The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

The Oppermanns by Lion Feuchtwanger

"A long-forgotten masterpiece published in 1933 . . . A remnant of a world sick with foreboding, incredulity, creeping fear, and--this may feel most familiar to us today--the impossibility of gauging whether a society is really at the breaking point." --Gal Beckerman, The Atlantic

Written in real time, as the Nazis consolidated their power over the winter of 1933, The Oppermanns captures the fall of Weimar Germany through the eyes of one bourgeois Jewish family, shocked and paralyzed by an ideology they cannot comprehend.

In the foment of Weimar-era Berlin, the Oppermann pothers represent tradition and stability. One pother oversees the furniture chain founded by their grandfather, one is an eminent surgeon, one a respected critic. They are rich, cultured, liberal, and public spirited, proud inheritors of the German enlightenment. They don't see Hitler as a threat. Then, to their horror, the Nazis come to power, and the Oppermanns and their children are faced with the terrible decision of whether to adapt--if they can--flee, or try to fight.

Written in 1933, nearly in real time, The Oppermanns captures the day-to-day vertigo of watching a liberal democracy fall apart. As Joshua Cohen writes in his introduction to this new edition, it is "one of the last masterpieces of German-Jewish culture." Prescient and chilling, it has lost none of its power today.

The celebrated German-Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958) was an incomparable master of the historical novel, applying his distinctive technique of projecting critical contemporary themes onto exceptional individuals and complex historical scenery from times long gone. Using a thorough knowledge of historical detail and playing the role of an enlightened philosopher with a highly idiosyncratic literary style, he engaged both ancient Jewish history and the dilemmas of Jewish existence in his key writings. Throughout his career, Feuchtwanger was drawn to a central theme of Jewishness, and his best work presents the enigma of the Jew and treats the quandary of being Jewish in a non-Jewish world. He depicts the predicament of the modern Jew, of whatever historical period, in achieving a synthesis of his or her particular relationship to the Jewish people and a universal relationship to all humanity. Beginning in 1925 with his instantly famous novel Jew Suss and followed by his Josephus trilogy-Josephus (The Judean War), 1932; The Jew of Rome, 1935; and Josephus and the Emperor (The Emperor and His Jew), 1942-Feuchtwanger deals with the theme of nationalism versus cosmopolitanism, in the trilogy specifically via the life of Josephus Flavius, the renowned yet controversial Jewish historian of the first century. In these inimitable and haunting works, as also in his life, Josephus witnesses firsthand the tragic fall of Judea and the Jerusalem Temple, and then spends his life defending the Jewish cause on the world's greatest stage at the time, Rome. Feuchtwanger also wrote fascinating historical novels on Goya the artist, Benjamin Franklin in France (Arms for America), and Rousseau the philosopher. Toward his life's end in California, Feuchtwanger took up the theme of Jewishness again in his novel Raquel, the Jewess of Toledo (all available from MaKoM---see MaKoM Publications titles).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781946022332
ISBN 10	1946022330
Title	The Oppermanns
Author	Lion Feuchtwanger
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	McNally Jackson Books
Year published	2022-10-18
Number of pages	400
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.