Interview of Marta Feuchtwanger

1.1. TAPE NUMBER: I, SIDE ONE JUNE 17, 1975

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, because 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 [Feuchtwangen] 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, something 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--Loeffler 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 merchandise 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 grandfather 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 found out that it's not healthy when there are those microbes, trichinas.

WESCHLER

How would you characterize, then, your own early commitment 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 interested 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 Munich. 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.

WESCHLER

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.

WESCHLER

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 coming in, but that that was very....

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, my 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 afterwards 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?"

1.2. 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.

WESCHLER

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 was 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 gymnasium, 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 practice 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 university. 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. Oberndorfer (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 know, 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 [Giacomo] 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 Der 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. Everybody 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 illustrations 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 believed that he was guilty, even when he was condemned. Also then there was also another thing. Bernhard von Bulow 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--fifteen, 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.

WESCHLER

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 Munich. 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 dangerous; 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 examination, 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] Durer, 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 antiscientific, 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 question, 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 Munich, 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 costume 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 reproductions. 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--I 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.

1.3. 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]. When 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 [dynasty], 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 entertainment. 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 countryside, 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 fighting 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 whatever 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 invention. 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 always 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 me that there were factories for this margarine in Holland and Rumania and even Egypt.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, but this one in Holland was the competition. 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 and 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 1883.

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

...fleetingly, 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 gymnasium 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 children. 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 reputation.

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 looking, 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 proletarian 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 something 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 I?

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 thing 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 that 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 the 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 graduated 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.

1.4. 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 representative 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 somewhere 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 mentality. 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

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 Lion" 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 always 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 parents 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 individualist. 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 something 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--I 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 communities 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 ambitious, 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--I 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 tuberculosis.

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 influence 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 orthodoxy. 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 president--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 everything 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 absolutely 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. Afterwards, 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 everybody. 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 particularly?

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 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 Munchner 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?

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, Schaubuhne. 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 humiliated at home, and then all those famous authors made so 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 Hofbrauhaus, the famous Hofbrauhaus, where the people stand around kegs and had 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 Mühsam, 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 and a very high voice. Later on he helped make the revolution 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 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 heroines 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 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 evolution?

FEUCHTWANGER

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

1.5. TAPE NUMBER: III, SIDE ONE 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 Der 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--I don't know if you know the word, that touching the feet under the table? How would you say that? Footsie?

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 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 Der 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 us some of the stories of the earliest things.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. [reading] Joel, King Saul, Das Weib des Urias, Der 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 mentioned here. That is the play which I've told you about.

WESCHLER

Right, right.

FEUCHTWANGER

And Joel and King Saul. Yes, there was also 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 commemorative volume on Feuchtwanger that was published in the USC [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?

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 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--I 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 surprised 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 he never found out, but he was always attacked in the newspaper.

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 [Der Spiegel; Munchner Halbmonatsschrift fur 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 newspaper. My husband was absolutely innocent about that. He didn't know beforehand. 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 professors, 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 entrepreneur 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 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 terrible 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 standing 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 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 my 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 newspapers. 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.

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 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 before 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 always at home; they had their own lives.

WESCHLER

But you were gradually meeting the family.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja, because Franziska wanted me to meet 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 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 restaurant." 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. "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 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, witticisms, 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, Loeffler 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?

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 nothing 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 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 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 particular 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 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...

FEUCHTWANGER

....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.

WESCHLER

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.

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 mentioned 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 relationship with Max Reinhardt. As you were just saying, this story begins with the theater that was started....

FEUCHTWANGER

The new [Kunstler]-Theatre, yes. There 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 foundation 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. 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 beginning 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, 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 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 Troya, 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 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 beautiful--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 Eibenschutz] 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.

1.6. 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 Schaubuhne; that was the theatre magazine there--the periodical, 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 Kaffee-haus around--in the open, of course--and everybody met there. Also they could eat the famous fish of the Starnberg 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

"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.

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 ambiente 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 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 lanterns 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--from 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 yourself.

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 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.

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 Zukunft ("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 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 "Vaterlandslose Gesellen." The emperor called them that: "the boys (guys) without fatherland." 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 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 Mühsam, but that was later, during the war--Erich Mühsam. 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.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, Oscar Wilde, and the whole literature in those days--Hoffmannsthal.

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 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 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 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

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 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

Der 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 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 appointment 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--first 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.

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.

WESCHLER

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 something. 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 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--I was the only child--that I would make a good parti, as they called it, a good marriage. 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 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 business. 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.

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 fiancé, but I always said, "But how do you consider yourself my fiancé? 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 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 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 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. 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 something. 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?

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 relationships.

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?

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.

WESCHLER

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 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 basement; 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 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! 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 together, 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 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

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 just enough--and it wasn't much--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.*

* For additional details about this stay in the south of France, see Tape XXVII, Side Two.

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, 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.

1.7. 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 backpacks 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?

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 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. And 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--from 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 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 expected 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, 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 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 together, 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 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 childhood 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 came as an Egyptian slave, with a costume--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 fiancé, 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-- 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 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 follow us, he didn't believe me, of course; but he pardoned 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 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--I 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 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 vongole--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 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 already 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 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 believe 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 Switzerland, 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 nobody 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 Oberndorffer. 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?

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 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 lessons 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 called there) the Hall of the Field Marshal [Feldherrnhalle]. 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 figurines, 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 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 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 praying. 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 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 interested 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 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 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 fraudulent way. And to cover that, he accused my father of perjury. 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--I 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 complimented 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 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 subconsciousness. 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 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]

* 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 Süss.

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 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 fango.

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 Schaubuhne or so. At the same time, I found out that he was also homosexual. 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 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!

1.8. 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 Schaubuhne. 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 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?

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 sunrise, 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 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 swimming--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 bathing 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--I was one of them--flirting 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 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 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 somebody 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 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 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 sometimes 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 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 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 symbolic, 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 symbolic--"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 in his hut. So we exchanged our delicatessen, and it was very nice. Then we went on the next day; we were fortified. 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 nourishing. [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 came with handfuls of gold, threw them over the table, and said, "I want to buy your wife." 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 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 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 them 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 them 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 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 beginning, 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, 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, some 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 Mannesmanngesellschaft, 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 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 Kaiserschmarren. 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 Kaiserschmarren.

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.

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 nobile, 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 my 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 [honeysuckle] 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.

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 anything to say. But it was already the time when my husband began to doubt about l'art pour l'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 room 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 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 time.

WESCHLER

That site is an eerie site to have in 1914; it's almost like a symbol of the coming year.

FEUCHTWANGER

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 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 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 carabinieris?" 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 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 from--another village. And when we went to this village, it was all down. There was no house standing 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 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.

1.9. TAPE NUMBER: V, SIDE ONE JUNE 30, 1975

WESCHLER

Today we're going to do a very brief backtracking, 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 vessels full of water, and on their knees they washed the whole steps and dried them 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.

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 always 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 acetatis [Burow's solution]. It is a medicine to make compresses, for an astringent. In those days in Germany, everybody used that 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 my 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 from 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.

FEUCHTWANGER

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 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 immediately those were no good, and now comes the police. What 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 governor 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, 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. 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 would 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. 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 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. 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 Byzantine works]--like the icons, but enormous; 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 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 everything about that, even a little Greek, if it was necessary. 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 I 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. 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 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. 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 immediately 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 Süss. 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 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.

WESCHLER

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. 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 extortions 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 frightening, 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 anything. 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. just so you could see his face. Then we went on. There was a very narrow corridor; on both sides were cells, and everywhere 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 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 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 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 sardines, 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 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. Somebody 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 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 restaurants, 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.

WESCHLER

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 caffe 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 unusual, so they came and asked us if we would try the 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, 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.

1.10. 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 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. Everybody 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 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 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?

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 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 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 summer 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 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 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?

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. 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 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. 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 because 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 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 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. 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 without 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 something like that?

FEUCHTWANGER

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 something. I had something. This was the only money I had. So the first thing I did with the money was to buy two 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 exactly 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 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

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 pacifists. My husband also writes for newspapers, and I heard always from other wars that the correspondents of newspapers 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 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 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 clandestinely, so I 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 identification papers. If not, that was really a kind of deserting 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 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 fleeing, 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. 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 Germans!" 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 husband 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 soldiers to come in, they just pushed him aside and went through. 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 imprisoned--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 [came 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.

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. 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 Rome 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...?

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 l'art pour l'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 patriotic, in a way. I cannot deny that. We were glad when 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 again good that we had this military passport. "Since you are a soldier, you can ride home with your wife without 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 very 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 ambassador, 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 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.

1.11. 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 intermission 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. "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 Mühsam 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 existence.

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 friends--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 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. Mühsam 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 Mühsam. Nobody could understand how the two could get along. He always said jokingly to Mühsam, "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.... 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. Mühsam 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 Mühsam, 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 must have been someone important. They didn't condemn the little people to death, just the leaders.

WESCHLER

What did Mühsam 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 dangerous.

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 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 without earning any money, and also everything was in an uproar. All of his brothers were already in the army. One was on the front.

WESCHLER

Which brother was on the front?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was the third one, Martin. He was already 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.

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 underneath 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 satirical newspaper with beautiful illustrations by great artists; it was a magazine, more 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 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 Mannheim was the capital then of Baden.) But anyway, he immediately 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 population 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 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 husband 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

What effect did this have on the parents?

FEUCHTWANGER

They came back. They were almost not human 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, spies! Arrest the spies!" Lots of people came and surrounded us, and it was rather dangerous-- 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!" All of a sudden, the whole thing turned around, and they began to 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.

WESCHLER

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 Schaubuhne, 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 contemptible people; they were all criminals--and this was all there was in the newspapers. So my husband thought, "Isn't it 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 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 behave 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 Schaubuhne 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. 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.

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 difficulty 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.

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 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 before 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 hospital 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 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 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 idiot!"

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--first 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 helmet. 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. 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.'" [laughter]

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 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 countryside. But my husband never excused himself. He always went with them, and of course it was probably too much.

1.12. TAPE NUMBER: VI, SIDE TWO JULY 7, 1975

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 introduce 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 extensively 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 something 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." 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, because it also was for the church. It was so everybody would be sent to the right church.

WESCHLER

He was sent to the non-Christian church.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. [laughter]

WESCHLER

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."

WESCHLER

"Deutschland uber alles." Germany above everyone.

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 Der 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. [Betrachtungen 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 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 Torggelstube 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 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.

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 Lagerlof--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 possibility for correspondence, even to write letters.

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?

FEUCHTWANGER

"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 [under the title 1918] in Three Plays.

WESCHLER

I mean, how did the poem itself come about?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was called the first revolutionary poem 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 allowed, 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 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 Weltbuhne. 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 that it could not be played because it was about an Englishman, and it was also full of admiration for this Englishman. 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

Was 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 government," 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 capital of Bavaria.

WESCHLER

We might just go ahead slightly here--a "flash-forward," I guess you could call it--to discuss the effect that this "Lied der Gefallen" had.

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 citizenship?

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-fifty-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 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 Fruhlingsopfer (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 because 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 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 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.

* 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.

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 everybody 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 procedure of the expressionists, using thick strokes of paint, 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 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

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, 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!" 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 publisher 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 inflation.

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 Akadamiestrasse 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 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 Süss (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 times. He had a technique to dictate in different colors. For instance, the first draft was written by the secretary 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 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 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 publisher was immediately so taken of me that he said that I have to play Julia Farnese, who was a Renaissance princess. 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 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 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 is "not so good. "

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that's true. [laughter] It was this period of "l'art pour l'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 Räteregierung, 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 revolution. There was an older man who was a critic for a rather 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 anything, 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, 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 when the Räteregierung came, he said to everybody (and we heard it, of course), "Aren't you astonished how Feuchtwanger is reacting in this Räteregierung, 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.

1.13. 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 understand 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 perfide 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 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?

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 l'art pour l'art ?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, it was not, because it had many--what shall I say? For the poor, it had revolutionary ideas. 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.

WESCHLER

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, conservative 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 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]--I 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 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 Berlin, 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 was not very manly. He was very elegant and light, but he had not this manhood which the Munich actor had. And the girl who played his wife [Johanna Zimmermann], 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 political intensity of life that was beginning--that it was no longer a time of l'art pour l'art. How had these two plays, Warren Hastings 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 Der Konig und die Tanzerin.

FEUCHTWANGER

Der 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. Ubermangansaureskali--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.

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 Hastings 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 Kriegsgefangenen.

FEUCHTWANGER

Die Kriegsgefangenen 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 just about two prisoners of war; one a Frenchman, very light and not very deep but charming; 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 fiancé 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

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 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 [Friede]. It was actually two plays: one was the Eirene, the other I don't remember now [The Acharnians]. They were two plays by Aristophanes. The most important thing of it was that the funny verses of Aristophanes had 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 rehearsals. I was very good friends with all the actors. In those days it was difficult to get material, and I had 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 Suss, 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 Suss, who was a historical personality. And it was an historical plot. He found this very interesting, also because he studied the whole time. It has been found out by many serious scholars that Jud Süss was innocent--he has been hanged--but he was not innocent morally.

WESCHLER

Well, first tell us who he was.

FEUCHTWANGER

[Joseph Suss Oppenheimer] was a courtier--it was a little bit like [Henry] Kissinger--of the Archduke of Wurttemberg. 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. Suss 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 Suss' 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 Suss'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, Suss changed entirely, and his only ambition was to revenge his child. 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 Süss knew that he had wreaked revenge, he let himself go, 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 Süss, 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 decided 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? It doesn't seem 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 seems 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 themes, in this play.

FEUCHTWANGER

Not only Jewish themes, 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.

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 revolution.

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?

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. 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 from 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 from 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 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 [Erich] 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 them 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--feel about the turn that the revolution took with Lenin's ascendancy?

FEUCHTWANGER

Lenin wasn't known to many in Schwabing 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 emperor 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 them 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 dangerous.

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?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, not at all. Not at all.

WESCHLER

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 communism, but a republic, I would say, like America. Something 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 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 "communism"; that came after the war only. It was Marxism and socialism. Socialism was what embraced 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 them called them "Salon Communists, " 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 Communists 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 happen, whereas the Communists do want it to happen."

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't really remember 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 revolution and the final collapse in 1918-- was there any increasing politicalization 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 was suppressed as much as possible in the newspapers, but still it sneaked through. Then, the first time I saw a demonstration was when my husband had an operation on the hernia which he got when he was in the army. I came back--from 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 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 somewhere--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.

1.14. TAPE NUMBER: VII, SIDE TWO JULY 10, 1975

WESCHLER

We've just been talking about the peace demonstrations that were taking place in the weeks before the armistice, and you might continue with the story of what happened after that in Munich.

FEUCHTWANGER

After that, a very few days afterward--much as I recall, it was the twelfth of November--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 them." 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 was. Then the critic [Richard Elchinger] of the Munchner Neusten Nachrichten, 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 them 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 Residenz, 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.

WESCHLER

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.

WESCHLER

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 was very popular; that was Prince Max von Wurttemberg. He was a nephew of the great duke of Wurttemberg 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; we 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. 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.

FEUCHTWANGER

He was a journalist, but he was very knowledgeable--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 man 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 my husband was always hungry and was not at home with his rich parents but lived rather in a single room.

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 coming, 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 obviously no money for the stamps, so I took the letter with me 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 [Kammerspiele] 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, my 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 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. 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 Des 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 everybody 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 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 victory, 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 murdered. 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 how they felt about Eisner.

FEUCHTWANGER

They were very much for him.

WESCHLER

How did Erich Mühsam feel?

FEUCHTWANGER

Mühsam was a friend of his, but he was against him, because Mühsam 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 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 monarchism, and against anything revolutionary. And the peasant women--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 manufacturer, 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?

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 [Mira Deutsch] was a friend of the publisher of my 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 Steinruck, 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 Mühsam?" He was something like the police chief then; he worked in the police. So we called Mühsam, 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 Mühsam said, "Let those people go; they are my friends!" So they left again. Everything was over. But afterwards, when the Räteregierung 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. Mühsam 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 Räteregierung 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 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 them 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 anticommunists 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

Kaufmann. 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 them, 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 room 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 ill repute: there was nothing which would help to this accusation. But she has been condemned 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 [bad except that] 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 immediately arrested and had to go to jail until she was 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 my 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; I pay you ten cents for a streetcar." {laughter] Afterwards, 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 Mühsam 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.

WESCHLER

What kinds of articles, what kinds of things were said about Eisner?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, that he is a communist and that everything 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 immediately 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 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 remember 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 began already to make the revolution--he shot the socialist parliamentarian, the deputy [Erhard Auer], 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 parliament, 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 experience. 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 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?

FEUCHTWANGER

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 days? Did the communists take over after Eisner's assassination?

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, anti-Semitic, and antiliberal--this group [the Thule Gesellschaft] 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 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 army.

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 the communists?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, because they were socialists. It was [Friedrich] Ebert.

WESCHLER

Ebert sent them down to put down the communists, and the communists...?

FEUCHTWANGER

The Räteregierung, 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 Räteregierung, nothing else, until the soldiers came from the north. They were called by those who were against the Eisner government or the successors of the Eisner government; they called them 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 Räteregierung, 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 Räteregierung, 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.... Ach! We were always in the middle of that!) Then this landlord of our help, he wanted the little house for his 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 Räteregierung. 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 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.... "

1.15. 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 immediately 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 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 Reichswehr. 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 prisoner!" 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 Räteregierung 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 humanity and justice and helpfulness--all that with the terrible cruelties which happened.

* 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."

WESCHLER

What was the response of the general Munich population, and then also the Bohemian group, to the arrival of the Reichswehr?

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, 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 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 Räteregierung. 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." [laughter] 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 we have from the war, all the victories--finally they conquered Munich!"

WESCHLER

At least the German army knows how to do something right.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. [laughter] But this actor was so funny--and I remember 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 army 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 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 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 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 instance, 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.

WESCHLER

That was not at this time yet?

FEUCHTWANGER

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 them. 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 them 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 submarine. 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 immediately been hanged. He said, "The whole roads were full of--from 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 Poschart] 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. 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 him 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 afterwards-- 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 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 Räteregierung 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 the stage.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, in a way, but he was not so much interested 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 Räteregierung 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--I 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 Räteregierung. 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, 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 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 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.

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 l'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 l'art pour l'art but that it has to have a purpose.

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.

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 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 simultaneously telling you that little girls should not be shouting.

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. Gradually 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 [1912]. 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] 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 Mühsam 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. 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] was a professor of literature at the university, and the other [Walter Strich] was a writer. She probably had an affair with both of them, 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 Steinruck; and we were sometimes there. But we didn't belong so much: that had a special reason. In this clan, it was so exclusive 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--I should have been flattered, but I had the feeling that it was a kind of irony; I couldn't quite 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 understand 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 Die 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 remember 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 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.

WESCHLER

But this group, this clan that the sculptress headed, was still a very aesthetic group, it was still l'art pour l'art.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, very much l'art pour l'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 l'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 once 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? 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 remember a performance of The Awakening of Spring [Fruhlings Erwachen] when he played himself in the play. Also it was a very funny story about performing because he was considered the greatest actor of his own plays. He never played anything....

1.16. 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 performance [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 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. [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 relationship 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 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 Torggelstube 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 would 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.

FEUCHTWANGER

Of course, he hated everything.

WESCHLER

We'll talk about Hitler in more detail later on. [pause in tape] Later at the Kammerspiele....

FEUCHTWANGER

They played also the plays of my husband. They played Der 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 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 Süss. And in the Kammerspiele, 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 chemical. 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 [Maria Kanova] 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; 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 Walter. 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 conciliation--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.

WESCHLER

What was his name?

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 relationship of the theater to the new government, to Eisner's government. Eisner had been a theater critic, so he had 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 [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 was Steinruck, 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." [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, Steinruck, 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 Kammerspiele 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 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 White Guard when the government of Berlin sent the Reichswehr to beat down the Räteregierung. They arrested everybody 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 soldiers--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. 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 Räteregierung and that too put several people in danger, and many came to your house.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, during the Räteregierung, 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?

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 [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....

WESCHLER

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 ministerialrat [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 came to our house. There were all kinds of political interests. 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 Räteregierung 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 [Max Scheler]. He was there. Then there was [Johannes?] Klingelhofer, 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. Becher, and he wrote very modern lyrics in those days which nobody could understand. 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 Räteregierung. 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 killed Gustav Landauer. I told them 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 extremely 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 directly, 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 revolution in Augsburg when he came to Munich. I have written 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 other play is much better." So my husband said, "[Next time] 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 me? 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]

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.

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 performed the first time in Munich in the Kammerspiele, 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 [Leopold] 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. 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 enemies, Jessner and Jhering. [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 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. Ringelnatz 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 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 Ringelnatz. (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]

WESCHLER

Did everyone have an appropriate hangover, I should hope?

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't know, I haven't asked them; 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 Boheme, they got free tickets, either from the authors or the actors or so--[either that or....] 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.

WESCHLER

Well, why don't you just start and tell us who he was.

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 tuberculosis, 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, 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 it! 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 Wedding, 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?

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 Simplicissimus--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 Simplicissimus 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 Scharfrichter--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 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.... "

1.17. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE ONE JULY 14, 1975 and JULY 15, 1975

WESCHLER

We are in the middle of Roda Roda’s story about Feuchtwanger’s car.

FEUCHTWANGER

This was later, in Berlin. "Feuchtwanger took some driving lessons, and that was his first time out. He drove through the [Kronprinzen Allee], and all of a sudden he ran against a tree. Feuchtwanger went out and around the car and said, 'Fine, but how do I stop the car if there is no tree?'" That's Roda Roda.

WESCHLER

Well, perhaps you could tell us more about Brecht in the early days.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. Brecht was always in Augsburg when he had no money. One day his father came to my husband and asked him, "You know, I wanted my son to be a doctor. But he now wants to be a writer. You already have success, so I wanted to ask your advice. Do you think he should be a writer? Do you think he has talent?" So my husband said, "I can only say one thing: I never advise a young man to be a writer, because it’s a very hard job, and I know from experience. But if your son wouldn't write, wouldn't continue to write, it would be a crime." So the father said, "That's all right, I believe you. So I will give him his monthly check, and he can be a writer." He was a little depressed, because a doctor would have been better anyway. But then he left, and before he went out of the door, he turned around and said to my husband, "You know, I am a manufacturer of paper. I make beautiful white paper, and then they go and print on it." [laughter]

WESCHLER

So, in a way his son was going to be one of the greatest of the criminals in this regard.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, the beautiful white paper, [laughter] And a funny thing--[remember how] in Brecht's play Spartacus [Drums in the Night], which was a drama, somebody says, "Now we go in the big white bed"? Do you remember the ending?*

*Kragler's penultimate line in Drums in the Night (Act V): "Now comes the bed, the great, white, wide bed, come!" ("Jetzt kommt das Bett, das grosse weisse, breite Bett, komm!)

WESCHLER

Right.

