Trauma in Lion Feuchtwanger's ‘The Oppermanns’

The paper deals with Lion Feuchtwanger’s The Oppermanns as a novel about trauma. Traumatic experience reflected in the novel is connected with the events of 1933, when Hitler was appointed Chancellor and Nazi dictatorship began. The methodological framework for the research is Trauma Studies. This methodology is now successfully applied to studying trauma in literary texts, for example in the research works conducted by M. N. Lipovetsky, A. M. Etkind, M. A. Litovskaya, B. Holmgren. While studying a literary text from this point of view, particular attention is to be paid to the relationships between the author and his or her characters. In accordance with this principle, the primary focus is on the similarities and differences between Lion Feuchtwanger and his Gustav Opperman. Gustav is shown to be a projection of the author’s personality. The paper considers important traumatic markers in The Oppermanns. First of all, these are violence and muteness. The novel’s plot is shown to be based on the escalation of violence, both physical and psychological. In 1933 Feuchtwanger chose to stay in exile and not to return home from his long journey to the USA and European countries; this decision saved his life because he was not only a Jew but the new regime’s enemy as well. However, life in exile meant for him not only to be alive but to feel guilty towards guilty made return to Germany and try to speak against Nazi dictatorship. This affair results in Gustav’s imprisonment to a KZ, which would also have been a possible scenario for Lion Feuchtwanger if he had returned to Germany in the spring of 1933. That is why Gustav’s death is Feuchtwanger’s symbolical death and Gustav’s biography is sort of experiment, conducted by his author in the novel instead of carrying it out in his real life. As a result, Feuchtwanger becomes convinced that to choose exile was an extremely correct decision.