Schwabing intellectual.

So they arrested him and brought him into the castle
where the king lived before. When he was brought into the
castle [there was] a big room, a very beautiful room with
works of art, and there was a general sitting in it. He
said, "What are you doing in here? Here I am a prisonerl"
And this was General Ludendorff, who made the war, the
marshal. He has been arrested before and the White Guard
didn't know yet that he was there arrested. He was arrested
by the Rate regie rung and was in the palace, very honored, and

then they brought in Wolfenstein, and he said, "What are
you doing here? It is I who am arrested here.'" So he
thought he has to be alone and nobody else has the honor
to stay with him.* [laughter]

And this officer saw the whole thing. He went with
the soldiers because he was curious what would happen to
Wolfenstein. He knew him only by seeing him at the Cafe
Stephanie, where all those writers always were. Then he
heard what the soldiers spoke with each other, "What
happens now? What are we doing with him?" He found out
from their words that it's rather dangerous for Wolfenstein.
So he went to Wolfenstein and said, "I am an officer, a
lieutenant, and this is my man. I'll take care of him."
So he took him out, and outside he said, [whispering] "Now
try to go home without anybody seeing you." He just wanted
to save him because he was sure the soldiers would kill
him. That's why he came to us and said he wanted us to know
what happened to Wolfenstein and that he is all right now.
So all those things, you know, were always so mixed up with
hiomanity and justice and helpfulness--all that with the
terrible cruelties which happened.

WESCHLER: What was the response of the general Munich
population, and then also the Bohemian group, to the arrival
of the Reichswehr?

* But see alternate version of this story at the end of Tape
X, Side 1. In her proofreading, Mrs. Feuchtwanger noted
here, "I think the other version is the right one."

379

FEUCHTWANGER: The response is what the newspapers write.

And since the newspapers were taken over again by the old

owners of the monarchy and so, people believed what was in

the newspapers. They had also no other possibility to

know.

WESCHLER: The newspapers were pro-Right.

FEUCHTWANGER: Pro-Right. And the Right were the socialists.

But the socialists didn't know that they were used by the

Right, by those people.

WESCHLER: How did you respond to the arrival of the White

Guard?

FEUCHTWANGER: You can imagine how we responded. We were

ourselves in danger.

WESCHLER: In general, that Schwabing community would have

been against the White Guard.

FEUCHTWANGER: Of course they were. They were all in danger,
in great danger. They didn't go to the coffee houses.
[ laughter]

Then we — yes--when we went home after we were together
in this public park. . . . This was the Ludwigstrasse, where
also the great library is, and there is also the armory.
Some people with arms, who were kind of voluntary vigilantes,
they spoke with us and said, "You come with us. You have
to take also rifles with you. We have to show those
Schwabinger — they called them those Schwabinger Gesindel,

380

those ruffians or something like that — "we have to show

them. You have to take, everybody, also your wife,

has to take a rifle." So we had to go with them. They

ordered us. We went in and took some rifles, and before

we left we put them in a corner and ran away. [laughter]

And then a man came and spoke with us and said, "Do you

see a Jew today on the street?" [laughter]

WESCHLER: And you said?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, we didn't say anything. We were cowards.

[laughter]

WESCHLER: I wanted to step back a little bit now, and talk

about the national, and particularly Berlin, politics.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, but I think we haven't finished yet,

because an important thing comes now, not in Berlin but

in Munich.' Before the White Guard took over, they tried

to defend Munich against those Guards which were nearing

Munich. One of those who wanted to try was [Ernst]

Toller. He was a kind of a general [laughter] of the defense

of Munich. He met Lion's brother, the youngest brother,

the hero, on the street, on the Ludwigstrasse.

WESCHLER: [Bertold] Feuchtwanger .

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. The Ludwigstrasse was a big street

where the library was and many of the public buildings —

the university, the armory, many beautiful public buildings;

it was a beautiful street- And Toller met Bubi--that's

381

how we called him--and said, "You have to help us. You
have experience in the war," Toller was also a soldier,
but he was not so much in the middle of the battle. He
said, "We know that you had so many orders and iron crosses,
and you have to help us." So Bubi went with him to the
outskirts to see the defenses of Munich, of the Rateregierung .
And he said it was so terrible poor, it was just--he said,
"No. You want me to do that? No. I know what war is. I go
home." IlaughterJ And Toller — they went on. They began
to shoot already. The bullets and cannons, the artillery
was already over our heads. We could hear them coming
over our heads. Finally, of course, the White Guard had an
easy victory. It was not very difficult. They came in,
and there was a man on the Siegestor, you know, which is
like the Arc of Triumph in Paris; it was where we lived
near the Academy with this arc. They came on horses in
triumph, and on one of the horses was an actor [Fritz
Kampers] who played in a play which Lion had directed at
the Volkstheatre . He never was in the war. He always
told the people he cannot be: they cannot make theater
without him; he has to be excused of war service. So he
was always there, and he played the young lovers. But
now he was sitting high on the horse and he was seeing
us, so from above he just greeted us as if he would be a
general. Then a man beside us said, "Now that is all what

382

we have from the war, all the victories — finally they
conquered Munich 1"

WESCHLER: At least the German army knows how to do some-
thing right.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja. [laughter] But this actor was so
funny--and I reraanber even his name--he was so funny on his
horse looking to us down, you know, the ordinary mortals.
WESCHLER: I haven't yet gotten a sense of what this array
was that came. Was it an organized army?
FEUCHTWANGER: Not at all. They had no arms; they had
nothing, just the soldiers, some soldiers who were against
the Prussians.

WESCHLER: No, I'm talking about the army that came, the
White Guard. They were an organized army?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, yes, they were very organized. It was
from Berlin, where there was already the socialist government-
Ebert. And then Toller had to hide because he was in
great danger. He was hidden in an apartment, and he had to
dye his hair red, and he was in a cabinet....
WESCHLER: I should think that dyeing his hair red would
give the game away.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , [laughter] But he had beautiful black
hair, and he was in a closet, hidden, and somebody denounced
him, of course. He was arrested and had to be five years
in jail. He hadn't done anything, because he had not the

383

possibility to do anything; he just had his ideas. He

didn't kill anybody; he was not violent. He always said

to the people, "Please show the others that we are better."

And then that was Toller, with his defenseless defense, who

inspired my husband to write this Thomas Wendt . Ja,

that's why I always wanted to make known this kind of

transition.

WESCHLER: Well, I'm glad somebody here knows where this

interview is going. Before we come to Thomas Wendt, I

wanted to talk a little bit about the national scene.

I wanted to name a couple names, and maybe you have some

observations about them. Let's talk a little bit about

Ebert. How was he thought of in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: He was like what you would call an "Uncle

Tom." They didn't call him like that, but that's what

you would say here. I think he was a nice man and he

didn't know better. He was a good administrator. It

wasn't so bad, his government, but immediately the military

took over, and the big armament people and the big industry

took over, and he didn't feel that. He was used by them.

But he was not a bad man if the others wouldn't have been

worse.

WESCHLER: Was he also assassinated?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, but [Matthias] Erzberger was assassinated,

Erzberger was from the Catholic party — it's called the

384

Centrum party — and he was most instrumental to end the

war. He went to the pope, and he also was at Versailles.

