The Oppermanns

[he [] PPER MAN NS LION FEUCHTWANGER Translated Irnrn the German by JAMES CLEUGH With an introduction by RUTH GRUBER CARROLL & GRAF PUBLISHERS, INC. NEWYORK

Copyright © 1934 by The Viking Press, Inc. Copyright © renewed 1962 by The Viking Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by arrangement with Viking Penguin, Inc. Translated from the German by James Cleugh First Carroll & Graf edition 1983 Second Carroll & Graf edition 2001 Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. A Division of Avalon Publishing Group 19 West 21 st Street New York, r~y 10010-6805 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN: 0-7867-0880 -8 Manufactured in the United States of America

Critical Praise for Lion Feuchtwanger's The Oppermanns "The story of the Oppermanns appeals to our reason, our sense of justice, our indignation. But [the novel] appeals to our emotions as well; those emotions, detached but pro- found, which it is the problem of pure artistic creation to arouse .... Feuchtwanger, no more than Voltaire or Zola (in the Dreyfuss case), is concerning hirnself with the literary val- ues of his material. ... And so this novel is addressed to the German people, who will not be allowed to read it, urging them to open their eyes. And it is addressed to the world out- side bearing the message, "Wake up! The barbarians are upon us!" -New York Times Book Review, 1934 "The book is a loosely imaginative commentary on the course of events in Germany from the period of General von Schleicher's brief Chancellorship to a few months after the appointment of Herr Hitler as Chancellor. Inevitably the result is something both less and more than a novel. ... " - Tim es Literary Supplement (London) "There are few novelists living today who can compete with Feuchtwanger's rare gifts of historical observation and understanding of individual character." - Booklist "A powerful, gripping appeal to the world on behalf of a declassed minority which has lost its right to the quiet enjoy- ment of life and liberty." - Boston Transcript "Solid and exciting, conceived and realized by an artist, the best novel Feuchtwanger has written." - The New Republic "Feuchtwanger is a brilliant enough writer to know how to plead his cause popularly and incomparably." - Chicago Tribune

INTRODUCTION H e sits on the sofa in his hotel suite, his head hunched forward as if he is reading a book. He is a small man with agentIe voice, a giant among the German [ew- ish novelists rescued from Nazi terror. He is Lion (pro- nounced Leon) Feuchtwanger. It is 1947, and I meet hirn while he is in New York on a lecture tour. He speaks to me the way he writes; with cool logic and a carefully controlled passion. He teils me that he writes to shake the world, as he did with his novel The Oppermanns, as timely and riveting in 2001 as when he published it in 1933, the very year Hitler rose to power. I had come to interview hirn, but almost at once he was in- terviewing me. "What do you do," he smiled, "when you're not cross-exam- ining your willing victims?" I hesitated, and said, "I'rn writing a novel." He waited for me to go on. "It's about a young couple who meet in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Persons Camp." "And what's the problern?" he asked. "Mrs. Ogden Reid, the owner of the Neu/ York Herald Tri- bune, has asked me to cover the voyage of UNSCOP-the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine. It means giv- ing up the novel and traveling some four months through Germany, Austria, Palestine, and the Arab world. I'rn in full v