Biofiction as Cultural Intervention: The Tragic Failure of Lion Feuchtwanger’s Jud Süß

As a literary form, biofiction started to dominate in the 1990s, and over the last ten years, biofiction studies has surged dramatically. While scholars acknowledge that there were some important biofictions in the nineteenth century, the form first started to catch fire in the early twentieth century, especially among German writers who emigrated to the United States during the Nazi era. Klaus Mann, Heinrich Mann, Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Franz Werfel, Bruno Frank, and Bertolt Brecht are only a few who published noteworthy biofictions, but it was Lion Feuchtwanger who had perhaps the biggest impact, with the 1925 publication of Jud Süß, a biographical novel about the famous court Jew. This novel was a best-seller, which, in part, contributed to the massive surge in the publication of biofictions during the 1930s. But there are some serious concerns revolving around the work, which became most obvious after the release of Veit Harlan’s 1940 film Jud Süß. By analyzing the novel and film in relation to the Nazis‘ anti-Semitic political agenda, I clarify why Feuchtwanger’s novel not only failed tragically to accomplish what it set out to do, but also contributed significantly to an agenda that it sought to resist and debunk. This essay focuses primarily on Feuchtwanger’s novel in order to clarify what biofiction is, how it uniquely functions and signifies, and some of the potential problems with the genre.