The World of Yesterday

by Stefan Zweig

  Now I really did feel a powerful urge to do something against the war! I had the material ready to hand; to get me started I had needed only this last visible confirmation of what instinct told me. I had recognised the enemy whom I must fight—the false heroism that would rather send others to suffering and death, the cheap optimism of unscrupulous prophets promising political and military victory, keeping the slaughter going, and behind them the chorus they had hired, the “wordsmiths of war”,2 as Werfel called them in his fine poem. Anyone who expressed reservations was disturbing them in their patriotic business; anyone who uttered a warning was derided as a pessimist; anyone who opposed the war which inflicted no suffering on them personally was branded a traitor. It was always the same, the whole pack throughout history who called cautious people cowards, humane people weak, only to be at a loss themselves in the hour of disaster that they had rashly conjured up. Because the pack were always the same. They had mocked Cassandra in Troy, Jeremiah in Jerusalem, and I had never before understood the tragedy of those great figures as I did now, in a time so like theirs. From the first I had not believed in ‘victory’, and I knew only one thing for certain—even if victory could in fact be gained at the expense of countless victims, it did not justify that sacrifice. But I was alone among my friends with these warnings, and the wild howl of triumph even before the first shot was fired, the division of the spoils even before the first battle, often made me doubt whether I myself was mad among all these clever heads, or perhaps was the only person to be shockingly sober amidst their intoxication. So it was only natural for me to describe my own situation—the tragic situation of the ‘defeatist’, a word that had been coined to impute a wish for defeat to those anxious for reconciliation—and I did it in the form of a play. As a symbol, I chose the character of Jeremiah, the prophet issuing warnings in vain. But I was not setting out to write a ‘pacifist’ drama, expressing truisms in verse to the effect that peace is better than war; I wanted to show that a man despised as weak and fearful in a time of enthusiastic feeling is generally the only one who, when defeat comes, not only endures but rises above it. From the time of my very first play, Thersites, I had constantly turned to the question of the mental superiority of the defeated. I was always attracted to showing how any form of power can harden a human being’s heart, how victory can bring mental rigidity to whole nations, and to contrasting that with the emotional force of defeat painfully and terribly ploughing through the soul. In the middle of war, while others, celebrating triumph too soon, were proving to one another that victory was inevitable, I was plumbing the depths of the catastrophe and looking for a way to emerge from them.

  Unconsciously, however, by choosing a Biblical subject I had touched on something that so far had lain in me unexploited—my common ground with the Jews and their story, founded in either blood or tradition. Were not they my people, who had been defeated again and again by all other nations, over and over again, and yet had endured thanks to a mysterious power? And was that power not the one that, through a strong effort of the will, could overcome defeat by always enduring it? Our prophets had known in advance about the constant persecution and exile that still keeps us apart today, like chaff thrown into the street, and had taken defeat as an affirmation and even a blessed way to God. Had a time of trial not always been a gain to society and to individuals? I felt that was so as I wrote my play, the first of my works that I myself thought was really worth something. I know today that without all that I went through then in the Great War, without that fellow feeling and anticipation of the future, I would still have been the writer I was before the war, con moto—with emotion—as the musical term puts it, but gently so, not intensely moved to my very heart. Now, for the first time, I had the feeling that I was really speaking for myself and for my times. In trying to help others, I helped myself to write what is my most personal and private work, together with Erasmus, in which I made my way out of a similar crisis in 1934, the period of Hitler. From the moment when I began trying to construct it, I did not suffer so deeply from the tragedy of the times.

  I had not expected any visible success from this play. Tackling as it did so many questions posed by prophets, by pacifists, by Jews, and through the choral construction of the closing scenes, rising to a hymn by the defeated to their fate, the extent of the play had grown so far beyond the usual length of a drama that in performance it would have occupied two or even three evenings in the theatre. And then, how was anyone going to produce a play on the German stage that spoke of defeat, even praised it, while every day the newspapers were urging, ‘Death or victory!’? I could consider it a miracle if the text was ever printed, but even in the worst case, that is that it was not, it had at least helped me through the worst of those times. I had said in my dialogue everything I could not say in conversation with those around me. I had thrown off the burden weighing on my mind and recovered my true self. At the very moment when everything in me was saying, ‘No’, to what was going on, I had found a way of saying ‘Yes’ to myself.

