The Lautensack brothers

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The Lautensack Brothers is the title of a contemporary novel by Lion Feuchtwanger , which was originally planned (1941) as the play Die Zauberer . The first English edition of the novel was published in New York in 1943.

Table of contents

The novel tells the story of the telepath and clairvoyant Oskar Lautensack, who after a rapid rise becomes Hitler's advisor . During a meeting with the SA chief of staff, Lautensack anticipates the Reichstag fire . The vain clairvoyant, however, gets bogged down between his private interests and the expectations of the political rulers and is murdered at the behest of the highest authorities.

As in Feuchtwanger's novel Success , several characters in The Lautensack Brothers are recognisably reproduced from historical figures . The work is based on the life story of the occultist Erik Jan Hanussen , who was murdered in 1933. The figure of SA Chief of Staff Manfred Proell is clearly reminiscent of Ernst Röhm , Proell's confidante Count Ulrich Zinsdorff bears a strong resemblance to Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorff . Adolf Hitler, who is still depicted as Rupert Kutzner in the novel Success , and Paul von Hindenburg are shown with real names.

On the other hand, the plot of the novel deviates significantly from historical reality for dramaturgical reasons. Oskar Lautensack is constructed as a non-Jew, whereas Hanussen was of Jewish origin. A Jewish journalist acts as the intellectual opponent of the clairvoyant. Oskar's brother Hansjörg Lautensack rises in the novel to the position of Reich Press Chief, which Otto Dietrich actually held.

With the novel, Feuchtwanger primarily addresses the art of seduction (see in particular: Peter Stolle, The Hitler image in Lion Feuchtwanger's novels) and why people indulge in simple slogans.

Edition history

Feuchtwanger presented the drama manuscript Die Zauberer to the New York publishing house Viking Press in 1941 , but it was not accepted and he did not further edit it for the theater. From the material he developed a novel with partially significantly changed plot, which was published in 1943 with the title Double, Double Toil and Trouble by Viking Press. The American weekly Collier’s published an eight-part preprint of the novel in March and April 1943 . Feuchtwanger used the fee for the down payment for the Villa Aurora in the hills of Pacific Palisades .

In the same year the novel came out under the title The Brothers Lautensack with Hamish Hamilton in London. This publisher published the first German-language edition in 1944. A later German-language edition appeared in 1956 as Die Zauberer . Subsequent German editions were again titled The Lautensack Brothers .

expenditure

  • Double, Double Toil and Trouble , New York: The Viking Press, 1943.
  • The Brothers Lautensack , London: Hamish Hamilton, 1943.
  • The Lautensack Brothers , London: Hamish Hamilton, 1943.
  • Die Zauberer , Rudolstadt: Greifenverlag , 1956.
  • The Lautensack brothers , Berlin and Weimar, Aufbau-Verlag 1964.
  • The Lautensack Brothers , Berlin: Structure of the Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001.

filming

The novel was made into a film in 1971 and 1972 by DEFA under the direction of Hans-Joachim Kasprzik on behalf of East German television . The main roles include Horst Schulze , Petra Hinze , Ctibor Filčík , Klaus Piontek , Rolf Hoppe and Hannjo Hasse . The three-part television film was first broadcast on March 18, 20, and 22, 1973 on the first program of GDR television.

Individual evidence

  1. cf. on this Gisela Lüttig in the epilogue "To this volume", in: Lion Feuchtwanger, Die Brüder Lautensack , Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001, p. 362.
  2. cf. on this Gisela Lüttig in the epilogue “To this volume”, in: Lion Feuchtwanger, Die Brüder Lautensack , Berlin: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, 2001, p. 358 f.