Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958)was a German historical novelist. Born into an Orthodox Munich family, Feuchtwanger studied philosophy at Berlin and Munich; in 1907 he received his doctorate from the University of Munich for a thesis on Heine's Rabbi of Bacherach. As a young man he was mainly interested in drama. He wrote about a dozen plays, three of them in collaboration with Brecht, on whom he had considerable influence. It was after World War I, in which he served in the German army, that Feuchtwanger's name first became known. His greatest success came with Jud Suess (1925; English edition Jew Suess, 1926), a novel about Joseph Suess Oppenheimer, the 18th-century court Jew, which he had originally written as a play. In 1939 this world best seller, which had already been made into a motion picture in Britain, was used by the Nazis as the basis for a viciously anti-Semitic film. Feuchtwanger's other big success of the 1920s was Die haessliche Herzogin Margarete Maultasch (1923; The Ugly Duchess, 1927), a psychological study of an Austrian historical figure. Erfolg (1930; Success, 1930) daringly exposed the moral corruption of postwar Germany. It was during this period that he began writing his Josephus trilogy - Der juedische Krieg (1932; Josephus, 1932), Die Soehne (1935; The Jew of Rome, 1936), and Der Tag wird kommen (1941; The Day Will Come, 1942). Feuchtwanger spent the winter of 1932/33 on a lecture tour of the U.S. and was there when Hitler came to power. He never returned to Germany, but settled in the south of France. After the French collapse in June 1940, the Vichy regime put him into a concentration camp. With the help of American friends he managed to escape over the Pyrenees and, as a result of the intervention of President Roosevelt, was able to enter the U.S., where he spent the rest of his life. The novel Die Geschwister Oppenheim (1933; The Oppermanns, 1934) deals with the fate of a German-Jewish family in the early days of Nazi rule. A trip to the U.S.S.R. produced Moskau 1937, which included an historic interview with Stalin. The years of exile in France inspired several novels, including Simone (1944; Eng. tr., 1944), Exil (1939; Paris Gazette, 1940), and Unholdes Frankreich (1942; The Devil in France, 1941). When he was living in Pacific Palisades, California, Feuchtwanger wrote more best sellers, including Waffen fuer America (2 vols, 1947–48; Proud Destiny, 1947), the story of Benjamin Franklin's activities in France; Goya (1951; This Is the Hour, 1952); Narrenweisheit, oder Tod und Verklaerung des Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1952; 'tis Folly to be Wise... 1953); Spanische Ballade (1955; Raquel the Jewess of Toledo, 1956), and Jefta und seine Tochter (1957; Jephta and his Daughter, 1958). Many of these books were translated into more than 30 languages. Feuchtwanger's play Wahn, oder der Teufel in Boston (1946) is a penetrating study of Cotton Mather and his times. The 30,000-volume Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, bequeathed to the University of Southern California, was the novelist's third collection; previous libraries were lost in Nazi Germany and occupied France. After World War II, Feuchtwanger received awards and honors from both West and East Germany.

Arnold Zweig (1887–1968) was a German novelist and playwright. Zweig was born in Gross-Glogau, Silesia. In 1915, while a university student, he volunteered for the German army and spent over a year in the trenches. After the war he became a free-lance writer. He was for a time editor of the Zionist Juedische Rundschau, having unlike the vast majority of German-Jewish writers, turned to Jewish nationalism. With Lion Feuchtwanger he wrote Die Aufgabe des Judentums (1933). When the Nazis came to power, Zweig left Germany for Erez Israel by way of Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, and France. He lived in Haifa where he coedited the short-lived weekly Orient (1942–43). In 1948 he settled in East Berlin, remaining there until his death.

Zweig first attracted attention with his Novellen um Claudia (1912, Claudia, Eng. 1930). The biblical drama Abigail und Nabal (1913) and the novella Aufzeichnungen ueber eine Familie Klopfer (1911) were followed by a more important drama of Jewish life, the prizewinning Ritualmord in Ungarn (1914, revised as Die Sendung Semaels, 1918). It was, however, his best-selling novel, Der Streit um den Sergeanten Grischa (1927; The Case of Sergeant Grischa, 1928), which (translated into nearly 20 languages) spread Zweig's reputation far beyond the German-speaking world. Perhaps the outstanding war novel of the Weimar Republic, this scathing exposure of Prussian justice dealt with the trial and execution of an innocent and inarticulate Russian prisoner of war. Over the years Zweig wrote a series of prose epics on Germany before, during, and after World War I (parts of an eight-volume cycle entitled Der grosse Krieg der weissen Maenner); Erziehung vor Verdun (1935; Education Before Verdun, 1936); Einsetzung eines Koenigs (1937; Crowning of a King, 1938); Junge Frau von 1914 (1931; Young Woman of 1914, 1932); and Die Feuerpause (1954). The Nazi terror was described in another fine novel, Das Beil von Wandsbek (1947; The Axe of Wandsbeck, 1947), filmed in 1951; it was published first in Hebrew in 1943.

Zweig's thinking on Jewish problems found expression in the essays Das ostjuedische Antlitz (1920); Caliban (1927), a study of anti-Semitism; Juden auf der deutschen Buehne (1928); and Bilanz der deutschen Judenheit 1933 (1934; Insulted and Exiled, 1937); his drama Die Umkehr (1925), and the novel De Vriendt kehrt Heim (1932; De Vriendt Goes Home, 1933), based on the tragic career of Jacob IsraLl de Haan. During his early Zionist period in Germany, Zweig held that Palestine could change the character of Jewish life everywhere by becoming once again the spiritual center of the Jews and by developing new forms of cooperative living. He nevertheless increasingly held internationalism to be the highest ideal. Zweig never felt at home in Palestine, being unable to adapt himself to a Hebrew-speaking milieu: local publishers were not inclined to translate his books, nor was Habimah enthusiastic about staging his plays. He favored a binational, Jewish-Arab state and became increasingly critical of Zionist aims. Failing eyesight also increased his aggravations; after the declaration of Israel's independence, Zweig, now more sympathetic to Communism, made a much-publicized return to East Germany, where he succeeded Heinrich Mann as president of the Academy of Arts in 1950. He received many awards, including the International Lenin Peace Prize (1958). His correspondence with Freud was published in 1968. Toward the end of his life, Zweig evidently reassessed his views on Zionism and courageously refused to sign an East German intellectuals' statement condemning Israel's "aggression" against the Arab states after the Six-Day War of 1967.