He was accused of....

WESCHLER: He was the one who signed the Versailles

Treaty.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , that's it, ja. He was in the government,

from the Catholic party, but he was more hated than Ebert

because he signed this terrible--what they said is

terrible--contract in Versailles. That's why he was

assassinated by, you could say, already the predecessors

of the Nazis.

WESCHLER: What about the Spartacists, and Rosa Luxemburg

and . . . ?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, this was at this time, I guess. I

didn't know much about her because we lived in Munich and

they were in Berlin.

WESCHLER: Were they only a Berlin group, or were there

Spartacists in Munich also?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all in Munich, only in Berlin.

But Luxemburg had nothing to do with the Spartacists. She was

just a Communist. It was her party, a serious party, but

not violent or so, nor revengeful. She was a member of

the parliament.

WESCHLER: How was she regarded by the people in your circle?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, many admired her, but I didn't know

385

enough. I was a little afraid; I didn't know enough about
her. I only read what was in the newspapers, you know; we
didn't know much about the whole thing. We were always in
the province and a little slow. So I didn't know what really
happened with her, but other people who knew more--for in-
stance. Dr. Kaufmann, the lawyer, he knew about all those
things; [Karl] Liebknecht and so on. He was a great admirer
of Liebknecht. But I didn't know anything. I thought we
would be glad to have just socialism. But she was a
Communist. Later I heard that she was a great woman and
also Liebknecht a great man. But I just was not enough "in
the know" about what happened there.

WESCHLER: In particular, do you happen to know what Bertolt
Brecht thought of Luxemburg?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think he was an admirer of Luxemburg, but
at this time he was not in Munich. He was either in Augsburg,
where he is at home, or — yes, he was most of the time in
Augsburg, because he told us that he made also a revolution
in Augsburg. A friend of his who was a doctor, they took
horses--and the other was Caspar Neher, the painter who
made the sets--those three, they took horses and rode through
Augsburg and announced the revolution. [laughter] That's
what he told us.

WESCHLER: The next time we talk we'll talk in more detail
about Brecht. What about the Freikorps? Was that...?
FEUCHTWANGER: That was much later.

386

WESCHLER: That was not at this time yet?
FEUCHTWANGEB: Ja, it was a little later but not much.
[Georg] Escherich, I think was the name of the man. They
tried to be on good terms with the Russians even, because
they wanted arms from Russia. You know it wasn't allowed
to have arms or planes after the Versailles peace treaty,
but they got arms in Russia. They had also their pilots
trained in Russia. I knew some of than. They told me that.
They didn't know that I was Jewish, and I wanted to hear
what they had to say. I met some of than skiing and so.
Once there was a very funny thing: one was a great admirer
of my husband. He said, "You know you have to read a book.
I read a book now, and you have to read it. If you don't
have it, I will give it to you." He was very much in love
with me because we were skiing together. He said, "This
book is called The Ugly Duchess, and you have to read it.
Every word is as if written by Ludendorff!" [laughter]
That was the highest thing he could say. Those things
happened to me. Later I found out he was one of those who--
some of his friends assassinated Rathenau . He was from
a submarine, a commander of a sutmarine. He told me
about the revolution in Turkey. He was there, and he said
that this dictator, [Kenal] Ataturk, he abolished the fez,
you know, this hat — that was a kind of religion, the fez —
and every peasant who had been found with a fez has

387

immediately been hanged. He said, "The whole roads

were full of--frora every tree hanged somebody with a

fez." That's what he told me.

WESCHLER: No doubt speaking admiringly of that.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, oh yes.

WESCHLER: Well, that's a bit in the future. Maybe we

should right now begin to talk about Thomas Wendt . I

guess the way to phrase this question is, what was Lion

doing during all of this?

FEUCHTWANGER: Lion was just looking at this and taking it

in. He wanted to see everything and to hear everything and

to speak with everybody. He was also invited by a lady

[Maria PoschartJ who was a friend of ours; she had a big

party — I don't know; I wasn't there: I don't know anymore

why. And there she met a man who introduced himself to

Lion with the name of Amman. He was also from the Reichswehr ,

a high officer, and he said — maybe I should have mentioned

that they murdered almost everybody they arrested, the

soldiers. For instance, Gustav Landauer: he was a

great writer and was also in the government; he was a

Marxist, and he was in the government together with Eisner.

He was in charge of the theater, because he was mostly

interested in literature and in writing. He wrote about

Heine and about Shakespeare in books which are still now

being read. His wife translated Oscar Wilde's Salome .

388

He was a man with a great beard, very tall, and very
mild. He was somebody who couldn't even kill a fly.
He was arrested also after they took over in Munich; they
had to take hira to one of the breweries on the other side
of the river rather far away. He always thought the human
being is good; you can do something if you only speak
with them. So he began when they went through those green
parks which they had to traverse; he wanted to tell them
what's it all about, the revolution, and that it is only
for the well-being of the people and things like that.
But the soldiers, they were in a hurry; they wanted to go
back to their girls and dance or something. Anyway, they
were bored about this old man who was always preaching, so
they just killed him with the rear of their rifles. And
then my husband met this man who I told you about. He
was the superior of those soldiers, and he said to my
husband, "I was very angry with my soldiers that they
killed Gustav Landauer. I told them always, don't kill
any intellectuals. We will have the bad articles after-
wards— they give it afterwards to the newspapers." It was
his only regret, that later they would have trouble with
the newspapers. So that was the mentality of those people.
You asked me how people reacted. He was not sorry that
a great man has been killed, a great personality, a great
human being; he just said, "We have only trouble with the

389

newspaper. "

WESCHLER: So Lion was taking it in....

FEUCHTWANGER: He took all that in, ja, ja, and he used it

to write.

WESCHLER: And at what point did the idea of Thomas Wendt

come to him?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think during the Rater eg ierung with Toller.

WESCHLER: So actually he had begun thinking about writing

it before the counterrevolution.

FEUCHTWANGER: Also there was another, for instance — let's

say, the way to write. He was tired of writing plays

like classical plays. He wanted a new form of play. He

thought that ideas cannot be expressed when you always

have to write five acts or something like that. It should

be more.... When you write in epic form, you can better

follow the flow of your thought. That's why he wanted to

try this, what he called the epic drama. That was what

influenced Brecht so much when he found out. My husband

always said the epic drama existed already before. In

India it has been used, and Shakespeare wrote in a kind

of epic drama, because he didn't fit in acts--he had little

scenes. That is what Lion wanted to do, and that was

the form, his new form in which he wanted to express his

new ideas.

WESCHLER: But Thomas Wendt was intended, of course, for

390

the stage.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, in a way, but he was not so much inter-
ested in the stage: he was just interested to write it.
WESCHLER: He intended that people would just read it,
perhaps, more than see it.

FEUCHTWANGER: You know he didn't intend to be read or
played. He had to write; he had to write himself. He had
to express himself, and it was a second thought whether
it would be performed or printed or read. First of all,
he had to write — he wouldn't want to think about what
followed afterwards.

WESCHLER: So he began writing Thomas Wendt during the
Ratereg ierung and he was still writing it during the
counterrevolution, I take it. Or had he finished already,
during the time of the White Guard?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, it was about the same time. I don't
know exactly when he began to sit down and write because he
spoke about it and was always--! think he ate and drank
and slept with it, you could say.

