Wulf Koepke

Lion Feuchtwanger's Discovery of Himself

in Heinrich Heine

World War I changed Lion Feuchtwanger's life. After his short French cap-
tivity in Tunis in 1914, he never escaped the grip of political power. It drove
him from Munich to Berlin, into his French and American exiles, and it kept
him from ever visiting his homeland after 1945. Before 1914, however, he
felt free. Paradoxically, he also felt closest to Heinrich Heine, a German-
Jewish writer and exile before him, and a permanent victim of politics, be-
fore he knew what fate had in store for him. Feuchtwanger's writings in exile
routinely mention Heinrich Heine as an exemplary writer in exile, but unlike
Ludwig Marcuse or Hermann Kesten, Lion Feuchtwanger never really
focused on Heine in his later years. 1 One of the literary plans of his last
years was a series of stories on famous exiles. 2 Maybe Heine would have
been one of them. But, there is a closer, inner connection. After the three
novels on the time of the French Revolution, his trilogy on revolution,
Feuchtwanger returned to the re-creation of Jewish legends: the Jewess of
Toledo and Jephta and his daughter. A return to Jewish themes, in a double
sense: both novels describe a return to one's Jewishness at the expense of
one's happiness. To regain one's identity after being involved in a foreign
world comes at the expense of personal happiness or even one's physical
existence. Feuchtwanger's version of the Raquel story introduces a variation
of the Messiah idea: her son (and the king's!) survives; he is hidden in the
Jewish communities of Europe, but he could be (or one of his descendents
could be) the ruler in the coming age of eternal peace.
Heinrich Heine, in Feuchtwanger's mind, was very much concerned with
the end of the persecution of the Jews. After having tried, in an exemplary
manner, to bridge the gap between Jews and Germans, and to help inaugurate
1
One example, Feuchtwanger's "Der Schriftsteller im Exil" of 1943: "[...] der elegante
und tödliche Haß Heinescher Gedichte, das alles ist nicht denkbar ohne das Exil der
Autoren." Centum opuscula, repr. under the title Ein Buch nur für meine Freunde,
Fischer Taschenbuch 5823 (Frankfurt: 1984), 533. Subsequent quotes from
Feuchtwanger's essays will be from this edition. Beside Ludwig Marcuse, also Max Brod
and Antonina Vallentin wrote books claiming Heine for their cause, and, of course,
numerous essays appeared.
2
Lothar Kahn, Insight and Action. The Life and Work of Lion Feuchtwanger (Rutherford,
Madison, Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975), 345.
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164 WulfKoepke

the age of reason that would eliminate anti-Semitism, Heine, according to

Feuchtwanger, returned to Judaism on his sickbed and recognized that his
idealistic hopes had been mere dreams. Feuchtwanger's early Jewish heroes
had anticipated this return: Jud Süß Oppenheimer gave up his political
gambles for Jewish martyrdom; Flavius Josephus died and disappeared in the
Jewish earth. The image of Heine did not contradict such a search for a
Jewish identity; rather it confirmed it. There are two central points on which
Feuchtwanger based that conviction: Heine's modernism, and, that he, a no-
toriously "bad" Jew, could not escape his heritage.
The most revealing document of Feuchtwanger1 s early preoccupation with
Heinrich Heine is his article, "Heinrich Heine und Oscar Wilde," written in
1908, at a time when a scholarly career seemed still in the cards for Lion
Feuchtwanger. 3 The article is subtitled "Eine psychologische Studie," a
rather provocative declaration at the time of the controversies about Freud's
discoveries and theories. Oscar Wilde was then considered a prototypical
"modern" writer; 4 his Salomi had enthused the young generation. In the ar-
ticle, Feuchtwanger wanted to make two points: he declined to look for pos-
sible "sources" of Wilde in Heine's work. Thus, he repudiated conventional
philological-scholarly methods; but he wished to point out an inner affinity
between the two writers, and thus he viewed Heine, following Nietzsche, as
a prototypical modern writer, similar in may ways to Oscar Wilde. What
Feuchtwanger attempted can be called a variety of Geistesgeschichte, if taken
in a larger sense. It corresponds to the new criticism coming out of Austria
after the turn of the century, written by Hofmannsthal, Kassner, Simmel, and
the young Lukäcs.
Feuchtwanger considered the two writers artverwandt. He sees a tragic
conflict as their innermost being, a conflict between the desire to believe in
great ideals, and the resigned knowledge that those hopes are illusory:
"Dieser unselige Zwiespalt zwischen dem Willen und dem Unvermögen zum
Glauben an ein allversöhnendes Ideal macht Heinrich Heine und Oscar Wilde
zu Wesensverwandten." 5 Both of them are important artists in a monumental
way: "Heine und Wilde sind klein in allem Großen, groß in allem Klei-
nen. "(24) They are masters of artistic form, and they are great in the small
genres, but they cannot sustain the pace of an epic or dramatic work of large
proportions. Also, they considered their art a game; they divorced art from
life. "Dies ist das Gemeinsame ihrer Kunst: sie ist nicht Poesie des Herzens,
sondern Poesie des Hirns. "(26) Heine and Wilde also maintained that there

