Women in Exile

Acknowledgments

The International Feuchtwanger Society (IFS) gratefully acknowledges the support of our sponsors whose generosity made possible the success of the tenth biennial conference of the IFS “Women in Exile: Feuchtwanger and Gender Dynamics in Exile and in Exile Literature”: USC Libraries, Interim Dean Andrew T. Guzman, and Dean Melissa Just at the University of Southern California; Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades; and the Austrian and German Consulates in Los Angeles. We also wish to thank all the colleagues who participated and attended the conference, especially those who shared their final research papers for inclusion in this volume.

Birgit Maier-Katkin, Marje Schuetze-Coburn, and Michaela Ullmann

Introduction

Wenn ich mit Freunden zusammensitze und sie mich über mein Leben mit Lion ausfragen, erzähle ich von unseren kleinen und manchmal auch nicht so kleinen Erlebnissen oder von turbulenten Ereignissen, die über uns zusammenbrachen und wie wir sie dann durchgestanden haben.

[When I spend time with friends and they ask about my life with Lion, I tell them about our small and at times not so small experiences or about the dramatic events that came down on us and how we got through it all]

— Marta Feuchtwanger, Nur eine Frau (Berlin und Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1984).

With its focus on women in exile and particularly with Feuchtwanger and Gender Dynamics, this volume aims to participate in the ongoing discourse about women’s presence, contribution, and experience of historical events. The Nazi period not only affected the lives of men but also challenged women to forge a path outside their home country. Regarding the well-known Lion Feuchtwanger, it was his wife, Marta Feuchtwanger, who worked diligently in the background and was involved in promoting his success and legacy. To the inner circles of friends and family, Marta was well known for her social gatherings, her skill of storytelling, her sherry and Apfelstrudel (apple pie), and her vibrant and energetic personality. This reveals that behind a famous and celebrated man, there tend to be multiple, often unacknowledged, contributions from women that play a large part in their success and continued recognition. A closer look at female participation during the period of exile from Nazi Germany reveals a nuanced understanding of historical experience. Women in exile have been instrumental in adjusting to and succeeding in the new, often unbearable environment of foreign surroundings. Many exiled women joined their men in exile; they were homemakers, secretaries, chefs, translators, drivers, personal assistants, artists, musicians, scholars, and much more. Some had their own successful careers and professional accomplishments while at the same time taking care of family business.

This volume aims to connect Lion Feuchtwanger’s work to the gendered experience of exile from Nazi Germany and is divided into five parts. Part I offers a detailed exploration of select women who—in some way or another—shared their life with Lion Feuchtwanger. Part II examines women’s influence on Feuchtwanger’s work and exile experience. Part III explores the depiction of women characters in Lion Feuchtwanger’s work, Part IV branches out to explore select women (unrelated to Feuchtwanger) who exemplify noteworthy perspectives of women in exile, and Part V offers Edgar Feuchtwanger’s insider view on Lion Feuchtwanger’s diaries. The volume offers an interdisciplinary discussion of how women represent, experience, and are depicted within a life in exile. Contributions to this volume arose from the International Feuchtwanger Society conference held in Los Angeles, Southern California on September 15–17, 2023, along with additional solicited papers. The topic of women in exile is not unique to this volume. It has been approached by scholars including Charmian Brinson, Judith Gerson, Atina Grossmann, Hiltrud Häntzschel, Marion Kaplan, Dagmar Lorenz, Sybille Quack, Inge Hansen-Schaberg, or exile organizations such as Frauen im Exil (Women in Exile), to name a few. What differentiates this volume is a focus on women in exile that draws connections to the Feuchtwanger family and to Lion Feuchtwanger’s work, but also seeks to shed light on some select unique gendered exile perspectives unrelated to the Feuchtwangers.

All five parts in this book aim to connect three elements of gendered literary analysis: (1) to promote and make women visible who typically remain hidden behind their male counterparts, (2) to explore how women are depicted in literature, and (3) to connect forced exile from Nazi Germany to gendered experiences and perspectives that shaped women’s lives and that of the wider (often male dominant) exile community.