WESCHLER: Well, why don't you tell us a little bit about
the play. What is the play about?

FEUCHTWANGER: It is about a writer who goes through the
same experiences as Toller did in the Ratereg ierung . And
there is a girl who is a kind of symbol of the people, who
always went from one to the other, from one man to the other.

391

from one idea to the other, and it was kind of--but she
was absolutely human; you wouldn't know that it was a
symbol of the people who are so difficult to hold in one
direction. Then also the different experiences that
this writer had during the--and most of all, when he saw
that it didn't come out what he wanted to do. He thought
he shouldn't write anymore; he should do something.
Writing is not the right thing; he should act. Then he
wrote this poem about "The Song of the Fallen" in this mood.
WESCHLER: "The Song of the Fallen" which Lion had written
in 1915 was then put in Thomas Wendt's words--it was said
that he had written it.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. And most of all — there is another
man in this play, this novel-play or epic-play, who was
called Herr Schulz; that's like John Doe here, something
like that, so everybody could be named like that--it's a
name very common. This man becomes very rich, first during
the war because he has delivered merchandise to the army,
and then he was also the same during the revolution. He
always used those political movements for his own profit.
This girl was with the writer and later with a rich man.
He was an aesthete. He was a manufacturer but at the same
time an aesthete. His wife, the wife of this aesthete,
has--by chance somebody threw a stone during the
revolution, and she lost her sight. She was such a
wonderful woman with understanding. And this poet, this

392

writer has been excited, terribly upset about this thing,
that the revolution --you know it's always symbolic, but
you don't feel it; it's just when you think about it--
that the revolution does this, that an innocent has to
suffer in the revolution. Finally this girl, who was in
love at first with him and then with this manufacturer,
at the end she went over to Herr Schulz, to this man who
is a profiteer, because she wanted luxury. You cannot
always live with ideas, you see. It began when the writer
found this girl when she wanted to go and drown herself.
He saved her from drowning. Herr Schulz — in those days, it
was still the war — had seduced her and then he threw her
out. She wanted to drown herself, and the writer saved her
from drowning and helped her on. But then she ends by
following Schulz again. In the meantime she has become a
real woman, not this little girl anymore.
WESCHLER: It seems like a very despairing theme.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it is. And he says, "I can say that
everything what happens to the people, in the end it is
always Herr Schulz."

There is also a scene when he goes to the sea, and
he's so desperate that.... There are high waves; it's at
night, a great storm, and he's all alone on the beach. And
he shouts into the waves. He is so desperate that he is
shouting into the waves. And then he sees people who were

3 93

working, weaving the nets, and he says maybe that's the
right thing to do, just weaving or working in the earth and
not doing anything. My husband always was [torn] between
doing and not doing, between the Indian philosophy of not
doing and.... Or as Goethe said, for instance, "Conscience
has only the one who is contemplating; those who act have
no conscience." That's a rough translation. And that's
what he said, that maybe the only thing was to sing and
work. Like they sing when they bring their boats in.
It's a kind of poetry. But you have to read it; you
cannot have any idea when you hear it from me like that.
WESCHLER: But it does give us a chance to talk about
Lion's own attitudes during those times. By the time of the
invasion of the White Guard and so forth, do you think that
Lion had more or less become resigned and despairing about
the possibility of politics?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , ja, absolutely. Ja, ja. That's what
he said, how in the end, it's always Herr Schulz who is
victorious.

WESCHLER: So the play is very much a representation of
his own political feelings at that time.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, in a way, yes. No — you could not say
absolutely, you know, because in a way he was also an
optimist and thought maybe it shouldn't be like that, like
it was in the play.

3 94

WESCHLER: How did that come out? In what way was he

an optimist?

FEUCHTWANGER: When he wrote this play, he thought about

that. But that doesn't mean that he always thought about

that. In a play you have to stay in one line. But he

was not one; he was more people, in a way.

WESCHLER: Could you tell some stories that would help

us see the other sides of his feelings around that time.

FEUCHTWANGER: Later on he made the little monographs, and

he said, "Maybe you ask me after all I have been through —

prisoners of war and Hitler and concentration camps — you

ask me what I would say now, and I say I would do the whole

thing again." So that was his attitude — that he welcomed

good and bad, you could say.

WESCHLER: By the time of the White Guard, did he have any

political line that he was pursuing, or had he more or

less become apolitical again?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, I think he has decidedly changed. Also

in his attitude to literature and to his work, this

attitude that 1 'art is only for itself and has no other

purpose, he had changed entirely.

WESCHLER: He renounced that. Now, he would rather, he

now saw the political....

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he thought that it is not enough to

make only 1 'art pour 1 'art but that it has to have a purpose,

395

WESCHLER: In a way, this brings us to Brecht, who was

to be very influenced by Thomas Wendt.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , he was more or less influenced by the

form, the new form of the play. Until then his two plays

were only like ordinary, like other plays. After that he

began to write a kind of epic writing.

WESCHLER: Well, I think what we will do is stop for today

and start with Brecht next time. One last question: how

was Thomas Wendt received?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, that was also very difficult. it has

been planned to be played by this avant-garde theater, but

then came another putsch , the [Friedrich] Kapp Putsch,

and everything, all the theaters, had to be closed and the

whole thing was off. Then this same director [Erich Engel]

who wanted to make it in this avant-garde theater wanted to

make it at the State Theatre. Then there came another

putsch--I don't remember, something always happened. It

could not be played because the actors were afraid of riots

or something like that.

WESCHLER: And was it ever played?

FEUCHTWANGER: I think it has been played in other cities,

but I have never seen it played. Mostly in Prussia and

the northern countries.

396

JULY 14, 1975

WESCHLER: Today we're going to set, in effect, the
backdrop for Brecht, who we'll be talking about either at
the end of today or tomorrow, and we're going to begin by
doing a little bit more detailed discussion of theater in
Munich. Munich sounds, the more I talk to you about it,
like an incredible place for theater. One thing which
you had just mentioned in passing, which seems to me to be
a delightful story, is the story of the day you met Ibsen.
You might begin with that.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , when I was still a child. I was always
fighting on the street with the boys. Even when they were
taller, I didn't mind; I was very strong and I could run
very fast. Of course, there was a lot of shouting and name
calling which was always necessary to arouse the boys. But
one day a little man came by, a little old man with white
sideburns and white bushy hair, and he stopped and said to
me, "A girl shouldn't shout so much." Then he went on. It
didn't make much impression, but still I remembered his
look. I was not angry about him; it intrigued me that
somebody would tell that to me: I didn't consider myself
a girl; I was one of the boys. Later on, I saw a picture of
him in Die Jugend--that is this periodical which was mostly
fun and also some poetry — there, on the front page, was a
drawing of a man with two girls running over a lawn, and this

397

was the same man who spoke with me. I found out and saw
that it was Ibsen. Then I heard that he is always sitting
in a tea room along the Maximilianstrasse, across from the
State Theatre (it was then the Royal Theatre) . There he
was sitting in a very beautiful old palace building which
was used now for commercial things — it was a little tea
room — one could see him sitting at the window writing his plays,
WESCHLER: So the man who wrote The Doll ' s House was simul-
taneously telling you that little girls should not be shout-
ing .

