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KAHN / THREE CENTRAL EUROPEAN WRITERS
105
pera te about the Jews’ chances ever to gain acceptance. Some
examples:
Futile (for the Jew) to act in exemplary fashion. They say:
We know nothing! We have seen nothing! We have heard
nothing!
Vain to seek obscurity. They say: T he coward! He is try
ing to hide, driven by his evil conscience.
Futile to go among them and o ffer them one’s hand . They
say: Why does he take such liberties with his Jewish in tru
siveness?
Writing some time la ter in
Lebensdienst
(A Life’s Service), the
writer pointed to Rathenau, patriot ex traord inaire, noble soul,
miracle worker, man o f spirit. He was not welcome, and was
viewed as the e ternal alien. It is all reminiscent o f Auerbach
declaring toward the end o f his life tha t he had lived in vain.
Wassermann was working on “Ahasver,” a novel o f Jewish
destiny, when he died. Little did he suspect tha t less than a decade
la ter even the option o f migration would be closed. . . .
FEUCHTWANGER’S JEWISHNESS
Lion Feuchtwanger, born in Munich o f an orthodox and well-
to-do family, was prone to say that his brain though t international
while his heart beat Jewish. It is significant tha t this au thor, who in
his youth rebelled against the orthodoxy o f his home, wrote his
best and seemingly most lasting novels on Jewish subjects. His
Jew
Suess (Power
in an American edition) has lived on and his
Josephus trilogy — the story o f the Jewish-Roman historian —
may well be the finest specimen o f Jewish historical fiction.
The
Oppermanns
(1934), written in some haste as a quick response to
H itler’s initial assault on Jews, may well be the first book on the
Holocaust. In spite o f the literary shortcomings o f
The
Oppermanns,
the novel depicts splendidly a German-Jewish
u rban and sophisticated family at the time o f H itler’s accession to
power. Two decades later,
Raquel or theJewess of Toledo
(1956) was
to be a reprise o f Jew Suess, the story o f a Spanish Court Jew
whose daugh ter falls prey to the lust o f a Christian king. Finally,
his biblical novel
Jephta
(1957), acclaimed by many as a crowning
achievement, has struck others as Feuchtwanger past his prime.
But Jews also appear frequently in such novels as
Success,
p e r