THE OPPERMANS (Die Geschwister Oppermann)

Novel by Lion Feuchtwanger, 1933

Lion Feuchtwanger's novel The Oppermanns (1933; Die Geschwister Oppermann ) describes the fate of an upper middle-class Jewish family in Berlin from November 1932 to late summer 1933. The story focuses on the independent scholar Gustav Oppermann, who has signed a manifesto against the introduction of barbarism in public life. Consequently, after the Nazi seizure of power and the burning of the Reichstag, he is in danger and therefore goes to Switzerland. When he returns to Germany under a false name in order to collect evidence of Nazi crimes, he is arrested and sent to a concentration camp. After his release he dies from the aftereffects of his treatment there. His brother Martin, who manages the family business, the furniture company Oppenheim, is forced to merge the firm with that of his competitor, the storm trooper Wels. He will immigrate to London. His brother Edgar, a world-famous laryngologist, is removed from his hospital and will go to Paris. His brother-in-law Jacques Lavendel, an Eastern Jew with American citizenship, liquidates his business in Germany and moves to Switzerland. Whereas Jacques Lavendel's son Heinrich is able to cope with anti-Semitism at school, Martin's son Berthold is driven to suicide by his anti-Semitic German teacher. Edgar's daughter Ruth, an ardent Zionist, goes to Palestine.

The novel thus deals with anti-Semitism in Germany shortly before and after the Nazi seizure of power. Although Feuchtwanger also tries to include the lower classes by introducing the furniture salesman Wolfsohn, his concentration on anti-Semitism prevents him from dealing with the entire spectrum of German society. Hitler appears as a rather ridiculous character. The success of National Socialism is described as the result of crude agitation, targeting the lower middle class. It is supported by capitalists and big landowners who want to protect their financial interests and to fight Communism.

In spite of the rise of barbarism, Feuchtwanger optimistically believes that even National Socialism, which appeals to man's basic instincts, constitutes only a short, temporary episode in history's development toward a society governed by reason. In the end reason will win out over stupidity and barbarism although maybe not in the characters' lifetime.

The characters are not described in black-and-white fashion but with all their personal weaknesses, the Jews as well as the Nazis, who, as Feuchtwanger believes, represent only a small part of the German people. Feuchtwanger's style is conventional, almost naturalistic. On the basis of eyewitness reports he paints a stark and clear picture of the Nazis' anti-Semitic actions at the time, showing the discrimination of Jews, the effects of anti-Semitic propaganda, and the corruption of the German legal system. He takes his readers inside the Gestapo prisons and concentration camps confronting them with the inhuman treatment of human beings. By doing so, the novel was of tremendous informational value for the exiles and other readers outside Germany at the time. Already in the summer of 1934 all international editions together had sold more than a quarter million copies.

—Hans Wagener