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he didn't say "little girls"; "A girl
should not shout." [laughter]

WESCHLER: That's even worse. [laughter] Well, I think that
all Ibsen scholars will benefit from that story. We,
meanwhile, who are interested in Munich, can go on. Grad-
ually the Torggelstube ceased to be as important as a meeting
ground, primarily because of the founding of the Kammerspiele,
and you might talk a little bit about when this gradual
change took place, and how it took place.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I didn't know when the theater has been
founded because we were not there; it was before the war,
I think 11912] . But we were always at the performances
there because it was an avant-garde theater in Schwabing.
It became always more avant-gardish and also the plans for
playing were very interesting. Mostly they played [August]

398

Strindberg, who was then very much in regard with the
Schwabing clan, which was a special clan.

This was where this sculptress, Lotte Pritzel, was
the reigning queen, I could say. She didn't look very
impressing, but you could recognize her from far away on
the street on account of her walk. She walked only
from the knees down: her whole body didn't move; only
the knees moved. It was a kind of shuffling. Her abdomen
was like the women of [Alessandro] Botticelli: it was more
sliding out, and her head was not very straight. She looked
a little bit like a somnambule, like sleeping when she
walked. Her eyes were also--she didn't look at anybody.
She looked very sexy with all this — without knowing it
probably. She was a kind of reigning queen of another clan--
which was the contrary of Wedekind's clan, but at the same
time all of them were also admirers of Wedekind. And
to both clans Eric Miihsam was welcomed. She had several
friends, of course, and a great love life, but nobody
knew exactly what it was. In those days, all was very
discreet. They were only speaking about Schwabing as a
whole, but no names were named. There were two brothers
who looked very much like the puppets or the wax dolls
which she sculptured. And she herself looked absolutely
like her dolls: a kind of rococo but stylized, a long
stylized rococo. Those dolls were made on thin iron rods.

399

and there were many exhibitions of those dolls. And you
could see from the dolls what kind of mind she had. Those
two brothers were both there and looked absolutely like
these doll-men; one [Fritz Strich] wa s a professor of
literature at the university, and the other [Walter Strich]
was a writer. She probably had an affair with both of tham,
but nobody knew exactly. Nobody, nothing was known. This
was much more attractive than if there was all that kind
of gossip about it. Rainer Maria Rilke was there, and
the new director of the Kammerspiele, Otto Falckenberg,
who came from Reinhardt; and one actor who was accepted,
who also came from Reinhardt, Albert Steinriick; and we
were sometimes there. But we didn't belong so much:
that had a special reason. In this clan, it was so ex-
clusive that they considered that anybody who had a
success couldn't be something, because success meant that
the whole great audience, the people, would like what he
writes or performs and they were only for the very choosy,
things which couldn't have any success.
WESCHLER: So Lion was too successful.

FEUCHTWANGER: He was too successful with his plays. But
the funny thing was that they liked me much more than my
husband. They called me the "queen of the night." I
had always the feeling--! should have been flattered, but I
had the feeling that it was a kind of irony; I couldn't quite

400

grasp it. [laughter]

WESCHLER: They were a different group than....
FEUCHTWANGER: They were absolutely different. They still
admired Wedekind. He belonged to this kind--he belonged
to the development of this clan--but what they mostly
admired was Strindberg, and mostly Strindberg in contrast
to Ibsen. Ibsen was so well done; everybody could under-
stand what he wrote. But [Strindberg] was mystic, and you
could explain it in every kind of way like you wanted to
do, and that was much more for their taste. And director
Falckenberg, who was also a writer, he came from Reinhardt.
The first performance of his career in Munich was pie
Geistensonate, The Ghost Sonata by Strindberg. I remember
it began with a long table where they are sitting to eat
for the dinner, and on the top of the table was a major.
And one of the guests all of a sudden said — they were
discussing something, I don't raniember exactly what it was--
"Take your corset off, Mr. Major." And this was really a
changing of the whole literature in those days, just this
one phrase, that something like that can be spoken. Of
course, it was known that the military officials had
corsets on to be straight and elegant, but it was not meant
like that. It was more inside, the corset; it was a kind
of restriction, an inside restriction.
WESCHLER: As we were talking about this before we turned

401

on the tape recorder, you said that at that point one

realized that it was time to start listening to the words.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja, that is true, ja, ja. That's what

we thought; at least I thought it's time to start listening

to the new movement.

WESCHLEIR: But this group, this clan that the sculptress

headed, was still a very aesthetic group, it was still

1 'art pour 1 'art.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, very much 1 'art pour 1 'art. And it was

not very creative.

They didn't have new ideas, but they followed the
new ideas very, very. . . . They were very much awake for
everything new, but they didn't create anything. L 'art
pour 1 'art was still the reigning idea then. But of course
Strindberg was the contrary of it. He was a moralist
even more than Wedekind. My husband one wrote about
Wedekind as a moralist. The moral of Wedekind was freedom
of love and freedom between the sexes. But Strindberg
was mostly suffering from love and suffering from the
marriage. And also the fight between the two sexes.
WESCHLER: So it's rather ironic that his Schwabing group
still clung to Strindberg in this way.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, it was because we listened. It was
something new.
WESCHLER: What general period are we talking about now?

402

Was it after the war or during it?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was during the war, ja, ja. Because I
remember that Wedekind died in 1918, and I remanber a
performance of The Awakening of Spring [Friihlings Erwachen]
when he played himself in the pl^y. Also it was a very
funny story about performing because he was considered
the greatest actor of his own plays. He never played
anything ....

4 03

TAPE NUMBER: VIII, SIDE TWO
JULY 14, 1975

WESCHLER: We are in the middle of a story about Wedekind
as an actor.

FEUCHTWANGER: He was considered--not only considered, he
was really — the greatest actor of his own plays. He
never played anything else but his own plays. He was not
an actor: he was rather an antiactor. He ignored, didn't
know even the most important rules of acting. Mostly each
time, he was standing on the ramp and speaking to the audience.
But his face was in constant movement; sometimes he looked
like Mephistopheles, and then sometimes he was mild and
wise. I never saw so many expressions in a face. The greatest
actors of Germany played his roles, but nobody made this
impression which he made. Once there was a special per-
formance [of Fruhlings Erwachen] , a very modern kind of
performance; it was modernized Wedekind, stylized in a
way. But the young actors who came from Berlin, from
Reinhardt, were more or less naturalistic, and also stylized,
you could say; and they had other movements. Usually those
actors have not these round movements and the round vowels.
[The lead actress] was a human being and a real young girl.
This play is about a girl who got pregnant and died during
the abortion. She said always, "How could I get a child

4 04

if I didn't love this boy?" And then there was also a
scene in the cemetery where one boy came who had committed
suicide. He came to the funeral of this girl with his
head under the arm. That was typical Wedekind. But before
this girl was dead she played a scene together with Wedekind,
and Wedekind became very furious and said, "Miss [Annemarie]
Seidel, if you think you are playing Strindberg, I leave
the stage." So she didn't play anymore like Strindberg.
I laughter]

WESCHLER: So Wedekind did not like Strindberg.
FEUCHTWANGER: No, I wouldn't say he didn't like him; it
was just not his style. He didn't want that his play would
be performed in the style of Strindberg. I think he was
knowledgeable enough to understand Strindberg. Both
writers had influence on each other, but I don't know which
one more to the other. Because he knew Strindberg. Also
the wife of Strindberg [Frida Uhl] was in a kind of re-
lationship with him, one of the wives of Strindberg.
WESCHLER: She lived near Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER: She lived in Austria, in the Alps of Austria,
but that was very near to Munich. It was later, when she
was divorced already. But there was something, because
the daughter of Wedekind told me all also about it. There
was a relationship between Wedekind and this woman who had
been the wife of Strindberg, and maybe Strindberg was jealous

405

of Wedekind — I don't know. Something happened there,

I'm not exactly sure. But this was always in the family,

the literary family.

