The Devil in France, a Memoir of Feuchtwanger’S Internment and Escape from Vichy France in 1940
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
T H E D EV I L I N FRANCE My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 LION FEUCHTWANGER USC LIBRARIES UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA “Enemy Number One”: Lion Feuchtwanger and the Literature of Exile A Visions and Voices event series organized by the USC Libraries The USC Libraries are home to the papers and library of historical novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, who escaped his native Germany after Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933. An outspoken critic of the Nazi Party, his books were burned, and propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels declared him “Enemy Number One of the German people.” The libraries recently published a new edition of The Devil in France, a memoir of Feuchtwanger’s internment and escape from Vichy France in 1940. His story reveals the struggles faced by artists who speak truth to power and endure exile from their native countries. In conjunction, the USC Libraries and Visions and Voices present: Panel Discussion Wednesday, September 29, 12:00 p.m. Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, 2nd floor Doheny Memorial Library In honor of Banned Books Week, join us for a panel discussion about censorship, political repression, and writing in exile with Feuchtwanger Fellow Christopher Mlalazi of Zimbabwe—a playwright and poet under government surveillance for writing critically about the Mugabe regime—professors Michelle Gordon (English) and Wolf Gruner (History) of USC College; and Cornelius Schnauber, director of USC’s Max Kade Institute. Marje Schuetze-Coburn of the USC Libraries will moderate. Tour and Performance at Villa Aurora Tuesday, October 26 Busses leave campus at 5:15 p.m. RSVP required Get an intimate look at Lion Feuchtwanger’s life in exile by visiting his former home in Pacific Palisades, where he hosted figures like Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann, and Arnold Schoenberg. There, he and other émigrés exchanged ideas about art and politics, read from works in progress, and debated their relationship to Southern California, the United States, and Europe. After a welcoming reception and tour, enjoy a reading of letters between Lion and his wife Marta Feuchtwanger from the 1930s and 1940s. www.usc.edu/visionsandvoices Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958) was the celebrated author of Jew Suess (1925), The Oppermanns (1933), This Is the Hour (1951), and numerous other historical novels, plays, and essays. He was a fearless critic of the Nazi regime, writing many articles for European newspapers in the 1930s and exposing their ideological bankruptcy in his novel Success (1930). After escaping Europe in 1940, he and his wife Marta settled in Los Angeles, where many other German émigré artists and intellectuals gathered during World War II. Villa Aurora, their former home in Pacific Palisades, is now an international artists’ residence. The Devil in France is novelist Lion Feuchtwanger’s memoir of exile and internment during World War II. Published in 1941, his account blends vivid descriptions of the Les Milles internment camp with reflections about humanity and survival. He recounts the cosmic apathy of the French officials and the absurdity of his situation. A well-known critic of the Nazi regime, he was first imprisoned because of French fears about German aggression. This meant he was interned at Les Milles along with Nazi sympathizers and spies. Vivid in Feuchtwanger’s memoir are the physical world of the camp—a hot, dusty, abandoned brickyard—and the wit and optimism that enabled him to cope with the uncertainty and seeming hopelessness of his plight. www.usc.edu/libraries/devilinfrance T H E D EV I L I N F RANCE My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 Lion Feuchtwanger USC LIBRARIES UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA USC LIBRARIES Published by Figueroa Press 840 Childs Way, 3rd Floor University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA 90089-2540 © Aufbau Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Berlin 1997, 2009 All rights reserved No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission from the publisher, except in the context of reviews. Every reasonable attempt has been made to identify owners of copyright. All historic photographs are from the collections of USC’s Feuchtwanger Memorial Library. Cover illustrations appear courtesy of USC School of Architecture students Marcos Carrillo, Alex Hagentorn, Lillian Lin, Nicholas Tedesco, and Kevin Yan. ISBN-10: 1-932800-66-2 ISBN-13: 978-1-932800-66-1 Library of Congress Control Number: 2010925617 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Feuchtwanger, Lion. The devil in France: my encounter with him in the summer of 1940 / Lion Feuchtwanger. Translated from the German by Elisabeth Abbott. Edited by Bill Dotson, Marje Schuetze-Coburn, and Michaela Ullmann. p. cm. Includes The escape / Marta Feuchtwanger. Translated from the German by Adrian Feuchtwanger. 