FEUCHTWANGER

[laughter] And there is another thing. He was very much liked by women. He didn't look very good--you couldn't say that--but he had something of a Gothic saint, you know: a very thin face, and bones, a bony face, and deep-lying eyes. And also his hair was, in a way, grown into his forehead, so he looked not like everybody. And the Weiber [women] were very much in love with him. They ran after him, mostly the actresses. And his friend [Otto] Mullereisert, who was a doctor, always said, "I think he seducted the women with his guitar playing." He was always sitting in a corner somewhere on the floor, singing his ballads with a very shrill voice. And the women just fainted almost, you know. Anyway, he was very successful. Once there was an evening at the theater director's--Engel, Erich Engel, who made the first performance of The Threepenny Opera. And like always, because he had not much room in his apartment--we had not enough chairs--we were sitting around on mattresses, and Brecht was sitting in one corner. [pause in tape]

WESCHLER

Brecht was sitting in one corner...

FEUCHTWANGER

...in one corner, and singing, and he sang something which I had given him the plot for. I found in the newspaper a story about a young boy who killed his parents and lived always with the bodies in the apartment and didn't know what to do with the bodies. At first it was all right, and then the woman who came with the milk said, "It smells so funny." (It's in the ballad, you know.) And it ends up that finally, of course, they found the bodies, and then they buried them. I cut it out from the newspaper, gave it to him, and he made a ballad out of it. And he sang it. It is very funny, and at the same time also tragic. My help, who was a woman of peasant's descent, she came to me after she read about this--[Jacob] Apfelböck was the name, which is a funny name of the apple, you know, like an apple--and she said, "Isn't that terrible, this boy who kills his parents? What do you think would he do when he goes to the grave of his parents?" Of course, he was condemned to death, you know, and he would never go to their graves. So this was a funny question. I told Brecht this question, and this was the point, then, of the ballad of Brecht.* When he sang that, he looked at me, because I gave him the whole idea (he also gave me the first little handwritten manuscript of it). He smiled at me when the end comes, which my maid, my help, had told me. He smiled at me, and I smiled back. And then there was a famous actress from Berlin, who visited him there--she was very much in love with Brecht--and she ran across the whole room to stand before me and said, "You don't laugh when Brecht sings." Afterwards we danced a little bit; Brecht danced with me, and he said, "Don't you think she is a little bit strenuous?" That was all he said about it. [laughter] Gerda Müller was her name. She was a very, very famous actress, and she played also in his plays. I think she played the queen in Edward [II]. But she was so upset that I smiled about Brecht. I admired her also; I didn't even answer her. Then he met another actress--I don't know when or where.... Yes, I know. There was a Dramaturg [Otto Zoff]--that is, a man who reads the plays for the theater and also has a voice in hiring actors and actresses--and he had a sister. This sister came from Vienna to see him--he was also a very well known writer--and so Brecht met this sister. She was an opera singer in Wiesbaden at the State Theatre and had a very good career before her. She was very good looking, like a madonna a little bit. She also had a very rich friend in Munich who had a publishing house. Anyway, Brecht fell in love with her, and she with him.

*Brecht’s ballad, "Apfelböck oder die Lilie auf dem Felde," ends with the phrase "Ob Jakob Apfelböck wohl einmal noch// Zum Grabe seiner armen Eltern geht?"

WESCHLER

What was her name?

FEUCHTWANGER

She is still living. Marianne Zoff was her maiden name. She is married now to an actor, [Theo] Lingen, in Vienna. Her daughter, who is the daughter of Brecht because they married afterwards, is called Hiob [Hanne], and she played in the first performance of Mother Courage (she played the daughter Kattrin, the mute daughter). But then they were not married yet. Brecht made the opera and theater look bad to her. He could persuade her that this was not the career for a woman and also that the only career is to be his wife. So she really left the opera and went with him to Munich and lived very poorly with him. But before she married him, she had to leave her boyfriend who was this great publisher. And before they were married--this man was very jealous, of course--and once, when Brecht was at our house, somebody called us and said, "You know that this man"--I don't remember his name [Herr Best?]- "is going up and down before your house and is going to kill Brecht." So we told Brecht, "You can't go away. There is still this man down there outside who wanted to kill you." All those things happened. [laughter] But he became cold feet probably and didn't kill him.

WESCHLER

Thankfully, for German literature. [pause in tape] You were just going to tell us some more stories about Brecht, him and actresses in general.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. They all fell in love with him, mostly the young actresses, partly because they liked him or he impressed them, but also because they thought they could get good parts in his plays. Once, a young actress who was blond--and I know that he didn't like blond girls--she came and told my husband that she was expecting a child of Brecht, and what should she do? My husband had him come and said, "Listen, Brecht. May I ask you a silly question?: Do you have always to make children?" And Brecht said, "A silly answer: yes."

WESCHLER

Was it Brecht’s child?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was Brecht’s child, but I think she had an abortion. He had also before already a child in Augsburg. This girl later married a doctor.

WESCHLER

Was that child born?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. He had a child, and Brecht’s father took care of her. The mother was later married, and I think the roan adopted this girl.

WESCHLER

Did Brecht have any feelings of closeness to this daughter?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, then he had forgotten the girl and forgotten the whole thing. The father took care of everything. He was very young, I think seventeen or so. He also didn't want to marry--they just wanted him all the time--maybe in those days he didn't know how to prevent to get a child, [laughter]

WESCHLER

I wanted to explore a little bit more closely the relationship between Lion and Brecht. Clearly Lion was one of the earliest people--not only to discover but to promote Brecht and really help him along. Would you say that Lion was Brecht’s teacher in any way?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, no. I couldn't say that. I think they were very different in a way; they could impress one another, but not as teachers. For instance, when my husband was writing Thomas Wendt, he spoke about it to Brecht and said, "I am trying a new kind of form; I call it the epic drama." He told him about that. He didn't give it to him to read--he hadn't finished it yet--but he spoke about it. "I think sometimes you cannot express your ideas very well in a play because you are bound to the form of the play, to the different acts and scenes. But I want to make short scenes and long scenes the way I feel that just this point has to be made." Brecht was very impressed about that, and he also changed from then on his whole method of writing plays. Drums in the Night had been written in the old way of several acts (every act has to be balanced with the other), but his later plays were much more formless, because he was impressed with this new form which my husband used for the first time. But there was no other kind of teaching.

WESCHLER

In the case of their collaboration on Edward II, what did that collaboration consist of?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was very funny. I think they compensated each other. My husband had more sense for buildup and also for logic. Brecht was always going on and on and on; he never would have found an end. It was like an open-ended play for him--which is the only way to do it, I think. A play cannot be ended because then it would have been done, over. It should be like life which goes on also, and that was also a little bit of the feeling of Brecht. From his studies and his practice. Lion had more sense of the form, the architectural form. That's why they compensated each other. Brecht liked to work on something. He never wanted to end the work. That is a kind of poetical stance, I could say. Also what Brecht didn't have was logic--maybe it could even be so that someone had died before and then could be alive afterwards. This is an exaggeration, but it happened in other plays. He had [little sense of] sequence, and my husband had much more. So they compensated each other, and it was a very fruitful work together.

WESCHLER

How did it actually take place? Would one of them write a draft and give it to the other?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, no. Every word was written together.

WESCHLER

They sat together in a room?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, they sat together and gave each other the word. Once my husband said, "This isn't logical." And Brecht said, "That's just what I want. I don't want it logical." Sometimes they quarreled. I remember later, when I was in Berlin, I came home from the market one day, and my help said, "Oh, I am so glad you came home; Mr. Brecht is just killing the poor doctor." I came in and said, "Why do you think that?" She said, "First I heard both of them, and now I hear only Mr. Brecht shouting; the poor doctor doesn't say a word." [laughter] So I went in and they were both sitting there and laughing. They had really had a sharp controversy and discussion, and when it was finished then they laughed together. So it was like that; they were quarreling and discussing--not quarreling, but discussing things. And once I remember that--we lived in Munich on the fourth floor--and Brecht left; he lived very near. They couldn't find the right word or the right expression, and he left without finishing. And, at twelve o'clock that night, we heard somebody whistling downstairs. My husband went to the window; Brecht was there, and he said, "Doctor, you were right!" He always called him "Doctor." So sometimes it was like that, and sometimes my husband gave in, of course. For instance, with Simone, I usually was with them when they were together. Brecht wanted me always. First of all, he wanted an audience always. He was inspired if somebody was sitting there. I think it could even be somebody who couldn't even understand the language. He just needed somebody: he made gestures; he went around; he wasn't sitting there. My husband was usually sitting at his desk, but Brecht went up and down, gesturing, so he needed an audience. Sometimes he also asked me what I would say. Once they couldn't find a turning point which would bring about a solution. They asked me in from the kitchen, told me what they were looking for, and I had an idea which they accepted. It was in Kalkutta, 4. Mai which they adapted from my husband's first play, Warren Hastings. They accepted this turn and Brecht said, "I think it is a very good idea and we accept it. Your husband should have to pay you $450 for that." And later, every time I met Brecht, he would say, "Did your husband give you the $450?" [laughter]

WESCHLER

Had he?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, it was also that I didn't intend to accept it. [laughter]

WESCHLER

As long as we're on Kalkutta, 4. Mai, how did that come about?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, my husband had long forgotten about this play Warren Hastings, and also he was already quitting the theater and writing his novels. But Brecht found this play so effectful, and he said, "We should adapt it for modern times."

WESCHLER

It was all of ten years old at this point.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. But he thought it should be adapted. He asked my husband so often and then he insisted so much that my husband finally gave in. Then it has been played in Berlin at the State Theatre. It was a very interesting performance, but not what my husband was thinking about it. Some scenes had been taken out which he found important. The next day in a review of an important critic, there was written, "We didn't get an explanation for (this and that)." And these were just the scenes which they left out. But it was a great success, mostly because the actor was so good. It was Rudolf Foster; he went to England during the vacation, to the Isle of Man, to study English mores. His performance was against my husband's idea of the man, but he was so effectful that it was a great success. And Sybille Binder played, who was very beautiful, and she sang a song which Brecht made for her, "The Surabaya Jhonny."

WESCHLER

That was in that play?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. It was in that play.

WESCHLER

So you were perhaps one of the first people to ever hear that song.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja.

WESCHLER

Brecht, in addition to being a playwright at this time, was also a director.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, but I wanted to tell you something still about how they wrote: sometimes when they had discussed a long time, they went into Lion's study where the secretary was, and my husband usually dictated what there had been spoken before. Then he gave Brecht a copy and he kept a copy, and overnight they both worked on this copy. Then Brecht came back the next day and they took it over again.

WESCHLER

With all kinds of arguments.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes.

WESCHLER

About his being a director: for one thing, he directed the performance of Edward II, didn't he?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, he did, but not officially. Officially it was Bernhard Reich who directed it; but, of course, Bernhard Reich hadn't much to say.

WESCHLER

What was he like as a director? He was a young man....

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, he was a tyrant when he was directing. He was so obsessed from the whole thing that people, the girls, the actresses, had to play on and on again, and sometimes l remember Maria Koppenhöfer, who was one of my best friends there--she was later a great actress in Berlin; she was still very young, not the great actress yet--she really ended up in tears. The actors said, "We don't want to have anything to do anymore," and left the scene. In the end it was all friendship again. Everything was forgotten because they found that he had such a new way of leading an actor, and also of explaining and of being a director, that everything was forgotten.

WESCHLER

Were you present at some of the rehearsals?

FEUCHTWANGER

I was always present; he insisted always that I be there.

WESCHLER

You were his traveling audience.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, but during the rehearsals, there were also other people there, of course. But my husband said that he cannot come to every rehearsal--"I write my novels now" He was so much in the midst of his work, and when he came, he did it only out of friendship.

WESCHLER

You say that Brecht had such a new way of leading an actor or an actress. How would you describe that?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. What he always said was, "First comes the gesture, and then comes the word." That was a new way, also the way they had to move. Mostly he didn't allow many movements. I remember when he directed [Blandine] Ebinger--not long ago she visited me from Berlin--she then was the wife of Friedrich Holländer, who was a composer who composed the most famous songs in those days (he composed the music to The Blue Angel, for instance, all those songs which Marlene Dietrich sang, "I am from head to foot with love," or something like that). Anyway, Ebinger he directed in a pantomime. He said, "You know, she has to be thin and vicious," he said, "thin and vicious." [laughter] And he made always those gestures. He made the gestures also for the actors. "Before the words should come the gestures, or the position, or the movement."

WESCHLER

I take it that these were some pretty astoundingly successful plays.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, but the funny thing is he never had success with a great audience--nowhere except in Germany.

WESCHLER

Weren't they successful in Munich right away from the very start?

FEUCHTWANGER

Not with the audience; they were literary successes. In Munich it was only the Edward, the Drums in the Night and the Edward. The other things were all done in Berlin. The greatest success was The Threepenny Opera, which he didn't like anymore afterwards.

WESCHLER

The Threepenny Opera. But that's in Berlin, and we are going to save that for later. But in Munich would you say that he was well known?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, not very well known. The same with here: he was well known, but he was not played. He is not played very much in America, and yet he's so famous. He has been played at the Lincoln Center last year, I think, in Galileo, but it didn't go on to the next year like a big hit. Or Mother Courage. The greatest success in New York was also The Threepenny Opera, but it was in such a small theater--I think it held only a hundred people or so--it played, of course, for years because it was a small theater. Mother Courage has been played--by mistake, it has been promised to two theaters. At first, they wanted to make a lawsuit out of it. Finally they decided both could play it. Then the one who made it more spectacular had no success, and the one which was in a kind of little avant-garde theater and almost amateurish had the greatest success with it.

WESCHLER

Well, I think we are going to close fairly quickly for today. But one last set of questions about Brecht concern his politics in the very early days in Munich. Later on, he was avowedly leftist in his politics and so forth. But my sense is that early on, in 1920-21-22, he didn't really have any kind of thought-out leftist approach.

FEUCHTWANGER

It was very funny: he went to Berlin and came back much more to the left than when he was in Munich.

WESCHLER

What was he like in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER

In Munich he was liberal, like we all were. It was not the obvious left. When he was in Berlin, he met Hele[ne] Weigel, whom he married later when he divorced his first wife. She was very communistic. She was from a very wealthy Viennese family which had a big department store, but she was a communist, an outright communist. And she always was. He met her, and she had a great influence on him. But still he was not so outright. The first thing which was a little was the Kuhle Wampe, if you know that film. That was the most near to the people and the proletariat.

WESCHLER

Did he talk about politics very much during those early years in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, it was not necessary, because we were all of the same opinion. Only we didn't [belong] to any party. We were pacifists and we were liberals; we were for the leftists. Even if we were not leftists ourselves, we were for the leftists. We were for the Räteregierung [and when] we saw that the revolution didn't lead to anything, we thought it could have been better [except that] it was murdered--you know, Eisner, Erzberger, and Rathenau, Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, all of them murdered. There was also one of the leaders in the north, a man named [Hugo] Haase, who was a deputy of the parliament, and he was also murdered. He was the only leader of the Independent Socialists. So there was no leader anymore for the leftists. Of course, we were all pacifists and against violence; we were against those antirevolutionaries, so we were for the revolution. But I remember also that after the premiere of Kuhle Wampe, I had a car and Brecht didn't have a car yet, so we went together. My husband went with other people, and then we met all together in the cafe on the zoo. That was on the first story. I took Brecht with me and a man by the name of Fritz Sternberg. He was a communist writer--Marxist, let's say, a theoretical Marxist. We went together, and we were sitting there. We were the first to come, and we were all alone at the long table waiting for the others. They spoke together, and Sternberg explained communism to Brecht. That was just after the first performance of Kuhle Wampe. He explained it, and Brecht said, "Yes, I think you are right." That was at the turning point when he became a communist. First he was very much influenced by Hele Weigel, by his wife. But this was [when] he made a decision, and it was Fritz Sternberg who did it. I don't know if Fritz Sternberg ever knew what an impression he made on Brecht. Fritz Sternberg was then here also; he came to see us, but he couldn't stay here because he was a Marxist.

WESCHLER

He couldn't get citizenship papers?

FEUCHTWANGER

Not only that. He could not even get permission to stay as a noncitizen.

WESCHLER

Well, we're beginning to get more political again, and the next person in the wings to talk about is Hitler. We'll begin with him next time. [pause in tape] Very quickly, one additional note: the name of the philosopher who was at Ludwig Feuchtwanger’s house was Max Scheler.

FEUCHTWANGER

He was half Catholic and half Jewish because he married a Feuchtwanger. No--his father married a Feuchtwanger. Max couldn't become a professor in Munich because he had a duel with somebody. So that was out; even though he was Catholic, he couldn't become a professor at the university. But he became famous--he is still now famous as a philosopher. You can find him in every philosophical work.

JULY 15, 1975

WESCHLER

Today, we are eventually going to start talking about the political situation in 1921-22-23, in Munich, but first we are going to talk a bit more about the literary scene. You had some more memories, and in particular about a woman novelist who you wanted to talk about.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that was another of those carnivals, a fiesta, I could say, where the artists made all the decorations and the people came in fancy costumes.

WESCHLER

This is Fasching?

FEUCHTWANGER

Right. Mostly self-made costumes and very artistic usually, and it was very gay. My husband and I, we went usually to those balls together, but inside the door we lost each other. Everyone went on his own adventures. After I had danced with many people.... I remember also that I danced with one man who made an anti-Semitic remark because he didn't think that I was Jewish; then I said, "There is a proverb that says, 'A good German man doesn't like the French man but he likes the French wine,' and I wanted to tell you that you don't like the Jews, but you like the Jewish women." I told him that and then I left him. And when I left him, all of a sudden, I saw Lion sitting somewhere with a bottle of wine--I don't know if it was French wine--and a girl was sitting on his knees. He motioned that I should come over to him, and the girl jumped up because he told her, "That's my wife." She was very, very embarrassed, but I put her at ease and told her to sit down. Then she told me that she was studying in Munich.

WESCHLER

What was her name?

FEUCHTWANGER

Marieluise Fleisser. She was from Ingolstadt; that's a little town in the north of Munich on the Danube, and it was always a garrison. Later on, but much later, she wrote a play about the engineers, the soldier-engineers of Ingolstadt [Pioniere in Ingolstadt] which was a big scandal, and she almost had to leave the little town. But at that time she was still a student of [Arthur] Kutscher. There she met Brecht, who also went sometimes to the lectures of Kutscher, and Brecht spoke to her about Feuchtwanger. When she saw my husband, she recognized him from the pictures in newspapers, and that's why she came to him and wanted to make his acquaintance and immediately sat on his knees. She thought that was the easiest way to make an acquaintance. She was very well built, had very white skin and blond hair and blue eyes--but her eyes were a little too light; they had no real color. She had something--I called her a Sumpfblume, that means a flower that grows in a swamp; she looked like that, you know. Also a little Lässig [indolent]. She wanted my husband's advice: she wanted to be a writer too and wanted to know if she could come some day. He agreed, and she brought with her at the same time what she had written. And those were poems which were just awful. I read some of them. They were romantic and kitsch; the worst was that they were so cute. She writes about her little toe--she hangs her little toe into the water in a little brook or something like that--in verses. My husband told her, "That's not writing; you cannot do that. I have never read something like that. You cannot read what I write--that wouldn't be in your line--but you should read Brecht, which is poetry. You should read him and see what one can do with the German language." She did that, and she immediately not only fell in love with Brecht and imitated him, of course, but she was absolutely devoted to him in every way. Like a serf, you could say.

WESCHLER

What was the German word you used off tape?

FEUCHTWANGER

Hörig. I didn't find the right translation for it.

WESCHLER

She acted almost slavishly.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, but it was not only that--it was also spiritual.

WESCHLER

Was that common with Brecht and women?

FEUCHTWANGER

Very often, yes, but never had I seen it like that. Because she was a writer and an artist, too, so it was much more serious. It was not just a fleeting moment of sexuality or so; she was so dependent on him. Also he did so much for her. He immediately recognized what she could do. After she had read his works she had changed completely. She wrote a play which was called Purgatory [Fegefeuer] which was also in the little town where she lived. He was instrumental that it has been played in Berlin, with a great literary success but not success at all financially and without a big audience. But she got a very important literary prize for this play. She wrote a book about her own experiences,* and she always compares Feuchtwanger with Brecht. She said she learned more from the wise Feuchtwanger than from Brecht, and that it was very painful, her relationship with Brecht. She always came to Feuchtwanger for advice and for comfort. After the war she wrote him immediately; she said that during the Nazi time, where she had a very bad time in Bavaria, that she could manage to read all his books which he wrote in the meantime.

*Materialien zum Leben und Schreiben der Marieluise Fleisser, edited by Günther Ruehle, Edition Luhrkamp.

WESCHLER

Secretly, of course.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, of course.

WESCHLER

Talking about Brecht and women: was Brecht one who got very turbulently involved with women, or were they more or less incidental?

FEUCHTWANGER

For the moment, but they were usually short moments. I don't think that he was very much involved with women. It was so easy for him. He could have anyone he wanted. But also he had a special taste, and he didn't like most of the women. For instance, he didn't like blond women, and Fleisser was blond, pale and colorless--everything was colorless on her--but she had a wonderful body. So he was indifferent in the relationship with her, sexually. He was very much for her talent and wanted to help her, but he couldn't stand her for very long. By the way, he wanted to marry me. Between his two marriages which he had, he thought I could marry him too. [laughter] But I was already....

WESCHLER

To which you said....

FEUCHTWANGER

No, I didn't even answer him, and he didn't insist when he saw it was not possible. He just mentioned it in passing.

WESCHLER

That will at least earn you a footnote somewhere.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. He wanted it really, but he was too proud to insist when he saw that he had no success. But we were always very good friends. Usually when I didn't respond, the men were sometimes great enemies afterwards; they wanted to destroy my marriage and things like that. Many men. But he was never like that. He immediately understood, and there was nothing changed in our friendship.

WESCHLER

Did that create any tension between him and Lion?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, Lion didn't know about it. But the only thing what he said was, "You know, I have no bad conscience against your husband. What I did has nothing to do with him; I'm not sorry about it, and I have no bad conscience." [laughter]

WESCHLER

And everybody lived happily ever after.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, absolutely. Also even if I would have liked him very much--I liked him very much but not in this sense--! would never have done it with a friend of my husband. Because I think friendship is much more important than sexual adventure. There are so few real good friendships, and this friendship between Brecht and Feuchtwanger was so unusual because it was a human friendship and it was also collaboration in the literary work. And that was something which wouldn't happen so often. I didn't want to destroy that. That's why I didn't even [consider it]. It happened with other friends of his also. One said always that I am "a spine in his flesh."

WESCHLER

"A thorn in his flesh."

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, "a thorn in his flesh." So let's [laughter] let it be.

WESCHLER

You had said that Fleisser was a student of Kutcher's, and I wanted to talk a little bit about Kutcher, and then about...

