FEUCHTWANGER, LION

born July 7, 1884, Munich, Ger. died Dec. 21, 1958, Los Angeles, Calif., U.S. German novelist and playwright known for his historical romances. Born of a Jewish family, Feuchtwanger studied philology and literature at Berlin and Munich (190307) and took his doctorate in 1918. Also in 1918 he founded a literary paper, Der Spiegel. His first historical novel was Die hssliche Herzogin (1923; The Ugly Duchess), about Margaret Maultasch, Duchess of Tirol. His finest novel, Jud Sss (1925; also published as Jew Sss and Power), set in 18th-century Germany, revealed a depth of psychological analysis that remained characteristic of his subsequent workthe Josephus-Trilogie (Der jdische Krieg, 1932; Die Shne, 1935; Der Tag wird kommen, 1945); Die Geschwister Oppenheim (1933; The Oppermanns), a novel of modern life; and Der falsche Nero (1936; The Pretender). Jud Sss tells the story of a brilliant and charismatic Jewish financier who adroitly manages the revenues of the Duke of Wrttemberg. After the tragic death of his daughter, Sss voluntarily renounces the pursuit of power and is tried and executed by his political enemies. Feuchtwanger was exiled in 1933 and moved to France, from where he escaped to the United States in 1940 after some months in a concentration camp, described in The Devil in France (1941). Of his later works the best known are Proud Destiny (1947), Goya oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1951; This Is the Hour), and Jepta und seine Tochter (1957; Jephthah and His Daughter). His German translations of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II (in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht) and of plays by Aeschylus and Aristophanes also are highly regarded.