3
Lothar Kahn, 39-40.
4
Cf. "Von den Engländern war damals Oscar Wilde der meistgelesene. Salomä spielte in
der Phantasie der Heranwachsenden eine ungeheure Rolle." Feuchtwanger,
"Selbstdarstellung," (1933), 357.
5
Quoted from Ein Buch nur für meine Freunde, 17-30, here p. 21.
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Feuchtwanger's Discovery of Himself in H. Heine 165

was no connection between moral character and the artistic talent. A criminal
may be able to write perfect prose or poetry. Both the artist and the criminal
are romantics; both are cosmopolitan. Indeed, they belong to the elite of Eu-
ropean Romanticism: "Als die Gipfelpunkte dieser europäischen Romantik
aber ergäben sich die Namen Heinrich Heine, Victor Hugo, Friedrich
Nietzsche, Oscar Wilde." (29) Indeed, for Feuchtwanger: "Wilde vollendet,
was Heine begann." (29) Feuchtwanger quoted Heine, saying that the poetry
of certain writers was really "eine Krankheit." (30) Is that not typical for
both Heine und Wilde — and the modern age?
Thus, Heine was seen by Feuchtwanger with Nietzsche's eyes as the great
European Romantic, with all the virtues and limitations of Romanticism.
Lion Feuchtwanger, the aspiring dramatist, steeped in the atmosphere of the
true Boheme of Schwabing, saw himself at that time as the successor of Wag-
ner and Nietzsche, as a new poet "des Hirns" at the time of Stefan George
and the early stirrings of Expressionism.
Previous to this study, which was published in Feuchtwanger's very own
short-lived literary journal Der Spiegel, he had written a dissertation entitled
"Heinrich Heines 'Rabbi von Bacherach.' Eine kritische Studie." 6 The disser-
tation caused the very critical Franz Muncker to urge Feuchtwanger to pursue
a scholarly career in the study of German literature, even though Jews were
still barred from becoming professors in Bavaria. He began to work on a
Habilitationsschrift on the origins of jounalistic prose in German literature,
but ultimately preferred the life of a writer and critic. Pieces of the new study
appeared, mainly for financial reasons, in the Frankfurter Zeitung J Feucht-
wanger's dissertation contains three parts: first, the Entstehungsgeschichte,
that is, the reconstruction of when and how Heine wrote this abortive histori-
cal novel; then, second, an analysis of the text and its presumed continuation;
and, finally, a critical - very critical ~ evaluation. I tend to agree that the
author of this dissertation comes through as arrogant and too sure of
himself, 8 but he does not have to worry about much previous scholarship,
and he is, indeed, very familiar with Heine's life and works, as well as with
Jewish history. The real subject was evidently close to his heart: the twisted
relationship of an emancipated, even assimilated, Jew to his Jewish heritage.
Heine, he found out, really tried what Feuchtwanger would do later himself.

