Enemy Number One: A Panel discussion

Feuchtwanger Memorial Library

Holocaust Studies

Warner Brothers Archives

Holocaust Documentary Films in Leavy Library

USC Shoah Visual Archive

LA Opera - The stigmatized

What happens when art collides with its society

Feuchtwanger Memorial Library - Exhibitions (not published yet)

Exiled German-speaking intellectuals in Southern California

Varian Fry Institute [http://www.varianfry.org]

 Villa Aurora, Pacific Palisades

Open to USC students only. Admission is free. RSVP required. To RSVP, click here beginning Thursday, September 30, at 9 a.m. See below for details.*

 

*This trip is for current USC students only. You must use the provided transportation to participate. Space is limited and advance registration is required. RSVP at the link above beginning Thursday, September 30, at 9 a.m. Check-in for the event will begin at 11:15 a.m. on campus. Buses will depart at 12 p.m. and return to campus at 5 p.m. Lunch will be provided at check-in.

The USC Libraries are home to the papers and library of historical novelist Lion Feuchtwanger, who escaped his native Germany after Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933. Because he was an outspoken critic of the Nazi Party, the Nazis ordered his books burned and declared him “Enemy Number One.” The libraries recently published a new edition of Feuchtwanger’s The Devil in France, a memoir of his internment and escape from Nazi-occupied France. He wrote movingly about the political situation in Europe and his experiences as an exiled writer. He later escaped to Los Angeles, where Theodor Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, Thomas Mann and other German émigré artists and intellectuals gathered during World War II. Feuchtwanger’s story illuminates the struggles faced by artists who speak truth to power and endure exile from their native countries.

In conjunction with this new publication, USC students will have the opportunity to take an intimate look at Lion Feuchtwanger’s life in exile by visiting Villa Aurora, his former home in Pacific Palisades where he hosted figures like Charlie Chaplin, Thomas Mann and Billy Wilder. There, he and other émigrés exchanged ideas about art and politics, read from works in progress and debated their relationships to Southern California, the United States and Europe. This tradition continues at Villa Aurora, now an international artists’ residence. After a welcoming reception and tour, students will enjoy a staged reading of letters exchanged between Lion and his wife, Marta Feuchtwanger, from the 1930s and ’40s. Acclaimed actor and Holocaust Survivor Curt Lowens and actress Nina Franoszek will play the parts of Lion and Marta.

Related Event:
“Enemy Number One”: Lion Feuchtwanger and the Literature of Exile
Wednesday, September 29, 12 p.m.
Doheny Memorial Library, Friends Lecture Hall, Room 240
For more info, click here.

Organized by Marje Schuetze-Coburn and Michaela Ullmann (USC Libraries). Co-sponsored by Villa Aurora.

For further information on this event:
visionsandvoices@usc.edu