WESCHLER: Let's talk a little bit more about what it

meant to people for the scene to shift from the Torggel-

stube to the Kammerspiele. What kind of life was there

around the Kammerspiele? Was it also centered around taverns

there?

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, there were several taverns there, very

cheap mostly, which was very important because during the

war and after the war during the inflation, nobody had money, and

we were all glad if you could only pay for a glass of wine.

People didn't say anything, even the owners of those taverns,

if somebody was sitting there the whole night with only one

glass of wine; it was all understood that it belongs to

the Kammerspiele and the Schwabing atmosphere. There was

another tavern right beside [our Pfalzische Weinstube] ,

which I think was called the Griechische Weinstube, the

"Greek Wine Restaurant." And there was always Hitler sitting

with his clan. He liked to sit among these Schwabing

Bohemians, I v;ould say.

WESCHLER: So, Hitler, the would-be artist himself...

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, maybe it had something to do with that.

WESCHLER: ...was in that group, and yet at the same time

hating that group, too.

406

FEUCHTWANGER: Of course, he hated everything.

WESCHLER: We'll talk about Hitler in more detail later on.

Ipause in tape] Later at the Kammerspiele. . . .

FEUCHTWANGER: They played also the plays of my husband.

They played Per Amerikaner , and it was not a success at all.

It was not a very good play, but the director wanted to

play it. There was a good part for his wife in it. But

my husband didn't want even to have it played. He wrote it

more or less because he was impressed by the Kirschgarten

of Chekhov. This was written a little bit like the way

the Kirschgarten was written. But he didn't write it for

the theater, just to write another play. But by chance

Falckenberg asked my husband if he has new plays and when

Lion gave it to him, he wanted to play it. My husband was

very sorry about it. He just said, "Yes, I wanted you to read

it, but I don't want to perform it." But still it has

been performed. And my husband was right. [laughter]

WESCHLER: What other theaters were there in Munich at

that time besides the Kammerspiele?

FEUCHTWANGER: There was the Schauspielhaus and the State

Theatre.

WESCHLER: And what were the different styles of theater?

FEUCHTWANGER: The State Theatre was the most old-fashioned,

more classics and romantic, pathetic and rhetoric, while

the Schauspielhaus was in between, because they were the

4 07

avant-garde theater, before the war. They were the first
to play Wedekind. There was always a scandal there.
Later on they played my husband's play Warren Hastings
during the war, and also his play Jud Siiss. And in the
Kararaer spiele, they wanted to play Vasantasena, the Indian
play of King Sudraka which my husband not only adapted but
wrote in new German verses- This was an enormous success
and has been played over the whole of Germany. From then
on, all his plays they wanted to play. Then my husband wrote
The King and the Dancer . This was also an Indian play.
The performance was also a great success, but it didn't
follow up in the other cities.
WESCHLER: Which theater performed this now?
FEUCHTWANGER: The Kammerspiele for the works after
Vasantasena — or even before Vasantasena . With Vasantasena,
they couldn't find the right actress for a long time and
they had a deadline for the contract. So they asked my
husband--instead of paying [the penalty] , damages or so--
they asked him if it would be all right with him if they
played another play; and this was The King and the Dancer .
This was interesting insofar as the dancer was very
beautifully built, a very young girl. She was absolutely
brown because the painter who made the sets asked her to
bathe in a certain chemical which was violet, violet
crystals, which made the skin brown. It is an antiseptic

408

cheroical. So she was almost naked, with a beautiful
brown body, and she danced wonderful like the old Indian
dancers — it was not sexual, it was just beautiful. She
was all brown, and she didn't move very much, only like
those dancers with their arms like serpents or snakes.
WESCHLER: What was the relationship of the two Mann
brothers to the Schwabing community?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, Heinrich Mann was very much in the
middle of it. But then during the war he married a
very rich woman iMaria KanovaJ and then in a way he had his
own clan around himself in his apartment. But most of
those people from Schwabing were invited. His wife was
from Czechoslovakia, from Prague, and there were in the
house of her father a lot of diplomats coming and going;
those diplomats were also then invited in the apartment
of Heinrich Mann, who was very much interested not only
in politics but also in diplomatics. He always said the
French are the only people who know what diplomacy is,
and their own writers were ambassadors. So he had another
kind of clan or society around himself. In those days,
they were the more moneyed people and more elegant, but
still he had this same preference for the Bohemian.
WESCHLER: How about Thomas Mann?

FEUCHTWANGER: Thomas Mann was far aloof. He lived in
the other part of --we were all divided by the river Isar;

409

He lived on the other side of the Isar in a very elegant
outskirt. He lived there with his wife [Katia]; and his
friend, very near living, was Bruno VJalter. Bruno Frank
also lived in his neighborhood. And he never was seen
in Schwabing or so. He had no relation to Schwabing, not
even to his own brother.

WESCHLER: What did Schwabing think of him?
FEUCHTWANGER: They ignored him more or less, [laughter]
Because he was considered very reactionary on account of
his book; he was for the kaiser and for the war against
France, for the First World War. And all those people in
Schwabing were more or less liberal, against monarchy
and for the revolution. He was not so much for that,
Thomas Mann, but later on he changed. After Heinrich
married, the division between the two brothers was even
greater. The two wives didn't go along very well, or they
didn't even want to know each other very well. But then
Heinrich Mann was very sick, he had an appendectomy. And
one of our friends made the cone iliation--what do you call
that? [pause in tape]

WESCHLER: Reconciliation. Someone else arranged for the
reconciliation of Heinrich and Thomas Mann?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , he was the correspondent of the Berliner
Tageblatt before Adelt.
IVESCHLER: What was his name?

410

FEUCHTWANGER: His name was Joachim Friedenthal.
WESCHLER: And how did this come about?
FEUCHTWANGER: He was a friend of Heinrich Mann and a
great admirer of him. Also Heinrich Mann had much
sympathy for him because he was also liberal and the Berliner
Tageblatt was a liberal newspaper. Joachim Friedenthal
was an admirer of literature and of great men, so he thought
it is a pity that those two brothers would be enemies. Also,
since everybody thought that maybe Heinrich Mann was in
very dangerous condition, so he went to Thomas Mann and
told him that Heinrich Mann is so sick and has to have
this operation and if it couldn't be the thing to do to
visit him. And Thomas Mann immediately followed his
counsel and came to his brother. They had both tears in
their eyes, and they said they should have done that a long
time before. From then on they didn't see each other very
much, but at least there was no hate anymore.
WESCHLER: This was near the end of the war sometime?
FEUCHTWANGER: I think so, ja. Between — I can only say
between 1914, the beginning of the war, and the 1920s.
Most of the things what we spoke about now were in this
time .

