by Stefan Zweig
And the miracle happened. Within three years everything had been rebuilt, within five years were raised those communal houses which served as a social model for the rest of Europe. The galleries and the gardens were restored; Vienna became more beautiful than ever before. Commerce picked up, the arts flourished, new industries emerged and soon in a hundred different areas we were at the forefront. We had been easy-going and frivolous, living off the old capital; but now all was lost a new energy emerged which surprised us all. To the university of this impoverished city converged students of all countries; around our great master Sigmund Freud a school evolved which in Europe and America had a bearing on all intellectual activity. Whereas in the past we relied on Germany for the publishing industry, now large publishing houses established themselves in Vienna, commissions came from England and America to study the municipal system of social support, the arts and crafts acquired, thanks to their unique qualities and taste, a dominating position. All was suddenly activity and intensity. Max Reinhardt left Berlin and set up the Wiener Theater. Toscanini came from Milan, Bruno Walter from Munich; and the Vienna Opera, and Salzburg, where all Austria’s artistic forces were communally represented, became the international capital of music and an unprecedented triumph. In vain did the chambers of music in Germany strive, with the limited means at their disposal, to turn this tide of foreigners from across the world towards Munich and other cities. But they could not manage it. For we knew why we were struggling; Austria found itself suddenly confronted by a new historic task: to safeguard before the world the freedom of the German language, already enslaved in Germany, to defend our old heritage, European culture. That gave this what you might call carefree city a marvellous strength. Such a feat of resurrection was not the work of a single man or a party, or of Seipel, the Catholic, any more than the social democrats or the monarchists, but everyone, the entire life force of a two-millennia-old city. I can say without any hint of pettifogging patriotism: never had Vienna displayed so gloriously her cultural credentials; never had she earned to such a degree the sympathy of the whole world than an hour before the great assault on her independence.
It was a beautiful and glorious day in her history. This was her final struggle. We were resigned to the loss of all prosperity and assets. We had sacrificed the provinces; no one dreamt of salvaging a scrap of territory from the neighbouring countries of Hungary, Bohemia, Italy or Germany. We might have been poor patriots in the political sense of the term, but there was one thing we would not cede, nor let ourselves be surpassed in: art and the culture we felt to be our true homeland. Also the most glorious page in Vienna’s history happens to be the way in which she defended this culture. I can quote an example: I have travelled much, been present at a number of admirable performances, at the Metropolitan Opera under Toscanini, where I have heard the greatest singers, at the ballets of Leningrad and Milan, but I must confess that I have never been so awestruck as by those which occurred at the Vienna Opera following the collapse in 1919. We groped our way through the darkened streets—street lighting restricted by a shortage of coal—paid for a ticket with worthless banknotes, entered the familiar space, to be struck with horror. The room, with its clutch of lamps, was grey and icy-cold: no colour, no radiance, no uniforms, no evening wear. Just a crowd of people huddled together, dressed in worn-out winter coats and uniforms, a grey, livid mass of shadows and spectres. The musicians entered and took up their positions in the orchestra. We knew them all and yet we scarcely recognized them now. Grizzled, wintry, decrepit, they sat there in their tails. We knew that at this time these artists took home less than a waiter or a manual worker. A shudder seized the heart; there was so much impoverishment, so much dejection and misery in that space, one truly felt the breath of Hades. The conductor raised his baton and the music began. Darkness fell and all of a sudden the old sparkle returned. Never had our opera played and sang better than in those days, so much so that they wondered if they would be obliged to bar the doors the next day. None of the singers, none of the wonderful musicians had accepted the numerous more alluring offers made by rival cities, each had felt duty-bound to give the best of himself and to preserve the common good which was most precious to us: our great tradition. The empire had gone, the roads were in a lamentable condition, the houses had the appearance of having just suffered bombardment, the people seemed struck by a grave illness. Everything was neglected and already half lost; but this one thing, art, our honour, our glory, we defended in Vienna, each playing their role. Everyone worked twice, ten times as hard and suddenly we sensed the world was watching us, recognizing us, as we had already recognized ourselves.
That is how, through a fanaticism for art, a passion so often ridiculed, we once more saved Vienna. Expelled from the top rank of nations, we nevertheless conserved our place at the heart of European culture. The mission to defend a higher culture against all forms of barbarism, the mission that the Romans engraved in our very walls, was accomplished right up to the final hour.