FEUCHTWANGER

There was another professor named [Friedrich] van der Leyen.

WESCHLER

Well, let's talk first about Kutcher for a second, and then....

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't know much about Kutcher. I met him several times at Heinrich Mann's house; he lived very near to Heinrich Mann's house and also not far from us. I only remember that Kutscher means "coachman." So during these masquerades, he always had a blue coat, a loose coat like a peasant coachman. So everybody knew this is Kutcher.

WESCHLER

He is talked about a good deal in many Brecht biographies. Was he central to the community at all?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, yes, he was very much in the literary [life]. But nobody of our circle was a friend of his; they knew him, but he was not a friend of all our friends. Maybe just with Heinrich Mann, but even there not a very near friend. It was after the war that he became important. because he was left over from those good times, you know, the twenties. There was a vacuum, and there Kutcher was, who knew everybody. He was not known as a Nazi, so nobody had anything against him politically. He had no Nazi stigma. So he wrote books about Wedekind and Brecht and everybody. He knew them all personally--Brecht not so much.

WESCHLER

Had he been one of Brecht’s teachers?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, I told you that Marieluise met Brecht [in his class]. But he was not his teacher, because Brecht didn't want to have a teacher; he was just there. He studied medicine, and so he went into the class because it was literature; but he didn't follow it, and he did not study literature. He didn't even read literature, you know. Most of the books, the important books of world literature, he didn't read.

WESCHLER

Did he never read them, or he just hadn't at the time he started writing?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, he never read big books usually. I think my husband was the only author he really read, but I am not so sure. Anyway, during the Hitler time, he visited us in the south of France where we lived, and we made an excursion together with the car. My husband was working, as always, and so we spoke about Lion's work. And he said, "I make you responsible: now he is writing this Flavius Josephus book, and I know what it is all about, and you are responsible that it won't become too chauvinistic. I make you responsible!" [laughter] That was our relationship. But it was always wonderful to be with him; we had so much in common, and we understood each other without speaking. I could drive with him without speaking. It was a beautiful friendship.

WESCHLER

You wanted to talk about van der Leyen also.

FEUCHTWANGER

He was a professor, and Lion had to be in his classes.

WESCHLER

This is when Lion was a young man.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, he was a student but he was already grown up. He had to write a paper about the classic Austrian playwright, [Fritz] Grillparzer, of whom I know that my husband had great respect and also admired him in many ways. But it must have been about a play which he didn't like, and van der Leyen was very upset that it was so arrogant and even sloppily written. He told him that in front of all the students. But then he saw that Feuchtwanger, who was rather shy and spoiled--or so he thought at least, the spoiled son of a very rich old family from Bavaria--he saw that he had tears in his eyes when he spoke like that to him. Afterwards Lion came to him and said that he wanted to thank him; he thinks he deserved his blame, and he thinks he was too much spoiled by the praise of other professors who found everything that he wrote so good. He thinks that it was a great service to him that he spoke so frankly with him. Van der Leyen found this very courageous; it never happened to him, something like that, that this timid man was so frank and so honest and spoke to him like that. And from then on he had great friendship for him.

WESCHLER

This story, by the way, is told in detail in a book we've just been looking at. What's the name of this book?

FEUCHTWANGER

Immortal Munich [Unsterbliches München], and it is written by Hanns Arens. He brought it to me when I was in Munich. He came to my hotel and brought it to me. It is the book about Munich, really about the whole period, let's say, from 1890 on.

1.18. TAPE NUMBER: IX, SIDE TWO JULY 15, 1975

WESCHLER

We're continuing with some more details about the literary history of Munich and particularly again about Bertolt Brecht. You have an interesting story about the time around Drums in the Night.

FEUCHTWANGER

I think I told you about this premiere, the first night when all the critics came from Berlin.

WESCHLER

This is Edward II now.

FEUCHTWANGER

Edward II, ja, ja.

WESCHLER

Let me ask first, what had been the impact of Drums in the Night?

FEUCHTWANGER

The impact in Drums in the Night: it came to Berlin and has been played there, and was a sensation with the literary circles and also the critics, most of the critics. The most important was against him.

WESCHLER

This was [Alfred] Kerr?

FEUCHTWANGER

That was Alfred Kerr of the most important newspaper [the Berliner Tageblatt], and also himself a writer. But there was another critic, Jhering, and he was from a not so big but still very good newspaper, also more conservative [the Börsen-Courier]; the newspaper was more conservative, but he was more avant-gardish. He immediately found Brecht--you had the impression that he discovered Brecht. But he would have never heard about Brecht if Lion hadn't discovered him in Munich.

WESCHLER

But neither of them would have heard about him if Brecht hadn't been as great as he was.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. When the [Berlin] State Theatre, Jessner's theater, had the intention to perform Edward II--which was a great success in Munich--the critic of whom I spoke just now, who was more avant-gardistic, he wrote a letter to my husband saying, "You are already an established writer, and we both are very interested in Brecht. I think we have to help him in every way to make his career. I think it would be better if you would not write on the program, 'by Feuchtwanger and Brecht,' but instead only mention Brecht's name." My husband, who was very proud, did not say, "I don't think so; we wrote it together," or something like that--just "all right." And then nobody mentioned Feuchtwanger when this play had been played. It was also a great literary success but there was no response from the audience. It was too early for this kind of what they called Entfremdung, "alienation." It was not understood yet. But when the book was printed, Brecht insisted that on the second page it would say, "I wrote this play with Lion Feuchtwanger."

WESCHLER

We talked a good deal about their collaboration. I've read somewhere that it was Lion's insisting to Brecht that the language be more chopped, that Brecht's language was too smooth.

FEUCHTWANGER

No, that was Fleisser who wrote that. Marieluise Fleisser wrote that in her memoirs. She wrote that she found that Feuchtwanger "roughed up" the language of Brecht because he found it too smooth. I cannot say about that. I wouldn't know that. Maybe Brecht told that to her.

WESCHLER

But you wouldn't vouch for it.

FEUCHTWANGER

No, I didn't say it, but Fleisser wrote it. You can read it in her book. It must be. I cannot explain it otherwise than that he told it to her.

WESCHLER

We can come back again later on to the literary scene in Munich, but I think right now I would like to move slowly over into political history again. Now, when we last left the political scene in Munich we had the Soldiers and Workers Councils of the Räteregierung, and they had been overturned by the White Guard.

FEUCHTWANGER

I think I forgot to call it by the right name. It was called the Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants Movement. I forgot the workers, I think; I called it only the Soldier and Peasant Rat (Soviet). The most important thing was the workers, of course.

WESCHLER

But in any case it was overthrown very early on by the White Guards coming from the north.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, of course, because it was against the socialist government in Berlin and they didn't want that. There came complaints from Bavaria, not from the socialists so much but from the conservatives and reactionaries. In Berlin they didn't recognize that, that it was the reactionaries who did the whole trouble. The whole thing was because Eisner had been killed. Instead of making diplomatic movements, they just sent their troops there. The troops were well trained from the war--it was not long after the war. They were used to kill everybody. Everybody who was in their way or who they suspected, mostly peasants--they just killed them. When somebody denounced another man who he didn't like and said that he had a gun, they just killed him without any trial. Immediately put on the wall and killed. It was like those paintings of Goya.

WESCHLER

What kind of government did Bavaria have after that?

FEUCHTWANGER

It became very conservative, of course.

WESCHLER

And what kind of manifestations were there in the public life? Was there censorship, for instance? How did you sense that in your daily life?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, there was no censorship, but it was not necessary because everything became reactionary all of a sudden. All the newspapers became as reactionary as they were before the war when the kaiser was still there. So there was no censorship in this way with the newspapers. Except that those who were from the Communists, they were, of course, not allowed to be printed. But I don't remember any real Communist newspapers--one was called independent socialist, but it was very near to communism [Neue Zeitung (?)] I remember a young publisher of this independent newspaper and his young wife [the Martins]. They were very handsome people; you wouldn't think that they were in any way terrorists or so. We were all very hungry. Once we met them at those carnival things, and they told us, "You know we are always hungry and we don't have enough to eat, so we do gymnastics." (It must have been something like yoga, but they didn't know about yoga in those days.) "That helps us. You are less hungry when you make gymnastics." I remember that even until now how that was something quite new, that when you make movement, exercise--I thought always that makes appetite, but they said it helps them with breathing and not to feel so hungry. I think that must be something like a Bavarian yoga. [laughter]

WESCHLER

So Bavaria was having all varieties of stirrings.

FEUCHTWANGER

Absolutely, and all those young people, they were so idealistic and not terroristic at all. Those who were terrorists were the reactionaries.

WESCHLER

There is the famous story of the member of Parliament coming in and saying, "The enemy is on the right!"

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, yes, that was one of the presidents of Germany before Hitler who said that [Chancellor Joseph Wirth].

WESCHLER

On the right, as opposed to the left, which everybody was afraid of. Well, beginning to move in that direction, I want to set up the context for Hitler in Munich. I'd like to start by talking about three kinds of things which historians say contributed to the conservative, the reactionary trends. First of all, they talk about the Treaty of Versailles.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. That was the undoing of Eisner. First of all, they said it was "a stab in the back of the German people." And those who were the Nazi kind of people said the Jews did that stab in the back. But in fact it was hunger which did it. Everybody was hungry, and nobody wanted to go into the war. It was so bad that one general, who was a friend of ours--he was rather liberal; he was from Württemberg--told us that many officers who were very courageous in the beginning and went in front of the soldiers, they didn't dare that anymore; they went always after the soldiers because [they were afraid] the soldiers would shoot them in the back. They didn't want to follow the officers anymore. So bad was the situation on the front already. Because they had letters from home that everybody was hungry and it was so terrible a situation.

WESCHLER

Do you think that the people of Bavaria were responsive to that "stab in the back" kind of rhetoric?

FEUCHTWANGER

Absolutely. Everybody was.

WESCHLER

Already that early?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, already then.

WESCHLER

Even though they had known the hunger.

FEUCHTWANGER

That's why Eisner had already been killed. But not only Eisner, also Erzberger, and also the independent member of parliament with the name of Haase; he was a very great leader and great man and a liberal and not at all terroristic. All the great leaders, the great men and the peaceful men, they killed.

WESCHLER

What was the feeling of the intelligentsia about the Treaty of Versailles? In retrospect we realize that it was a very strict and perhaps....

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, it was very strict. We were all upset; also my husband and I were upset about it. But I was less upset even than my husband, because I was so pacifistic that I said I think that everybody who makes war--and there was no doubt that the emperor began the war; of course, it was first the killing of the archduke in Austria, but that was no reason to make war in Germany (and even the socialists followed immediately and rallied around the emperor)--I think the people have to pay. Because that would be the last war. If they are not punished and they don't pay even more than they could afford, then they would never remember that. So I had a militaristic pacifism, and I was much more for the Treaty of Versailles. I said we have to pay, even myself I have to pay, because when we make war we have to pay.

WESCHLER

Revisionist history of World War I has tended to argue that all the governments were equally responsible for the war.

FEUCHTWANGER

No, that's not true.

WESCHLER

You don't think so.

FEUCHTWANGER

No, not at all. They were not prepared. That's [the proof], you can say, because France was not prepared at first. It took a long time, and without the American help of the planes, I don't know if they would have won the war. Decisive were the American planes.

WESCHLER

What did you and Lion and the other intelligentsia feel about Rathenau's position on obeying the demands?

FEUCHTWANGER

Rathenau was very conservative, very conservative. But what he did was that he found that you have to have peace with the Russians, and he made the first détente with the Russians. It was the Treaty of Rapallo, I think it was called. That's why Rathenau was killed.

WESCHLER

I also heard that he was killed because he argued a position of fulfilling the demands of the Treaty of Versailles.

FEUCHTWANGER

No. I don't remember that he did that so much. It was mostly the Russian détente.

WESCHLER

How did you feel about that détente?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, every détente was welcome to me, of course. We lived long in France, so we knew there was not the least warlike mentalities there, not at all. We read all the newspapers of the little towns, in Paris and so, and the socialists had so much to say. Jaurès, who was the leader of the socialists, was killed because he was against the war, even after the war had already begun. So it's really only Germany who was responsible.

WESCHLER

Okay. The second thing that is going to become very, very important in the rise of Hitler is the economic situation, which is about to get right out of hand. Maybe we should talk about it.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, of course. There is also something else; maybe nobody ever has stressed that the Germans liked to be spoken to. The people in Germany were mostly very religious, mostly in Bavaria. They liked to go to church and look up to somebody who spoke down to them from the pulpit. They always liked to be told what to do. They were very apolitical. They had great interest in learning and technique--they were the greatest book readers and also had big libraries; every little man has his library--but they were not interested in politics. They thought that we pay our taxes and others do the politics. But when somebody came and spoke to them, they liked to listen to it. It was a little bit like a theater. And Hitler made those big things, those theatrical things. An orchestra would play those old German marches, and with those uniforms and those banners, it was very military. And the Germans always liked the military because it was colorful, with their uniforms and all. It was like--when you see a ballet, you like always the ensemble of the ballet: it's the same with a march of soldiers. The girls just were enthusiastic about a captain in the army and so. And this helped also Hitler very much, this mentality.

WESCHLER

He was a great understander of the Germans.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that was his only merit, that he had psychological instinct. He was an unlearned man. But he had this instinct to speak to the people, to shout; he spit when he spoke--it was not even good looking--but he hypnotized the people.

WESCHLER

Before we get to Hitler directly, still, I do want to talk a little about this economic background.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that was also what I wanted to begin with. He spoke about what happened; of course, only the Jews are the criminals, first with the stabbing in the back. But what did the Jews have to do with the Second World War? Did they also stab in the back there? There were no Jews. But he said so and everybody liked to believe it; it was a scapegoat. Then he began to promise. He said When the Nazis would come, everything would be better. We would have more work to do, we would have more pay to have, and we wouldn't have any Jews anymore who would stab in the back. And the people believed it. They wanted to believe it. Germany was always victorious in war most of the time. There had been this famous war in 1871 where France was defeated, and so they were proud of that. They always had those Sedan victory celebrations every year, because there was a decisive victory in Sedan in France. They always called it the Sedan Feier. And it never ended; the whole country made a celebration of Sedan. It was more than thirty years after.

WESCHLER

Fifty years.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, fifty years after, and they were still celebrating this victory. There was no country in the whole Europe like that. Adoring the military, mostly the higher officers. The captains on up were mostly from poor families. Aristocrats or young students who hadn't the talent to finish their studies--they went to the army. They were very badly paid in the army, but you wouldn't believe the roles they played socially. Every officer, every lieutenant and every colonel was a god. This was also a part of the Hitler movement.

WESCHLER

Was that as true in Bavaria as it was in Prussia?

FEUCHTWANGER

Everywhere. Everywhere.

WESCHLER

Okay, but let's do talk about the inflation, not necessarily talking directly about Hitler. What exactly was that like to live through?

FEUCHTWANGER

We were hungry already during the war, but that was nothing compared to the hunger and starvation during the inflation.

WESCHLER

So what happened exactly?

FEUCHTWANGER

I give you an example of my husband. He had this successful play Vasantasena which was accepted in every great city of Germany, mostly in the state theaters. When it was performed, it was always sold out. And those are big theaters, enormous theaters, where mostly the opera was played. But when the money came, his royalties were paid every month to the publisher, and the publisher then paid it every month to ray husband. So, for instance, when there was a good, let's say, $3,000 at the box office, by the time my husband got it, it had the worth of one penny. When it came to him, he couldn't even buy a crust of bread anymore.

WESCHLER

How did you people survive?

FEUCHTWANGER

That's what I ask myself, too. But mostly in Bavaria it was not so bad as in other [parts of the country], because Bavaria was always a peasant country. It was not so much industry; all around Munich, there were farms and agriculture. The women went out every Sunday with their backpacks and went out to the countryside to go from one place to the other. They were really heroes, those women. In the worst weather, snow or rain, they went around to get a little bit of flour or butter or a little bit of meat.

WESCHLER

Was the inflation as bad for peasants as it was for the city people?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, the peasants made big profits. Not only big profits, they didn't even know what to do with the money because they also knew that the money wouldn't be worth much. You couldn't put it in the bank or it would soon be nothing. So they bought things: they bought the first cars--the first cars were bought by the peasants; they bought grand pianos which they had in their barns, and all kinds of machinery. And the money they used to kindle cigars with. You know it was just--it was disgusting. We had also to go to the countryside to eat something sometimes, and it wasn't allowed to go. You had to have permission. They said when too many people from the cities go to the countryside, there wouldn't be enough for the whole distribution. So I have to go to the police, to the doctor of the police, who had to decide who can go to the countryside. I looked so hungry and so starved, I was so pale and anemic, that the doctor said, "You look like you have tuberculosis. You have to go to the countryside." So he gave me a certificate that we could go. There was already no gas. In daytime the gas was always turned off. Only at night there came a little gas. So I had to stay up at night, and then I had to work in daytime. We had not much help because it was so expensive. We had no coals. So at night I was up and baked some bread. Because my husband had a stomach ailment which he got in the military service, we got some stamps for flour. So I had to bake bread myself at night. So, when we went to the countryside, I brought my own bread. In our backpack we had these big breads. We had a chance to get some oil from my brother-in-law [Fritz] who was a director with this factory, with margarine and oil. So sometimes at night, you know, very clandestinely, I had to go far away out of the city, first with the tram and then I had to walk to the factory. And there I met in the darkness--it was eerie, absolutely dark November--my brother-in-law. He had a bottle of oil, and that was my loot that I brought home. With this bottle of oil, I made bread, so the bread would stay fresh longer. It was between a bread and a cake; so it would stay fresh longer and wouldn't be so dry, I always put some oil in the bread.

WESCHLER

To me, when I read these histories, it's inconceivable that these people could have survived at all.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, I always said that I couldn't survive it a second time.

WESCHLER

I'm interested in the day-to-day thing. You said there were rations; there was rationing?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, there was rationing. No meat.

WESCHLER

You didn't need money to get a little bit of food? A little bit of food was given to everybody? How did that work?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, some stamps we had.

WESCHLER

So food was distributed through stamps, not through money?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, no, only stamps. But there was a black market, of course, which the peasants made with the special people who found out how to make money. There was big black market. Those people who had connections with other countries, manufacturers and so forth, they could buy from the black market, but we couldn't because we didn't have it. Yes, I have to tell you about those food stamps. Also for meat, you had to have stamps. It was very difficult. Those people who were in Germany before the war, who were old customers of the merchants where they bought what was necessary for life, [had it easier]. We were new customers, so we had no possibilities sometimes; even with the stamps we couldn't get something because they had to keep it for too many people. People were standing in lines always, long lines around the corner, to get something to buy. There was a little butcher in our neighborhood, and I was buying there, because the big butchers didn't even look at me. Always they said they had nothing here, because they had it all under the counter, only for their old clients. So this little butcher woman, she was sympathetic to me, and I also did something for her. She liked to go to the theater, and my husband had always free tickets, mostly for the plays he directed in the theater. I gave her tickets; and then every week we put all the stamps together from every day; and at the end of the week we got a little piece of meat, which I let my husband eat on account of his stomach. He couldn't eat the bread which we had. You know the bread was made--there was sawdust in the bread. First they put potatoes in the bread, and that wasn't so bad. Then a kind of beets: the bread had not only no taste, it had bad taste with those beets. But this wasn't the worst, because later they filled it with sawdust. It was very bad for my husband's stomach, so at least once a week he had to have some meat. You had no choice what kind of meat you wanted, even if you had the money. But with those tickets for the theater--she liked so much the theater--I got a little bit of filet. It was not bigger than the interior of my hand, and I got that every week. For instance, I gave her tickets for this play of Keyserling which my husband directed. We were friends of all the directors, and sometimes they gave me tickets; I told them, "If you had not sold out, can I have some tickets so we can get something to eat?" When this helped, I gave her also the tickets when my husband directed The Lower Depths. I thought now I have something to give her. Every time it was played we got two tickets. Then the next time I came she said, "You know, when you give me those kind of tickets, there is no meat. I don't want to see poor people. We are poor ourselves. I want plays with counts and princesses."

WESCHLER

Was that during the war or during the inflation?

FEUCHTWANGER

During the war and during the inflation, because later on my husband wrote himself plays and I always got some tickets.

WESCHLER

Right, I see. Some other things: it sounds like during inflation, money literally ceased to have any value and things became barter economy. Does that make sense?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. One billion was what before was one mark. Before you had to pay four marks and twenty cents to buy one dollar; it was always like that in Germany. But now you had to have one billion marks to have the same value as one mark in peacetime.

WESCHLER

At the height of the inflation, did people even use money at all or did they just barter? Did they just trade tickets for bread? Did that become primary?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, not usually. Just, those who could afford it went to the countryside. I don't know what was in other cities, but I think it was a little better in Prussia with the living. I don't know why. Even Hilde [Waldo], the secretary of my husband, she tells me always that she had relatives who had a big estate, and she could always go there to get something to live.

WESCHLER

In your case, you did leave the city.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, we were in the Bayrische Wald (Bohemia). We couldn't go to the real countryside, into the Alps or so, because they had nothing. When you went there, they didn't have anything, because they sold everything to the black market. So we went to the Bayrische Wald; that is in Czechoslovakia--the Bavarian forest and Bohemian forest, they are called. It's one big unit of mountains with many forests, even with virgin forests there. We went first to the Bavarian side, but there was nothing to eat. So in those days we could go to the other side--the borders were open--and we went to the Bohemian side. There at least we got some eggs. The only thing which was there--no meat--were eggs.

WESCHLER

Was there inflation there also?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, there was inflation everywhere in Europe, but mostly in Austria (what was Austria before) and Bohemia (later Czechoslovakia). They had at least eggs, because they had no black market, so there were at least eggs to buy. We ate lots of eggs in every way. The Austrians and Bohemians were always very good cooks (now, the Czechoslovakians). They made omelettes which I had never eaten before, in the way they could cook it. Then they had raspberries; they filled them with fresh raspberries. It was just a treat. We made mountain climbing at the same time, and there were lakes and so forth. We were very happy, and at least we were not hungry going to bed. But then my husband got a telegram from Bruno Frank; he said the theater wants to play one of his plays. It was called Die Treue Magd, The True Housemaid. And he wants my husband to direct the play.

WESCHLER

This is in Munich again.

FEUCHTWANGER

In Munich, right. A friend of Bruno Frank [Emmy Remolt] was a famous actress from Württemberg, and he wrote the play for her. My husband was Bruno Frank's best friend in those days, so he couldn't leave him; he couldn't tell him, "I'm so happy here I don't want to go back." So we went back to Germany, and it was over again.

WESCHLER

This winter, was it a very bad winter in terms of the amount of food available or was it just the economy?

FEUCHTWANGER

The winters are always bad in Bavaria.

