From the Bookshelf of Books Almost Nobody Reads (But Should)…

The Oppermanns

Lion Feuchtwanger

Start date: January 1, 2023

Finish date: March 1, 2023

Discussion: 2023 Reads!

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What Members Thought

Mar 12, 2023 Diane Barnes rated it it was amazing

This book is powerful, so it will be hard to do it justice in my review, but I'll try. It was written in 1934. The author saw what was coming in Germany, so was lucky enough to get out of the country to let the rest of the world know what was happening there. The Oppermann's are a wealthy German Jewish family who own a chain of furniture stores. Gustav is the eldest, who prefers to leave the running of the business to his brother Martin, and Edgar is a respected surgeon in his field. Their siste ...more

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Mar 10, 2023 Lark Benobi rated it it was amazing

Shelves: words-without-borders, 2023, male-identified-authors, germany

I understand why Feuchtwanger isn’t as widely read or even as well-known these days as some of his contemporaries but this book is its own kind of masterpiece. In contrast with other novels set in Germany in the era of National Socialism, The Oppenheimers captures the intellectual richness of German culture prior to Hitler’s rise, and how completely Nazism perverted it. There is quite a bit of space devoted to intellectual and philosophical and historical and moral frameworks that the characters ...more

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Apr 22, 2023 Ned rated it really liked it

My attention was drawn to this by my invisible Goodreads online friends (those soul mates whom I’ve never seen in the flesh but with whom I share interests in books) who read books that have been forgotten or gone out of favor. I am certainly glad I did, because the facts behind this tale are enticing. Here is a novel written a few years before Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the start of the second world war, where he is referred to as the “leader” of a small movement of ultra-nationalists. Wha My attention was drawn to this by my invisible Goodreads online friends (those soul mates whom I’ve never seen in the flesh but with whom I share interests in books) who read books that have been forgotten or gone out of favor. I am certainly glad I did, because the facts behind this tale are enticing. Here is a novel written a few years before Hitler’s invasion of Poland and the start of the second world war, where he is referred to as the “leader” of a small movement of ultra-nationalists. What floors me is that the author could only vaguely have imagined what was to come later, thus his perspective was naïve in a sense, uncolored by the history of WWII and its aftermath that we now know so well. That alone makes this book worthy of my time. It is well written in its native language, I am sure, however the fact that it was created almost a century ago, and translated from German for an English-speaking readership, more European than American, makes it clumsy in places. But the prose shines in others, and the ideas and storyline contribute to the astonishing fact of its unique perspective in history. I recommend highly.

The novel is set in Berlin, told from the perspective of an un-orthodox Jewish family who have been entrenched in high German culture for well over a century, living comfortably from the business created by their patriarch, Immanuel Oppermann, whose dark old oil portrait that hangs lovingly on their wall. The business succeeds like an Ikea or discount store today, offering inexpensive, less durable furniture for more common folk unable to afford the high standard of “German” quality. The main protagonist is a bit of an intellectual “playboy”, a bachelor celebrating a relative life of leisure and comfort. But the strain of ultra-nationalist arising from the less educated and increasingly aggrieved class is gaining momentum. As is well known, their “leader” gains power through political maneuvering after starting a street campaign of violence – this novel captures the growing fears and outright terror of Gustav Oppermann and his siblings as they are nearly paralyzed with the slow-moving coup. The Oppermanns, and their teenaged children, and several Jewish friends associated with their business and linked by community give a panoply of responses to the rising concerns. Even the schools, long a bastion of liberalism, sees its instructors succumbing to replacement by the “cunning” nationalists – that mindset that, though uneducated, has the street cleverness to know how to manipulate by fear (sound familiar)? The grass roots Brown Shirts movement is at first derided (“My Battle” or Mein Kampf is often joked about with its clumsy and naïve ravings). Those speaking against the loyal nationalists, and the street thugs enforcing compliance, are whisked to prison or “concentration camps” for re-education. The terror is real and the good Germans are afraid to speak against the tyranny. And then the Reichstag fire, which even at the time most people know it was staged to justify a purge of “communists” (meaning leftists, meaning Jews, meaning non-Aryans and defectives, etc). You know the rest. Gustav leaves his country, returns in disguise as a peasant and is shocked by the apathy and fear and seeming normalcy of German people outside of the hotbed of Berlin & other big cities. The acquiescence is seemingly benign, the banality of evil (Arendt?).

All books have myopia for their time and unconscious bias, most authors assuming the readers have historical and cultural context. What makes this book unique is that the reader has a vantage of knowing how the future manifests (like reading old science fiction about todays world). What is chilling to me is how incredibly durable is will to power in human beings and how incredibly common is the tactic of discrediting the “other”, often leading to intolerance. It continues over the globe today, and its sickness is in us now, in our hearts if we let that seed take root.

The Oppermanns is the cautionary tale of all cautionary tales. It is not dull, in places it sparkles, in others it has ordinary details of life from a place and time in history that are simply fascinating. I highly recommend it. Though written a very long time ago, and translated clumsily in parts, the plot and perspective and its relevance today made this a most meaningful and enjoyable, albeit terrifying, read.
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