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silvej01's review against another edition
5.0
I inherited my battered hard-covered copy of this book (translated into English from the original German) from my grandfather. The book had been sitting on my bookshelf for years and I knew very little about it. I pulled it out only recently after learning that The Oppermanns, a sort of sequel to this one, was being re-published. (While the English translation of Erfolg (the German title) appears to be out of print, quite a decent facsimile of this 1930 publication is available free for downloading from the Internet Archive.)
Lion Feuchtwanger, a German Jew, escaped Germany in 1933. In the late 1920s when he wrote it, the movement for National Socialism seemed to have failed. Indeed, among other key narrative threads related to corruption and growing extremist politics, the later chapters of the novel provide an only lightly fictionalized story of the Beer Hall Putsch. The Nazis here are called True Germans. Adolf Hitler is called Rudolf Kutzner. There are many characters in this novel and I admit that I had trouble throughout keeping up with who is who. At least several characters are fictionalized versions of historical figures or friends of the author. Kasper Prökl for example is based on Bertolt Brecht, a friend and collaborator of Feuchtwanger. Jacques Tüverlin is based on Feuchtwanger himself. Although I could only identify a very few of them, there are many others that have real-life counterparts. While there are forays to Berlin and Paris, Weimar Munich is the primary setting and, more than any of these characters, that city is the novel’s main character.
In addition to the ubiquity of corruption in German politics and the legal system, a major theme of the novel concerns the rise of Nazism. While the book is far from optimistic about the Germany’s political prospects, it does appear to assume that, however corrupt the institutional systems remain, Nazism at least was in deep retreat following the failure of the Putsch. To my mind this error in prediction makes the book even more important and relevant for our own time. It would, of course, be foolish to regard this novel as speaking directly to us today about our current political situation in the United States, all the same—damn it!—this novel has much to say about our current political situation in the United States. Knowing as we do what ultimately did happen to Germany just a few years beyond its 1930 publication makes this book all the more valuable. It is a more important cautionary tale beyond what its fine author thought he’d written.
Apart from this warning (particularly for we Americans witnessing the Republican Party transforming into a nascent party of fascism), the novel has great literary merit. Feuchtwanger’s book has been compared to Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer and USA Trilogy, in that like Dos Passos his overriding aim was to a paint a vivid panorama of an entire complex culture. I agree, although in contrast to those excellent Dos Passos’ novels, and despite the narrative sprawl, there is more of an underlying story tying this novel together—Martin Kruger’s railroaded incarceration owing to the liberal, aesthetic, political, and artistic choices he’s made as the director of the great art museum in Munich, along with his foreign (Bohemian) nationality.
There are weaknesses in the novel (4.5 stars rounded up), or perhaps weaknesses in my ability to keep track of so many people and their activities, but ultimately this long-forgotten novel achieves greatness and has continuing relevance for us today.
Lion Feuchtwanger, a German Jew, escaped Germany in 1933. In the late 1920s when he wrote it, the movement for National Socialism seemed to have failed. Indeed, among other key narrative threads related to corruption and growing extremist politics, the later chapters of the novel provide an only lightly fictionalized story of the Beer Hall Putsch. The Nazis here are called True Germans. Adolf Hitler is called Rudolf Kutzner. There are many characters in this novel and I admit that I had trouble throughout keeping up with who is who. At least several characters are fictionalized versions of historical figures or friends of the author. Kasper Prökl for example is based on Bertolt Brecht, a friend and collaborator of Feuchtwanger. Jacques Tüverlin is based on Feuchtwanger himself. Although I could only identify a very few of them, there are many others that have real-life counterparts. While there are forays to Berlin and Paris, Weimar Munich is the primary setting and, more than any of these characters, that city is the novel’s main character.
In addition to the ubiquity of corruption in German politics and the legal system, a major theme of the novel concerns the rise of Nazism. While the book is far from optimistic about the Germany’s political prospects, it does appear to assume that, however corrupt the institutional systems remain, Nazism at least was in deep retreat following the failure of the Putsch. To my mind this error in prediction makes the book even more important and relevant for our own time. It would, of course, be foolish to regard this novel as speaking directly to us today about our current political situation in the United States, all the same—damn it!—this novel has much to say about our current political situation in the United States. Knowing as we do what ultimately did happen to Germany just a few years beyond its 1930 publication makes this book all the more valuable. It is a more important cautionary tale beyond what its fine author thought he’d written.
Apart from this warning (particularly for we Americans witnessing the Republican Party transforming into a nascent party of fascism), the novel has great literary merit. Feuchtwanger’s book has been compared to Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer and USA Trilogy, in that like Dos Passos his overriding aim was to a paint a vivid panorama of an entire complex culture. I agree, although in contrast to those excellent Dos Passos’ novels, and despite the narrative sprawl, there is more of an underlying story tying this novel together—Martin Kruger’s railroaded incarceration owing to the liberal, aesthetic, political, and artistic choices he’s made as the director of the great art museum in Munich, along with his foreign (Bohemian) nationality.
There are weaknesses in the novel (4.5 stars rounded up), or perhaps weaknesses in my ability to keep track of so many people and their activities, but ultimately this long-forgotten novel achieves greatness and has continuing relevance for us today.
gdollinger's review
4.0
Americans don’t know much about German history. Germans lost WWI. Nazis bad. Germans lost WWII. Angela Merkle cool. This is a liability when reading a historical novel about Bavaria in the 1920’s.
The characters are based on real people and events and they are more familiar to us today than we would like to admit. That the the story ends soon after the failed Beer Hall Putsch doesn’t need a spoiler alert, but how it ends does.
The characters are based on real people and events and they are more familiar to us today than we would like to admit. That the the story ends soon after the failed Beer Hall Putsch doesn’t need a spoiler alert, but how it ends does.
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