The exhibited manuscript by Lion Feuchtwanger was a lecture that he gave in the US in 1942, apparently for a German audience. The year of the lecture indicates the the majority of the audience were themselves exiles. The location and details of Feuchtwanger’s lecture are as of yet unknown. In August 1942, the author had lived in Los Angeles more than a year. At this point, after his difficult months of internment in France and a period of adjusting to the US after his emigration, he once again found a work rythmn.

The lecture looks back on the tragic history of the coexistence of Jews and Germans, which was later labled as the “German-Jewish Symbiosis.“ The lecture particularly highlights various aspects of the German language and the affinity of Jews for it. Feuchtwanger warns that the relationships between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans are devoid of “objectivity,“ and the complexities of this nextwork is often overlooked. He also accuses Jews who lived in Germany during the period that preceded the rise of National Socialism and failed to grasp the graveness of the threat.

The manuscript clearly shows that the themes of the lecture were vital to Feuchtwanger. The numerous deletions, revisions and additions testify to the prolonged thought process that went into its completion.

Further reading:
Heike Specht: Die Feuchtwangers. Familie Tradition und jüdisches Selbstverständnis im deutsch-jüdischen Bürgertum des 19. Und 20. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Wallstein 2006
Wilhelm von Sternburg: Lion Feuchtwanger: Die Biografie. Berlin: Aufbau 2014