The following gives a more detailed overview regarding each part and chapter contributions.

Part I begins with biographical studies of women who either have a personal connection with or are related to Lion Feuchtwanger. Birgit Maier-Katkin takes a closer look at Lion’s First Lady Marta Feuchtwanger who after Lion’s death began to manage his literary heritage and successfully promoted his legacy across two continents (Germany and the United States). Maier-Katkin argues that it is due to Marta’s ingenious, unrelenting, and diligent efforts that Lion’s work is still remembered today and that their house in Los Angeles became a famous residence for artists and exiles. Heike Specht sheds light on several women in the Feuchtwanger family who not only played a decisive role in promoting the family wealth but also showed great intuition and socio-political understanding when the family was under attack by the Nazi government and had to initiate new ways to survive in exile outside of Germany. Specht reveals how the Feuchtwanger family’s ascent from Wirtschafts- to Bildungsbürgertum (economic to educated bourgeoisie) explains the unique contribution Feuchtwanger women added to the public success of Lion Feuchtwanger’s generation.

Part II treats biographical connections between Feuchtwanger and the women who played an instrumental role during his exile. Roland Jaeger looks at the extensive correspondence between Lion Feuchtwanger and Lola Humm-Sernau (his long-time secretary in Berlin and Sanary-sur-Mer, France) to show not only the importance of written correspondence but also to point to Sernau’s own career and work in exile that so far has received little acknowledgment. William Katin writes about two women Ingrid Warburg and Eleanor Roosevelt who were influential in Lion Feuchtwanger’s successful escape to the United States. His essay points to the fact that some women worked behind the scenes, hidden from public and official recognition, in order to offer their skills and help in the fight against Nazi Germany.

Part III offers literary explorations of select Feuchtwanger novels with a particular focus on gendered depiction. Both Franziska Wolf and Helga Schreckenberger discuss Feuchtwanger’s novel Exil which is part of the Wartesaal Trilogy. Wolf addresses the poetics of female death in Feuchtwanger’s novel and investigates how these deaths are used to create narrative effects that reinforce gender stereotypes. She argues that in Feuchtwanger’s depiction of the moment of death, this is particularly noticeable as the author engineers a dialectic between passive female suffering and active male positioning. Helga Schreckenberger examines the precarious economic and emotional situation that is depicted in Feuchtwanger’s novel Exil as it reflects on the German exile community in 1935 Paris. Schreckenberger argues that the novel assigns to the concept of exile two different gendered meanings embodied in Sepp and Anna. Sepp exemplifies the nomadic, active, and successful spirit of exile, the figure of “Recke” and Anna embodies the condition of “Elend” as she remains rooted to her pre-exile existence, unsuccessfully searching for financial and domestic stability. In her essay about the Josephus Trilogy, Tanja Kinkel explores high-ranking female personalities from Ancient Rome. Kinkel connects Feuchtwanger’s depiction of Berenice, Dorion, Mara, and Lucia to questions of acculturation, identity formation, and the experience of exile. Kinkel points out that all three novels reveal an interesting power dynamic between men and women, and argues that in the final analysis, Feuchtwanger reveals an inherent gendered miscommunication that is manifested in the inability to understand each other. Frank Stern continues Kinkel’s discussion of Feuchtwanger’s female legends and mythologies in ancient times with a Midrash reading of Feuchtwanger’s novel Jephthah and His Daughter. He shows how Feuchtwanger was aware of the Jewish written and oral tradition and the Midrashim that dealt intensively with daughter and father. Stern argues that Feuchtwanger’s work indicates his ongoing literary fascination with female personalities in biblical and later times.

