The word and the image mutually excluded each other. Joseph was a literary man to his very marrow; he put faith in the invisible Word; it was the most miraculous thing in all the world; though without form it had more power than anything endowed with form

Following a brief period of internment in France and a harrowing escape from Continental Europe he sought asylum in the United States where he died in 1958. Feuchtwanger's fierce criticism of the Nazi Party—years before it assumed power—ensured that he would be a target of government-sponsored persecution after Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor of Germany in January 1933.