Ludwig Feuchtwanger

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Ludwig Feuchtwanger (born November 28, 1885 in Munich , † July 14, 1947 in Winchester , England ) was a German lawyer, lecturer and author.

family

The Jewish ancestral family was expelled from the Middle Franconian town of Feuchtwangen in 1555 as a result of a pogrom . The tribe was divided into four branches: One branch of the family initially settled in Fürth and took the surname Feuchtwanger. The goldsmith, soap maker and merchant Elkan Feuchtwanger (1823–1902) emerged from this Fürth branch. He founded a margarine factory in Haidhausen , which his son Sigmund Aaron Meir Feuchtwanger (1854–1916) took over and ran the business. Sigmund Feuchtwanger and Johanna Bodenheimer (1864–1926) married in 1883. They had nine children and were the parents of Ludwig Feuchtwanger and his brothers Lion Feuchtwanger and Martin Feuchtwanger .

Life

Ludwig Feuchtwanger graduated from the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich in 1904 and studied law and political science. In 1908, with his work on the history of social politics and poor relief in the age of the Reformation, he was awarded Dr. phil. PhD with Gustav von Schmoller in Berlin . Feuchtwanger then worked as a lawyer in Munich.

From 1915 to 1933 Feuchtwanger worked as an editor for the Duncker & Humblot publishing house . During his editing, Carl Schmitt was able to publish for the first time in the publishing house. The almost twenty years of correspondence between the editor and the author has been published since 2007. He published Jewish studies and articles on Jewish studies . After the seizure of power by the Nazis on 30 January 1933 Feuchtwanger was revoked his law license and he lost his proofreading. Nevertheless, he sought Schmitt's support with the idea of ​​a Jewish representative for the Jews who remained in Germany.

Together with Eugen Schmidt, Feuchtwanger was also active in the editorial department of the Bavarian Israelite Community Newspaper: It was published by the Association of Bavarian Israelite Congregations from February 1925 until the forced termination in December 1937. The newspaper tried - like comparable publications - to influence the secularization tendencies that had prevailed in Judaism since the middle of the 19th century through a targeted information policy.

From 1936 to 1939 Feuchtwanger was also head of the Jewish training center in Munich and a member of the adult education center. Until 1938 he published in organs such as the yearbook for Jewish history and literature or the Jüdischen Rundschau . Instead of using novels like his brother Lion, he wanted to enlighten with historical texts. In 1938 he was arrested by the National Socialists and taken to the Dachau concentration camp . In 1939 Ludwig Feuchtwanger and his family emigrated to Winchester in England. There they lived in modest circumstances. Since Ludwig accepted a job as a consultant and translator in the British Army in January 1945, he traveled back to France and Germany. His letters to Brother Lion testify to his experiences in dealing with the Germans immediately after the end of the Second World War - especially from their constant assertion that they “didn't know anything”.

Ludwig Feuchtwanger's son is the historian Edgar Feuchtwanger .

Publications

  • The pay of the academic writer. Expert opinion on behalf of the Verein für Socialpolitik . Duncker & Humblot, Munich 1922.
  • Festgabe. 50 years of the main synagogue in Munich . 1887-1937 . Together ed. with Leo Baerwald on behalf of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Munich. Self-published, Munich 1937.
  • Collected essays on Jewish history . Edited by Rolf Riess. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 978-3-428-10873-2 .
  • Carl Schmitt / Ludwig Feuchtwanger. Correspondence 1918–1935 . Edited by Rolf Rieß. With a foreword by Edgar Feuchtwanger. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-428-12448-0 .
  • The course of the Jews through world history . First publication of a manuscript from 1938 (= European-Jewish Studies - Editions , 2). Edited by Reinhard Mehring and Rolf Rieß, De Gruyter, Berlin 2013, ISBN 978-3-11-033422-7 , also as an eBook .

literature

  • Heike Specht: The Feuchtwangers. Family, tradition and the Jewish self-image in the German-Jewish bourgeoisie of the 19th and 20th centuries . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-8353-0017-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Joseph Pischel: Lion Feuchtwanger. Experiment over life and work . Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 19 f.
  2. ↑ Joseph Pischel: Lion Feuchtwanger. Experiment over life and work . Röderberg, Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 20.
  3. ↑ a b cf. Mehring / Rieß (ed.): The course of the Jews through world history. Afterword pp. 347–362.
  4. ^ Paul Noack : Carl Schmitt. A biography . Ullstein 1996, p. 186 f.
  5. ↑ Ludwig Feuchtwanger: Collected essays on Jewish history . Edited by Rolf Rieß. Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, pp. 214-225.
personal data
SURNAME Feuchtwanger, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German lawyer and publisher
DATE OF BIRTH November 28, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH July 14, 1947
Place of death Winchester , England