  NOTES

  1 Benedetto Croce did not become a minister until 1920-21. [This note appears in the German original.]

  2 Die Wortemacher des Kriegs, an anti-war poem by Franz Werfel written in August 1914.

  IN THE HEART OF EUROPE

  WHEN MY TRAGEDY Jeremiah was published in book form in Easter, 1917, I had a surprise. I had written it in a spirit of bitter personal protest against the times we were living through, so I thought that I must expect it to arouse equally bitter hostility. But exactly the opposite happened. Twenty thousand copies were sold at once, a fantastic number for a play in book form. Not only did friends like Romain Rolland publicly applaud it, so did some who had previously been in the opposite camp, like Rathenau and Richard Dehmel. Theatrical directors, to whom I had not even offered the drama—any performance in Germany or Austria during the war was, after all, unthinkable—wrote asking me to reserve rights to its premiere for them once peace came. Even my pro-war opponents were civil and respectful. It was not at all what I had expected.

  What had happened? Nothing, except that the war had now been going on for two-and-a-half years. Time had done its work, bringing cruel sobriety. After the terrible bloodletting on the battlefields, the fever began to die down. People looked war in the face with cooler, harder eyes than in those first months of enthusiasm, and their sense of solidarity began to weaken, since no one could see any sign of the great ‘moral cleansing’ that philosophers and writers had so grandiloquently proclaimed. A deep rift ran right through the nation; the country could be said to have fallen apart into two different worlds. First came the world of the soldiers who fought and suffered the most cruel deprivation, then the world of those who had stayed at home and went on living their old lives, going to the theatre and still making money out of the misery of others. The world at the front and the world behind the lines presented a sharper contrast than ever. A frenzy of protectionism, wearing a hundred disguises, had made its way through the doors of the civil service offices; everyone knew that money or good connections could still bring profitable orders for some people, while farmers or labourers, already shot half to pieces, were driven back to the trenches. Everyone began ruthlessly looking after his own interests as best he could. Essential everyday items grew more expensive daily, thanks to shameless deals done by middlemen, food was getting scarcer and scarcer, and above the grey morass of general wretchedness there hovered, like a will-o’-the-wisp, the phosphorescent light of the provocative luxury in which war profiteers lived. Embittered distrust began to take hold of people’s minds—distrust of the currency, which was rapidly losing value, distrust of the generals, the officers, the diplomats, distrust of every announcement made by the state or the general staff, distrust of the news and the newspapers, distrust of the war itself and its alleged necessity. So it was not the literary merit of my play that brought it this surprising success; I had only put what no one else dared say openly into words: they hated the war, th
ey would distrust even victory.

  However, to express such sentiments in words spoken live on stage was surely impossible. There would inevitably have been demonstrations, so I felt it likely that I could not hope to see this first anti-war play performed while the war was still going on. Then, suddenly, I had a letter from the director of the Zurich Playhouse, saying he would like to stage my Jeremiah immediately, and inviting me to go to Zurich myself for the production. I had forgotten that—as also in the Second World War—one small but precious German-speaking nation had been granted the grace to keep out of hostilities, a democratic country where you were still free to say what you thought and stand by your opinions. Of course I agreed at once.