We fulfilled our mission in the Vienna of yesterday and we shall continue to fulfil it abroad and everywhere. I spoke of the Vienna of yesterday, the Vienna where I was born and where I lived and which I love today more than ever now that I have lost it. Of today’s Vienna (1940) I can say nothing. We know very little of what is happening there; we are even fearful of interpreting it too exactly. I read in the papers that they had summoned Furtwängler to take in hand the musical life of Vienna; surely Furtwängler is a musician whose authority none can contest. But the fact that they have to reorganize the musical life of Vienna shows that the venerable, miraculous organism is mortally threatened. After all, you hardly call for a doctor to visit a man in robust health. Art, like culture, cannot prosper without freedom, and the culture of Vienna cannot flourish if it is severed from the vital source of European civilization. The mighty struggle that today shakes our world will definitively decide the fate of this culture and I hardly need tell you on which side my most fervent wishes stand.
IN THIS DARK HOUR
AMONG THE EUROPEAN WRITERS gathered here today whose aim is to endorse our old avowal of faith in favour of intellectual union, we have, at least those of us who are writers in German, a painful and tragic prerogative. We were the first to be confronted by the barbarism now terrorizing the world. Our books were the first to be cast onto the pyres. With us began the expulsion of many thousands of people from their homes and their homeland. At the beginning it was a severe test for us. But today we have no regrets over this enforced exile. For how would we be able to look the free countries and ourselves in the eye, if we had spared the Germany of today or even venerated her? Our conscience feels that much more liberated, having made a clean break from those who have plunged this world into the greatest catastrophe in all history. But at the same time, we feel a sense of detachment from any responsibility for the brutal acts committed today in the name of German culture, though the shadow of these acts still weighs peculiarly on our souls. But you, my other European friends, have things rather easier. Faced with these barbaric measures which threaten the very dignity of man, you can at least state with pride: “It has nothing to do with us! This is a foreign spirit, a foreign ideology!” Whilst we German writers, we must bear these violations as a secret and odious shame. For these decrees are issued in the German language, the same one in which we think and write. These brutalities are committed in the name of the same German culture that we have laboured to serve through our works. We can hardly deny that it is our homeland which has foisted these horrors on the world. And although in the eyes of Germans today we are no longer their countrymen, I feel the need here to express an apology to each of my French, English, Belgian, Norwegian, Polish and Dutch friends for all that has befallen their peoples in the name of the German spirit.
Perhaps you are surprised that we continue to create and write in this German language. But if a writer can abandon his country, he cannot wrench himself from the language in which he creates and thinks
. It is in this language that we have, throughout our lives, fought against the self-glorification of nationalism and it is the only weapon remaining at our disposal that allows us to continue fighting against the force of nationalist criminality which is laying waste to our world and trampling the spiritual endowment of mankind into the muck.
However, my friends, if we have lost faith in any optimistic outlook following this horrifying plunge of humanity into bestiality, we have still gained something through the enduring trial. I believe that each of us today has been instilled with a new consciousness and is more aware of the necessity and fundamentally sacred character of intellectual freedom than in former times. For it’s always that way with the sacred value of life. We forget it as long as it belongs to us, and give it as little attention during the unconcerned hours of our life as we do the stars in the light of day. Darkness must fall before we are aware of the majesty of the stars above our heads. It was necessary for this dark hour to fall, perhaps the darkest in history, to make us realize that freedom is as vital to our soul as breathing to our body. I know—never has the dignity of man been so abased as now, nor peoples so enslaved and maltreated; never has the divine image of the Creator in all His forms been so vilely defiled and martyred—but never, my friends, never ever has humanity been more aware than now that freedom is indispensable to the soul. Never have so many men reviled tyranny and oppression with such unanimity; never have so many men thirsted for a message of redemption than now when their mouths are gagged. If today a single one of our words can penetrate their prisons, those inside will draw courage from the fact that their oppressors have celebrated victory prematurely. For they will know that there are still free men existing in the free countries who not only desire freedom for themselves but for all men, all peoples, all humanity.
And rightly this freedom, which is assured here, in this free country, imposes on all of us, and especially us writers and poets, a sacred duty; never in our life have we known such a critical and defining moment as this. It is for us today, those to whom words are granted, in the midst of a reeling, half-devastated world, to maintain in spite of everything faith in a moral force, confidence in the invincibility of the spirit. Let us then make common cause; let us accomplish our duties in our work and in our life, each in their own mother tongue, each for their own country. If we can remain faithful to ourselves at this hour and at the same time to one another, then we will at least have performed our duty with honour.