Part IV expands the discussion about women and Lion Feuchtwanger to include a select group of exile women whose exile experience in different parts of the world demonstrates not only gendered challenges that needed to be overcome but also unique artistic and social perspectives that women introduced to their communities and contributed to their surroundings in exile. Jacqueline Vansant discusses exile networks in Minna Lachs’ autobiographical reflections to reveal how various networks function in a time of crises. Her essay shows the important role of a variety of formal and informal networks played in Lachs’ successful preparations to leave and eventual escape from Nazi Austria. Through the genre of the memoir, Käthe Erichsen offers a reading of exile and gender in Sonia Wachstein’s Hagenberggasse 49 in which she examines the simultaneous conveying of lyrical storytelling and historical testimony. Erichsen’s essay explores how the status of exile prompts a negotiation between home and displacement to compose a new identity. Christina Wieder looks at gendered exile in Argentina. Her essay focuses on Hedy Crilla and Irena Dodal whose film creations provide insight into the kind of concrete emancipation images artists brought from their homelands. Wieder argues that through a form of self-translation their film creations represent their country of origin and simultaneously make elements of their exile country visible. Wieder reads this as a way to offset personal and professional fragmentation caused by the experience of exile. Examining Lotte Lenya, a star performer in the 1920s in some of Bertolt Brecht’s plays during the Weimar Republic, Margrit Fröhlich shows how after a slow and almost failed start, Lenya attained a near cult status in America. She became a musical and film star and was known for her genial interpretations of Brecht’s and Kurt Weill’s work. Camille Jenn-Gastal traces the German-Jewish musicologist Annelise Landau through exile. Although Landau struggled after her arrival in New York, she was able to reestablish her career and ultimately succeeded in her mission to make German-Jewish composers known to the American public. Katrin Sippel addresses women’s exile experience in Portugal from the perspective of women’s fashion. The essay shows how from the male viewpoint of influential and powerful Portuguese male community leaders, the presence of Jewish women from Germany and Austria was seen as a threat to the more conservative moral values imposed (by state policies) on Portuguese women. Sippel argues that while some women exiles were castigated for their fashion and public assertive behavior, and came into conflict with the law, in the final analysis their presence began to modernize the stringent male–female divide and subsequently allowed Portuguese women to adopt a more independent manner in the public space. In Part V, the book concludes with a return to gendered biographical information as Edgar Feuchtwanger shares his insider commentary on his grand-uncle’s relationship with women. By mostly focusing on Lion Feuchtwanger’s recently published diaries, he provides a comprehensive review from the perspective of a survivor and softens the tone that sharply criticizes Lion’s objectification of women.

The authors in this volume investigate biographical, historical, literary, cross-cultural, and cross-gender aspects of women and female characters and their influence on Lion Feuchtwanger’s personal biography, his writings, and the world in which he lived, as well as women’s experience in exile in a more general way. These fifteen chapters written by authors from Austria, England, France, Germany, and the United States provide new insights and evidence of women who had a direct and profound impact on Lion Feuchtwanger’s life and creative impulses, as well as women whose contributions impacted the exile experience more broadly. This volume advances exile studies scholarship through its focus on gender, women’s roles, and the use of innovative approaches that move beyond traditional biographical surveys by incorporating fashion, art, and popular culture.

Birgit Maier-Katkin

1 Marta Feuchtwanger’s Ingenuity: Memorializing Lion Feuchtwanger

ABSTRACT

This chapter explores Marta Feuchtwanger’s support and personal investment in the literary career of her husband Lion Feuchtwanger. From the beginning of their relationship, Marta gave Lion her undivided support and this continued well beyond his death. The main focus of this chapter will be on the years after Lion’s death when Marta began to manage Lion’s literary legacy. From her place of exile in Los Angeles, she reached out to a widespread international community to promote Lion’s work and to keep exile themes at the center of postwar discourse. The chapter examines how Marta memorialized Lion. It looks at the initiatives she started, the contacts she promoted, and the legacy she created for Lion, for herself, and the field of exile studies. This allows us to examine how the woman who stood by her husband’s side throughout their forty-six years of marriage became one of the most outspoken proponents of his work and shaped Lion’s legacy well after his death.