WESCHLER

Was there a lack of food or was it just that the black market was so expensive?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, it was the black market. But Bavaria was never a very great agricultural country. Most of the flour came from Rumania. But all that, they couldn't afford. Austria later on also had a big inflation. The only good thing was that it was all together, all those inflations, so that when Austria had its inflation we could go to Austria and live very cheaply there. And when France had an inflation, we could go to France; that was much later, in the twenties. They had a big inflation. So the only good thing was it always changed from one country to the other.

WESCHLER

What happened with the factory of Lion's family, that margarine factory?

FEUCHTWANGER

They had contracts during the war for the army. They delivered the margarine for the army. So that when the German army invaded Rumania, they got all the oil they needed. They could also get grain from Hungaria, which, still with Austria, was one of our allies. So they always had enough to manufacture.

WESCHLER

And during the inflation, they also had enough?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. But they were not allowed to sell it to private people; they had only to sell it to the army or the government. That's why I had to go clandestinely there and get from "the emperor of the margarine"--that’s what I always called my brother-in-law, "the emperor" [laughter]--he gave me a bottle of oil. That was the loot which I brought home.

WESCHLER

Was Lion's father still alive at this time?

FEUCHTWANGER

No. It was my brother-in-law who was in charge. He took over the manufacture.

WESCHLER

It occurs to me, first of all, that we better make a little side trip, because there is a story we want to tell about the death of Lion's father.

FEUCHTWANGER

There is not much to say there, because my husband didn't go very often to his parents. He always thought that they never have forgiven him what he did a long time ago when they had to pay for the scandal of the Phoebus. He always felt unwelcome. Maybe it wasn't true, but he felt like that. And when his mother died we were not in Munich and we heard it too late. I think it was when his mother died. But when his father died [in January 1916] we were in Munich, and I remember that my husband went to see him shortly before his death. And he said, "I heard that Reinhardt has accepted your play, Vasantasena. I read it, and I cannot understand how he can perform such a boring play." That was one of the last words he said to my husband. [laughter] When his mother died, we were skiing in the Austrian Alps when we got [the news].

WESCHLER

What year was that now?

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't remember; it was in the beginning of the twenties [January 1926]. So we got the notice, the telegram, too late. We were at a refuge, you would call it. a hut in the mountains, and there was no telegraph. So when we came back from the mountains, we found the telegram. The funeral was already over. [pause in tape] After my father-in-law died, my mother-in-law inherited the whole fortune and also the factory, but her third son took over as the director. He was married with a very rich girl who was the daughter of a banker from Darmstadt or someplace like that near the Rhine. None of the sons got anything from the inheritance. If they wanted they could have gotten something, but they had been asked, all the children were asked, to leave the money in the factory so it would work there, and later on they would get more. That's what they did, also my husband, although we would have needed it very much because then we could have bought something on the black market. Then, after my mother-in-law died, I said to my husband, "You know, we were always not on good terms with the family. I think we don't want to have anything from the inheritance. We just don't want to have anything to do with the whole thing." My husband said, "Yes, I think you are right." So we lived better like that; we didn't have much money but at least there is no quarreling. Because they wanted to begin again with the [residue] from this Phoebus affair; they always said it has to be deducted from his inheritance. So he said, "I just don't want to hear anything about it anymore." But one day his youngest brother, the hero [Bertold], he came to us and said, "You know, we have finally divided the whole thing, and we should find out what everybody will get." So my husband said, "I don't want to have anything to do with it. I'm on good terms with my sisters and brothers now, and there is a peace which is better like that." He said, "How can you be so stupid? You'll get a big piece of money. Why do you refuse to do that?" He spoke so long so my husband said, "It's all right. I will do that." So after a very short time, my husband found out that my mother-in-law had speculated with this banker, who was the father-in-law of the other son who took over the factory, and she had lost the whole fortune. The stocks were in very bad shape, and there was nothing left anymore. Not only that, all the children were now responsible for all the debts. So when she speculated for more than she had owned, they had to pay for it. Finally we found out it was just even, but they had to pay--all the children and also my husband had to pay for the funeral. This was a relative, you know; that was the father of my husband's sister-in-law. And he insisted that everybody pays everything. It was when they all were sitting together. They found out that there was some little--several thousand marks were left. And one sister was not married--she was always at home helping her mother, and she had no means to live--so everybody left what they would have inherited from this little sum to her. That was all that was left.

WESCHLER

Which sister was this?

FEUCHTWANGER

Bella was her name. She later on was with her brother Martin in Halle (that is in the middle of Germany). He had a great newspaper there [the Saale Zeitung] and also a kind of publishing house for articles which he distributed to other newspapers [in the Hendel Trust], and she helped him there. During the Nazi time, he went to Prague with what he could save, what was not very much. She went with him and helped him there, too. Then he just barely escaped to Israel when the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia, but she couldn't escape anymore. She said she stays there because she thought she was not so much in danger, as a woman, as was her brother. She stayed too long, and she was sent to Theresienstadt, the big concentration camp, and there she died of typhoid fever.

WESCHLER

Well, I suppose we should go back to the origins of that debacle in the Munich of the 1920s. One other thing I think I should ask, since you brought it up; we haven't mentioned Bruno Frank at all. Maybe you could talk a bit about him.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, Bruno Frank was a great friend of my husband. My husband always was very shy; he never would be outgoing to offer his friendship. But he met Frank... When Frank came, he was in the army, a volunteer who sometimes came on furlough to the Torggelstube.

WESCHLER

This was during the war?

FEUCHTWANGER

During the war. Just when our friendship began. He came to the Torggelstube. And when he came there, the whole room lit up; he looked so wonderful, in a Ulanen uniform. It was grey with yellow and a yellow cap. He was very good looking, very manly, broad-shouldered and tall--explosive, almost, I could say, very vivacious. Everybody was changed when he came, really. It was the great world for me also. And he immediately was stricken by a great friendship with my husband. He was so much in awe of him, also, of his intelligence. He was the only person with whom my husband was on a first-name relationship (but he offered it to my husband). It was a very wonderful relationship. Frank was very cultured and very knowledgeable, and also he had so much understanding for everything in literature. One day.... My husband wrote this novel Jud Süss, I told you about it. But no publisher wanted to have it, because it had a title which was.... And also it was a big manuscript. It came back usually from the publishers without even having been opened. Then in Berlin, there was founded a big publishing house which was kind of like the Literary Guild or something, you could call it. But only one man had it, a very rich industrialist who wanted to do something for culture. He founded that, and it was called the Volksverband der Bücherfreunde; that means "the Union of Lovers of Books." Bibliophiles, in a way. And he wanted to have novels mostly. He came to Munich, to the critic and the correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt, who was a friend of ours; [Leonhardt] Adelt was his name. Adelt had been in America for a short time (he went with the Hindenburg, this [zeppelin] which later was burned). He knew English very well, which was very rare. In those days, everybody learned a second language, only it was French as their second language. There was a great success--this is a long story but I have to repeat that--he heard about the great success of Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. He brought this book to Germany and translated it. And when this man, this great industrialist--Aschenbach was his name--wanted to found this publishing house, he came to see Adelt, who was a friend of his, or he knew him. So the first book of this publishing house was an American book. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, which Adelt translated. It was a great success. And this man came again to Munich and asked his lecturer, who was a Mr. Feder, if he could find some unpublished novels. But nobody had an unpublished novel at that time. Adelt knew that Frank was just writing so enthusiastic about this book that he wrote for the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt just an enthusiastic review about it. It was first published in very great editions by this book society, and later it was published by an ordinary publisher [Kiepenheuer]. But Jud Süss still had no publisher.

1.19. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE ONE JULY 15, 1975 and JULY 17, 1975

WESCHLER

We seem to have just hit another vein of stories about the literary community, and this one has to do with Bruno Frank and Bertolt Brecht. You say that they did not get along very well.

FEUCHTWANGER

They didn't know each other--Brecht only by way of our house--but I wouldn't say they didn't get along. There was no relationship at all. But Frank read some of his work--I don't know what it was, a poem or a play--and he said, "I just can't make anything out of it. It is for me Greek. I can't find the merit of it." But no discussion farther. And the same was with Thomas Mann. Thomas Mann also had read something of Brecht and just couldn't make any sense of it. Then one day somebody gave him the play Mother Courage, and Thomas Mann, who knew that Brecht didn't like him.... For instance, Brecht wrote once in Berlin, in a magazine, "Klaus Mann is the son of Thomas Mann. By the way, who is Thomas Mann?" So that was his way to treat Thomas Mann. I think he didn't read much of him, but he just didn't like him because he was successful. That was also a little bit this clan, which I told you, something which is successful cannot be good. Mann, of course, heard about that; there is nothing which is gossip which wouldn't come back to the person. So when he read that--I think it was Erika who understood very much and was very clever; she gave him the play Mother Courage--then Thomas Mann said, "The monster has talent." [laughter] You can read that everywhere in all those biographies about Brecht and Thomas Mann. So it was the same with Bruno Frank. And one day--Brecht had his young friends, and they all were a little bit suspicious about his friendship with the much older Feuchtwanger. They thought Brecht should be a man by himself, not always go to Feuchtwanger to get advice or work with him. Brecht was a little bit impressed by this; at least this kind of speaking was not agreeable to him. So he said, "Oh, I am only a friend of Feuchtwanger because he helps me." Of course, this was immediately borne through the whole literary world of Munich, and Bruno Frank came to Lion and told him, "You know that Brecht says that in his way of friendship for you, he only uses your influence." Frank said, "I cannot stomach this kind of thing. It's not your way to be a friend of this kind of person. You have to make a choice: either me or Brecht." So my husband at first shrugged his shoulders and didn't speak much about it. He didn't want any quarrels with his friends; he only had discussions in literary things, but not personal quarrels. So it ended without any real ending of the whole conversation. Later on, my husband thought, "Maybe I speak with Brecht about it." He told Brecht what Frank said, and then he asked, "Is it true?" and Brecht said yes. And that was the end of it. Nobody spoke anything anymore about the whole thing. But my husband wrote the character [Kaspar] Pröckl in Success [Erfolg], and it has been influenced a little bit by that, I think.

WESCHLER

I see.

FEUCHTWANGER

I have to tell you also that when this book was in manuscript, my husband gave it to Brecht to read. We went to a North Italian lake for a vacation, and all of a sudden Brecht came with his wife, Helene Weigel, his second wife. We didn't know--we hadn't invited him--but all of a sudden he was there. And we made long walks together. Finally in the evening my husband told me, "You know, Brecht is very upset about this portrait. I told him that it is not a portrait. It's not a roman a clef; it's just an impression which I had from him, but only one side. It's not the whole Brecht." But still Brecht wanted him to change it. Lion said, "But it's already printed. I cannot change what is already printed." And Helly, his wife, went walking with me and she said, "But what about this novel? It's nonsense, the whole thing. You have to use your influence that Feuchtwanger has to change this Pröckl. And this woman--she is just stupid." She was very much against the novel. But then my husband said, "I cannot do anything anymore. Even if I wanted to, it's already printed." Then Brecht came to me and said, "You know, your husband, he is always walking with us and he is a very good walker. I'm not very athletic, and I think he makes me tired so my arguments will weaken."

WESCHLER

But the book got published.

FEUCHTWANGER

The book got published, and their friendship was the same, and nothing had changed. Yes, it survived all that. But not so much with Frank. With him, it was the same friendship always, but there was something lacking. It was not anymore this cordiality of the beginning. And then Frank also married, and his wife [Liesel] was very ambitious. She wanted him to be very successful; so there was not anymore the same friendship. They were still good friends and also here, but it was not the same anymore.

WESCHLER

You mentioned that during the inflation Frank had called him back.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that was when we were in Czechoslovakia (Bohemia, it was then).

WESCHLER

Right. What kind of power did Frank have?

FEUCHTWANGER

He had written a play, and he wanted my husband to direct it.

WESCHLER

Was he at that time very popular already in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, he was popular, but more or less for his poems. He was a poet. From the war he always sent very patriotic poems, very beautifully worded poems for the Simplicissimus. [Olaf] Gulbransson, who was the great illustrator of this great magazine, he illustrated always Frank's poems with very lovely landscapes. But it was very patriotic and for the war.

WESCHLER

What were Bruno Frank's political feelings after the war?

FEUCHTWANGER

He was very much for the revolution, of course. The war was lost, and he saw for himself. He came back and had emphysema from the war. He was in Spain when the war broke out, and he came back immediately as a volunteer. He had a friend who was a prince of Württemberg. Frank was born in Stuttgart, which was the capital of Württemberg, and the Herzog von Urach was a friend of his. So he went to this Duke of Urach and told him, "I don't want to go into the infantry and be trained and coached; I want to go to the front right away. I couldn't stand to be this kind of soldier." The duke had a great influence and said, "Yes, you can be a cavalry man who brings telegrams--a messenger--and there you don't need any training." And that's what he did. But in the cold winter he had to ride against the wind in Belgium, and this cold wind gave him emphysema and asthma. So he was released then from the service and lived in Munich and wrote. He began to write novels. His greatest was much later, the book A Man Called Cervantes [German title: Cervantes]. It was a best seller here.

WESCHLER

I want to get back to Munich again around the time of the inflation and so forth. The other event which is taking place--we have been talking about things that were leading to the Nazis, of course--was the French invasion of the Ruhr valley.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, but if you want to know more about the beginning of the whole thing, you have to know about the printing of Jud Süss, because this novel had a great influence on the Nazis.

WESCHLER

Okay. You want to do that first?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. But that is also another story, like Kipling always says. My husband was called by a great publisher who was a very rich man, an Austrian who had the greatest bank in Austria [the Alpine Montan Bank] and also big factories, and his hobby was publishing. He had a palace in Munich, and there he had a publishing house and had all the money you wanted for this publishing house. The director of this publishing house was a count, because the publisher wouldn't do that without a count. That was the way he wanted to live. My husband had been asked, because he had a good name as a critic, to look for plays in foreign languages which could be played in Germany. Translated--my husband could also translate if he wanted, but most of all he was to be a kind of scout in foreign languages. Since he read Italian and French and English, so he began to read. And he had a very good contract for that. In a way it was our salvation, since we could now buy some better food. After a year or so (it was not quite a year), he had read so many plays in other languages--and I did also because I too read other languages--there was just no play which could be translated for the German stage. So he went to this man and said, "I'm so sorry, Mr. Sobotka. I didn't find a play, and it's somewhat painful for me, or embarrassing, that I take always the money every month and I couldn't do anything." This man said, "Yes, it's true; that is not very practical." (I think the contract was for three years.) He said, "Didn't you write a novel?" My husband said, "Yes, I wrote a novel." He said, "I know that it hasn't been printed yet, and I haven't read it--my director has looked at it, but he said it was nothing for my publishing house--but still if you want to, we can dissolve our three-year contract, and instead as compensation we will print your book." Which he hadn't read. My husband was, of course, very happy that this book would finally be printed. (Years later, [S. Fischer], the owner of the greatest publishing house, S. Fischer Verlag, came to see my husband. We lived already in Berlin. My husband had an appendectomy, so he visited him in the hospital. And he said, "You had such a big success with your Jud Süss. Why didn't you give it to us?" And my husband said, "I sent it to you but it came unopened back.") So that was the story of Jud Süss. It was the use always to pay an advance, which was very fortunate. Always in the last moment there came something [to help us survive]. One day, I was fixing the rolling stove we had which you could roll from one room to the other. It was a cold night, and I had just cleaned it out--we had no maid, nobody of course to help--and I was all black from the soot when the telephone rang. [It was] very early in the morning at seven o'clock. I went to the telephone with my black hand--the telephone, everything was black--and it was Mr. Sobotka, the owner of the publishing house, this great industrialist. He said, "You know, your husband cost me a whole night's sleep. I read the manuscript. I couldn't lay it down. I had to read it from beginning to the end, and I just finished it. It’s a great book, and I'm so happy that I can publish it."

WESCHLER

Was he himself Jewish?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. He was an Austrian Jew, married to a Gentile. I don't know if he was converted; he was absolutely not interested in Jewish things usually. He just found the novel so interesting. His director--the Count Damen was his name--he was very unhappy about the whole thing. And this publishing house, it was the first novel they printed, because until then they only published plays.

WESCHLER

What was the name of the publishing house?

FEUCHTWANGER

Drei Masken Verlag. You know, from the three masks of the theater--drama, comedy, and I don't know the third.

WESCHLER

What I think I would like to do--it's getting a little bit late today. I think we should continue on Thursday with Jud Süss.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, and Jud Süss was, of course, a novel which the Nazis hated most on account of its world success. But they then used the novel, and they turned it all around as an anti-Semitic film.

WESCHLER

Okay. We'll talk in detail about that in the next session. We'll be able to do it justice.

JULY 17, 1975

WESCHLER

We are going to start today with some more Munich stories and then proceed to other things. First of all, you have two more stories about Wedekind. These are about Wedekind and his children.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, one day Erich Mühsam asked Wedekind why he gave his daughters such funny names. One daughter [was Anna Pamela, and the other] had the name Fanny Kadija. So Wedekind said, "You know, I thought if she marries a nice man and would be a good housewife, then Fanny would be appropriate; but if, against all expectations, she becomes a whore, then Kadija would be of great value." Then, later on, when he was already dead, the two daughters had a fight once with the mother and Kadija--who was here visiting with me; she told me the story--answered her mother, "What do you want? You were only his wife, but we are his flesh and blood!" [laughter] She looks so much like her father. She is also very gifted as a writer.

WESCHLER

You had some other stories about Brecht and Caspar Neher on vacation.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, that was in the beginning of our acquaintance. He sent us a picture postcard from the Bavarian Alps.

WESCHLER

Who was he with on vacation?

FEUCHTWANGER

He was with Caspar Neher, the painter who made all the sets; he also made beautiful illustrations for Lion's book Pep. And the third one was Mullereisert; he was a young doctor. Brecht wrote, "We are wandering so much around and it is so hot that at night, when we go to bed, I can just stand my trousers beside my bed, they are so stiff from the sweat." Also he wrote that it is very cheap because he is singing to the guitar, so he is always welcome with the peasants. They got shelter and food. Caspar Neher made drawings of the people, and Mullereisert treats them when they have ailments. So that was very satisfactory.

WESCHLER

The early summers of Bertolt Brecht.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. [pause in tape]

WESCHLER

Today, we're finally going to get to the Hitler Putsch. I wanted to set up the background, because you, living in Munich, were perhaps among the first Germans to have an awareness of Hitler. (Off tape we've already told some stories of those early awarenesses.) You might start with how you first began to know of him.

FEUCHTWANGER

The first I knew of him was from the placards against him from his own comrades when he founded the party. They immediately had a fallout, and you could see on the street corners big placards about "The traitor Hitler who betrays the Nazi party," and that he doesn't do what they have concluded, mostly the abolishment of the money. There was one man [Gottfried Feder] who was a fanatic Nazi because he had found out that money should be abolished. That was the first thing I heard about Hitler, when I saw this placard against him from his own comrades.

WESCHLER

This was before the Hitler Putsch.

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, that was before he was Hitler, you could say. Before anybody else knew about him.

WESCHLER

What was your general sense of him at that time?

FEUCHTWANGER

Everybody laughed about this. There was a newspaper already much before which was kind of a preparation for the Nazi movement, the Volkischer Beobachter. It was very anti-Semitic from the beginning, a very down-to-earth, almost a peasant kind of mentality. After the close of their shops you could see all the Jewish merchants going around with their Volkischer Beobachter under their arm, waiting for the tram or streetcar and reading there what has been told about them. But nobody took it seriously. They laughed about it. They thought it was a kind of insanity. But they wanted to read it, of course. They were the best customers for this newspaper, these Jewish merchants. [laughter] So it began already like that. It was a preparation for the Nazis.

WESCHLER

But then Hitler was at the coffee house which was next door to yours.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, it was a funny thing. He liked to be around artists, although he pretended to hate them. So when the whole artistic population of Munich moved into apartments or rooms in Schwabing and also frequented the inns there, there were two little wine pubs next door to the avant-garde theater. We were usually in the Pfälzische Weinstube, this Palantine Weinstube; and the other was the Greek wine restaurant. They were much alike, but they had different kind of clientele. And mostly in the Greek restaurant there was always Hitler sitting there. But he wasn't noticed very much; just somebody said that Hitler sits there. That was all.

WESCHLER

Did he already have his characteristic mustache?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that's why everybody knew him immediately. That was the only thing. But nobody noticed him very much.

WESCHLER

Was that an unusual mustache?

FEUCHTWANGER

Absolutely unusual. Only Charlie Chaplin had it before. But I don't think that Hitler knew about Chaplin; it was just his way. You know, he was from Austria, and I think he wanted to be a Prussian. He thought that it looks more Prussian, more energetic. Then there was also a coffee house in the Hofgarten, which was in the middle of Munich, formerly a part of the castle which was called the Residenz. This was a garden which was a rather big park in a square, and in the middle was a little temple like from a rococo or baroque time, and around it was a wall with arcs. In bad weather you could promenade inside, with murals in it. On one side were little coffee shops. And in summer they had their tables outside, way in the garden. When the first spring came and the first sun came out, everybody met there. It was this light green which was so typical for vegetation in Munich with a light blue sky. It was an atmosphere like Florence in the air. And there we were all sitting. Everybody who could afford had a new dress for the spring, and we were sitting there--mostly at first the people from the Torggelstube, and later also the people who lived then in Schwabing. We had two tables where everybody knew each other. Also people from the newspapers and correspondents of the Berliner Tageblatt. At the next table was sitting Pfitzner, Hans Pfitzner, the composer and conductor, whom I admired very much. I knew him better as a conductor. When you looked at him, he looked rather sinister, small--not very small, but he looked small because he was so thin and went a little hunched. He had a fanatic face, always very serious; I think I never saw him laugh, or I even don't know if he could laugh. But when I saw him conducting, I was enormously impressed: his Fanatismus, which you could see in his face, came out in the best way. I was not a great critic of music, but I just felt it immediately. It was hypnotic almost. (At the same time, [Felix] Weingartner, the famous Weingartner, also conducted in Munich.) And at this table was not only Pfitzner but also a Mr. Kossmann, who had before a periodical which was called the Suddeutsche Monatshefte; that means the Monthly Periodical of Southern Germany. It was very important but didn't get much money, so they had to close it down. And the third person was Hitler, because Kossmann was a great admirer of Hitler. Also Pfitzner was a German nationalist, like Wagner in his way. Kossmann was not a National Socialist, but he was very nationalistic and patriotic. He hated everybody who wouldn't run to war as a volunteer--but he didn't. This was during the war, what I tell now. And the third one was Hitler. Everybody knew who he was, that he was a rabble rouser, something like that. Also by this newspaper, which I told, the Volkischer Beobachter which meant the Racial Observer, the "volkish" observer. And once my husband was struggling with his coat--it became cold; it was the first days of spring--and this man Hitler jumped up and helped him into his coat. My husband had blue eyes and blond hair, so he didn't recognize him as a Jew.

WESCHLER

How was he like at that point, to be sitting at a table next to him?

