The Oppermanns

I wish I could give a good rating to this book also because nowadays the same constituencies that brought Nazism to power in Germany start to reemerge and rumble in Europe, in a much less truculent fashion but with similar cultural and social background. The book however is too badly written to get a high rating. The main characters are the three brothers and one sister of the well-to-do Oppermann family. The sister is a side line. The three brothers, we are told, are clever, worldly-wise, and sophisticated. Yet at every turn they take the most foolish and child-like decisions. After 50 pages of reading it's easy to predict what they are going to do next. There are parallel stories intertwined. Even knowing in advance what will happen next, that next doesn't arrive quickly because the stories interrupt each other as in a TV serial where the script is never linear simply to make the serial last longer. One of these parallel stories, that of Herr Wolfsohn, is really left without a final conclusion. And there is a list of sloppy stylistic and narrative aspects too long to go over. On page 215 of the James Cleugh translation there is a high school equation (only equation in a non scientific book) which is wrong: In my print at least, the equation is (a+b)^2 = a+2ab+b. It should of course be (a+b)^2 = a^2+2ab+b^2.

This book is a thought-provoking story of 1930s Germany, and should be a shocking & awakening reading experience. Moreover, this story definitely exemplifies how a fascist movement can germinate, taking root quickly in a society and how difficult it is to totally eradicate. The crux is Evil can indeed prosper when regular people bury their heads in the sands of apathy, and do nothing. Is the same kind of movement taking root in America now? Will we stop it?

This book is in a perfect condition.

The Oppermans family saga centers on the four adult siblings of an affluent, thoroughly assimilated German Jewish family, and traces their individual lives as they are brought to personal and professional ruin. While this is entirely fiction, the distressing scenes and dialogues are familiar to any student of history. Feuchtwanger was intimately familiar with the subject matter, as he had already his house broken into, his books banned and burned, and his citizenship revoked. As an enemy of the Nazi state, he would eventually serve time in a concentration camp in Vichy France until the American journalist, Varian Fry, helped facilitate his escape (detailed in Feuchtwanger’s memoir “The Devil in France.”)The family’s initial response to the rise of the Nazis is disbelief, then skepticism that they would follow through on the rhetoric, and finally doubt that the nightmare would last. “A people which had reached so high a point of technical and industrial development did not lapse into barbarism in twenty-four hours.” But of course it did.The story also captures so well the agonizing situation facing German Jews. To wait it out, or to leave? And if to leave, to remain in Europe or to make a new life as a farmer in Palestine? But it wasn’t so simple. “If they had money, there were not allowed to take it with them, and other countries would not admit them unless they had money.”While some friends, coworkers and acquaintance stayed loyal and principled, others revealed themselves to be craven opportunists. “In the hospitals, in the University, on all sides, medical men without ability were seeing signs of hope. An era was beginning in which the requisites were no longer talent and accomplishment but the ostensible consanguinity to a certain race.”Reading The Oppermans, one must constantly remind oneself that Feuchtwanger wrote this before the Nuremburg Laws, before Kristallnacht and before World War II. One of the best novels of the interwar years and a memorable read.

Stunning by any measure, but what hits this reader in the gut is that this novel was not written with historical hindsight. It was written in the heat of the moment, a moment so dreadful that it would drive most to agitprop or ranting. This is neither, although it does seem to be taken directly from experiences of those known personally to the author, and perhaps it is. The whole is as powerful an exposition of “how could this have happened?” as any historical analysis. Perhaps more so, as the stories are those of “relatable” human beings. As all reviewers have noted, what remains urgent and, unfortunately, timely about this novel is its exposition of “how this happens.” Every high school student should be taught this book to understand “how this could happen.” (Btw, I am baffled as to another reviewer’s criticism of the style: this book is lucidly written, smoothly clear and straightforward.) Read it with a shiver, grateful for its author’s accomplishment.