1. Feuchtwanger, Lion, 1884-1958. 2. World War, 1939-1945—Prisoners and prisons, French. 3. World War, 1939-1945—Personal narratives, German. I. Feuchtwanger, Marta—The escape. II. Feuchtwanger, Adrian tr. III. Abbott, Elisabeth, tr. The first English language edition of The Devil in France—which did not include Marta Feuchtwanger’s “The Escape”—was published by the Viking Press, New York, in 1941. Mexico’s El Libro Libre published the first German edition under the title Unholdes Frankreich in 1942. Book and map design by Howard P. Smith Contents Foreword | Catherine Quinlan 7 Introduction | Marje Schuetze-Coburn 11 The Devil in France | Lion Feuchtwanger 17 The Bricks of Les Milles 17 The Ships of Bayonne 99 The Tents of Nîmes 173 The Gardens of Marseille 261 The Escape | Marta Feuchtwanger 265 Timeline | Michaela Ullmann 279 Acknowledgements 291 Map of Europe Inside Back Cover FOREWORD Catherine Quinlan 7 CATHERINE QUINLAN When the USC Libraries published Against the Eternal Yesterday in 2009, we took an important step in our commitment to preserving and carrying forward the story and stories of Lion Feuchtwanger. Published in partnership with Villa Aurora and the International Feuchtwanger Society, that collection of essays explored the cultural, historical, and academic context of Feuchtwanger’s work and supported the active community of inquiry that thrives around his legacy. We are now proud to present a new edition of Feuchtwanger’s memoir, The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940. This is the first updated, English-language edition since Viking Press issued the original in 1941. We invite the USC community, Feuchtwanger scholars around the world, and new generations of readers to rediscover or explore for the first time this exceptionally personal story set against global upheaval and impending atrocity. When Feuchtwanger writes in The Devil in France that his interest in history lures him “into thinking out loud of how a writer of the year 2000 will…express what a journalist of the year 1940 is saying now,” he is expressing curiosity about how we tell and retell stories. He is asking how the evolution of language complicates the documentation of human experience and the comprehension of history. He is wondering—as he does once more when invoking the words of German philosopher Theodor Lessing—how writers in the next century will “give meaning to the meaningless” through acts of creativity. Great libraries like ours share Feuchtwanger’s concern for the continuity of knowledge, and reissuing The Devil in France is one of the many ways we are acting on that concern. With this new edition, we are helping readers of 2010 understand what compelled a writer of historical fiction to tell a true story—that of his internment at Les 8 FOREWORD Milles in 1940. We are protecting a unique articulation of a personal history. We are preserving a valuable intellectual resource that will inform research yet to be conducted and inspire stories yet to be told. As home to the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, we have been able to supplement this edition of The Devil in France by drawing upon our extensive collections relating to Feuchtwanger and the study of German exiles. We have created a detailed timeline and map to provide more biographical and geographical perspective; we have included as a postscript Marta Feuchtwanger’s account of the couple’s escape from Europe; and we have consulted the German-language manuscript to refine the original, 1941 English translation. I am grateful to our partners at Villa Aurora and USC Visions and Voices, with whom we are collaborating to build a series of events around this memoir. Much as we have sought to enrich explorations of this narrative by adding context, our events will encourage members of our community to discover Feuchtwanger’s story through diverse and challenging experiences. Programming such as performances, readings, and inventive online experiences have the potential to inspire meaningful engagement with many aspects of the USC Libraries’ collections, and so this publication and related events also serve as a pilot project for introducing a one campus, one book program to USC. Beginning this fall with The Devil in France, we will hold annual events that support the perseverance of vital stories like those of Lion Feuchtwanger, and that demonstrate the essential role of libraries in preserving individual voices amid the tumult of history. Catherine Quinlan Dean of the USC Libraries 9 INTRODUCTION Marje Schuetze-Coburn 11 MARJE SCHUETZE-COBURN Lion Feuchtwanger’s memoir The Devil in France: My Encounter with Him in the Summer of 1940 is unique among the author’s extensive writings. With this work, Feuchtwanger shares his personal thoughts and feelings, blending his observations with the chronology of events during his time behind barbed wire. At the time of its publication, Feuchtwanger’s fans knew and loved him for his historical fiction—his long, dense novels filled with rich descriptions and details from the past.