FEUCHTWANGER

He didn't look like anything, except for this comical little mustache. Nobody would have noticed him, only that was a little comical. But even with that, he could have been a clerk in a grocery.

WESCHLER

Was he loud at the table?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh no. No, no. Not at all. Very quiet. Rather awkward, I could say. And the only intellectual at the table who you could see speaking was Kossmann. And this man Kossmann was Jewish. He was so reactionary and so supernational that he admired Hitler and Pfitzner. Afterwards, he supported Hitler in every way, but Hitler notwithstanding had him killed in a concentration camp. Pfitzner abandoned this kind of mentality and was very upset about the Nazis when they came to power. He didn't even notice them anymore. He retired entirely from this whole movement. That's what I heard. We were not there anymore.

WESCHLER

How did the Nazis treat him?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, he was not Jewish; they didn't do anything to him. Also he did not attack then; he was just retiring. He was so upset that he even--I don't think that he composed very much afterwards. I would not know when he died; maybe he died only at the beginning of the Hitler movement; I don't remember. I have to look it up. [d. Salzburg, 1949]

WESCHLER

I suppose we should begin to talk about the way in which Hitler stopped being such a laughable character. Because things begin to get dangerous.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja.

WESCHLER

Now, in the history books the event which in addition to the Versailles Treaty and the inflation is credited with giving Hitler something to talk about, was the invasion of the Ruhr by the French.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. That's true.

WESCHLER

How did the people of Munich that you were with and in general--how did they react to that?

FEUCHTWANGER

But everybody was upset about the invasion of the Ruhr. They were all patriotic. In a way, you cannot blame them. They were Germans. Of course, there were differentiations. Some people, for instance like Mühsam--and also others, I wouldn't say only Mühsam--found that it was all right: when people have begun a war, and such a bloody war, without any reason, then they should also pay for it. I was one of them. I always said that I think it is necessary that those who lost the war and began the war, they should pay for it. Even though we suffered more than many other people. Our money was gone, and the money which my husband earned was not of value anymore when he got it because it went through the different [intermediaries]. First the theater paid it to the publisher--that was a month after the performance always--and then the publisher a month afterwards paid my husband. That was in the contract in those days. When my husband got, let's say, about $2,000 from one performance, when he finally got it, he could not even buy a piece of bread for that. So we really suffered. But my idea was only peace. I was a militant pacifist, and I thought we are part of Germany and we have to pay, too, even if we were against the war. Because that may be the only means to abolish war.

WESCHLER

Well, in what ways did Hitler first begin to seem a political force in the city? I'm talking about the days before the Putsch.

FEUCHTWANGER

He held big speeches in the beer cellars. They were enormous buildings, mostly--some were in the hands of the Catholic monks. They brewed the beer, many Catholic monks. The Augustine order and so. And some were in the hands of Jews, some of those beer cellars. And Hitler used the one of a Jewish proprietor. The man who owned that didn't know anything about the whole thing. It was the Lion Brew Cellar [Bürgerbrau Keller], and here he had an enormous audience. There is one thing which my husband always said was the only clever thing which Hitler ever wrote in his Mein Kampf ("My Struggle"). He wrote a terrible German, you know; you almost could not understand it. When you want to understand him you have to read the English translation. [laughter] But he had also some help. But I wouldn't blame him for that: he had not much money and was not a good student. But in this book, he said he tried to go from one factory to the other to speak with the workmen during their lunch break. Then he saw that people were not interested; they didn't even listen to him. They were interested in--they were hungry and they knew they had to go back to work. But then he tried it in the evening, first in smaller buildings. Thus he found out how much easier it was to get in contact, to have an impact. He found out that the reason was that the workmen were tired, and their criticism would be dulled. He could hypnotize them, in a way. He could speak to them, and his voice and the way he spoke to them was effectful. Also, what is more my opinion, the people in Germany like to be spoken to. Sometimes he gave them hell, but the more he gave them hell, the more they liked it. This was a little bit what Hitler--he was Catholic, and he knew this tradition from the Church. He shouted enormously about their own faults they committed, and that they allowed the rich people or the Jews to do all those things, and that the war was lost not because of the military or because the soldiers were not very courageous, but rather because there was a stab in the back from those in the hinterland. And all those things--that went in like honey to those people who were tired. Here was one who cared for them, who tells them what it is, and who promises to make everything better. They had no critic at all. Even from the beginning, the Germans are not very critical in any political way; maybe they have changed now, but in those days they didn't care anything about politics. They liked to work and they liked music and they liked to read. They were good readers; they bought books--even workmen bought books. They read also the newspaper. But they wanted to be left in peace with their beer stein, reading and sitting and smoking maybe. That was all they wanted.

WESCHLER

Did you attend any of Hitler's rallies?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, it was impossible. My husband was known; everybody would have recognized him and beaten him immediately. They didn't care what happened afterwards. Also, [the government was] very mild against all the crimes of the Nazis. But no Jews would dare to go inside.

WESCHLER

Did you talk to anyone who did attend theM?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, we spoke with the correspondent of the Berliner Tageblatt. He told us about how great the reception was and how big the impact was. And he himself was impressed. It was so funny: we were very good friends.

WESCHLER

What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER

Leonhardt Adelt. He was the one who told us later that we should take his bicycles and flee because the station was already....

WESCHLER

We'll get to that in a second.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. The Adelts were very hospitable and wonderful; when they got something somewhere to eat, they always invited us. They had family in America, I think, and got things sent, and always they shared with us. But when he spoke about how he was at one of these meetings in the beer cellar and what an impact Hitler had, how he thought that he is dangerous but most of all how he found him to be an effectual speaker, I thought that anything what was spoken about Hitler which could be taken in any way as a praise, this man who did that could only be an anti-Semite. I jumped up and said, "You are an anti-Semite like everybody else!" And I ran away in the middle of the meal.

WESCHLER

And meals were hard to come by in those days.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja, that's true. My husband was very embarrassed, but he followed me, of course; he didn't let me go alone. He said that he didn't think that Adelt meant it so personally in this way; he thought that I had misunderstood him. So the next day his wife called me and said, "My husband couldn't sleep the whole night, that you could think he could be an anti-Semite. You know how much he likes you and how much I like you. But still he apologizes when he saw that you could be offended by what he said." So we were reconciled. I think I was wrong. It was just because--maybe I was too young. But I wasn't so young anymore....

WESCHLER

I don't think that anybody can be criticized for being very sensitive about that issue, even in retrospect.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. But my husband was more objective, and also he knew that Adelt could not be an anti-Semite even though he was not Jewish.

WESCHLER

How did the Bavarian press in general treat Hitler?

FEUCHTWANGER

They were afraid, I think. Also the Bavarian press was very reactionary anyway; after the Räteregierung, they became to be very reactionary. They were glad that somebody was there. They were mostly Catholics; the most important newspaper, the Münchner Neusten Nachrichten, was very Catholic.

WESCHLER

I assume there were groups that were already critical of Hitler very early on. What would you say the centers of criticism were, if not the press?

FEUCHTWANGER

There was no center of criticism. You had friends, and they spoke about him. But there was no center and no opposition. We didn't know many socialists, because the socialists were not very obvious, you know. Somebody could be a socialist without his friends knowing that he was. So everybody was--but they were not very upset. They just didn't take him seriously.

WESCHLER

Do you think that he began to be taken more seriously around the time of the Putsch, or do you think that even at the time of the Putsch...?

FEUCHTWANGER

No. You know, when you have read my husband's book. Success--he ridiculed the whole thing, although my husband maybe exaggerated because he wanted to make him more ridiculous. He thought--there is a proverb which says, "Ridiculousness kills." He believed in that. He thought that maybe like Aristophanes, the Greek playwright, who was also antiwar and made fun of the military--Maybe in a way he was inspired by Aristophanes and thought he makes him more ridiculed. But the whole Putsch was ridiculous because it was made up with so much fanfare and then.... He became all of a sudden also anti-Catholic, because he said that they didn't follow him enough. Also his religion was heathen; he was more for the Germanic gods. So, on one side at the Feldherrnhalle, which was like the Hall of the Lanzi in Florence (it's called the Hall of the Field Marshal), many people met on Sundays for the concert. It was also a place where all the students had their meetings on Sundays with their colored hats, their fraternities which wore different colors. [On the morning of the Putsch], Hitler met and Hitler marched together with Ludendorff, who was the field marshal during the war, and with all his followers. I don't think that [Joseph] Goebbels was there already. But all of a sudden one of the officers, a colonel of the guard, shouted, "Stop." They didn't stop but went on to go to the Residenz, to the castle. Three times they were told to stop, and they didn't stop. So the soldiers had to shoot. When the shooting began--I think they shot more in the air than at the people--then Hitler and Ludendorff threw themselves down on the ground. Of course, it was the only sensible thing to do when somebody shoots at you. But it was so ridiculous because the build-up was so enormously pompous, and all of a sudden this man Ludendorff, who thought himself like a god, they threw themselves down instead of standing there like heroes. So that made the whole thing so ridiculous. The whole thing was off. Absolutely off.

WESCHLER

How did you hear about this? Were you an eyewitness?

FEUCHTWANGER

We heard everything from Adelt. Oh, no, we couldn't be there. It was shooting, and Jews were not allowed.

WESCHLER

So how did you hear it?

FEUCHTWANGER

Adelt told us. He was of course from the press, and these people had a special place somewhere in a house where they could see from above. Adelt called us and told us the whole story. "It's off," he said. "The whole thing is off." Then they were arrested. And I think somebody died.

WESCHLER

Just before that, you had told me the story about being called in the middle of the night.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, I have to find out when that was. I think it was the night before the Putsch. Adelt called us in the middle of the night--it was two or three o'clock--and told my husband, "You know. Hitler makes a Putsch, and he is already arresting people, mostly merchants, important merchants, and mostly Jewish people. They are going from one street to the other. They are very near-to-where you live, and you cannot go to the station anymore because the station is in the hands of the Nazis. You come to me"--he lived farther out in Schwabing--"and take the bicycles and leave the town." But my husband said, "Oh, I'm much too tired," and turned around and slept. Adelt couldn't understand; he just couldn't understand that somebody could behave like that. But the next morning he said, "You were right. It's already over."

WESCHLER

Did Lion even tell you what the phone call was about that night?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, yes, we had a big double bed together, so I knew what happened. I asked, "What is it?" and he said, "Oh, Adelt said we should take the bicycles, but I don't even think about it."

WESCHLER

Were you worried about it though?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, I always was of the same opinion what he was. I thought he knew better than I. Then Hitler was arrested and Ludendorff was arrested. I don't know where they brought Hitler, probably into a jail or something. But Ludendorff, because he was a field marshal, he was conducted into the Residenz, which was nearby, across the street.

WESCHLER

That's where he had been marching anyway.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, and there was a man who was already arrested the night before by the Nazis. He was a big perfume merchant, very elegant. He was famous in the whole of Europe. He was picked up also because he was Jewish. His name was Talmessinger. It was a name we didn't know: he wasn't Bavarian--he didn't belong to us because he was no Bavarian--he was just rich. But he was picked up and put in the big residential hall where the crowning usually took place. And there he was sitting, this little Jew, sitting on a chair, when Ludendorff came in. Ludendorff said, "What are you doing here? It is I who am arrested here. Out with you." So Talmessinger was very glad to go. [laughter]

WESCHLER

We should note, by the way, that this is a correction of an earlier version we told of this story.*

*See Tape VIII, Side One.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, it's true. I had confounded it with another man.

WESCHLER

But this is the time this actually happened. In addition to being farcical, however, the Nazis were....

FEUCHTWANGER

They were not farcical for everybody. Only for my husband. I must say that everybody else was more afraid of Hitler than my husband was. Because my husband always said that when somebody is so unintelligent, he cannot be dangerous. But he was mistaken. There is something which is difficult to explain, his impact on the people. I tried to explain it, but I don't know if it was the right way.

WESCHLER

It's something that will take an awful lot of witnesses to talk about it. Nothing really accounts for it completely.

1.20. TAPE NUMBER: X, SIDE TWO JULY 17, 1975

WESCHLER

We are in the middle of the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich in 1923. We were just talking about how other people besides Lion experienced the coming of the Nazis, and a good example is Bruno Walter.

FEUCHTWANGER

Bruno Walter was himself very nationalist. He was in no way involved in any revolution; even, I think, he was a monarchist.

WESCHLER

He was himself Jewish and had converted?

FEUCHTWANGER

He was Jewish, but he was converted long ago. I think already his parents had converted. He was from Austria, from Vienna. No, in Vienna he was the conductor, but I think he was born in Berlin.

WESCHLER

And when had he come to Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER

He came to Munich after the death of Felix Mottl, who was a very great conductor. He was accepted in Munich only because he was converted to Catholicism.

WESCHLER

Parenthetically, you had told a story about Mahler....

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that was long before. Mahler was called to be a conductor. That was before Mottl; they wanted Mahler. He was very famous. He came back from America or so, and they wanted him. They didn't know probably that he was Jewish. He was Jewish, but also he was converted. But when somebody found out in Munich that he was Jewish, they immediately canceled the contract. Then Felix Mottl came and when he died, the times had a little bit changed; they didn't find anybody who was good enough for them, so they called Bruno Walter, who was a student of Gustav Mahler. Walter was really a demigod in Munich as a conductor. He was so venerated and also he was so gifted, and his Mozart was outstanding when he conducted the Mozart operas. He was the general director. Everything was "general" in Germany, so he was the director-general of the opera. [laughter]

WESCHLER

What circles did he circulate in? Was he part of the Schwabing group?

FEUCHTWANGER

He was a friend of Thomas Mann. Both were nationalistic in those days. His wife was an English lady who was also Gentile, and he had two daughters. One of them committed suicide later. She was very gifted, that one who committed suicide. I think it was about a man, I think a love story. As I say, the theater was always sold out when he conducted. But the Nazis hated him because they said he was Jewish. They didn't consider it a religion; for them it was a race. When he conducted, they came in with rotten eggs and tomatoes and threw them at him during the performance. So he recognized that he couldn't stay there any longer. But it was a terrible--what shall I say?--tragedy for him, because he loved Munich, he loved the theater. He had built up the orchestra. But he was immediately called to Berlin. So he fell upstairs.

WESCHLER

At that time in Berlin there was no Nazi problem yet.

FEUCHTWANGER

Not at all. It was Goebbels who made that in Berlin later.

WESCHLER

Ironically, it’s a situation where these great people in the provinces are going to be fleeing the provinces and going to Berlin, often because of the Nazis.

FEUCHTWANGER

Heinrich Mann left very early; Brecht left very early in those times. They both wrote my husband--mostly Brecht always wrote--"You cannot stay in Munich. This has become a small country town. Only in Berlin can you live. Everything is alive here." And finally we gave in.

WESCHLER

Can you give us some particular stories about the leavings? Why did Brecht leave in particular? Just the general mood, or were there particular incidents with him?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was partly the general mood, but it was also because the theater was in those days very exciting in Berlin. First it was Munich which was so exciting, and then Berlin took over. There was Reinhardt and Jessner and [Viktor] Barnowsky, those three people. But I have to tell you something else about what happened in those times. Only, I don't remember the chronicle following. It must have been after the Putsch. There was a friend of Hitler, Colonel [Ernst] Rohm, and he was a kind of barbaric Bavarian, a rough type. He founded--I don't know if he founded it--but anyway it was a kind of commandos. In the morning many times there were bodies, dead bodies floating in the Isar. That was all Rohm's people who did that. People who were not popular--he was very like those medieval Landsknecht, those knights who ran around and were so barbaric. After the Hitler Putsch--this killing of the people was before the Hitler Putsch--he escaped to South America, and there he introduced National Socialism, which is still prevailing there in many ways. It's not very much anti-Semitic, but many of the dictators in South America, like [General Alfredo] Stroessner in Paraguay or so, they are all disciples of Rohm.

WESCHLER

And this was in the twenties that he left?

FEUCHTWANGER

This was in the twenties. He left when he was in danger of being arrested. He fled to South America. Later he came back. And when Hitler came to power.... Hitler was very intimate with him, but when Hitler needed money for his movement--it was about 1932-33--he went to the big industrialists, the heavy industry people for money. They told him, "Yes, we are willing and ready to give you money to finance your movement, but you have to get rid of this Röhm; he is too socialistic." Because the movement was national socialistic. They said they would not give the money before he got rid of him. So Hitler went back to Munich and killed Rohm. Nobody knows exactly how he was killed, but that he was killed there is no doubt. It has never been negated. Some say that Hitler personally shot him. Others say it was his hangman who did it. I don't think that Hitler would have done it himself; he was not courageous enough. I think Rohm would have just laughed in his face when Hitler would have come in with a gun. [laughter]

WESCHLER

What about some of the other Nazis who were already beginning to get on the bandwagon? Rudolf Hess was already in the Munich days.

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't remember him. I never heard about him then. Also not about Goebbels, before we were in Berlin. But we left for Berlin in 1925.

WESCHLER

Were there any other Nazis at that point who were prominent in the movement besides Hitler and Rohm?

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't remember, I know more those who were in a way so terribly disappointed because.... There was [Richard] Willstatter: he was a great chemist who got the Nobel Prize. He was also, like Bruno Walter, so nationalistic and his pride was to be German. He also had, of course, to flee the country. He later was great man of the Rockefeller Institute. But those were--much more than anybody else, they were impressed, or I should say shocked by these Nazis, because in so many ways they had the same ideas as Hitler; except they were not anti-Semitic because they were Jews themselves.

WESCHLER

How did Thomas Mann respond?

FEUCHTWANGER

When Hitler came to power?

WESCHLER

No. In Munich, in the early days.

FEUCHTWANGER

In the early days, we didn't know him very well. But we knew Bruno Frank, who was our friend and also Thomas Mann's friend; and we could know, of course, that Thomas Mann had a Jewish wife, and his father-in-law and mother-in-law were Jewish, so it was very natural how he reacted. But even without that, he would have reacted against the Nazis. I think that was already the beginning of the changing of his attitude.

WESCHLER

He found that his attitudes had very, very strange bedfellows.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, that's true. It's amazing: I never could understand anybody who was a nationalist--I was myself, when I was young, a nationalist--but I could not understand that somebody could be for war. That he was for the kaiser and for the war against France--this I never could understand.

WESCHLER

We've talked about some specific Jews and how they responded. The Jewish community in Munich was the first community which had to cope with Nazis....

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't know, because we were in Berlin then.

WESCHLER

But in 1923, at the time of the Putsch.

FEUCHTWANGER

We had not much to do with the community. We knew Jews, but the community itself was a religious thing.

WESCHLER

Do you think most of them were like the ones who bought the paper and laughed at him, or do you think there was a real sense of danger?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, they laughed at him, but at the same time, in their bones--although it was maybe a hundred years before that the last pogroms were--but in their bones they must always have felt that sometimes there would be pogroms. That's why they were so anxious not to be too obvious; for example, the thing with my husband when he had the Phoebus scandal, that the parents paid immediately, only so that nothing would come in the newspaper.

WESCHLER

How did the members of Lion's family, for example, which was an Orthodox family, react?

FEUCHTWANGER

This had nothing to do with Orthodoxy.

WESCHLER

I'm trying to get a sense of how different groups in Munich responded to the Putsch.

FEUCHTWANGER

They didn't "respond" to the Putsch. Everybody was glad that it was over. And before, they didn't know much about it. Except the Volkischer Beobachter, this paper, they didn't know much about the Nazis. Nobody went to the meetings--it was so different; it was another world. Nobody thought about that. It's the same as the Catholics went to church: the others went to Hitler. They didn't pay much attention to the whole thing.

WESCHLER

Would it be fair to say that after the Putsch was over, most people assumed that that was the last thing you were going to be hearing of Hitler?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, absolutely, of course. He was sent to jail. But they let him off earlier than he had to stay there, and he was allowed to write this book in jail. But they said somebody helped him to write it. Of course, everybody was shocked that he was released earlier. But as I tell you, we were not in Munich anymore, so I don't know what happened in Munich.

WESCHLER

Let's talk a little bit about why you left Munich, and then we'll come back and talk a bit more about the books.

FEUCHTWANGER

I think we wouldn't have left Munich on account of Hitler. There were other reasons. For instance, the tax people: they came all the time and wanted to know more about our finances. We were impoverished like everybody else, except those who were black marketeers, by the inflation. So they came to our apartment and said that my husband did not pay enough taxes. I said, "We pay what we have." They said, "For instance, for this play you got 50,000 marks." I said, "Yes, but what can you buy for 50,000 marks?" They said, "That's no difference, marks are marks. You have to pay. You are always with one foot in jail because you didn't pay your taxes." (But with 50,000 marks, you couldn't buy a pound of butter in those days. It was before the greatest inflation; it was in the middle of the inflation. Later it was in the billions, you know.) I said, "Yes, but you cannot say we have the money. I have money; I have some stocks, but they have risen, and even if I wanted to sell them, I can't buy anything with the money I get." So he said, "Yes, but we don't care. I will tell you something," said one of those officials. "If you were not born in Munich, we would have thrown you out a long time ago." They could not expel us out of Munich because we were both born there. But they expelled other people, and this was a great scandal. Also there was a great businessman who sold very elegant linen and mostly embroidered linen, very expensive things, beautiful embroideries. This family came originally from Austria. Their name was Rosenberg, and they had two beautiful daughters; one was married to a nobleman. The shop was a kind of curiosity for everybody who came to Munich, to see what beautiful things you can buy there. The owner did a very good thing: those girls who were prostitutes were taken in by a monastery, by a convent; they made those embroideries, and he paid them very well. It was because nobody else could have had the time to do those very complicated embroideries, and the nuns--it was called the Convent of the Good Shepherd--were very glad with this whole constellation. But then, all of a sudden, the man was expelled with his family and his shop was closed--because he was from Austria and he was Jewish. That was all. If he had done something, they would have sent him to jail. It was just that he was Jewish. That was already before Hitler came to power, the influence of the Nazis. The convent of the nuns, the Good Shepherd, had to close down, and the poor girls were all in the street because they had nobody anymore to buy their merchandise.

WESCHLER

So this harassment was one of the reasons.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that was very much. And also--didn't I tell about this Mrs. Deutsch who was then expelled? You know, when this policeman said, "Sit down, I'm a married man"?

WESCHLER

Oh yes, right.

FEUCHTWANGER

This lady had to leave Munich also. And her husband--I don't know if they were married, but they lived together--was a young aristocrat, very good looking, and when he came to say goodbye (because he was going also to Berlin, where Mrs. Deutsch lived), he said, "Go to the window." We went to the window, and there were two men standing there. Typical like detectives. Everywhere and in every country you can recognize the detectives. Either they have a trench coat or--those had hard hats. Anyway, he said, "You know, they follow me everywhere; they followed me also to your house." And really the next day they came, and it was those tax people. So it was already harassment. Because this man--Renato von Hollander was his name--was at our house, we were already suspicious and they harassed us. My husband said, "With one foot you are already in jail if you just exist here." Because when they say that a mark is a mark, even when it's devalued in this way, and so it is a crime if you don't pay the taxes.