Though fiction, The Oppermans depicts with chillingly believable clarity the evil that we enact upon each other. Today, think of Ukraine oppressed by Russia, with Russians being told lies originating from the marketing strategies of Putin's government. People are all too willing to believe ridiculous lies to cause them to storm the U. S. Capitol. We have learned only that there are good and decent people who would rather die doing the right thing and there are barbaric, cannibalistic followers who would torture and kill for amusement or because they are following orders or because everyone else is doing it.This book tells a truth that we as humans continue to play out.

Not going to precis the story as everyone has done that. I'll just say that once I got used to the slightly stuffy and stiff style of writing I gulped down this book in a few goes and put it down feeling I'd just read an absolute belter. Feels incredibly timely because I believe this is how fascism will triumph: first with cartoon-ish politicians saying outrageous things and blaming foreigners and those in need for the current state of affairs; the rubbishing of experts, intellectuals and so-called elites, the media backing and idolising them so much and so often that their audiences believe them. And bit by bit, before you know it, it's a selfish, hate-filled state condoned by the majority by indifference if nothing else. Phew - thank goodness that couldn't happen in the UK or US.

I was drawn to Lion Feuchtwanger ‘s novel ‘The Oppermanns’ by an Endnote in Volume 2 of Kershaw’s brilliant life of Hitler. Like ‘The Forsyte Saga’ and ‘War & Peace’ this novel starts with a distinct group of people and covers the disintegration of the group. It lacks the pettiness and internal feuding which marks the break-up of the Forsytes nor has it the intrusive effect of war destroying the world of Natasha Rostov. This novels covers not the disintegration of society as much as its debasement. It is centred on the impact of a Nationalist leader with his army of stormtroopers and ‘mercenaries’ driven by his ill-written ‘My Battle’ on a political system that has lost its way after losing a war. The leader is clearly Hitler, his brown-shirted thugs the SA and the ‘mercenaries’ the SS; sometimes names are given (e.g. Hindenburg and Schleicher) but usually not (the President of Prussia must be Goering, if only by his style). It was written in 1933 but describes changes which actually were to take place in the near future – the boycott of Jewish shops, intimidation of any support for ‘non-Aryans, weeding out of Jewish ‘intrusion’ into a GERMAN economy and the internment of any opposition in concentration camps. It is full of instances of how a nightmare was to sweep through Germany with the creation of the ‘Thousand-Year-Reich’. However, it misses a lot because who could imagine the depths to which the Third Reich would sink (1934 destruction of its own SA leadership, removal of all civil rights for Jews and others – ultimately their organised extermination – and the infliction on humanity of the Second World War).However, the author fails to see not just the toleration for but also the cooperation in much of that terror by the bulk of the German population. Later a cruel joke said Germany was filled by the 1% of the population not backing the Nazis in plebiscites. Resistance was little and rarely seen (e.g. the White Rose protest in 1943) not simply the apathy (at least) or passive resistance sensed in this novel. A far truer image of the population under the Nazis was that of the Nuremburg rallies. All these points really occur in the last section of the work where, perhaps, the author couldn’t bring himself to describe a boot smashing on a human face for ever (Orwell’s ‘1984’). A few idiosyncratic features puzzled me – ‘Mein Kampf’ becomes ‘My Battle’ instead of the universal ‘My Struggle’; SS become ‘mercenaries’ etc. Unless it was in the original – and even then perhaps why hide the targets?The reader may note an absence of detail of this review. This is because much of my fascination lies in seeing how fiction antedates fact. That’s what so intensifies reading about individuals that one can’t put the book down before their fate becomes known – for me that was about Berthold in particular. So I give the book 5 stars – perhaps with some reluctance arising from the above comments. Although the novelist was not writing a historical sketch, as a historian I was reading it as such – and that is MY failing!

Excellent story.Saw DVD of novel "Die Geschwister Oppermann" some years ago,but written word much better . Many thanks.

Excellent: fast delivery and book brand new

Engrossing novel about a German-Jewish upperclass family in Berlin - truly amazing to find out this was published in 1933.