First published in 1933, and swiftly translated into English and several other languages thereafter, Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel The Oppermans depicts a German Jewish family during the Nazi rise to popularity and then to power. While it remained influential in Germany after World War II, the book has largely been forgotten in the U.S. A newly published and revised English translation seeks to remedy the situation. Ari Hoffman writes in his review:
Reading The Oppermans is like riding a Ferrari into a slow-motion car crash; the ride is a pleasure if you can ignore the wheels spinning out and look away from what’s coming around the bend. . . . The Oppermanns shines when it aims a spotlight on the small-scale gains that made Hitler possible. A Nazi schoolteacher bullies [one young member of the family] and changes the curriculum, and both students and staff are too morally supine to stop it. “The boys,” we are told, “quickly come to terms with their first Nationalist teacher.” The Oppermans believe that “they had won a place for themselves in this country.” They hardly stood a chance.
The signs are everywhere, but so are the misreadings. A salesman notices that a gang tries to push a Jew in front of a train, but reassures himself that they were stopped in time. The butler at a private club turns up for work one day wearing a swastika. . . . Hitler, “the Leader,” is dismissed because his prose is turgid.
It is to Feuchtwanger’s credit that we like and respect his characters enough to resist blaming the Oppermans for their own misfortune. The novel is populated with major and minor characters who are allowed petty anxieties and grandiose dreams. They yearn for more marks, or a plate of piping hot schnitzel, or a joyride through Berlin. They try to keep the Nazis in the background because their foreground is full of life.
More about: German Jewry, Holocaust, Jewish literature