WESCHLER

What were some of the positive reasons why you went to Berlin?

FEUCHTWANGER

The first was, of course, Brecht. Every week came a letter saying, "You have to come to Berlin. Munich is becoming a provincial town. There is too much censorship." (Not censorship, but nobody dared to do anything anymore.) He said, "You cannot live anymore in this atmosphere." Then Heinrich Mann also said so, and so we finally went to Berlin.

WESCHLER

Why had Heinrich Mann left?

FEUCHTWANGER

There were two reasons. First of all, his marriage [with Maria Kanova] went apart, and so he went for a short while to Berlin where he then fell in love with an artiste, an actress [Trude Hesterberg]; so he stayed there. But also he stayed because he said he couldn't stand the atmosphere of Munich anymore.

WESCHLER

How much of the Schwabing scene survived beyond 1925? It sounds like everybody was leaving.

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't know. Munich after 1925 is absolutely like a foreign country to me. I came through twice, when I went skiing always. I met then Lutschi [Feuchtwanger] and Bruno Frank. They both invited me for dinner. That was all.

WESCHLER

They stayed in Munich longer.

FEUCHTWANGER

They stayed all the time, until the time of Hitler. Lutschi came into the concentration camp, but that is a later story.

WESCHLER

All these people we have been talking about, the household of the sculptress [Lotte Pritzel], all these kinds of Bohemian activities--did they seen to persist in Munich?

FEUCHTWANGER

I think they stayed in Munich, but the two gentlemen who befriended her, they went to Switzerland because it turned out they were also Jewish. Nobody would have thought it. You know, we didn't think always, "Is this person a Jew or not?" in our circle. Mostly also before Hitler came, the Jews were accepted absolutely; they were assimilated as German, so nobody thought all the time about it. It turned out that so many people were Jewish, and nobody knew about it before. When they were not religious, you know.

WESCHLER

Well, in the next interview we'll talk about the early years in Berlin, but right now I'd like to go back and talk about the books that we've suggested, talk about them in more detail. First of all, the obvious point is that Lion is not writing plays anymore; he's writing novels. How did that change come about?

FEUCHTWANGER

I think I was the reason for it. I thought always.... He had recognized himself that Jud Süss didn't give what he wanted; he couldn't tell in a play what he wanted to say. It would take too much room, and he couldn't afford this shortening which a five-act play or so demands. But he didn't realize that so much. He only was unhappy after he had seen the play. The play was successful, but he said, "I think it was maybe the direction or the actors." So I said, "I think you should leave writing plays and should write a novel." So he said, "All right, I'll try." He began to write the novel which was later to become Thomas Wendt. It began as a novel. He read to me the beginning, and I found it awful and he found it also awful. So he said, "I think I will write a play after all." Then he wrote an epic play; that was Thomas Wendt. But he said, "You cannot do that all the time. That is good for this kind of idea, but you cannot treat everything in this kind of [structure]." So he said, "I think I will write a novel about Jud Süss, what I wanted to explain." So he asked the publisher if he was interested in a novel, because it was the use to speak to the publisher beforehand. And the publisher said, "Of course, every novel you write is of interest to us." And he gave my husband a rather substantial advance. We needed that very much--always came something in the last moment or in the right moment. So my husband began to write, and after several weeks he said, "I think it's too long to write a novel. I could write a play in three months. How long does it take me to write a novel? I think I begin again with a play." Then I said, "Yes, that would be all right, but do you know we have already used the whole advance? We cannot pay it back." He said, "Yes, that's true." So he sat down a little bit invita Minerva--that’s a Latin proverb meaning, "not with much mood"--and he began again to write. And all of a sudden he didn't stop anymore, and he wrote day and night. I remember there was a film ball, and he usually went there. It was a very beautiful occasion where you met everybody; it was very gay. But he said, "I think I will stay home and write." So I went alone there, and when I came home at three o'clock in the morning, here Lion said, "I have finished." So on the day when the film ball was, I remember, the novel Jud Süss was finished. I think he worked about two years on it.

WESCHLER

How was the activity of writing a novel different than writing a play for him?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was something absolutely different. He had written a novel before, but he was so unhappy about his first novel [Der tönerne Gott] that he didn't want to think of it. That was also the reason why he didn't want to write another novel.

WESCHLER

I mean, did he have a different working style than when he was writing a play?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, absolutely, because when he wrote the plays he went out in the evenings. He didn't change. Everywhere there was always something in Munich; either they came all to us or we came to the others. Everybody brought a bottle of wine or some butter (when they had it) or some bread. When we were very elegant, some ham. And some eggs also. Every night, I think, there was something. During the Fasching, a special occasion was Steinecke. Steinecke was in the Akademiestrasse. That was across from us; only the Akademie was between. Our street was Georgestrasse, and we had no visibility but the gardens of the Akademie. On the other side, where the entrance of the Akademie was, across the street lived Brecht in a room, and there was also a bookshop. The owner of the bookshop was ["Papa"] Steinecke. Also the Simplicissimus, this famous restaurant where Valentin was playing, was there. Before it was somewhere else, and it was like a long intestine, but this was a little better situation. Steinecke was between Brecht and Simplicissimus. This man was a bachelor and he liked all those people; they came and bought his book but never paid for it. He was so in the middle of Schwabing.

WESCHLER

What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER

Steinecke. The name sounds Prussian. We didn't ask what he was, and everybody liked him. He was very much for all the Bohemians. He had a Hinterstube, a back room, where he usually had the packing room for his books, and this was cleaned out every winter. And during carnival he had dancing there. It didn't cost anything. He invited everybody, and the most famous people--except Thomas Mann--everybody was there. Arnold Zweig came in a domino, they called it, as an Italian masquerade. It's a coat, a black coat and in white. He was a good designer (his wife was also a painter), and all the persons of his novels were designed on his black coat, up and down, you know. It was like a duster, a big thing. So the costumes were all self-made. It's called the Nachtwanderer, the people who go around in the night, night wanderers. That was the title of all those doings. I came as a burglar once. I made up myself. I took a suit of my husband and made myself up like an Apache--that was a French underworld, I made a black eye, and all the things that you usually use in a fireplace were hanging from my belt as burglar tools. It was very amusing, very gay. You could let your hair down, as you say; it was like that. Sometimes I went also--from Tunis where we were prisoners-of-war, I saved a shawl, an enormous black shawl which was all embroidered in silver. Not embroidered--it was silver plates; they were bent around so it was all like a fish, the shells of a fish. I wrapped that around myself, and I had only one strap so it wouldn't fall down, nothing else, and this did a great effect. It was really a beautiful thing, and I think from then on Lotte Pritzel called me "The Queen of the Night." Then I had a little veil over my eyes--it was a kind of mask--and I looked very demonic, or least I thought so. [laughter] But I had always to have so much evening clothes, you know, that [once] I wanted to let my hair down, so I came as a burglar. I liked that very much. So one night we went home, I don't know who it was--we were all hanging arm in arm, and behind us I saw a whole row also arm in arm. And all of a sudden I heard somebody say something which sounded familiar to me. And I said, "Is that the man of the beast?" And it was Arnold Zweig. He had been in the army as a sappeur, those who have to prepare the trenches. They had to prepare the trenches. They were ordinary soldiers. That was the lowest part of the army and also the most dangerous, because they had no arms. They had only a kind of [shovel].

WESCHLER

The advance troops.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. The others could go into the trenches which they had to prepare. So they were...

WESCHLER

...subject to fire all the time.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, they were under fire. That was the most dangerous, and they were the most contempted because they never shot. Arnold Zweig had very bad eyes: he couldn't shoot; he would never have seen what he was shooting at. He would have shot his own officers probably. Anyway, during the war he was in Belgium. At the beginning, he wrote a little short story which was in the Weltbühne, which had before been the Schaubuhne. (Jacobsohn, who founded it, the publisher, said, "Now is no time anymore for Schaubuhne"--which means stage—"it is now the World Bühne, the stage of the world.") He became political, also pacifistic. And they had printed Zweig's short novel, which was very impressive. My husband and I liked it very much. But we didn't know Arnold Zweig then. I don't know how it came out, but I called back to this group in the middle of the night and said, "Is there the man of the beast?" And he said yes. So we stopped, and they came to us, and in the middle of the night, and it was very dark and we were tired from dancing. We made acquaintance. The next morning, very early--we were still in bed--rang the bell, and that was Zweig coming. We took our robes and let him in. He brought me something which I had never seen, a little pocket, a little pouch with a zipper--I had never seen something like that; he got it from a relative in America--with Tabak in it. It was just after the war when nobody had tobacco to smoke. And he smoked a pipe. So, to greet us and to make a friendship with us, he brought this dearest thing what he had, the pouch without the tobacco, but with the first zipper that ever came to Germany, and he gave it to me. And to my husband he brought an old coin, an old Greek coin. That was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

WESCHLER

A zipper friendship.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, a zipper friendship. It was zipped. [laughter] Then there was somebody else. There was an enormous man there, very strong, broad-shouldered; and every girl, every woman, who he just fell his eye on, he took her dancing, wild dancing. So he came also to me. I never came with my feet to the ground. He had me in his arms and swung me around and brisked me; I almost couldn't breathe anymore. Then he let me go and went to another. He didn't even look at my face. And this was Oskar Maria Graf. The Bavarian writer, a typical Bavarian writer, a great writer. He was also published in America and became an honorary doctor at a university. We never met really. We never spoke with each other; that was the only time. Later on, when we were here in America, he wrote letters to my husband; he also wrote about him and about his novels. He was a great admirer of Thomas Mann and of my husband; they were both his idols. So they corresponded, but they never met here in America. And when my husband had died, he wrote me a letter saying that he was suffering from asthma and was going to Arizona and wants to meet me as the wife of Lion Feuchtwanger. He came here and visited me and we had a wonderful time.

WESCHLER

Did he remember dancing with you?

FEUCHTWANGER

No. I told you he didn't even look at me. I found a room for him which wasn't too expensive, and--oh, it was a funny thing. He came by car from Arizona with his wife, a very nice person. She was his second wife; his first wife died very early and was very unhappy then. She was the half-sister of Manfred George; you probably know him from the Aufbau, the great Jewish-American newspaper. This was his first wife. Then happily he found another very nice person. We are still corresponding. And I found for them a little room, but it was in a nice place, on the ocean, on Ocean Drive. It was not more than a bed in it, but it was nice and clean. I told the consul general from Germany that "Oskar Maria Graf is here and you must do something about him." So friends of mine invited him for a lecture. He read out of his books, and I made a little introduction. And then the consul general had to go away, and his consul. Dr. Weinrowsky--she was a lady--she invited Oskar Maria Graf to Jack's at the Beach, this fish restaurant--and me, too, of course, because I introduced him. But all of a sudden he had a terrible asthma attack and it was only his wife who could come. I even sent him a doctor who could help him so that it felt a little bit better, but the doctor said he couldn't go out to the restaurant although it was very near. But when we were eating there, we were very sad that this whole thing fell through, because it was intended for him; so I said to Dr. Weinrowsky, "I think we take some chicken and some wine, and we go now to the room of Oskar Maria Graf." His wife said after the doctor had been there he felt a little better. So we came--it was kind of a court; inside there was a yard and a balcony. From this balcony you went into his room. There were only two beds and nothing else; I think, one chair. In this chair Oskar Maria Graf was sitting, and he looked like death; he looked terrible. He hadn't eaten for a long time. We brought him the chicken, and he began to eat the chicken and drink some wine. He became so gay that he all of a sudden said, "I will read some of my poems to you." So we were sitting on his bed, because there were no chairs. Dr. Weinrowsky is very formal, you know, dignified, from North Germany where they don't know these moods and that kind of behavior as in Bavaria: sitting on a bed, you know--it just can't be done. But when he awoke all of a sudden and he was in such a good mood and reading from his poetry, it was for her the greatest experience in her life. The next time when I saw the consul general from Germany--it was Mr. [Hans Rolf] Kiderlen--he said, "You know. Dr. Weinrowsky, she is not the same anymore since she went through...." [laughter] That was Oskar Maria Graf. And he didn't have the faintest memories that he had ever danced with me. And I told him that. [laughter]

WESCHLER

We are almost at the end of the tape today, but I did want to ask a couple of other questions about the early novels of Lion, and we'll talk more about them next time. A good deal has been written about the way Lion wrote his novels in his later life, with the different shades of paper, the different versions.

FEUCHTWANGER

No, Jud Süss he wrote by hand, in longhand, and he gave me the manuscript. And also the next novel, which appeared first, The Ugly Duchess. Both are written in longhand, and both are in the safe at USC, at the university. They belong to me. I have been offered for each of them $6,000.

WESCHLER

Did he reword the writing extensively?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, yes, he was a very slow writer. I wrote it from his handwriting into the typewriter. And I learned.. We had just got a cheap typewriter.

WESCHLER

Already at that time you were doing that?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. I had to copy it always at night because we could only heat one room with a little iron stove. It was a very, very cold winter. Even then my fingers were stiff. But I couldn't write on the typewriter in the same room where he was writing his book. So he wrote in longhand in the day, and I copied it at night with my stiff fingers. [laughter]

WESCHLER

Did you have corrections and revisions and so forth?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, yes, we had a lot of discussion all the time.

WESCHLER

Are there any parts of Jud Süss which you take credit for?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, I wouldn't know that. I take only credit that I had the idea for him to write a novel about it. Because I told him, "You always complain that it didn't come out. Why don't you write a novel?" But that's my only help which I gave him.

WESCHLER

One final question for the day: now, as we look back on his career, we think of Feuchtwanger as an historical novelist, as that being the genre which he excelled in.

FEUCHTWANGER

In a way, but he also wrote modern novels.

WESCHLER

Right. But the genre which is one of the ways in which he is best known is the historical novel. Do you think that as he was writing those first two novels, which were both historical novels, do you think that he saw his life already as lying particularly in that direction, or did that just develop?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, it was only that he was interested in those themes. He was interested in the man who paid with his life for the guilt of others, and also in a man who was so brilliant with so much lust for life, who then turned to let himself fall. Süss could have saved himself if he had converted to Christianity. He was not a religious man at all. He would have been saved. But he let himself fall because.... Also in the Bible there are those kinds of ideas where it is better to sleep than to be awake, or better to be dead. And Indian philosophy had great influence on my husband in those days.

WESCHLER

One very clearly has a sense of the difference between European power and Far Eastern inaction.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. But the title "Power" had nothing to do with this novel. His novel was called Jud Süss. Only in America the publisher called it Power. Lion had nothing to do with that.

WESCHLER

Well, why don't we stop for today. In the next session, I would like to talk more about Jud Süss. Also, we have given The Ugly Duchess short shrift; she deserves more. Then we will begin to get into Berlin.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja.

1.21. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE ONE JULY 24, 1975

WESCHLER

We have some more stories of life in Munich. To begin with, you were telling me about some of the lectures that were given in Munich at the Gallery Caspari.

FEUCHTWANGER

[Georg Caspari] had a branch of the gallery of Paul Cassirer in Berlin. Cassirer was not only the husband of the famous actress [Tilla] Durieux, but he was a famous man himself because he introduced the impressionists into Germany. They were absolutely unknown. He not only bought many of the famous impressionist pictures himself and had a wonderful gallery, a private gallery also, but he introduced the changing of the taste of painting; this was his merit. And he had a branch in Munich. The director and owner was Caspari, and he had this wonderful gallery in Munich where I saw for the first time a sculpture of [Wilhelm] Lehmbruck. For me it was a revelation; I never saw things like that before. I must say I have [discovered] him, for myself at least. There were always lectures there, by Thomas Mann or Heinrich Mann or my husband and once....

WESCHLER

At the gallery?

FEUCHTWANGER

At the gallery. There were literary evenings. Once he invited Jakob Wassermann from Vienna. Originally his family had come from Furth, and he was born there, where the Feuchtwangers were all born when they had to flee from Feuchtwangen, He read for the first time, before it was printed, a short story called "The Son" ["Der Sohn"]. It made a great impression on me; it was a very interesting short story. Afterwards, he talked with my husband and told him that they were related, that he comes also from Furth. One of the sisters of long ago-he was a descendant of her--married a man with the name of Wassermann who was a goldsmith, and he comes from this family. So they were related. My husband had never heard about that before.

WESCHLER

Did they become friends after that?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, Wasserman went back to Vienna, and, you know, in those days there was not much connection. When somebody was in another city, there were no planes or so; it took a long time to go and everybody had his own friends, his own circle. Later in the immigration, they exchanged letters because Jakob Wassermann went to Switzerland, and he also died there. But there was not much personal relations anymore.

WESCHLER

At these literary evenings, what kinds of things, for instance, did Thomas Mann read?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, he read mostly from one of his novels, but I don't remember which novel it was. I think it was Königliche Hoheit (Royal Highness). And Heinrich Mann wrote a short story about his sister. It was called "The Sister," I think. My husband--I think he read from The Ugly Duchess.

WESCHLER

What kinds of audience were there? Was this a relatively select audience?

FEUCHTWANGER

A very select audience--lots of writers and painters, of course, because it was also a gallery. But the best names of the German painters.

WESCHLER

Okay. We now also have a story about what it was like to get paid during the inflation.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. When my husband [was about to write] this novel, The Ugly Duchess, which he has been asked to write for the book club, he was asked what kind of theme he would like to depict. Then he said he was always interested in ugly women; maybe it was already a kind of women's lib, because he was interested in what the ugly women were doing with their lives and how they succeeded and how their fate was.

WESCHLER

Is this something about which he spoke with you often beforehand?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. He always said that he would not have written anything without asking me first if I agreed with it.

WESCHLER

This theme of ugly women: who were some of the other women that he was interested in?

FEUCHTWANGER

Later he wrote a play which was called The Oil Islands [Die Petroleuminseln], and this was the same theme, only about a modern woman.

WESCHLER

Okay. Well, continue with the story.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. And then there was a wonderful man by the name of [?] Adler, who was a lawyer and very much interested in literature and in writers. He was also the counselor of the literary guild, you could say, the writer's guild. He asked my husband what he did with his book when he made a contract, and then he looked at the contract and found it very, very good and advantageous. But he said, "You have to be very careful with the money because when you get the money, it will only be sent to you, and until you get it as a check, it will be nothing worth anymore." So he said we had to [make it so] that the day it will be published the payment of the advance will be due. The advances were very high always in those days, a big part of the whole deal. So he said, "We have to go to Berlin, and I go with you; I do it on my own because I know that a writer cannot pay so much for a lawyer. We go together in a third-class sleeping car. We will have to bring the money back right away to Munich and bring it to the bank and buy some stocks or whatever is best." And that's what they did. They came back with big bags, enormous bags, in which there were all the bills. One mark was the same as a billion, or a billion was the same as before a gold mark. That's why they had so many billions.

WESCHLER

They actually had bills that were a billion marks?

FEUCHTWANGER

Bills, ja. The highest bill was one billion. But it was not worth more than one mark in peacetime. So they had to bring it back themselves in the sleeping car with big bags. I remember how I opened the door and the porter had I don't know how many big bags--they were enormous bags like bean bags or so. And then the porter had to bring them to the bank.

WESCHLER

And did the inflation get worse after that?

FEUCHTWANGER

After that, it couldn't get worse. After that it was converted into Rentenmarks. That means--I don't know what that means in translation; it's just that it was again one mark. And all this other money wasn't worth anymore. Just at the right moment my husband brought it to the bank, because [in those days] people could make wallpaper out of that money. It was a terrible time, mostly for people who were older and had no business anymore.

WESCHLER

On fixed incomes.

FEUCHTWANGER

Fixed incomes, ja, ja.

WESCHLER

You have another story from that general period of what happened while Lion was in Berlin....

FEUCHTWANGER

To get the money. He was with this man Adler, who was just a great person and a friend of humanity. That same night was the first night of our friend Bruno Frank's play The Woman on the Beast [Das Weib auf dem Tiere]. It was a successful play. Afterwards, of course, we celebrated at the house of the director and owner of the theater, Adolf Kaufmann, who was also a friend of Eisner. In the afternoon the first actress of the theater, a very young actress, and I and Caspar Neher and Bertolt Brecht, we four went to....

WESCHLER

What was the name of the actress?

FEUCHTWANGER

Maria Koppenhöfer. She later became very famous, but there she was only a beginner. And we went to the Starnberger See for a swim and for rowing. We were there the whole day, in the open air, and it was a great day. Of course, we went back to Munich and took a shower and went very elegant into the first night of the theater. But we were all terrible thirsty. Maria Koppenhöfer had a terrible sunburn on her back, and I had to powder it with calcium to relieve her from her burning. We went to the theater, and then when we came to the party of Mr. Kaufmann, I said, "I'm terrible thirsty, this whole day in the sun. Give me something cold to drink." And they gave me a big glass--I think it was a quarter of a liter or so--and I drank it in one swallow. It was wonderful, sweet and cold. But it was Schwedenpunch--it was pure liquor, but I didn't know it; I had never even heard before about it. In those days it was the fashion to serve that at parties, but only in little glasses, not in such big glasses like a beer glass. So I was so dizzy, all of a sudden, that I didn't even realize that I was just drunk. I sat down and said, "I don't know what happened; it must be the heat or something." Then the man who made the sets, [Leo] Pasetti--who was an aristocrat, a very nice person and a great artist--he said, "You know, you have to drink a little bit," And on the other side, I think, was Caspar Neher, and he also said, "Yes, of course, that is the only thing that will help you." So Pasetti gave me a little glass of red liquor, and Caspar Neher gave me green liquor, and they always saw to it that I never took two of the same at once; I had always to change from one to the other. It didn't help very much, of course, but I wasn't conscious of that. Afterwards, it was such a beautiful night that we went into the English Garden for a walk--it was about midnight--but I was lucky that there were two, so one watched the other, so that nothing could happen to me. And they brought me home. I came home. I'm usually very orderly, but all my clothes the next day I found somewhere on the floor; in every room there was another piece. I was sleeping--I didn't wake up--and then the bell rang. I went to the door, and I realized that I was absolutely naked, I had nothing on. Outside there must have been somebody who was always ringing the bell. I was swaying behind the door, but fortunately I didn't open it: I only swayed, until this person outside was tired of waiting and left and put only a card into the mailbox. I took the card out, and then I realized what had happened. On this day, I had an appointment with a publisher who came from Vienna to speak about a luxury edition of The Ugly Duchess. This was a very famous publishing house which made very beautiful illustrated luxury editions [Delphin Verlag(?)]. When I was just looking at this card, I realized what I had missed; then there came Maria Koppenhöfer, who wanted to see how I am, and also that I would powder her back again, which was burning. I opened the door for her because I realized it was she. I recognized her voice, and I gave her this card. She said, "You have to do something, you cannot--you have to do something." I said, "Yes, but I am still so dizzy I couldn't do anything." She said, "You have to. You take a shower; I will get a taxi for you, and you go into this hotel which is written on the visiting card. You will speak with this man." And that's what I did. But I still was not quite sober when I was at the hotel, and this man invited me in and offered me a glass of liquor. [laughter] Fortunately I didn't drink that, but I asked for a cigarette. I usually didn't smoke much, but I thought it would give me more poise, something to hang on to. So then he told me what he intended to do with the book--how he would make it--and he offered me a rather big sum in advance. I still couldn't speak very much, and so I didn't answer--just swayed a little bit in my chair. Then the man thought it wasn't enough, and he immediately doubled the sum. So I realized I had to do something, and I said, "All right, let's sign it." Then we signed the contract, and I left. But this publication was never realized; the publishing house closed, and we had $3,000 without doing anything. My husband still had the rights to it. [laughter]

WESCHLER

So there we have a moral tale about the virtues of drinking.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. [laughter] But maybe it's also the virtue of not telling anything, not talking.

