Exile (Feuchtwanger)

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Exil is a novel by Lion Feuchtwanger . It was written from May 1935 to August 1939 and published in 1940. It forms the third part of the waiting room trilogy, to which the novels Success and Die Geschwister Oppermann belong.

action

The Bavarian composer Sepp Trautwein fled the Nazis from Munich to Paris . At the time of the plot, he has been in exile for two years. When the journalist Friedrich Benjamin, who works for the exile magazine Pariser Nachrichten (PN), goes to Basel to meet an informant, he asks Trautwein to replace him in the editorial office for a few days. But the meeting with the informant turns out to be a trap, Benjamin is abducted to Germany by Nazi thugs. From then on, Trautwein fought for the release of Benjamin with journalistic means and neglected his wife Anna, who works in a dental practice and thus covers a large part of the living costs.

Trautwein's adversary is the intelligent and talented National Socialist journalist Erich Wiesener, who for his part lives in contradiction to the ideology he represents due to a relationship with the “quarter Jew” Lea de Chasseffierre, with whom he has a son. This relationship also endangers Wiesener's position within the power hierarchy of Nazi officials in Paris. Wiesener developed a plan to infiltrate the PN and make it useful to National Socialism . The Jewish businessman Gingold, owner of the PN, agreed to work with the Nazis in order to conduct his business in Germany without complications, but increasingly lost control and eventually became a Nazi henchman in order to save his daughter's life who was arrested in Germany for racial disgrace . Gingold dismisses Trautwein. Trautwein's wife Anna, who had recently rejected a job offer from her employer in London , takes her own life. As a result of the dismissal, all journalists left the PN and founded a new émigré magazine, the Pariser Deutsche Post (PDP).

Trautwein, inspired by the experiences he had in the struggle for the liberation of Benjamin, the death of his wife and the talented poet Harry Meisel, wrote musical compositions with which he was increasingly successful. Lea separates from Wiesner. She organizes a concert for Trautwein in her house and later donates a large sum to the PDP Friedrich Benjamin is released by the Nazis. He starts to work for the PDP, but he no longer shares the same opinion as the other journalists. He is of the opinion that a war must be prevented by all means. A political debate ensues between Trautwein and his son Hanns, whereby the father takes the view that in socialism the individual should not be forgotten. Hanns takes the position that a perfect socialist society for the benefit of all can only be created by force. He's going to the Soviet Union . As an aside, the novel describes the Parisian emigrant milieu and internal power struggles of the representatives of the Third Reich in Paris.

background

The figure of Friedrich Benjamin is based on the person of the journalist Berthold Jacob , who was kidnapped by the Nazis and was released after seven months. Feuchtwanger portrayed Friedrich Benjamin, although Jacob did not want any literary treatment of his fate. The developments of the PN show parallels to the real events around the newspaper Pariser Tageblatt , the figure of Mr. Gingold to that of the Jewish publisher of the Pariser Tageblatt, Vladimir Polyakov. The figure of Erich Wiesner is modeled on the journalist and book author Friedrich Sieburg . Feuchtwanger has officially denied a connection, probably for legal reasons. Clearly real historical processes that play a role in the novel, are the Nazi Party in 1935 in Nuremberg , which with the promulgation of racial laws was decided and the assassination of Herschel verdigris , the book Klemens Pirckmaier, the Counselor of the German Embassy in Paris, Ernst vom Rath , who is called in the book Baron von Gehrke, also Spitzi. Jacques Tüverlin, who appears in the book, has the features of Lion Feuchtwanger, and comedian Balthasar Hierl corresponds to Karl Valentin . In the figure of the half-Jewish Lea de Chassefierre, the author placed a "dubious monument" to his temporary lover, the painter Eva Herrmann , as the "lover of the German journalist Erich Wiesener, who served in the Third Reich and resided in Paris."

expenditure

  • First edition: Querido, Amsterdam 1940. 988 pp.
  • First edition in Germany: Greifenverlag, Rudolstadt 1948. 587 pp.
  • Collected works in individual editions Vol. 8: 2nd edition structure, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-351-02208-2
  • Paperback: Various editions, most recently: Aufbau Taschenbuch Verlag, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-7466-5608-7 . Also available as an ebook.
  • Audiobook: Abridged version, read by Axel Milberg . Der Audio Verlag , ISBN 978-3862315116 , 5 CDs approx. 400 min.

filming

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Flügge: Muse of Exile - The life of the painter Eva Herrmann . Insel, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-458-17550-6 , p. 238
  2. ↑ In the case of library records for an edition published by Greifenverlag in 1939 (example: UB Giessen shelf mark FH Germ J 4 / 22.538 ), the year may not be correct, as the publisher stopped production in 1930 and was only resumed after 1945.