6
The dissertation has now been reprinted as Fischer Taschenbuch 5868, (Frankfurt: 1985),
together with Heine's text.
' For instance, "Was bedeutet journalistisch?", "Die deutschen Reimchroniken des 14. und
15. Jahrhunderts," "Die politischen Sprüche und Lieder der Deutschen im Mittelalter,"
"Die Ahnfrau des modernen Feuilletons." All are reprinted in Ein Buch nur für meine
Freunde.
8
That is the assessment of Lothar Kahn, ibid., 39; but Kahn's point is the contrast between
Feuchtwanger's assertiveness in his dissertation on paper and his dubious role in society.
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166 Wulf Koepke

Stimulated by Walter Scott, Heine wanted to write a historical novel on

the persecution of the Jews in the late Middle Ages, shifting to the problems
of Jewish identity and the difficult question of conversion to Christianity. The
extant fragment, published much after its original conception and writing, of-
fers somewhat disjointed fragments of both aspects. There may be conviction
or tactics behind Feuchtwanger's evaluation. In any event, he saw Heine's
concept and project in larger proportions than others have done, and conse-
quently, he viewed the actual achievement as so much smaller, criticizing
even the style of the first two chapters, and considering only the third chapter
as brilliant prose. By contrasting the gap between plan and achievement in
such a manner, Feuchtwanger pointed his finger at a task still waiting for its
realization. Feuchtwanger's sober dissertation, in its own way, contributed its
share to the revival of Jewish self-awareness at the beginning of the new
century.
Feuchtwanger traced in detail the genesis of Der Rabbi von Bacherach; he
provided his reader with glimpses of the emancipated Jewish circles in Ber-
lin, and of the many and changing inner conflicts of Heine embodied in this
tale. Feuchtwanger offered an idea of what the novel could have been, but
cautioned that Heine was not the type of writer who could really have emu-
lated Walter Scott, as opposed to Willibald Alexis and others. Feuchtwanger
unfolded the psychological and cultural, as well as political problems Heine
faced at the beginning of his career, when he felt deeply that he had to
champion the Jewish cause, i.e., to generate more understanding and accep-
tance of the Jewish character by showing how it was shaped by incessant per-
secutions. Feuchtwanger gave good reasons to show how Heine finally be-
came wise and decided against publishing what would have been a most con-
troversial story. Feuchtwanger surmised that Heine had almost completed a
version of his novel, the manuscript of which was destroyed when the apart-
ment of his mother in Hamburg burnt down. 9 Between the lines of the sober
scholarly study, regret is clearly perceivable. Perhaps it is regret that the
great novel on anti-Semitism was never written, or regret that the
manuscript, as it existed, was lost. Perhaps it is regret that Heine was not,
and could not be, a German or a Jewish-German Walter Scott.
Heine, much more than the distant and abstract Moses Mendelssohn, re-
mained the pivotal legitimizer of German-Jewish cultural symbiosis and of
the fundamental fact that a writer's identity remained tied to his language.
Thus, Feuchtwanger reiterated throughout his exile that he could never cease
to be a German writer, and he insisted that it would be futile to look for

