Refuge and Reality: Feuchtwanger and the European Émigrés in California ed. by Pol Ó Dochartaigh, Alexander Stephan

Abstract

898 Reviews body of work that has been treated so intelligently and with such perspicacity in White's book. UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN DAVID BARNETT Refuge and Reality: Feuchtwanger and theEuropean Emigres inCalifornia. Ed. by P6L 0 DOCHARTAIGH and ALEXANDER STEPHAN. (German Monitor, 6 i) Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi. 2005. viii+ I40 pp. E40; $56. ISBN 90-420-I945-X. The attention Feuchtwanger has attracted is clear from Lion Feuchtwanger: A Biblio graphic Handbook, ed. by John M. Spalek and Sandra H. Hawrylchak, 4 vols (Munich: Saur, I998-2004; reviewed in MLR, IOO(2005), 562-64). Yet despite Feuchtwanger's international reputation, there was until recently no Feuchtwanger-Gesellschaft. In July 200I scholars from the USA and Europe gathered at the Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades and at theUniversity of Southern California to found a Feuchtwanger Soci ety. This new society elected IanWallace (University of Bath) as its first chair and P61 0 Dochartaigh (University of Ulster) as secretary and resolved to promote research both on Lion and Marta Feuchtwanger and on wider issues such as anti-Semitism, exile, and historical novels. The nine conference papers in the present volume focus on emigres in California. Wolf Koepke reminds the reader of the incredible work ethic of Feuchtwanger inAmerica. Regrettably, the novel he concentrates on here, Die Bruider Lautensack, tends to be remembered less for its quality than because its pre-publication inCollier's Magazine in 1943 enabled Feuchtwanger to buy his house on the Paseo Miramar. Despite the title of this paper ('Hitler inHollywood'), the novel never made the transfer to the screen, just as Simone, based on Feuchtwanger's co-operation with Brecht, never became a film, though both Brecht and Feucht wanger benefited financially. Arnold Pistiak's paper on the historical novel Jefta und seine Tochter sees the core of the work in power; in his paper on Waffenffir Amerika P61 0 Dochartaigh sees this novel as an instrument of reason. Though Die Bruider Lautensack and Simone never made it to the screen, Feucht wanger and Brecht collaborated inwhat became one of the most successful of Holly wood anti-Nazi films, Hangmen Also Die. IanWallace sheds new light on this work, noting particularly the influence of the film music of Hanns Eisler. Hollywood appears again inDavid Midgley's paper on Doblin in exile in Los Angeles. He focuses on how Doblin in this period of isolation and privation converted to Catholicism, an issue which in the context of anti-Semitism and the fate of the Jews was amatter of great contemporary concern. As Daniel Azuelos points out in his paper, the suggestion that Franz Werfel had considered conversion before dying had to be forcefully countered. The volume concludes with Alexander Stephan's paper on the all-embracing FBI surveillance of Feuchtwanger and Jeffrey B. Berlin's examination of the extensive cor respondence between Feuchtwanger and Ben W Huebsch of the Viking Press. As the Spalek-Hawrylchak bibliography established, Feuchtwanger is not highly regarded by British academics. IanWallace and Pol 0 Dochartaigh are to be congratulated on trying to ensure that Feuchtwanger will at last be awarded the critical attention that his extensive exile work deserves. INSTITUTE OF GERMANIC AND ROMANCE STUDIES, LONDON J.M. RITCHIE ...