  At this point, clearly, I could agree to go to Zurich for the production only in principle, since I would have to get permission to stay away from Austria and my employment in the War Archive for some time. Luckily it turned out that all the countries at war had a department for ‘cultural propaganda’ (no such thing has been set up this time). I keep having to stress the difference between our situation now and in the countries of that time, when the leaders, the Kaiser, the Kings had been raised in a humanitarian tradition, and must have been subconsciously ashamed of the war. Nation after nation rejected the accusation of being or having been ‘militaristic’ as a wicked slander; instead, they vied with each other in declaring that they were ‘cultural nations’ and making a great display of it. In 1914, facing a world that valued culture more than violence, and would have shunned such slogans as sacro egoismo1and Lebensraum as immoral, they wanted nothing more badly than recognition of universally valid cultural achievement. All the neutral countries, therefore, were swamped with artistic performances. Germany sent orchestras with world-famous conductors to Switzerland, Holland and Sweden, Vienna sent its Philharmonic; even poets, writers and scholars were sent, not to praise military deeds or celebrate the annexation of territory, but simply to show, through their verses and other works, that the Germans were not ‘barbarians’, and produced not just flame-throwers and deadly poison gas but works of absolute value to the whole of Europe. In the years 1914 to 1918—I must emphasise yet again—the conscience of the world was still a force whose favour the authorities wanted to win; the artistically creative, moral side of a nation at war was a strength respected for its influence, the states were still competing for human sympathy and not—like Germany in 1939—simply hammering it into the ground with inhumane terror. In view of that, I had a fair chance of succeeding if I asked for leave so that I could go to Switzerland for the production of my play. At the worst there might be difficulties on the grounds that this was an anti-war play in which an Austrian writer anticipated defeat as a possibility, even if in symbolical form. I asked to see the head of my department at the Ministry and put my request to him. To my great astonishment he immediately said he would do all he could to get me permission, adding, remarkably enough: “Thank God, you’ve never been one of those loud-mouthed warmongering idiots. Well, off you go and do what you can to bring this business to an end.” Four days later I had my leave and a passport to travel abroad.

  I had been rather surprised to hear one of the most highly placed officials in an Austrian ministry speak so freely while the war was still going on. But since I was unacquainted with the secret corridors of political power, I had no idea that in 1917, under our new Emperor Karl, a quiet movement had already begun in the higher circles of government to break free of the dictatorship of the German army, which ruthlessly, and against the will of our country itself, was towing Austria along in the wake of its own frenzied expansionism. Our general staff hated Ludendorff’s brutal arrogance, the Foreign Office was desperately resisting being drawn into support for extensive U-boat hostilities, which was bound to make America our enemy, even the people were grumbling about ‘Prussian presumption’. So far all this was expressed only in cautious undertones and apparently casual remarks. But in the days that followed I was to discover more, and I came unexpectedly close to one of the great political secrets of that time sooner than most.

  It was like this—on my way to Switzerland I stopped off in Salzburg, where I had bought a house. I intended to live there when the war was over. There was a small clique of ardent Catholics in Salzburg, two of whom were to play crucial parts in the history of post-war Austria—Heinrich Lammasch and Ignaz Seipel. The former was one of the outstanding teachers of jurisprudence of his time, and had chaired peace conferences in The Hague; the latter, Ignaz Seipel, a Catholic priest of extraordinary intelligence, was destined to take over the leadership of our little country after the collapse of the Austrian Monarchy, and in that capacity to give outstanding evidence of his political genius. Both were convinced pacifists, devout Catholics, passionate believers in the old Austria, and thus firmly opposed to German, Prussian and Protestant militarism, which as they saw it could not be reconciled with the traditional ideas of Austria and its Catholic mission. My play Jeremiah had found favour in these religious and pacifist circles, and as Seipel had just gone away, Councillor Lammasch asked me to come and see him in Salzburg. The distinguished old scholar spoke to me warmly about my book, saying it upheld the Austrian ideal of working towards reconciliation, and he very much hoped, he added, that it would be influential beyond the purely literary sphere. Then, to my amazement, and with the frankness that was evidence of his courageous nature, he confided a secret to me, a man he had never seen before: here in Austria we were on the brink of a crucial turn of events. Since the military elimination of Russia from the war, he said, there was no longer any real reason for Austria not to make peace, or Germany either if it would relinquish its aggressive tendencies. This was the moment, and it should be grasped. And if the pan-Germanic clique in Germany continued to oppose negotiations, then it was up to Austria to take the lead and negotiate independently. He indicated that young Emperor Karl had promised to lend his support to this endeavour, and we might soon see what effect the Emperor’s own policies had. Everything now, he said, depended on whether Austria could summon up the energy to go ahead with peace through reconciliation, instead of the principle of ‘peace through victory’ that the German military party demanded, disregarding any future victims of the war. In an emergency, however, extreme measures must be taken: Austria must withdraw from the alliance before being dragged down into disaster by the German militarists. “No one can blame us for disloyalty,” he said in firm, decided tones. “We have suffered over a million dead. We have done and sacrificed enough! Not one more human life, not a single one, should be thrown away in the cause of German world-domination!”

