Jew Suss

Plot

Feuchtwanger is probably the best historical novelist in the world - truly superb in erudition and majestic in his literary style. While this German Jewish writer is famous for his Josephus trilogy detailing the scenes of the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, he has also written unequaled novels on Goya the artist, J.J.Rousseau the philosopher, and last but not least, on Benjamin Franklin. Jew Suss is about medieval Europe and the Jewish presence there, sometimes a very visible presense, sometimes kabbalistically hidden. A tour-de-force of the highest calibre.

It is somewhat surprising that this novel, which became a best-seller soon after it was first published in 1925, should have been written by a self-consciously Jewish writer. Though its purpose was to expose and condemn antisemitism, it is easy to see that how the Nazis could mine it for the infamous antisemitic film under that title in 1940. True, that film was a distortion of the novel, but the character and appearance of Süss and of other Jews in the book is quite distasteful enough. It is, however, also true that all the non-Jews are distasteful also: there is in fact hardly an attractive character in the book.

Josef Süss-Oppenheimer was an ambitious Jewish financier, who from 1733 until 1737 not only ran the personal and public finances of Charles Alexander, the Duke of Württemberg, but also supported the Duke's Catholic autocracy against the Protestant Estates and the Protestant Constitution of Württemberg. He therefore made many enemies among the establishment, was also detested by the people whose financial burdens he greatly increased. He himself discarded traditional Jewish dress and maintained the lavish life-style of the aristocracy, which further exposed him to hatred. That he was a Jew, at a time before Jewish emancipation, of course added fuel to the fire. On the day that Charles Alexander died, Süss-Oppenheimer was arrested and charged with constitutional and financial improprieties. He was hanged in 1738 and his remains were publicly exhibited in an iron cage. It is generally believed that this was a judicial murder, to which the vicious and visceral antisemitism of the time contributed.

Feuchtwanger paints the political and social history of time in great and impressive detail (except that there is not a single date in the book); but he really lets himself go in unappealing and stereotypical details, repeated over and over again in this very long novel: the more observant Jews wear greasy kaftans and have bloodless faces; Süss is portrayed as arrogant and at the same time obsequious (allowing himself to be insulted over and over again by the coarse Duke and his courtiers), indifferent to the impression he knows he creates and to the warnings of his more cautious co-religionists, subtle and scheming and of course ever obsessed with profit and power.

Then, three-fifth of the way through the book, Süss discovers that, although he had been brought up as a Jew since childhood, he was in fact the illegitimate son of a German nobleman, a Field Marshal no less. There is no documentary proof of this, though the legend circulated in Süss' own lifetime. Feuchtwanger presents it as a fact. The one redeeming feature in this otherwise odious figure was that he had always proudly refused to convert: indeed, he had savoured his power the more because he had held it as a Jew; and he now, equally proudly, refused to make use of his new knowledge and to claim Christian and aristocratic descent.

Perhaps these stereotypes corresponded to what Süss and the other characters were really like, and perhaps not: some modern researchers see Süss as a creative but maligned reformer and modernizer of an antiquated medieval economic system. In any case Feuchtwanger now goes into pure invention. He has given Süss a beloved and beautiful young daughter, whom the father had hidden in a house deep in a forest, to keep her away from the corruptions of court life. An enemy of Süss' had discovered this, and led the lascivious Duke to that place. Rather than yield to the Duke, the girl threw herself to her death from the roof of the house. Süss' revenge is to exploit the Duke's guilt feelings: he becomes more arrogant and oppressive than ever and (unlikely in fact but powerfully effective as fiction) he now quite openly cheats the Duke, who is resentful but dependent. And then he convinces the Duke to plan a coup d'état against the Constitution - and betrays the plot to the Duke's enemies! He knows full well that if, as a result, the Duke falls, so will he. When the Duke hears that the plot has failed, he has a stroke and dies - not before hearing Süss hissing his triumphant vengeance into his ears - and then Süss suggests to the plotters that they should arrest him - which they promptly do: he will be doubly a scapegoat. (In fact, Süss was arrested on the day of the Duke's death, but not under those circumstances.)

The inquisition into Süss' alleged crimes ran into difficulties: he was not a native of Württemberg and had merely given advice: the real criminals were those who had executed it and had committed high treason. He had had intercourse with gentile women, forbidden not only to Jews but also to gentiles under the law: but many high-born families would be disgraced, and this charge was eventually dropped. But the verdict was not in doubt; the mob of course demanded it, too; and he was sentenced to be hanged. There was a slight chance that his life might have been spared if he converted to Christianity: he spurned it. Feuchtwanger's last fancy is that the corpse was taken from the gallows, another substituted, and that Süss was given a Jewish funeral. According to him, it was the substitute that remained exhibited for the next six years.

Though somewhat long and with descriptions frequently repeated, this is a powerful book. But I do not like historical novels which distort known facts. And for all its condemnation of antisemitism, I am disturbed by the relish with which the disagreeable stereotypes of Jews are narrated in this novel. They swamp, to my mind, the pathos of the Jewish people and Süss' stoical and tragic end.