WESCHLER: Now I wanted also to talk a bit about the re-
lationship of the theater to the new government, to Eisner's
government. Eisner had been a theater critic, so he had

411

a more than average interest in the theater.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, absolutely.

WESCHLER: Did he have any special relations with the
directors or the writers?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he was — of course, all the liberals were
avant-garde, but he still admired the classics. In fact,
the first celebration of the revolution was at the State
Theatre; first they presented a play by Goethe called
Epomenides Awakening . It was very classic and very
boring but with great gestures--and then the curtains
closed. When the curtain opened again, a little man came
out between the curtain with a thin red beard and red hair
and very pale, and everybody knew, of course, it was Eisner.
He said--he lisped because he was very shy also--he said,
"We are socialisths and we are thdemocrats. " That's what
I remember. That was his belief also, but the others didn't
believe in him. I mean his adversaries didn't believe that.
WESCHLER: Did he have any special meetings of drama people?
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, he asked for a meeting and asked my
husband I to attend] . There was also Gustav Landauer at
the meeting, who was called the minister of culture then, of
schools and culture--the name was Kultusminister . Kultus
is more religion, but in this way, it was more culture.
Brecht was asked to attend, and Georg Kaiser, who was then
also very modern, a playwright with a great success. There

412

was Steinriick, who was the great actor who came also from
Reinhardt and became the general director of the State
Theatre. He was a very good general director and also a
wonderful actor. Georg Kaiser said, "We should change
entirely the whole program of plays--no more classics
and all this old stuff." Eisner asked him, "What would
you propose?" Then he said, "More Georg Kaiser."
I laughter]

WESCHLER: What was the result of this meeting?
FEUCHTWANGER: There was no real result, because how
could you in such a short time make a difference? But
afterwards, Steinriick, who knew all those people and the
modern writers--he, had a very good program. The other
theaters didn't follow anyway what the government said.
They were more modern and more avant-garde. But at least
there was a new wind in the State Theatre.
WESCHLER: So that now it would be the State Theatre and
the Kamraerspiele which were both presenting more modern..,
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , but still there was no competition
between the two, because the State Theatre was a big,
very big theater; it was the opera house also at the
same time. And they couldn't play these intimate plays
which were more the kind of Kammerspiele. That means
"chamber," you know: that is, a smaller room. Ibsen
and the conversation plays, as they were called then, and

413

Strindberg all demanded smaller theaters. So, on the
contrary, they kind of helped each other out with the
actors sometimes, when it was possible.

WESCHLER: Okay. Was Landauer also one of the people who
was killed?

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, he was slain by the soldiers of the
VJhite Guard when the government of Berlin sent the Reichs-
wehr to beat down the Rater eg ierung . They arrested every-
body and also Gustav Landauer. Gustav Landauer was a great
idealist and thought when he speaks with people he could
change people. He believed that. He was a tall man with
a big blond beard, a dark blond beard, and spectacles.
And he didn't look out of the spectacles; he looked more
inside, I had the feeling. He was not a realist. He
didn't see how life really is; he thought people can be
changed very fast by the revolution. So he tried to speak
with the soldiers and to persuade them that now we have
another time, that we shouldn't be any more militaristic
and no more making wars (because there was still the
hate against France on account of the Versailles Treaty) .
And then the soldier s--they wanted to go home and it was
just boring to hear this man always preaching--they took
the butts of their rifles and killed him. Beat his head
in. It was on the way to the jail.
WESCHLER: You had some other stories about the collapse.

414

First of all, about the Right after Eisner's assassination.
FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, I have to tell you that: after Eisner's
assassination, it was also very remarkable. The whole
people were very much for him in the beginning, and even
the reactionary people. For instance in our house, the
mother-in-law of the general whose apartment we rented, she
came to us and she said, "We are so glad about this Eisner;
he seems such a very good man, and he brings new air and
everything. We were lied to: our king lied to us; the
kaiser lied to us. They always spoke about victory, and all
of a sudden, one day the war was lost. We didn't know
anything. So we have to have new air." But the same
people who, when he rode through the town, acclaimed him,
when his funeral was, they acclaimed that he was now dead.
They didn't acclaim him; but they acclaimed his murderer.
WESCHLER: When that happened, then began the Rateregierung
and that too put several people in danger, and many came
to your house.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, during the Rateregierung, those were
suspected, of course, who had titles like the Count
Coudenhove-Kalergi. He had founded the Pan-European
movement, and he was married with a famous actress [Ida
Roland] .

WESCHLER: You might talk a little bit about him. Who was
he? What was his background?

415

FEUCHTWANGER: His father was ambassador to Japan. His
father was half Hungarian, half Dutch--Coudenhove is
Dutch and Kalergi is Hungarian — and he was a count. He
was ambassador in Japan and married a Japanese princess.
The son was I Richard] Coudenhove-Kalergi, and he looked
wonderful, beautiful: this mixture of Hungarian and
Japanese was very interesting. Also his wife was a
beautiful woman, of course. They came and searched his
room in a very good hotel where he lived and they found....
WESCHLFJ^: This was during the Soviet period?
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , during the Soviet period. They looked
who was there in the hotels and found his name as a count;
so he was suspected. They looked into his room and found
a book with the title Communism. They took it in hand,
and he said, "But this is for communism . " So they let him
alone. But he didn't want to stretch his luck, so he left
the hotel with his wife, and they came to us. They didn't
know where to go, so they came to our house. At the same
time came the wife of the minister ialrat [Mrs. von Kramer] ,
who was the father-in-law of our general, and she came to our
apartment because she wanted to be protected. And another
ministerial officer came to our house, and then Coudenhove-
Kalergi, and I think somebody who was more to the left.
I think Kaufmann, this lawyer who owned the Kammerspiele
and was also a very intimate friend of Eisner's. They all

416

came to our house. There were all kinds of political in-
terests. Also the funny thing was that several days later
we were invited at the house of the brother of my husband
who didn't live far away, also in Schwabing, and he
had another clan in his house. There were for all kind
of different political directions. One of the ministers
of the former Rateregierung was there.
WESCHLER: Which brother was it?

FEUCHTWANGER: The second, Ludwig . [pause in tape]
WESCHLER: We were just mentioning the other people who
were at Ludwig ' s house during this period.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, there was a famous philosopher whose
father had had an affair with a Feuchtwanger , a cousin or
something like that of Lion, and had had to marry her;
he converted to Judaism, and the son became a famous
philosopher iMax Schelerj . He was there. Then there was
iJohannes?] Klingelhof er , who was minister of health and
things like that. What would you call it? — health, welfare
and agriculture. He was the son of peasants, and looked
like Jesus with a blond beard and blue eyes. Then there
was the son of the attorney general from Bavaria who was
a famous poet.

WESCHLER: What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER: His name was Johannes R. Bee her, and he wrote
very modern lyrics in those days which nobody could understand

417

Ecrasite was the title of one of the first. He became

later the minister of culture in East Germany and helped

Brecht form the Berliner Ensemble. They knew each other

from those days.