9
Lion Feuchtwanger, Heinrich Heines Rabbi von Bacherach, 25; this is one of the points
of controversy; later scholarship mostly disagrees with Feuchtwanger.
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Feuchtwanger's Discovery of Himself in H. Heine 167

common "Jewish" traits in Jewish writers of different ages and different lan-
guages. 10
A critical evaluation of Feuchtwanger's scholarly contribution to Heine re-
search is not called for in this context.11 However, it is obvious that behind
the objectifying style, and in spite of his adherence to the prescribed mode of
presentation and procedure, Feuchtwanger was very much addressing himself
to personal concerns. This is what makes his style so much livelier than the
usual German dissertation of the time, containing tortured academic language
of false modesty, flattery of professors, and overblown claims of new disco-
veries and insights. Most likely, Feuchtwanger was familiar with much of the
material before he began the specific research on this particular topic, the
most "Jewish" text of Heine. Thus, he had more insight than other young
academics in those circumstances, and he wrote faster.
Feuchtwanger knows and understands well the material of his dissertation.
He is familiar with the literature on Jewish history, and he knows why Heine
felt obligated to write this book, and why he finally did not really complete
and publish it. In a sense, Feuchtwanger uncovered a whole minefield of
problems and complexities among assimilated Jews. Heine, if we want to be-
lieve young Lion Feuchtwanger, would have brought out into the open the
very deep and troubling problems of the identity of German Jews. If we want
to adduce later evidence from Feuchtwanger's own novels, not his essays, we
find that in all cases, from Jud Süß to Die Geschwister Oppermann to his last
novels, assimilation is depicted as tempting, almost inevitable, but always
doomed. While Feuchtwanger kept praising the Jewish mentality and the
Jewish way of life as necessary bridges between Europe and Asia, his uncon-
scious self, expressed in his literary works, knew that the symbiosis would
not work.

Ό Cf. "Die Veijudung der abendländischen Literatur," (1920), ibid., 432, or "Bin ich ein
deutscher oder jüdischer Schriftsteller?" (1933), ibid., 362-364.
11
E.g. Ludwig Rosenthal, Heinrich Heine als Jude (Frankfurt, Berlin: Ullstein, 1973);
Hartmut Kircher, Heinrich Heine und das Judentum (Bonn: Bouvier, 1973); or S.S.
Prawer, Heine's Jewish Comedy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983). One is struck by the
fact that the discussion still argues the same points as Feuchtwanger did in 1907. There
has been new evidence, such as the connection of the publication of the Rabbi in 1840
with the Damascus pogroms and their repercussions in France; or some controversy about
the significance of the manuscript of the second chapter written on French paper, i.e.,
around 1840, meaning: it was written in 1840, or rewritten, or only copied. But, on the
whole, there are still the same disagreements on Heine's achievement, on the glaring gaps
in the extant narration, and on the unity of the project. Recent scholarship gives Heine
somewhat higher marks than Feuchtwanger did (possibly influenced by Muncker or
displaying youthful arrogance?). Also, as noted above, nobody seems to believe that an
actual manuscript of the nearly completed novel was lost in Heine's mother's apartment
fire. Scholarship on the Rabbi has been limited; in addition to the above books, one
should add studies by Franz Finke (on the manuscript of the second chapter) and Jeffrey
Sammons (on the unity of the extant text).
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168 WulfKoepke

This leads us back to Feuchtwanger's diagnosis of Heine's Zerrissenheit.

