Born of a Jewish family, Feuchtwanger studied philology and literature at Berlin and Munich (1903–07) and took his doctorate in 1918 with a dissertation on poet Heinrich Heine. Also in 1918 he founded a literary journal, Der Spiegel. His first historical novel was Die hässliche Herzogin (1923; The Ugly Duchess), about Margaret Maultasch, duchess of Tirol. His finest novel, Jud Süss (1925; also published as Jew Süss and Power), set in 18th-century Germany, revealed a depth of psychological analysis that remained characteristic of his subsequent work—the Josephus-Trilogie (Der jüdische Krieg, 1932; Die Söhne, 1935; Der Tag wird kommen, 1945); Die Geschwister Oppenheim (1933; The Oppermanns), a novel of modern life; and Der falsche Nero (1936; The Pretender). Jud Süss tells the story of a brilliant and charismatic Jewish financier who adroitly manages the revenues of the Duke of Württemberg. After the tragic death of his daughter, Süss voluntarily renounces the pursuit of power and is tried and executed by his political enemies.

Exiled in 1933, Feuchtwanger moved to France; from there he escaped to the United States in 1940 after some months in an internment camp, described in The Devil in France (1941; later published in its original German as Unholdes Frankreich and Der Teufel in Frankreich). Of his later works the best known are Waffen für Amerika (1947; also published as Die Füchse im Weinberg; Eng. trans. Proud Destiny), Goya oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1951; This Is the Hour), and Jefta und seine Tochter (1957; Jephthah and His Daughter). He translated Christopher Marlowe's Edward II (in collaboration with playwright Bertolt Brecht) and plays by Aeschylus and Aristophanes.