WESCHLER: So, during that period, the Feuchtwanger

family was protecting a whole group of people.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja , that's true. There were other people

who I forgot, but they all were involved in liberal

politics. But the only real communist was this man who

was a peasant's son and was agricultural minister. The

others were not real communists in those days. Surely not

Max Scheler, the Catholic.

WESCHLER: And what did they have to fear exactly? Who

would get them?

FEUCHTWANGER: It was the White Guard, the Reichswehr.

who were sent from Berlin to put down the Rater eg ierung . It

was very bloody; if they had found them they would all have

died like Gustav Landauer. They didn't even make a trial;

they just killed them with the butt of the rifle. I remember

the day after Landauer was killed, there was a girl who was

the friend of an architect, and he gave a big party. We

were invited, but I couldn't come; I don't remember why.

My husband was there, and he said he met a man there who

introduced himself as a captain from the army and said,

"You know, I was very angry with my people, my soldiers, who

418

killed Gustav Landauer. I told than beforehand, 'Don't
have to do anything with intellectuals because the day
afterwards, we only have trouble with the newspapers.'"
WESCHLER: Well, these are obviously extronely turbulent
times .

FEUCHTWANGER: They really were, ja.

WESCHLER: And all through our discussions here, on the
outskirts of these times, has been the figure of Bertolt
Brecht. We've kept on deferring talking about him direct-
ly, but perhaps now is the time.

FEUCHTWANGER: He was still so young, so very young, there;
he was about twenty, I think. He told us that in Augsburg,
where he came from, they made also the revolution. He was
in the army, but he was not healthy enough, so he was a
sanitary worker in the hospitals. His friends were all
on the front. When they came back, they all took horses
somewhere and rode through the city and shouted and shot
with their guns, and that was their revolution. [laughter]
And then he came to Munich to do a little more revolution.
WESCHLER: Well, why don't we start at the beginning with
Brecht. How did you meet him?

FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, that was very funny. One day, somebody
called my husband.

WESCHLER: What year is this now?
FEUCHTWANGER: Nineteen-eighteen or so — it was after the

419

revolution in Augsburg when he came to Munich. I have writ-
ten it down somewhere. It was ' 18 or '19. He was studying
medicine in Munich. And he went into the Cafe Stephanie,
which was the cafe of the Schwabing, of the Bohemians, where
everybody was there--those who were arrived already and were
famous, like Wedekind, or those who didn't have anything and
were usually just sitting there with one coffee the whole
day, one cup of coffee, and could read all the newspapers
they wanted. If they couldn't pay that cup of coffee, it
was all right, too; some other friend paid for it or so.
Everybody came there, and everybody knew each other. So
Brecht, who knew about this cafe, coffee house, went and
saw a famous actor with the name of Arnold Marie. (He
played a lot of Strindberg and Wedekind.) He went up to
him and said, "Mr. Marie, I know you are an actor. I have
written a play. Could you tell me what I should do with it?"
And Marie told him — he had the newspaper before his face and
didn't even look up — "Go to Feuchtwanger . " So Brecht went
to the telephone and called my husband and said, "Mr. Marie
told me to call you, that you would help me. I have written
a play." So my husband said, "Please come and bring it to
me." So he shouted through the telephone and said, "Yes,
but I wanted to tell you, right away, I wrote this play just
to make money. It's not a good play." So anyway my husband
wondered, "What about the other play?" He said, "Yes, the

420

other play is much better." So ray husband said, "[Next
tirae] bring the other play, too. In two days, you will call
me. I will have read the play, and I will tell you what I
think about it." So after two days, he called, and my
husband said, "Why did you lie to rae? That's a very good
play."

WESCHLER: Which play is the one that he wrote?
FEUCHTWANGER: It was called Spartacus. My husband said,
"I have spoken about your play with the director of the
Kammerspiele, Otto Falckenberg. He will come to me, and we
could meet each other because he is interested in the play.
He hasn't read it yet, but until you come he will have read
it, and then we can speak about whether the performance will
be possible." So they met each other, and Falckenberg said,
"I am very interested in the play and would love to perform
it, but this title is impossible. There is that terror
group in Berlin who committed all kind of crimes — at least,
that's what they say — and if I play it here, they would burn
down my theater. We have to have another title." So we
were all sitting together, and I had a brainstorm. I said,
"How about Drums in the Night [Trommeln in der Nacht] ?"
They liked this title and adopted it.

WESCHLER: So you are the author of the title of Drums in the
Night.

FEUCHTWANGER: The author of the title. That's not very
much. [laughter]

421

WESCHLER: What was Brecht like in those very first days?
FEUCHTWANGER: He was very shy, but you know the shy people
are not always so shy inside. My husband was shy, too,
[laughter] so I knew what the shy people are. Anyway he
was very grateful what my husband did for him. Also he
has been played and was successful, but not outstandingly
successful; but the play provoked a lot of interest. And
this interest has also been heard of in Berlin. I think
there were critics about him in the Berlin newspapers.

Later he brought Baal, and my husband said, "Yes, it's
true, you are right. This is a better play than Spartacus.
But it cannot be played, of course; it's impossible. In
the times we are in, that's impossible to be played. Even
if there is no censure anymore." Brecht was not astonished
about that.

But he insisted that my husband would write a play with
him. He said, "I would like to make a play which has already
been established in England. Maybe we could find something
which is not known so much, and we could adapt it together."
My husband looked at Marlowe's plays, and found this Edward II ,
and proposed it to Brecht, if he would like to do that. He
was very enthusiastic about the idea, and they made a new
kind of Edward II .

WESCHLER: Did Brecht know of Marlowe beforehand, or was...?
FEUCHTWANGER: I don't think so. He was too young still.
During the war, he hadn't much time to read much English.
And also Marlowe was not very much known--only Shakespeare.

422

WESCHLER: It was only known to someone like Lion who read
everything .

FEUCHTWANGER: No, he did it only because Brecht asked him.
Also, of course, Marlowe was known to my husband, but he
didn't think about this play right away; he had to read it
again. Then they adapted this play, and it has been per-
formed the first time in Munich in the Karamerspiele, and
this was a great sensation. They came from everywhere, all
the directors came from all the big towns and cities in
Germany, Also from Berlin came, from the State Theatre, the
almighty iLeopold] Jessner, (who also lived here [in Los
Angeles] and died here later). He came; he was the
greatest theater man in those days.

And then, after the premiere, they all came to our
house. Of course, nobody had anything to eat; everybody
brought something to drink. I had a little — by chance —
some ham and bread and butter, that was all. But everybody
came. First we all ate in a restaurant, and we heard,
from the other side--there were, you know, those partitions
between the tables--we heard from the other ones, "Do you
also go to the Feuchtwangers ' afterwards?" [laughter] The
street was already full of people when we came home. They
came with taxis. There was one man who had a bakery, a
very fine bakery, and he brought all kinds of baked things
to eat; so he was invited, too — he was let in, too.