For Feuchtwanger, Heine was the typical Jewish intellectual who lived for a
future age of peace, harmony, and progress, where reason had overcome
prejudices, such as anti-Semitism, but who knew, in his heart of hearts, that
such an ideal was an illusion, and possibly a dangerous one. Heine was also
the prototypical Jewish writer, who wanted to explain himself and his
heritage both to the Jews and the gentiles, and who failed on both counts. In
the end, Heine realized this, and he kept his late, innermost thoughts on
Jewishness mostly to himself. Feuchtwanger would not be so wise. He
exposed all those problems that Heine, apparently, had tackled in his novel
fragment. And, Feuchtwanger had to learn that his defense of Jud Süß
Oppenheimer would draw the attention of anti-Semites, and eventually it
brought about the infamous film that is not based on Feuchtwanger's novel,
but would have hardly happened without the international fame of
Feuchtwanger's book. 1 2
It appears that Feuchtwanger's characters voice his ideas and concerns,
but, it is futile to look for an alter ego in Feuchtwanger's novels — Tüverlin
in Erfolg included. Josephus may come closest to a confessional book, but
even there the traces of autobiography are carefully covered up. In
Feuchtwanger's early works and pronouncements, he was more direct. It is
obvious and somewhat trite to affirm that he molded Heine's image after
himself. What is more interesting in such a statement is that Feuchtwanger
insisted so very emphatically on a split in Heine's personality and world
view. And, indeed, such a split, as opposed to the somewhat barbaric
wholeness depicted in the Germans, especially Bavarians, is characteristic of
Feuchtwanger's Jewish characters, not just the protagonists, but also the
supporting cast in novels like Erfolg or Exil.
There is another aspect of Feuchwanger's early image of Heine worth
mentioning. It is the troubling definition of him as a poet "des Hirns."
Feuchtwanger agreed here with the many anti-Semites who denied Jews the
capacity for real emotions, and, by extension the capability of being a true
poet of the heart. The conventional image of Heine claimed that in his poems
he built up emotions only to mock them afterwards. But this is not what
Feuchtwanger means. He says that Heine (like Oscar Wilde) filtered his true
emotions through his brain in such a way that they became art. Artistic
expression in the modern age required such cerebral filters. Feuchtwanger, so
very different in his procedures from Heine, insisted on the same process. So
much in his plots and character constellations was cerebrally calculated. He
did not pursue his original visions in the manner of Alfred Döblin, who

12
Friedrich Knilli and Siegfried Zielinski, "Feuchtwangers 'Jud Süß' und die
gleichnamigen Filme von Lothar Mendes (1934) und Veit Harlan (1940)," in Lion
Feuchtwanger, (Heinz L. Arnold, Ed.), (München: text&kritik, 1983), 99-121.
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Feuchtwanger's Discovery of Himself in H. Heine 169

would never know where they were taking him, but he did his utmost to
control them. And, in so doing he created the layers of texture and
objectivity that cover the original imagination standing at the origin of his
works. In other words, Feuchtwanger did everything not to parade his
intuitions, his Einfülle, as Heine would have done or Döblin did. He was
reluctant to trust his own spontaneous impulses. Heine, on the other hand,
turned such impulses into artistry. The reason for this difference is historical:
beginning with World War I, Feuchtwanger was convinced that
psychological, aesthetic, and erotic problems and conflicts were secondary
and sometimes even irrelevant. The world, according to his view, was ruled
by economic laws and dominated by mostly irrational ideologies and political
power plays. It was the involvement of individuals in such political
mechanisms that was relevant, not their personalities as such. Feuchtwanger
did not write purely to express himself, definitely not after 1933, but rather
to serve a larger cause, the cause of the progress of reason against stupidity.
He fashioned political messages that more often than not stand in some
contradiction with the inner development of the protagonists. One can
venture the thesis that Feuchtwanger denied to himself that side of his
personality and artistic expression which were close to Heine, the decadent
European Romantic, preferring to be the objective chronicler of the age of
transition that should, as he never ceased to believe, give birth to the age of
reason.
Close to the end of his life, Feuchtwanger had one more occasion to make
a significant comment on Heine, albeit indirectly. On December 14, 1953,
Arnold Zweig wrote Feuchtwanger from East Berlin that, among many other
plans, he wanted to publish a collection of essays for which he should write
one more essay on Heine. Feuchtwanger answered on December 29, 1953:

Und lassen Sie doch die "Spirale" ohne den Heine-Aufsatz in die
Welt gehen. Über Heine ist gerade auch in den letzten Jahren so
schrecklich viel geschrieben worden, das meiste unnötig, ich gebe
es zu, aber auch einiges, was mir recht gescheit schien."