DETAILS OF FIRST PUBLICATION
‘THE SLEEPLESS WORLD’
‘Die schlaflose Welt’ (1914)
First appeared in the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, 1st August 1914. Included in Zweig’s Begegnungen mit Menschen, Büchern, Städten (Vienna, Leipzig, Zurich: Herbert Reichner, 1937; Berlin and Frankfurt: Fischer, 1955).
‘THE TOWER OF BABEL’
‘Der Turm zu Babel’ (1916)
First appeared in the April/May 1916 edition of Geneva-based pacifist journal Le Carmel, then on 8th May 1916 in the newspaper Vossische Zeitung, Berlin.
‘HISTORY AS POETESS’
‘Die Geschichte als Dichterin’ (1931)
First published in the Neues Wiener Tagblatt on 22nd November 1931. Extended and amended for PEN conference in Stockholm, September 1939, but never presented due to the outbreak of war that month. First published in the collection Zeit und Welt. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge 1904–1940, ed. Richard Friedenthal (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1943).
‘EUROPEAN THOUGHT IN ITS HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT’
‘Der europäische Gedanke in seiner historischer Entwicklung’ (1932)
A lecture given by Stefan Zweig in Florence on 5th May 1932, then repeated in Milan. First published in Zeit und Welt. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge 1904–1940, ed. Richard Friedenthal (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1943).
‘THE UNIFICATION OF EUROPE: A DISCOURSE’
‘Einigung Europas. Eine Rede’ (1934)
Unfinished manuscript, written around 1934 and finally published in an edition by Tartin Editionen, Salzburg, 2013, edited by Klemens Renoldner. The essay was among the typed documents dating from the period of Zweig’s exile in England and bears Lotte Zweig’s handwritten note in pencil in the margin: “The Unification of Europe. Lecture for Paris, not given.”
‘1914 AND TODAY’
‘1914 und heute’ (1936)
Written in celebration of the novel L’Été 1914, the penultimate instalment of the suite known as Les Thibault by the French writer Roger Martin du Gard (1881–1958). First published in Zeit und Welt. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge 1904–1940, ed. Richard Friedenthal (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1943). Republished in Zeiten und Schicksale. Aufsätze und Vorträge aus den Jahren 1902–1942, ed. Knut Beck (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1990) [part of Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden: Stefan Zweig].
‘THE SECRET OF ARTISTIC CREATION’
‘Das Geheimnis des künstlerischen Schaffens’ (1938)
Lecture given at a conference in London on 2nd December 1938, then in the United States during a reading tour of fifteen cities from 9th January to 14th February 1939. First published in Zeit und Welt. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge 1904–1940, ed. Richard Friedenthal (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1943). Republished in Das Geheimnis des künstlerischen Schaffens: Essays, ed. Knut Beck (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1984) [part of Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden: Stefan Zweig].
‘THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF TOMORROW’
‘Geschichtsschreibung von morgen’ (1939)
Lecture given during the US reading tour of January–February 1939. First published in Zeit und Welt. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge 1904–1940, ed. Richard Friedenthal (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1943), then later in Die schlaflose Welt. Aufsätze und Vorträge aus den Jahren 1909–1941, ed. Knut Beck (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1983) [part of Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden: Stefan Zweig].
‘THE VIENNA OF YESTERDAY’
‘Das Wien von gestern’ (1940)
Lecture given in Paris at the Théâtre Marigny in April 1940. First published in Zeit und Welt. Gesammelte Aufsätze und Vorträge 1904–1940, ed. Richard Friedenthal (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1943). Republished in Auf Reisen: Feuilletons und Berichte, ed. Knut Beck (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1983) [part of Gesammelte Werke in Einzelbänden: Stefan Zweig].
‘IN THIS DARK HOUR’
‘In dieser dunklen Stunde’ (1941)
Message of solidarity in the name of German writers in exile, presented at the banquet of the American PEN club in New York on 15th May 1941, on the occasion of the foundation of “European PEN in America”. First published in Aufbau, a journal for German-speaking Jews, New York, 16th May 1941.
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STEFAN ZWEIG
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RED LOVE: THE STORY OF AN EAST GERMAN FAMILY
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