423

Finally there were so many people that I said, "That's
all what is necessary now." So, when all those people
were there, and I opened the door again there was a man
said, "I'm the prince of Coburg-Gotha. " This royal
prince was also a theater fan; he owned the theater in Coburg
and he was very much for modern plays. So when everyone
was there, I finally said, "The only man who now is lacking,
is Jhering." The bell rings, I opened the door, and Jhering
came in. They were great enanies, Jessner and Jhering.
T laughter]

It was very wild, finally, the party, and some drank
a little too much. Also a friend and playwright, Arnolt
Bronnen, was there. He wrote Vatermord, you know. Assassination
of the Father; that was one of the plays in those days
which had to be seen. He was there, and also a friend of
Brecht, Caspar Neher, who made the sets always for Brecht —
and very beautiful sets he made. Bronnen said something
about Brecht, and Caspar Neher — they were all friends,
you know--thought it was something critical about Brecht.
He had drunk too much, and he wasn't used to that. He
took a bottle of wine and wanted to beat the head in of
Bronnen. When I saw that, I threw myself between the two.
Since Caspar Neher was such a big man, and even I^ couldn't
be strong enough to do anything, so I just turned his nose up.
I thought that would help, and it did. But the wine came

424

all down my neck and into my — I had a very low neckline,
and it all came inside. I had a black velvet dress, so it
didn't do any harm; it could be washed and cleaned out.
Anyway, I was full of wine — but only on the outside. [laughter]
But at least I saved Bronnen's life. Then a girl took her
clothes off, and all kinds of things happened.
WESCHLER: This was all the celebration of Edward II.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, celebration, ja. [laughter] And something
else happened. I didn't tell you about that. I told you
about Valentin, you know, the comic.

WESCHLER: I wanted to ask you in more detail about him.
FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, that comes; there is more to say. There
is another one, who was called [Joachim] Ringelnatz. Ringel-
natz was a sailor once and a teacher of grammar school. So
he was not a very cultured man; he was more or less like a
proletarian. He was also at that Simplicissimus where Valentin
performed. He always made himself very comical verses which
were not comical--they only sounded comical; he didn't mean
them to be comical. But they were great things, you know;
wonderful Ringelnatz was a personality. He always made with
his finger, set it into his temples as if he bore his finger
into his temple and took those verses out of the head. It
was great, really fantastic, like Christian Morgenstern, if
you ever heard about him, a little bit like that. And very
grotesque. Anyway, when in the morning I had to clean up — I

425

had no maid in those times (sometimes you could [afford] help

and sometimes you couldn 't) --fortunately I had taken out the

big carpet, the big rug, but there was still everything,

cigarette butts and everything. But when I began to sweep,

I came to a corner, and there was coiled a man, and this

was RLngelnatz. (Ringel means "roll," you know; that's a

funny thing.) But he didn't do it intentionally. He

just had drank too much and fell asleep. He was like a

sailor's knot himself, lying in a corner sleeping. That

was the last of the events of this night, [laughter]

WESCHLE3^: Did everyone have an appropriate hangover, I should

hope?

FEUCHTWANGER: I don't know, I haven't asked then; but

they were used to it usually.

WESCHLER: But there was a great deal of partying of that

kind in the whole Bohemian community.

FEUCHTWANGER: Yes, there was nothing else to do. There

was no television, and either you went to the theater which

was not expensive — and many of these people in the Boherae,

they got free tickets, either from the authors or the actors

or so — leither that or. . . .J So there was nothing else but

partying .

WESCHLER: Well, let's talk a little bit about Karl Valentin.

He is another person who is extremely influential on Brecht-

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, he was. And Brecht even made a movie

with him.*

*"Mrs. Feuchtwanger' s notes continue that the film had no
name and was never shown then.

426

WESCHLER: Well, why don't you just start and tell us who
he wa s .

FEUCHTWANGER: It's very difficult. There have been written
books about him, but nobody can find out what really could make
him what he really was. He was long and thin and had a very
thin, pointed nose; he had a little artificial nose when
he performed which was even more pointed, but he wouldn't
have needed it. He was very thin and looked like tuber-
culosis, you know, like the impersonation of tuberculosis.
His wife, who played with him, always played as a man, as a
conductor or something like that, and very, very, fat. She
wasn't fat, but she played somebody very fat. He usually
didn't play alone; he had always this partner. It was
very funny. You can't tell really if you just quote him. For
instance, she asked him, "You have glasses on, but you have
no glass in it. "

WESCHLER: "There's no glass in your glasses."
FEUCHTWANGER: So he takes them off and looks at them a long
time; he looks at them and says, "Yes, it's true. Aber, but
I thought it's better than nothing." [laughter] So it's
[difficult to communicate], this kind of humor he had. Then
during the Nazi time--he was, of course, very much against
the Nazis, but he had to perform to make his living--he was
popular with the people and he was popular with the
intelligentsia. And one of his evenings, he said, "Yesterday,

427

I passed the Cafe Luitpold" — that is a very elegant, rich
house--"and there was a beautiful car, a Mercedes
Benz, standing before the house; and out came a Nazi and
left with the car...." So he was called to court, to a Nazi
court, and they said, "How can you do that, say that there was
a very rich and elegant car and then a Nazi drove itl It
doesn't make a good impression. We warn you, if you continue
like that, we close your theater, and you can't perform
anymore or even you go to jail." So the next day he went
again on the stage and said, "Yesterday I passed the Cafe
Luitpold and there was a beautiful car, a Mercedes Benz, and
out of the coffee house came no Nazi." So it was, of course,
worse, but they couldn't do anything. He was too popular;
they couldn't forbid him. They just looked the other way. So
that is one of his characteristics.
WESCHLER: And what was his impact on Brecht?
FEUCHTWANGER: Oh, he influenced Brecht, Brecht wrote a
little one-act play which was called The Wedd ing , I think,
where everything breaks down, and those things like that
Valentin also made. He played also some instruments, Valentin
did, and Brecht once played in his orchestra, the flute or
something. [laughter] It's very difficult to make him out.
I don't know. What would you think, what is your impression
now after I've told you? Can you see him? Do you have a
feeling?

428

WESCHLER: It's very much tied to this cabaret style.

FEUCHTWANGER: It was in the cabaret, ja, ja.

WESCHLER: So I incorporate it with all the images I have

of cabaret life.

FEUCHTWANGER: Ja, ja. But before, in the beginning, he was

only in little restaurants — pubs, I could say. He played

only for the people, for the proletariat. But some of those

clan, the Schwabing clan, like Lotte Pritzel, saw him and said

to Kathi Kobus, who was the owner of the Simpl icissimus — that

was the Bohemian cabaret and restaurant at the same time, more

or less a wine restaurant--they said, "You have to let

him perform." This was just a little thing; it was long

like a stocking. And there he played and people were so

enthusiastic with him that later on the Simpl ic issimu s

became a little bigger. But he was never something which

anybody would know about except those who were in the know

about it. He had this very--he had his following there.

WESCHLER: Were there many people like him, comedians in

cabarets? Was that a common vocation?

FEUCHTWANGER: No, not at all. Just before that there

was one which was called the Eleven Hangmen — Die Elf

Scharf richter — those who hang people. That was before my

time. Wedekind founded it; when he was very poor, it

was the only living they had. Also Thomas Mann was then

with Wedekind. He wrote something for him, for this

429

cabaret. It was called eleven because there were eleven
people. . . .

Roda Roda was also a famous man, who was the master
of the anecdote. He wrote the best anecdotes. He also
once wrote about my husband for an anecdote. In Berlin,
when my husband learned how to drive a car, he said,
"Now, Feuchtwanger . . . . "

430

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