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KAHN / THREE CENTRAL EUROPEAN WRITERS
107
pay the price. Yet, not even at the height o f his pro-Soviet sympa
thies did Feuchtwanger allow these to in trude themselves into his
work. Where he dealt with related issues, he presented both pros
and cons and even his Communists reveal a degree o f skepticism.
While he never felt tha t he needed publicly to add his voice o f dis
enchan tm en t to the chorus o f detractors, he had his own private
doubts. His attitude was perhaps best explained in a le tter to a
German adm irer. “T he world cannot be explained without
Marx,” he wrote, “bu t it cannot be explained by Marx alone.” This
failure to embrace Marxism in its totality also led to some literary
differences with his collaborator on some plays, ex-protege and
friend , Bertolt Brecht.
Unlike Wassermann who was defensive about his Jewishness
and complained about the failure o f Germans to accept Jews,
Feuchtwanger was neither defensive no r aggressive about his
Jewish identity. He accepted it as ano ther facet o f his personality
and inne r makeup and as such to be recognized, accepted and
nu r tu red . What he adm ired about Jews was the ir ability to survive
on the basis o f a Book, o f a common spirit. In his own words:
They had no state, holding them together, no country, no
soil, no king, no form o f life in common. If, in spite o f this,
they were one, more than all the o the r peoples o f the world,
it was the Book tha t sweated them into unity . . . They bound
it with phylacteries round heart and head; they fastened it to
the ir doors; they opened and closed the day with it; as suck
lings they learned the Word; and they died with the Word
on their lips. From the Word they drew the streng th to
endu re the piled-up afflictions o f the ir way.
{Power,
pp.
165-6)
HIS TRILOGY
While
Jew Suess
first catapulted him to international fame, the
Josephus trilogy and especially its first volume may be his greatest
Jewish work. T h e ir writing and publishing history is in itself
linked to contemporary Jewish history. T he first Josephus was
published only a few months before H itler gained power and its
German title “Der jiidische Krieg” (The Jewish War) may have
been one reason — however false — for its quick success. T he sec
ond volume was lost when Storm T roope rs invaded his Berlin