  He took my breath away. We had often thought all these things in private, but no one had had the courage to say in broad daylight: “Let us break with the Germans and their policy of annexation in good time.” It would have looked like disloyalty to our brother-in-arms. And here was a man who, as I already knew, enjoyed the confidence of the Emperor at home, and the highest esteem abroad because of his work in The Hague, saying these things to me, almost a stranger, calmly and firmly. I immediately guessed that a separatist Austrian action had been in preparation for some time, and was well advanced. It was a bold idea either to induce Germany to be more amenable to negotiations by threatening to make a separate peace, or if need be carry out the threat itself. As history showed, it was the one last chance that could have saved the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the monarchy, and thus Europe at that time. Unfortunately the plan was not implemented with the determination that had accompanied its conception. Emperor Karl did indeed send his brother-in-law the Prince of Parma to Clemenceau with a secret letter, to sound out the chances of peace without previously seeking agreement with the Court in Berlin, even perhaps to start negotiating. Just how this secret mission came to the knowledge of Germany has not, I think, ever been cleared up, but when it did, disastrously, Emperor Karl was not bold enough to stand publicly by his convictions, perhaps because—as is widely thought—Germany threatened to send an invading force into Austr
ia, or perhaps, since he was a Habsburg, because he shrank from the odium of ending an alliance concluded by Franz Joseph and sealed with so much blood at this crucial moment. Anyway, he did not appoint Lammasch and Seipel to the prime-ministerial positions. This hesitation was fatal, for they were the only men who, as Catholics with an international reputation, would have had the strength of their moral convictions in shouldering the odium of breaking with Germany. Both did get the prime-ministerial post later, in the mutilated Austrian Republic rather than under the old Habsburg Monarchy, yet no one would have been more capable of defending an apparently unjust course of action to the world than these important and highly esteemed men. By openly threatening to secede from the German alliance, or actually doing so, Lammasch would not only have saved Austria, he would also have saved Germany from its insidious internal danger, its boundless desire to annex more territory. Europe today would be better off if the action confided to me frankly then by Lammasch, that wise and devout man, had not foundered on weakness and lack of diplomacy.

  Next day I travelled on and crossed the Swiss border. It is hard to convey an idea of what it meant then to move into the neutral zone from a country cut off from others and already half-starved. Changing from one railway station to another took only a few seconds, but in the very first of those seconds you felt as if you were suddenly stepping out of a stale, musty atmosphere into bracing air full of the smell of snow. It was a kind of dizzy sensation in the brain, running on through all the nerves and senses. Even years later, when I was travelling from Austria and passed this station—whose name I would never otherwise have remembered—that abrupt breath of fresh air instantly came back to me. You got off the train, and there in the station buffet—the first surprise—were all the things that had once been taken for granted at home but were now forgotten—plump, golden oranges, bananas, chocolate and ham, which were to be had only furtively in Austria, under the counter. There was bread and meat for sale without ration cards—and the travellers, like famished animals, positively fell on the food, which was both delicious and cheap. There was a post and telegraph office from which you could write and wire uncensored letters and telegrams to all quarters of the compass. There were French, Italian and English newspapers for sale, and you could buy, open and read them without fear of repercussions. Forbidden fruit was allowed here, five minutes from the other side of the border where it was still out of reach. The absurdity of European wars was made physically evident to me by the close spatial proximity of conditions on the two sides—over there, on the Austrian side of this little border town, its placards and signs still clearly legible with the naked eye, men were being taken out of every little house and hovel, put on trains and sent to the Ukraine and Albania to murder and be murdered; here, five minutes away, men of the same age could sit at ease with their wives outside their ivy-clad doors, smoking their pipes. I could not help wondering whether the fish on the right bank of this little river at the border were also at war, while the fish here on the left bank were neutral. A second after I had crossed the border, I was already thinking differently, more freely, with more vigour and less subservience, and next day I discovered from experience how the physical organism as well as the mind suffers from being inside a war zone. I had been invited to visit relations of mine, and unthinkingly drank a cup of black coffee at the end of our meal and then smoked a Havana cigar—I suddenly felt dizzy and had palpitations of the heart. After many months of substitutes, my body and nerves were not strong enough for real coffee and real tobacco any more. Even the body had to readjust to its natural element of peace on coming out of the unnatural element of war.