WESCHLER

Right, but that is not the virtue of this interview. [laughter] You also had mentioned, just in passing, that you were responsible for Koppenhöfer’s walk, which later became a very famous walk.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, she was a beautiful person, dark, and she had some Polish blood also. She was tall and wonderfully built, but she just made little steps on the stage. I said, "You cannot walk like that. You are tall, and you have to make tall steps, long steps, and not even lift your leg too much; it must be like sliding." I showed her how to do it, and she did it. Later on, in the reviews, there was always the talk about her sexy way of moving and walking. I also lent her sometimes my clothes, capes or things like that.

WESCHLER

Well, we've talked a good deal about the condition under which The Ugly Duchess and Jud Süss were both published, but today I want to talk about how they fared once they were published. Now, The Ugly Duchess was published first?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was published first. Since it was in a literary club and the newspapers usually did not pay any attention to [these club publications], there were no critics. But this way, the first time--it was before Jud Süss--to treat a historical theme was so new that it drew lots of attention. In the Frankfurter Zeitung there was a very great critic who was well known, by the name of Heilborn; and to our surprise he wrote an enormous lauding and praising review. And then also others followed. This was, of course, very advantageous, and they had lots of subscribers after this. With Jud Süss, it was a great success but nothing spectacular. Then the founder and owner of the Viking Press in New York went to see with his wife her parents in Sweden. She was born in Sweden. There was a professor from Berlin there for a visit.* And he knew also the parents of Mrs. Huebsch. (His name was Ben Huebsch.) This man told Mr. Huebsch that he knew he was a great publisher and told him, "I have read a great book, and I also spoke in lectures and in my classes about this book which is called Jud Süss, and I would really recommend you to read it." Huebsch read it and was very enthusiastic and immediately came to Berlin and spoke to my husband about publishing it. Then--but there was another publishing house just founded in London. It was founded by [Henry Mond], Lord Melchett. His wife [Sonia Graham], who was a very beautiful Gentile woman from South Africa, wanted to do something except just being the wife of the very rich lord who owned the first chemical factory. So as a birthday present he told her that he would found, with Martin Secker--who was a friend of the house--a publishing house. This was then the Martin Secker publishing house [Martin Secker, Ltd.]. Lord Melchett was, of course, the son of the famous chemist factory owner, [Alfred] Mond. He had done so much for the English economy that the Queen Victoria had named him lord and given him a lordship, an inheritable lordship, so his son [then received it]. And that always brings the name of an estate: the lord has to be named after a big estate. So he got a big estate, the estate of Melchett, or the castle of Melchett, and his son was then the Lord Melchett. He and the Rothschilds founded Israel, in a way, because one of the chemists in the factory was Chaim Weizmann, who was later president of Israel. And Chaim Weizmann was asked by the English government to invent a counterpoison against the poison gas of the Germans during the First World War. That was all during the First World War. Weizmann invented the right thing, and Lord [Arthur James] Balfour later on wanted to make him also a lord, but Weizmann said, "I would rather that Israel would be a home state for the Jews." Mostly Jews who had to flee the pogroms in Russia. So instead of becoming a lord, Chaim Weizmann became president of Israel. We met him when we were in England, in the house, the castle of Lord Melchett.

*In her notes Mrs. Feuchtwanger identifies this man as Professor Magnus, who was married to Freud's niece (Grace Magnus).

WESCHLER

Rushing ahead, just briefly, what was Weizmann like?

FEUCHTWANGER

Weizmann was very interesting, a fascinating man, not very good looking. He looked Jewish, black beard. But when he spoke.... We were at a big dinner table at Lord Melchett’s castle. There was also a cousin of the queen and many of the parliament there. He was sitting across from me. My escort was the cousin of the queen. We had a lively conversation, but all of a sudden Weizmann spoke and everybody was quiet. Nobody spoke when Weizmann spoke, and he was not even the president then. He was just so fascinating a man that when he spoke then everybody listened. We were also many times together with him. Also when he was here, we were invited at the Hotel Miramar. He had a little house there.

WESCHLER

What did he speak about at that time, do you remember?

FEUCHTWANGER

Funny thing: I remember he spoke about the economy and also that he found it so good that the Prince of Wales (who was later the Duke of Windsor)--he said, "It is good that he is interested in traveling and he does so much for the economy of England." He went around and he asked certain things which only England manufactured, and then people didn't have it, so he went to the manufacturer and said, "You should also take from our country what people want to use." So he did a lot for the economy.

WESCHLER

So Weizmann was very much an Englishman.

FEUCHTWANGER

He was very much English, absolutely. Until to the end even. When we spoke with him here.... For a while it was a very bad time for the Jews and Israel, for the Jews in Israel and England, because England didn't allow them to land in Israel on account of the Arabs, who they didn't want to offend.

WESCHLER

In the mid-forties, this was.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. Anyway, but he said to my husband, "I'm still for England. I still feel as an Englishman." Although he was born in Poland or in Russia.

WESCHLER

Well, let's get back to the story of the publishing of the books. So Lord Melchett and the head of Viking....

FEUCHTWANGER

My husband spoke to him, and Jud Süss was then the first publishing in this new publishing house. It was also received very well.

WESCHLER

It was published simultaneously by both houses.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, in America and England together. And it has been received--I don't know so much what happened in America; only later on--in England with, well, sympathy; it was a good success, but not more. Then Arnold Bennett, who was a great novelist in those times--he and [H.G.] Wells together were the most read novelists--he read the book and was so enthusiastic, he wrote a glowing review in one of these magazines or periodicals, and the review itself made a sensation. From then on the book was accepted everywhere. The success was so great that it went back to Germany and influenced the German success and immediately also the American success. Because England in those days was very much influential in connection with books and literature.

WESCHLER

There was also a movie made of it in England, wasn't there?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, a movie was made in England, by Gaumont-British. Conrad Veidt, who later came here and was a famous actor, played the Jud Süss. And one actor who escaped from Berlin played the rabbi. He was a very famous actor in Berlin and he couldn't live without Berlin; he died of a broken heart. That was the last part that he played.

WESCHLER

Do you remember his name?

FEUCHTWANGER

No. Not right now. [Paul Graetz actually played the role of Landauer.]

WESCHLER

Then later on there was a Nazi version of it.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. The Nazis had of course noticed this big success of the movie, and they thought that they would take advantage of it and also the success of the book. They made a movie and turned everything into the contrary. It was a very anti-Semitic movie, and the greatest actor, Werner Krauss, played I think four or five parts, each one more anti-Semitic than the other. After the war, it was of course forbidden by the new German state--it was forbidden and also it was proclaimed that all the copies had to be destroyed. That was the condition for many who had been under suspicion. Also Harlan, who was the director of this movie.... He had to come before the Persil--this was kind of like a soap: detergent court, they called it. Somebody had to clean himself of any suspicion.

WESCHLER

Purging.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, but they called it detergent. Detergent Court. They had to prove that they didn't do any wrong during the Nazi time. And Harlan--everybody knew that he made that film. Veit Harlan was his name, and he played before in plays of my husband and was very much liberal before. He said he couldn't do anything else, because he had been asked to do it, so he had to do it. The actor who played Jud Süss--[Ferdinand] Marian was his name--had to do it because Goebbels asked him directly to play this part. He played it and afterwards committed suicide.

WESCHLER

This man who played Jud Süss was not Jewish.

FEUCHTWANGER

No. Ach. Of course not. During the Nazi time, nobody was Jewish.

WESCHLER

Did you ever see that movie?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, I didn't want to see it. But I have been told by [Erich Maria] Remarque, he told us that it was very well done, it was very--and this was the danger of it, you see. Werner Krauss was the greatest actor in those days. Werner Krauss afterwards was asked by Erich Pommer, the great film producer--he went back to Germany for a visit and he saw Werner Krauss, and Krauss came to him and said, "I had to do it because if I hadn't done it, somebody else would have done it." And Erich Pommer said he just turned his back on him. He didn't want to speak to him. Werner Krauss played five parts, and each one was more anti-Semitic than the other. He played the rabbi, the uncle of Jud Süss, and also other parts. It was not enough that one was unsympathetic; he had to play five different parts. And Marian played Jud Süss. What Erich Maria Remarque told us was that he was in a way sympathetic. It seems that the actor did everything to make it not too anti-Semitic. After he had finished filming, then he committed suicide. He had been [menaced] with threats by Goebbels: he had to do it, but he was then so disgusted that he committed suicide.

WESCHLER

Just parenthetically, for researchers, it should be noted that [Marcel] Ophuls's film The Sorrow and the Pity has a part of this film Jud Süss in it.

FEUCHTWANGER

His father [Max Ophuls] was a famous movie man already, the father of Marcel, and had the name of Oppenheimer, I think, and then came the name Ophuls out of it.

WESCHLER

Anyway, his son, who made this movie The Sorrow and the Pity, does include scenes from the Nazi version in it.

FEUCHTWANGER

I have also to tell you later maybe what happened with the movie, with the forbidden movie. Should I tell it right away? Because it happened here.

WESCHLER

Sure.

FEUCHTWANGER

I told you that it was ordered to be destroyed, all the copies have been destroyed; Veit Harlan didn't get such a great prison term because he promised to do everything that it would really be destroyed. He went later to Switzerland where he died rather young. Here, about ten years ago maybe, I got a letter from Switzerland from two lawyers who wrote me that they had a copy of the film Jud Süss, and if I pay $100,000, then I can have the copy. And if I don't pay it, then they would sell it to Egypt. So I gave this letter to my agent. Dr. Felix Guggenheim, and he said, "Write them. Don't say no right away. We want to know a little more what happens with them." So I wrote them that I would like to know more details. But they must have become suspicious that something happened and they didn't answer anymore. But isn't it amazing, this?

WESCHLER

To your knowledge, though, it was not given to Egypt?

FEUCHTWANGER

It wouldn't help very much. It was in German. Of course, they could have made subtitles, but I have not heard anything about it. Anyway, they didn't follow up; they didn't write anymore.

WESCHLER

Another follow-up story I heard was the one about the French....

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, but I have to tell you something else about the film. Somebody sent me a newspaper from Germany, a German newspaper, and there it was said that as collateral for a bet, a copy of the film Jud Süss has been offered, in Stuttgart. So this letter I sent to the German government in Germany and said, "It has been promised that every copy would be destroyed. How come that this happened?" They wrote me back that they were very grateful; they didn't hear about it. By chance, somebody, just a person I didn't even know, sent me this clipping. They immediately took the copy into custody, and it will not be published anymore.

WESCHLER

Do you know if it exists, though, for research purposes?

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't know. I never heard about it. It shouldn't also. The German government forbid it and ordered it to be destroyed. But it must have existed because Ophuls made this film.

WESCHLER

Well, apparently part of it exists.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. And there was another thing in France. When the Germans invaded, they ordered that this film should be shown everywhere in a very big way. The French, when they wanted to see a film, they had to see that. Everybody was very upset, all the people who were, of course, against the Germans. [After the war] it was also in the newspapers that a man who made a movie like this and who wrote the book before it, should not be allowed to publish in France. The funny thing was that everybody had forgotten that it had been published, of course, long before, twenty years or so.

WESCHLER

So after the war people were against publishing Lion's work.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, immediately after the war, they said Feuchtwanger cannot be published anymore in France because he wrote this book which has been made into such a terrible movie. Then somebody wrote an open letter in the newspaper and said, "How can such nonsense be printed that Feuchtwanger was a Nazi? During the whole Hitler time he was in Russia." [laughter] And that was even worse in those times, because this was during the [House] Un-American Committee [years]. of course my husband was in Russia, but only for two months, not "during the whole Hitler time."

WESCHLER

With friends like that, who needs enemies?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja, that's true. Also in an encyclopedia [Twentieth Century Authors, H.W. Wilson Company, New York, 1942], it was written that he was two years in Russia, because he arrived in December 1936 and left January 1937. That was not even two months, but because the two years were cited so it was always written "two years." Now, in the last publishing I have seen it is corrected: it says, "At the turn of the year, 1937"

WESCHLER

Well, when we get there we will talk about that trip. [pause in tape] Okay, we're right on the very edge of your leaving Munich and going to Berlin, and you mentioned off tape that in that period you also went to Yugoslavia.

FEUCHTWANGER

Before we left Munich then, we wanted to make a trip from Munich to Yugoslavia. It was very cheap because in Austria, where we went first, and also in Yugoslavia, there was just then an inflation. For once we had the advantage of an inflation. Until then we had lost only money. So we came to Yugoslavia, and in Trieste we took a small ship, a very beautiful little small ship. It was very nice to go because they docked at every interesting place. We could go out and see. So we came to a little place which was called Draû. You had to go by bus, and all of a sudden you were in the middle of a small miniature Venice--everything was only channels and little palaces also from the same time as Venice, built in the Renaissance. Only a very small town but it was almost more beautiful than Venice itself, because there were no foreigners there and it was absolutely without any commercial enterprise. Very near to that was an old city--Salona, it was called--and it had old ruins from the Romans. We were shown a house which had central heating, and in it was the following way: in the cellar they had a big basin, and there they had stones and tiles and bricks. They made fire under these bricks, and they became very hot. Then they threw water on the bricks which, of course, created big foam and steam, and the steam went through pipes into the house where it was like a central heating. Of course, you had to have many slaves to do that. But still it was interesting that they had already invented the whole thing. Then we went farther to Cattaro. You don't see it from the ocean where we were in the ship because the entrance is so narrow, and the rocks, that you cannot see it from outside. But inside is then a part of the ocean. It looks like a lake. Then there was a road very high up, and very high up there was this town of Cattaro. A very interesting and also unusual part of nature that you couldn't see it at first. It was like a fairy tale, when you went straight into the rocks and came to a deep blue lake and then on top, on a hill, was a city. Then further on we came to Ragusa, which is now called (after the Yugoslavs had taken over from the Austrians) Dubrovnik. Ragusa is an old medieval town also and is still like it was. Around is a wall with high towers, and you go through the main street which has cobblestones. And you see from both sides into the houses, through archways, and it looks absolutely like Spain. There are courtyards with archways inside and mostly a little fountain or so. It is also like a fairy tale. It is very well preserved because they don't allow cars to go inside. I think the new city has been built around, behind this old city. Most of all, when you go through the city--or it is a town, you could say only--you come to the beach; it's not a real beach, it's mostly rocks, but platforms on the rocks so you can lay in the sun there and dive into the ocean. My husband and I, we went every day, swimming to an island; it took about an hour. After we were a week there and swam over every day, then a fisherman came over and said, "Why do you swim always here? Don't you know that there are lots of sharks?" So we said, "Until now the sharks haven't eaten us. So maybe they are not very eager for us." And we continued. Lacroma, I think, was this island. With some people we also made sometimes a race, who was the first. Of course, I was the first. [laughter]

WESCHLER

And you even beat the sharks.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, the sharks couldn't reach me. I was too fast for them. [laughter] But we were also on a little island which was called Korcula, before we came to Ragusa, and this was very desolated. No foreigners besides us. I wanted to lie in the sun, to take a sunbath, so I went into a kind of brush--a large part of the island was just brush. I was lying in the sun under the brush, and all of a sudden a man came. Of course I had my bathrobe with me, and I covered myself; but the man came always nearer, and it was a little uncomfortable. Also I didn't speak Yugoslavian.

WESCHLER

I imagine "no" is the same in every language.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. No. Not in Yugoslavian. "Nyet" is Russian, for instance; so something else is "no." Also "no" or "nyet" wouldn't do very good when somebody is real wild. [laughter] So anyway, I began to shout in German, and I shouted my husband's name, as if he would be there, and I shouted that he should go away and so, but he would not understand it. But it was intimidating to have a foreigner shouting in [her] own language, so he ran away and never came back. In the evenings there was always a promenade where there was also an old antique wall; on one side were the girls and on the other side the boys. Once when we were with the girls walking, then I saw this man, but he didn't recognize me. [laughter] He was a young boy.

WESCHLER

From the sound of it, your days of extreme poverty are over at this point.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. It was not so bad anymore.

WESCHLER

The books are beginning to bring in an income.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. But it was more later when we were in Berlin, because my husband then had got very good contracts with Ullstein [Verlag], the famous newspaper empire. The director of Ullstein [Emil Hertz] wanted to have my husband as an author. He had Erich Maria Remarque and my husband. So they paid mostly for advance for the Flavius Josephus. And this made us more wealthy. Then, of course, there finally came also, from all the countries of the world, royalties for Jud Süss ; and also immediately after Jud Süss, they printed The Ugly Duchess also in the other countries. But the first good-luck streak was Ullstein, who wanted my husband as a house author.

WESCHLER

One last question before we leave Munich--and the tape is about run out. In addition to [his] being a very important author, as I sit in this room I have to say that Lion was a very important bibliophile, a great collector of books. This story will also be the story of that book collection. What was it like in Munich? Was there much of a book collection?

FEUCHTWANGER

In Munich we had no books at all because we came, as prisoners-of-war from Tunisia, and then immediately my husband had to go into the army. Then came the inflation: we were glad to get enough bread to eat, and we had no money for books. Heinrich Mann always said, "The whole library of Feuchtwanger consists of a paperback, one paperback." He said "reklamheftchen"--that was even worse; it was what ten pfennigs could buy then, in an automat. Mostly they were classics only.

WESCHLER

So there wasn't yet...

FEUCHTWANGER

No. But in Berlin--also not right away, because we had first very great difficulties to get apartments in Berlin. There was a law that nobody could have an apartment who had not permission a long time before. So only newly built houses, or apartments which had been built on top of houses, new apartments on roof of houses, they were [available]--but they were very expensive. Even the most simple apartment was very expensive because there was a great need for it. So we got a little apartment on a roof. First we had only two rooms, and then the owner left us the whole apartment; that was then four rooms. So we didn't have much room for books either there. But then when more money came in, we decided to build a house in the best part, in the most beautiful part of Berlin, in the Grunewald, which was a forest. Also very near where we had our house, there was a little lake where you could swim in summer and go horseback riding around and also skating in winter. So then I immediately built shelves everywhere, and my husband began to collect books.

WESCHLER

Well, we'll look at Berlin more carefully next time.

1.22. TAPE NUMBER: XI, SIDE TWO JULY 25, 1975

WESCHLER

We are on the cusp between Munich and Berlin. One of the major things about that change was Lion's attending the performance of Edward II in Berlin.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, that was before we moved. We were in northern Italy on the Lake of Garda; we were trying to get some rest because my husband was working hard and also we had lots of parties always. People came day and night to our house, and we had to be alone for once. All of a sudden, a telegram came of Jessner, the director-general of the State Theatre: "Please come. We cannot go along with Brecht." (He was there for the performance of Edward II. It was the second performance; the first was in Munich before.) Just that it was impossible like that. "Please come. We need you." We had, of course, to immediately come back from Fasano, on the Gardasee; that was a long trip in those days, only by train. When my husband arrived in Berlin at the theater, Jessner was already gone. He didn't want to have the whole thing anymore and went to another State Theatre, which was in Wiesbaden, you know, near the Rhine. There was another State Theatre there which belonged together, and so he said he has very important affairs to attend to there and cannot stay for the rehearsal. So he left an old and very dignified man there, a little "hammy" actor, who was his representative [Karl Kühne]. When my husband came in, this actor was absolutely torn apart from all that had happened, and he said, "Oh, we are so glad that you came. We just cannot handle this Mr. Brecht. It's impossible to speak with him. And the expression he has!" So my husband, before he was in the theater, in the auditorium, he heard already Brecht’s voice, "Das ist Scheiss!" which means, "That's shit!" So that was the first thing he heard, and the old actor says, "You see." [laughter] So my husband entered and heard a little bit, and they began again. There was Jürgen Fehling; he was a famous director (his nephew is a doctor here now). He was really a great, a very famous, and a very good director, and he tried to smooth things over. My husband had no time to say "How are you?" because it was such a pressing affair. My husband only said, "Brecht, wouldn't it be better if you said 'It's stylized'?" So now they began again the same scene and Brecht shouted, "It's again stylized!" [laughter] So of course the whole company broke up in laughter. Then what happened: my husband was not long there when Jürgen Fehling went to the rim of the stage and said, "Gentlemen, it is a hard thing for me to do, to speak like this to two of the greatest poets of Germany, but I have to ask you to leave the theater." So they left the theater. But then Lion said, "I think I should go backstage and at least say goodbye to the actors who do their best." He also found that Jürgen Fehling hadn't understood the new way of Brecht and Feuchtwanger, what they tried to do. So he went to Werner Krauss, who was a star but in particular the star of this performance, and told him, "I wanted to tell you, before I leave, that there is a Latin proverb which he has to speak in Latin." He said, "The first line is all right, but the second line has another rhythm. Then he spoke the rhythm to him, how he should pronounce the whole verse. And then they left, Lion and Brecht. When they were already on the street, Brecht said, "Why did you tell Werner Krauss the wrong intonation?" And ray husband said, "If everything is wrong, the Latin has to be wrong, too." [laughter] They didn't come to the first performance--which was a great scandal, of course, [that] the two authors were not there in the theater. But they were so curious how the thing came out, so they went to the second performance. At the second performance when this part came, this passage with the Latin proverb, both giggled. So a gentleman who was sitting before them turned around and said, "Gentlemen, if you don't understand the play, at least be quiet." [laughter] So much about the performance of Edward II in Berlin.

WESCHLER

Was it as bad as it looked like it was going to be?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was not the play which they had intended to make. It was the way that all the Shakespeare and all the classics had been played. They made it very well in this old-fashioned kind, but not in the way they wanted to do it. Stylized. [laughter]

WESCHLER

How was it received?

FEUCHTWANGER

The press was very good because it was something new, and Berlin was always very avant-gardish. Of course, there were two kinds of press because they had a fight between each other, the two critics, Alfred Kerr and Jhering. [Whenever] Alfred Kerr knew that Jhering would find it good, he had some very important things to say against it. But everybody knew that it was much more the fight between the two critics than something against the play. But it was never a great success with the public. They had not reached yet this kind of performance or this kind of taste which the two authors [required].

