The novel was written by Feuchtwanger in America and first published in an English translation in 1943 by “The Viking Press” under the title “Double, double, toil and trouble” (words from the witches’ chorus in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”). In the manuscript, the novel was titled “The Miraculous Worker,” but already in the first German edition published in 1944 in London (Hamilton publishing house), the book carries the title “The Lautenzack Brothers.” In the Russian translation, the novel appeared in the journal “Foreign Literature,” nos. 1–3, 1957.