The word "gescheit" is high praise from Feuchtwanger. Obviously, he was

familiar with a good deal of writing about Heine. Heine had remained a pi-
votal figure, a legitimizing authority for the German exile, just as Spinoza
continued to legitimize independent Jewish thinking for other exiles. But, not
every German-Jewish writer had to publish his thoughts on these figures.
Feuchtwanger refrained from writing such an essay, although he was familiar
with the literature. Feuchtwanger, the critic and scholar, disappeared, in his
later years behind his fiction. Most of his occasional writings were more

13
Lion Feuchtwanger - Arnold Zweig Briefwechsel 1933-1958, (Η. v. Hofe, Ed.), (Berlin:
Aufbau, 1984), II, 222f.
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170 WulfKoepke

personal in nature, even when he recommended books. In a way, this is re-

grettable. We would have liked to know more about the insights of the older
Feuchtwanger on Heinrich Heine and the German-Jewish tradition. But, then,
that was a very painful subject, and Feuchtwanger would have preferred to
filter it through a fictional context. Later, he did not want to write about
Germany anymore, and the nineteenth century seemed to be too close for his
historical imagination.
Feuchtwanger shared his affirmation of Heine as a prototypical German-
Jewish exile writer with the rest of the German literary exile. Whereas many
leading writers questioned their intellectual roots in Nietzsche, Marx, and
Freud, for Feuchtwanger, the question of Heine was essentially different.
With all his problems, Heine was one of them, troubled, as much as they
were with the "German" philosophy of Hegel, the German penchant for
dangerous demonic myths, and the political danger for the rest of the world
posed by a unified and powerful Germany. Heine also had another virtue; he
was totally unorthodox; he was even unreliable. He was not one of those
straight moralists who could ruin a just cause. He was thoroughly human and
humane.

There remains one more aspect of Lion Feuchtwanger's connection to Heine

worthy of inclusion here. Much of the thrust of Feuchtwanger's political cri-
ticism was directed against the role of intellectuals. He was convinced that
intellectuals had ruined the Bavarian revolution of 1918, if not the German
revolution as a whole. He supported Stalin against Trotsky, thinking the for-
mer a man of common sense, as opposed to Trotsky the intellectual.14
Although Feuchtwanger felt the urge to get involved politically, and
especially to fight fascism and Hitler's Germany, he limited himself to
writing. He insisted that he was not a political man ~ a point incessantly
reiterated by Marta Feuchtwanger. He was just a writer, who wanted to
contribute to the progress of humankind and to the advent of the age of
reason. In this respect, Feuchtwanger identified with Heine (in contrast to
Ludwig Börne, for example). He insisted that the awareness of his limitations
helped him to stay with his real mission, as did Heine. There was one
significant difference, however. Feuchtwanger believed he had succeeded
where Heine failed. For Feuchtwanger had managed to convey convincingly
the troubled past of European Jews in exemplary fictions that did not simply
retell the past, but helped to shape the future. Feuchtwanger took up the task
where Heine had left it, when he abandoned his Der Rabbi von Bacherach. If
Heine's romantic modernity and subjectivity prevented him from presenting
the Jewish cause to the world, Feuchtwanger overcame (or repressed) his

I am referring, of course, to Feuchtwanger's book Moskau 1937. Cf. my study "Das

dreifache Ja zur Sowjetunion," in Exilforschung I (1983), 61-72.
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Feuchtwanger's Discovery of Himself in H. Heine 171

romantic self to be a realistic witness of his age and its antecedents.

Feuchtwanger's rather harsh judgment on the novel fragment may have been
motivated by the half-conscious feeling that Heine had failed in his self-
imposed mission. Although Heine was a great writer, he did fail to write the
great works that his talents demanded from him. Feuchtwanger's famous
work discipline implied a moral judgment on others, like Heine, but, then,
Feuchtwanger's critics could argue that he denied himself his highest
achievements, by repressing his spontaneity. Either way, Feuchtwanger, who
was neither a poet nor really an essayist or journalist, has a much closer
kinship with his forerunner than one may at first assume.

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