WESCHLER

How did the relationship between Brecht and Jessner develop after that?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, Jessner was a great admirer of Brecht because Brecht was very avant-gardish and he wanted to be very modern. I don't know if this was known everywhere else, but in Germany he was the man who invented the stairs, because he always made stairs on the stage. This was not done before. Maybe one step, or two step, but [he used] whole stairs where people went slowly down and even in the middle of the stairs sometimes stopped and played there; so it was great excitement. He made also a movie once [Die Flamme] with [Henny] Porten (she was a great movie actress in those days), and there were always the stairs of Jessner. Then later on it has been imitated everywhere in other countries, but he was the first one who made this kind of play with stairs.

WESCHLER

So he and Brecht, notwithstanding their shaky beginning....

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, Brecht was against everybody. He was also against Reinhardt. There was nobody who could do right. The only director who was right for Brecht was Erich Engel. But Erich Engel also prepared everything before with Brecht, so he was so imbued by Brecht that he couldn't do wrong. Also Brecht took over sometimes. But Brecht was always polite with Engel because they were good friends. You wouldn't believe that he could be so rough as he was at this rehearsal. Usually he wasn't like that. He was polite and even rather shy and modest. He looked modest--his dress was always his leather jacket, always the same leather jacket--and he was really absolutely unpretentious. With Erich Engel, he was on very good--they never had any words because they understood each other so well. Erich Engel also made the first performance of The Threepenny Opera. This was so beautiful--or beautiful is not the right word; so new--that people already applauded when the curtain opened. Because it was the first time that on top the whole ceiling was open and you could see all the strings coining down. This played a role also because on those strings were the old clothes which in The Threepenny Opera [belong to] the man who has a business for beggars [Jonathan Peachum]. And all the beggars' clothes--all that hangs down. It was so interesting and so frappant and new that people applauded it already before a word had been spoken.

WESCHLER

What year was that? Was that in the late twenties? Was that soon after Edward II?

FEUCHTWANGER

I don't recall exactly but you can find that out. [1928] Yes, everything was soon after because we were only in Berlin from '25 to '32. Everything happened in a very short time.

WESCHLER

Did you know Kurt Weill?

FEUCHTWANGER

Oh, yes, very well.

WESCHLER

Would you like to talk about him?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, but first I think we should speak about what happened after the performance [of Edward II] in Berlin. We lived in the house of my husband's sister because nobody had money and he was a merchant, very rich. He was a sugar broker. He had two big Mercedes Benzes and a chauffeur and all that.

WESCHLER

Who was that now?

FEUCHTWANGER

That was the sister of my husband. His oldest sister [Franziska] was married with this man. They were before in Konigsberg--no, in Posen. It was in the east of Germany, and after the First World War it went to Poland. They voted for Germany--they could stay in Poland or go to Germany. And he left his home--they had a big chocolate manufactury there--and he left everything there, except in his double-bottom valise he had some money. And he had to begin again with this. His sons had been persecuted by the Nazis, and all had to flee.

WESCHLER

What was his name?

FEUCHTWANGER

[Edward] Diamand. He voted for Germany and left everything there because he felt as a good German. We lived in their apartment. It was not a house; it was a big apartment in a big building. It was very funny because in the morning they had some good things to eat, goose liver paste and things like that, and Brecht never ate those things; he said always, "I haven't seen that before; I wouldn't eat that now." He was very conservative in his taste. I didn't like it so much because everything had too much onion; it was a little bit influenced from Poland, their kitchen. So we were several days there, and we had a very good time because we took big excursions with the car. Then we left for Rügen, the island of Rügen. It was already very bad, or still very bad with the money there with inflation; there was nothing to eat mostly. [My in-laws] always had food because they could afford the black market. But when we were in Rügen, it was again like poor people [laughter] until the money came from the State Theatre, you know, and this was not too much. But it was very cheap there in Rügen; only we had to live with the Fischers; we couldn't stay in a hotel. Also the hotels were not very great shakes there. On the end of the island, it was very wild; there are those white rocks there. They were very high, the rocks above the ocean, the Baltic Sea, and all white, because it was all chalk. It's very interesting, and together with that, those big beaches, those enormous trees with big trunks. Very beautiful is this island, and it was very wild still and very uncivilized. We lived with Fischers. There was nothing else to eat but herring, but it was the most delicious thing. You wouldn't believe how good herring is when it just comes from the ocean. They prepared it every day a different kind; we lived with the Fischers there, and it was fantastic how good everything was. Herring morning, midday, and night, but it was always beautiful, first because we were always hungry and also because it was so good, so fresh. They called it green herring when it was just salted in the moment it came, and then you could eat it raw. The next morning you could eat it already. Any kind of preparation. Then, the wife of Brecht, Marianne, his first wife--we were going just from one peasant farm to the other to get some butter or some bread or something like that. We always had to go there to get the other things, except herring. It was very beautiful; it was paradisical. People were nice when they had something; and when they had nothing, they were also polite. Once, when we went into a big farm and there was an enormous flock of geese, the gander was wild and ran against us with outspread wings, and the other geese--it was really dangerous. People said that they jump on you and scratch you in the face and all that. Anyway, it was so funny at the same time that I stood there and laughed; I didn't know it was dangerous. Marianne: she was more cautious, she ran away. But I was surrounded by those geese, and I think if the farmer hadn't come out, I don't know what would have happened. Anyway, they didn't even bite me, but it was funny and dangerous (what they said). And we got also some butter. But another time I was bitten by a dog in the leg and that was very sad. It wasn't the leg--the leg would heal by itself--but my stockings were torn, and this was a bad thing because stockings were very rare. But anyway, it was always great fun.

WESCHLER

What season was that?

FEUCHTWANGER

That was summer. We were also swimming, my husband and I. Brecht and his wife didn't swim; it was too cold for them. We swam and then we also took a boat. Once we went out with the fishermen, but Brecht became very green, and I was almost green; only my husband, he didn't feel seasick. (Marianne didn't come with us.) Only my husband was never seasick. But when I saw Brecht always becoming greener and greener, I said, "I think we should turn back." But I was very glad myself. Then sometimes on our walks--also Brecht and my husband came with us sometimes--we saw a little man going around. The only sensation of the place was to go to the train every day in the afternoon to see if there was some mail coming. We had never mail coming, but everybody was there, the peasants and just some people who were there for a short time. And also the newspapers came there, and that's why we went--to get the newspapers. There we saw a little man--he was not like a hunchback but almost, he was so bent over--and in every pocket he had a newspaper. He waited for the new newspapers, some more newspapers. Brecht said, "This man overvalues the newspaper like Karl Krauss." Karl Krauss was a great newspaperman, a biting essayist, and a great wit, and also a great writer in Vienna. He had an incessant fight with Jhering, who was for Brecht, so he was against Brecht. Brecht was between the two. So we both laughed about this man who overestimated the newspaper. Brecht had to leave before we left, and we brought him to the station, and there this man was again. And I asked somebody on the station if they knew who that is, and they said, "Of course. That's Karl Krauss." [laughter] Afterwards Karl Krauss wrote in his periodical which was called Die Fackel (The Torch), he wrote about his sojourn in Rügen, how beautiful that is, and that he always saw Brecht and Feuchtwanger there, and that "I must say their wives are much too good for those two." [laughter] So much about Karl Krauss. But later, Brecht, who didn't read very much usually, read his Fackel periodical and also some of his work that he did. Die letzten Tage der Menschheit, The Last Days of Mankind, and he found this very good. And he asked--I don't know if it was just diplomatic, but he really liked it, he wouldn't have been diplomatic alone--Karl Krauss if he could stage it, because it's a kind of play also. And it was an interesting performance; it had not much echo but it was interesting, some literary sensation. From then on there were only good reviews about Brecht in The Torch.

WESCHLER

So Brecht himself directed or adapted the Krauss...?

FEUCHTWANGER

He directed, maybe also adapted--I haven't seen it. It was in Berlin, and I think also by Reinhardt. Nobody cared much about it; it was just a literary experience. But those who understand something found it very good. It was very funny that Brecht would turn this man all around who was a terrible tyrant in Vienna.

WESCHLER

Did you have any other relations with Karl Krauss?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, none besides that he thinks I was too good for Lion. [laughter]

WESCHLER

What about Brecht's relation with his first wife?

FEUCHTWANGER

In that time? We begin already to get there... We went back. That was before we lived in Berlin. We went back to Munich, and then it was pretty soon that Brecht left again for Berlin. Then, when he came back, he came already back with his second wife, but he wasn't married yet. Marianne wanted to divorce him. I spoke with her. (Usually I didn't mingle in those things; I think people should make that out themselves.) But I told her once, I said, "I know how difficult it is with Brecht for you, to see all his affairs with other women and so, but you have to think that he is a genius." Then she said, "I'm sick and tired of genius. I want a man who loves me." And then she divorced him. She is still alive; she married a very good actor, [Theo] Lingen, and lives with him in Vienna. He is also a good movie actor. The daughter of her and Brecht was in the play Mother Courage; she played the mute daughter Kattrin. Her name is Hiob. She had an enormous success and still is known as a very good actress. Sometimes I hear about her.

WESCHLER

Where is she?

FEUCHTWANGER

In Germany. But, you know, those actresses are usually not in one place; they play in different theaters.

WESCHLER

Well, so you went from there back to....

FEUCHTWANGER

We went back to Munich, and then we decided also because Brecht all the time wrote, "You have to leave Munich. It has become a provincial town...." Because nobody dared to do anything; we were all afraid of the Nazis. Also we were persecuted by the Nazis--I think I told you about the taxes or so, yes, and how Bruno Walter had to leave because they threw rotten eggs on the stage. So we finally decided also to go to Berlin, and that was the end of our stay in Munich. I went sometimes back, only to stay overnight when I went skiing. I couldn't go directly to the mountains; I had to stay overnight there. Then I visited ray husband's brother Ludwig and his new wife (he was also divorced in the meantime) and also Bruno Frank and his wife.

WESCHLER

Well, let's start talking about Berlin. You had mentioned briefly what your house in Berlin was like. Where was it?

FEUCHTWANGER

At first, we had no house. It was only a built up on the roof; there was a little apartment built there [at Fehrbelliner Platz]. That was the only possibility to live there, because you had to have permission and a kind of document, a license, that you can have an apartment. And we--that was too short a time. Those who were born in Berlin or lived all of the time in Berlin came first, and we were just newcomers. So we had no choice but.... It was very expensive, more expensive than any luxury apartment because it has been built up new and they took advantage of that. But we were rather happy there. We then made a big trip from there to Paris and Spain. I remember that Brecht came to the station to say goodbye, and he was very sad that we were leaving because he had so many plans to work with Lion. It was also a little bit on account of that that Lion wanted to go away, because he wanted to work for himself. Also, I brought him off the theater; I didn't think that his kind of theater was too interesting. For me, it was too conventional, his theater. When I saw those new things happening, I thought that Lion is not made for theater because I said I think his talent is the novel. So this apartment was very high up, and we had a big view over the suburbs. Also, directly underneath were tennis courts and the crematorium. It was directly underneath. Directly underneath on the same street across were the tennis courts, and behind the tennis courts was the crematorium. You could see always the steam or the smoke coming out from when they just burned somebody.

WESCHLER

Where was this located, by the way? Which part of town?

FEUCHTWANGER

It was in the west, not far from where we later built a house in the Grunewald, which was the best, the most elegant, and also the most beautiful suburb. It was all forest and lakes there. But we liked it very much so high up; we could see so far. And then all of a sudden there came people from England. It was because my husband began to become famous in England, and there came the newspapermen there. It was something that was not heard of before, that somebody comes from England, from the London Times and the daily News, and whatever they called it, to interview somebody [in Germany]. It was the first, because the English were still--although it was already 1925-26--angry with Germany from the war. That was the first. Also I think my husband was one of the first who has been printed abroad. When they came there, they were very astonished that we lived in this little bird dwelling [laughter] on the roof. They took photos, some of which I still have; by chance they were saved. Big photos which were then published in England. But then was another event. Then came from Russia people, also newspaper people: one was a famous writer from Russia. [Konstantin Aleksandrovich] Fedin was his name; he's a famous writer. He was very aristocratic looking and very reserved, blond and blue-eyed and tall and pale. He spoke German, and they had also planned to translate something together, but my husband couldn't get very warm with him, maybe because both were shy. When he had left, my husband said, "I think he doesn't like me." But then we read in the newspaper that he spoke glowingly about my husband, his personality, about his visit and about his work. So you can wirklich make mistakes. I had a little Fiat; that was my first car. I had the little Fiat, and I brought the newspapermen to the radio station, which was a tower, a big tower, like the Eiffel Tower a little bit. I thought they would like that, but they got so dizzy.... I was used from skiing to go on the high mountains, but I found out it wasn't a very good idea to bring them there. I almost lost their sympathy. But then we went back down, and it was interesting because there was an exhibition of very modern architects, [Walter] Gropius, and all those, and [Ludwig] Miës van der Rohe--all the modern architects had a big exhibition there. And for the first time I saw something like television there. The director of this exhibition [Dr. (?) Michel] was known to us by our sport coach. We did all kinds: I did acrobatics and things like that; my husband did calisthenics; and also we made jogging around and things like that. He was also the coach of this director. The director had a very beautiful house in the middle of Berlin, with a lake and a beautiful park. We were invited there; they usually didn't invite anybody there, but that was all the coach who made this connection. And then he showed me something which nobody had seen at this exhibition: he showed me television, the first television. I didn't know what it was. I just absolutely couldn't understand it: I was standing before a little case, and it looked like a mirror first. And then, all of a sudden, I saw people moving there, and these were the people who were outside of the building. It was not the real television yet, but it was the beginning. Inside, in the building, I saw people who were outside.

WESCHLER

There weren't any commercials yet. [laughter]

FEUCHTWANGER

No, it was an absolutely new invention. It was absolutely new, and only very select people were allowed to see it in a little room. I don't know why it was hidden. Maybe they were afraid that somebody could imitate it, steal the invention. Miës van der Rohe was the other architect, and [Laszlo] Moholy-Nagy (he was also a famous painter)--those had a big exhibition there. I was always for the new things and was interested, and so I thought I should show it to the Russians. But they didn't understand it. They couldn't understand that somebody could be interested in this kind of building. But they were very nice, and we heard that they wrote also very nice about us; but since we couldn't read Russian, we didn't know it. Only about Fedin we had somebody translate it for us.

WESCHLER

Were there many Russians in Berlin at that time?

FEUCHTWANGER

No, no. Never. [And that was also] the only visit from England. English people didn't go to Germany; they still hated Germany from the First World War (which ended in 1918, and this was not even ten years after). There was still a great hate for the destruction with the Big Bertha.

WESCHLER

The attacks on London.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. My husband was the first one who had been translated abroad--in fact, the very first one, right after the war in France. I think I told you about that, his prisoner-of-war play [Die Kriegsgefangenen], which was then translated and published in a newspaper. But this was something else; it was the big success of a novelist then. That they came was really something. It was also in the newspapers; usually they didn't bring just those personal things in the news in Germany.

WESCHLER

What were some of the things that he was working on at that time in the early days in Berlin?

FEUCHTWANGER

Most of the time he wrote Success.

WESCHLER

Already at that time, very early on...?

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, ja. That was the only thing he did really, except the play with Brecht together, Kalkutta, 4. Mai, and another play alone, Wird Hill Amnestiert? (Will Hill Be Amnestied?) which had been performed at the State Theatre, just before Hitler. And then it was Success; I think he wrote more than three years on Success. We came in '25 and he finished it in '28, and then it had to be printed. So it was most of the time, and when I was skiing in the Alps, then he sent me the proofs to correct.

WESCHLER

You might tell that story on tape.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. When I was skiing, we usually were in a group and had a guide or a teacher. We made big tours on the high mountains.

WESCHLER

Did Lion ski as well as you?

FEUCHTWANGER

He had tried. When I began, we went together--it was during the war--to Austria, which was our ally. Here there was this famous man, Hannes Schneider, who was at first only a porter who brought the water to the ski huts and also the wood to make a fire, because it was high above the trees, in the snow where no trees were growing. He was discovered by the brother-in-law of Sigmund Freud, because he saw him skiing. Skiing was very new. It was done only in Sweden first, but only to go from one place to the other. In Sweden there are no high mountains, so it was only long cross-country. This was like in a car or something; it was faster going, faster than walking. In Switzerland, those people who were guides for the mountains in summer, they did some skiing, but they just went down skiing; and they usually fell down. There was no method or so: very fast go, and then falling. And this young peasant was a man who was thinking. Mr. Bernays--that was the brother-in-law of Sigmund Freud,* he was an American; he came there only for the beauty of the winter landscape--he was interested in him and told him to develop what he did for skiing. So he developed a method that you don't have to fall: you can ski whole mountains without falling a single time. Even very daring descents or so. It was called the Hannes Schneider method. We went to Sankt Anton, where he lived, and he was our teacher there. But there was no snow. Although it was January, there was almost no snow, only one meadow, a steep meadow, where the snow was ice. There we began to ski, and Hannes Schneider was there to supervise--he had also teachers--and he said, "I cannot teach skiing. Skiing is not skating, and we cannot ski on ice." But still he wanted to show us a little bit the method. And I did it all right. But my husband--the first time he wanted to go down, he fell. The ice was interrupted by a stone; he fell and hurt himself very badly on his backbone. Immediately he got up and didn't tell right away that it hurt very much, but then we found out he had to give up for the time being at least. So he never went back to skiing, because he had also his work to do. He didn't want to interrupt something for something he couldn't do very well. I also think it was because in sports he was more enduring than skillful.

*Walter Bernays was in fact a third cousin of Freud's wife, not her brother.

WESCHLER

You often went on these ski trips?

FEUCHTWANGER

I went every year. That was always my birthday present, that I could go skiing.

WESCHLER

You always went by yourself?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, I went by myself. I wasn't long by myself there. But Hannes Schneider was very nice to my husband, and he told him that he shouldn't try to ski anymore because it could get worse. He should try to cure that out. He was a great admirer of my husband because he read The Ugly Duchess. It [takes place in] Tyrol, you know, his nearest homeland, and he knew the novel and was a great admirer of my husband. Later on, Hannes Schneider, who was very tall and good looking--he looked like a Gothic saint from a church, brown and tall, and the ladies ran after him (that was always the case with ski teachers, but especially him), especially and mostly aristocratic ladies and so. He always tried a little bit to begin to flirt with me, but I didn't like to flirt with a man of whom I knew that he was married. He had a very nice wife.

WESCHLER

You only liked to flirt with those who you knew weren't married.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja. I didn't want to disturb things like that; it wasn't worthwhile. It was very funny: it was a kind of friendship, and also sometimes irritating him, the friendship. Then he had a terrible accident: he fell down, also because it was so icy. He was bringing some water up to the ski hut. With a very rich American he went there. He had this thing on his back instead of a backpack, and it was copper and very difficult to transport over the narrow, very narrow trail. On the other side there was a little river, which was usually frozen in winter, but it was running a little bit. It was very high, a kind of canyon, a tall canyon, a very big canyon. I was on the other side, going to another ski hut with friends. We made fun. (There were no ski lifts; you had to walk everywhere.) And he said he recognized my laughing and at that moment he fell, way down into the abyss. Maybe it was that his attention was taken away from this dangerous path because he heard me laughing. Anyway he told me that afterwards. He broke his thigh, which was very bad in those days, and bad for a skier because usually when somebody broke a thigh the leg was always shorter then. I went back home from there, I went to Innsbruck--that was the next town where he was in the hospital--and I visited him. For him it was a great thing that I came there; he never forgot that. Because it was not for flirting; it was just for friendship. Then he told me that he was near death several days before because he had an embolism in his lung from this fall; It was a compound fracture, and he had an embolism in his lung. And just by chance--he was already given up--he vomited the whole thing, a kind of bleeding of the lung which could be very dangerous; but in this case it saved him because the embolism came out, this piece of dried blood which was in his lung, and so he was saved. We saw each other every year, and always there was a kind of irritation that he couldn't get what he wanted. But on the other side he was very grateful; he never forgot that I visited him when he was sick.

WESCHLER

Meanwhile you were going to tell a story about the galley proofs of Success.

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes. Once it already had been printed, in '28 or so, there were the galley proofs of Success. And the secretary, who should do it, she just couldn't do it; she was not up to it. So my husband was very desperate because he wanted to write something else; he wrote some essays in those days, and he wanted not to be bothered with the proofs. But the secretary was not used to those things and he finally told her, "Send it to Marta at Sankt Anton." So every night after skiing and after we had dinner--I had dinner with the others--I went to my room and read the proofs. I wanted to do it right, so I couldn't go dancing like the others, and I got the worst reputation because they thought always I had a lover with me. I couldn't get that out of them. They never would have believed it. And Hannes Schneider was very upset; he didn't even look at me anymore. [laughter]

WESCHLER

I suppose we should go back to Berlin a little bit more and talk about your life in those very early days in Berlin. I had asked you about Kurt Weill. Maybe you could tell us a little bit more about him.

FEUCHTWANGER

Kurt Weill was a very young man still and he wasn't married yet, but he knew already Lotte Lenya. Also Brecht knew Lotte Lenya, and when my husband's play The Oil Islands was played at the State Theatre, Brecht and also Weill insisted that my husband would let her play in this first performance. It would be a great chance for her; she was a dancer before. My husband said, "Yes, it's all right." The ugly woman then was [played by] Maria Koppenhöfer; that I insisted because she was still young. There was a very famous, more famous, actress who wanted to play the part; her name was Lucie Höflich and I admired her very much. But I thought we should give a chance to a young actress, and I insisted that the part be given to Maria Koppenhöfer. The other should be a very beautiful girl, very exotic looking, and my husband said, "It's all right. but she is not a beauty and that is necessary."

WESCHLER

Lotte Lenya.

FEUCHTWANGER

Lotte Lenya. But Brecht insisted that that's just it: she has to be sexy but not so beautiful. So my husband gave in. And she was really very good. Kurt Weill wrote the incidental music for it. And also she sang some songs.

WESCHLER

This was before she was famous.

FEUCHTWANGER

Ja, immediately she became famous then. Not after this play, but after The Threepenny Opera.

WESCHLER

This was before The Threepenny Opera?

FEUCHTWANGER

Yes, it was before. Then Brecht and Weill--Hanns Eisler, I think, composed also something. Was it Hanns Eisler who composed then Kalkutta, 4. Mai? But there is a song which Sybille Binder, who played the wife of Warren Hastings, sings to the guitar; she sang "Surabaya Jhonny, "this famous ballad which Weill composed; she sang that in Kalkutta, 4. Mai. So there was always an interplay between the four, I would say--Brecht and Eisler and Weill and Feuchtwanger.

WESCHLER

Well, let me turn this tape over.

FEUCHTWANGER

But with Eisler, I'm not so sure. I will have to find out if Eisler was involved. I don't know if Eisler made the music; I think it was always Weill.