"Success" by Lion Feuchtwanger, translated from the German by Willa and Edwin Muir, published by the Literary Guild, 1930. Copyright 1930 by the Viking Press, New York. First Edition [Literary Guild was a mail order club. The books with "Literary Guild" imprint on the title page were published on the same date and the same plates as the trade editions].

Hard boards, original black cloth, silvery lettering on front board and spine [some wear]; 5.1/4" x 8.1/2"; private exlibris inside front cover, 781 pages, very good condition.

Martin Krueger, a museum director in Munich, has become quite unpopular and some people would like to be rid of him. Consequently, the lawsuit against him does not turn out to his favor. However, his friends keep fighting to prove his innocence.

"On the surface, Success is mostly about Martin Krueger, who is convicted and jailed unjustly in post World War I Bavaria, and Johanna Krain, who spends the better part of two years trying to free him. This story segues into an extremely thinly veiled, novelized version of the beer hall putsch of 1923. "Success" was published in 1930, and at that point it appeared that the Nazi party was disappearing into insignificance. It wasn't until the Reichstag elections of September 1930 that the party polled a significant percentage of the vote. While the novel is a damning account of the early rise of the Nazi party, that doesn't appear to me to be the actual point of the story."

Success is about injustice and the breakdown of law and order, which are two different things. It is set in Bavaria in the early 1920's, but the story is more universal than that. There are a few people who are dead set against Martin Krueger being freed, a few people who want to free him, and a lot of people who don't really care. Throughout the book, this single injustice is shrugged away as just one example in a society that doesn't appear to value justice since the end of the Great War (WWI). As the True Germans (Nazis) begin to rise and become more and more violent, they become the obstacle to Krueger's freedom. But even when the putsch fails embarrassingly (as did the real one) and their leader Rupert Kutzner (aka Adolf Hitler) flees the field leaving his supporters to the guns of the Army, and it appears that the True Germans are being swept away from power (temporarily as it turned out in real life), the injustice rolls on.

Finally, the novel is also about how little anyone can actually do to help someone else when society turns its back on him. There is a great quote in this book. "Life is a primitive jungle through which everyone had to hack his own path." That is a realization most parents are forced to accept in some form as their children become adults, and the conclusion that Johanna Krain ultimately comes to.” [a review]

"... It was published in 1930 and the author eventually found to his surprise that, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the fall of the Nazis were premature. Feuchtwanger was imprisoned in France, first by the French because he was a German, and then by the Vichy government because he was wanted by the Nazis. It's sometimes hard to please anyone. He escaped with the aid of an American diplomat aided by Eleanor Roosevelt. That sounds like the idea for a pretty good novel."

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