23 Facts About Lion Feuchtwanger

Lion Feuchtwanger was born in 1884 to Orthodox Jewish margarine manufacturer Sigmund Feuchtwanger and his wife, Johanna.

Lion Feuchtwanger made his first attempt at writing while still a secondary-school student and won an award.

Lion Feuchtwanger then studied history, philosophy and German philology in Munich and Berlin.

Lion Feuchtwanger received his PhD in 1907, under Francis Muncker, with a study of Heinrich Heine's unfinished 1840 novel The Rabbi of Bacharach.

Lion Feuchtwanger was one of the contributors of the Swedish avant-garde magazine Thalia between 1910 and 1913.

Lion Feuchtwanger was pregnant at the wedding, but the child died shortly after birth.

Lion Feuchtwanger soon became a figure in the literary world, and he was sought out by the young Bertolt Brecht.

Lion Feuchtwanger published the first part of his Josephus trilogy, The Jewish War, in 1932.

Lion Feuchtwanger continued the trilogy with The Oppermanns in 1933, which would become one of his best-known books.

Lion Feuchtwanger was one of the first to produce propaganda against Hitler and the Nazi Party.

The next day, Prittwitz resigned from the diplomatic corps and called Lion Feuchtwanger to recommend that he not return home.

Lion Feuchtwanger did not heed his advice and returned to Germany.

In 1933, while Lion Feuchtwanger was on tour, his house was ransacked by government agents who stole or destroyed many items from his extensive library, including invaluable manuscripts of some of his projected works.

Lion Feuchtwanger's works were included among those burned in the 10 May 1933 Nazi book burnings held across Germany.

Lion Feuchtwanger remembered that American politicians were among those who suggested that "Hitler be given a chance".

When France declared war on Germany in 1939, Lion Feuchtwanger was interned for a few weeks in Camp des Milles.

Lion Feuchtwanger's rescuers included Varian Fry ; Hiram Bingham IV ; Myles Standish ; Waitstill Sharp and Martha Sharp.

In 1943, Lion Feuchtwanger bought Villa Aurora in Pacific Palisades, California; he continued to write there until his death in 1958.

Lion Feuchtwanger defended the Great Purge and the show trials which were then taking place against both real and imagined Trotskyites and "enemies of the people".

In 1953, Lion Feuchtwanger won the National Prize of East Germany first Class for art and literature.

Lion Feuchtwanger reacted to the regime change with the novel The Oppermanns.

At first, Lion Feuchtwanger was writing it as a screenplay proposed by the British Government it was never completed and instead was reworked into a novel, resulting in the book's style, which differs with quick-cuts and literary montage sequences.

Lion Feuchtwanger's novels go unread; his plays go unperformed; he's a first-class writer without a first-class berth; a classic firebrand without a canon.