The World of Yesterday • Stefan Zweig

Actually, I hadn’t planned to read anything by Zweig in the near future. A few weeks ago, however, friends in my close literary circle strongly urged me to pick up this book, saying it was wonderful. Since I was very much in the mood to read the recollections of a great man of letters, I let myself be tempted to order it and read it right away. Whether that was such a good idea—you can find out in this article.

By Stefan Zweig I had previously only read a collection of novellas, which I remember as being very well done. The World of Yesterday is not, however, a collection of novellas and not a novel either, but an autobiographical work. Starting from the bourgeois and conservative life of old Habsburg Austria and spanning both world wars, Zweig describes his own life and that of his generation. Arranged chronologically, his life, experiences, and encounters form a red thread, while his impressions of social, political, and artistic changes play a very important role. As readers, we learn how Europe began to change around the turn of the century and how Zweig, from the perspective of an intellectual, perceived social and political rifts—as well as historical bright spots and remarkable people—in those difficult times.

The book opens with a portrayal of Vienna at the turn of the century, distinguished by peace and prosperity and, in particular, by the many great inventions of the time. Zweig describes the conservative, bourgeois society of Vienna around 1900. He evokes his bleak and scarcely nurturing years at the Gymnasium very vividly, and you sense the fertile literary milieu he inhabited in Vienna back then. The mental agility he shows even in his youth—the passion for art and literature—is remarkable. Zweig remains quite modest and even sees those dreary school years as the reason he immersed himself so intensely in literature and already read so much at such an early age.

Zweig goes on to describe his university years and, throughout his life, he traveled widely and attached great importance to his personal freedom. You could call him a cosmopolitan, and in the book he recounts the places he lived—his time in Berlin, living in Paris, how he ended up in London—and how later, between the world wars, he even traveled to the United States and Russia. In each country, he built circles of friends among artists and intellectuals and cultivated numerous contacts. I found it fascinating to see the big names that appear and with whom he associated: Sigmund Freud, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, H. G. Wells, or Richard Strauss, to name just a few. Having lived for shorter and longer periods in so many countries and having friends and contacts everywhere, he felt himself a European and was filled with the idea of a united, peaceful Europe. This peaceful Europe—and the freedom to travel at will and exchange freely with other artists—had become a personal necessity for Zweig, and the two world wars shattered him accordingly.

It should be mentioned here that Stefan Zweig came from a well-to-do family and seems always to have had ample means. You can sense this while reading; and if you look at how much he published, he was extraordinarily productive and industrious. He translated numerous works—Émile Verhaeren, for example, as well as Baudelaire—and wrote, with great research effort, biographies such as Balzac, Marie Antoinette, or Mary Stuart. Still, you notice that he was indeed privileged and always had the money and time for all these intellectual pursuits. From that starting point, it is understandable that a united Europe was very important to him and that he had the luxury of devoting himself to such intellectual considerations. While reading, I often felt he lived in a somewhat aloof artistic parallel world. The book is full of wistfulness over the failure of this European ideal, and it really ought to be required reading in schools, because it contains so many thoughts that are more relevant today than ever.

I found the book gripping—surprisingly, especially the passages about the war. I think that’s because war is once again at our doorstep, and events unfold just as he describes them. Time and again, that pulled me deeply into the book and shocked me at the same time. He describes what moved people from his perspective, especially Austrians and Germans, to whom he naturally felt closely connected, and he connects those observations to political developments. People believed the barbarity of war had been overcome—an insight I’ve often read—and alongside the atrocities, this realization is repeatedly cited as the great shock of the two world wars. People believed that through enlightenment and progress humanity had become something better, that the moral depths known in their extreme from the Middle Ages had been overcome. And then this modern human being relapsed into barbarism. Zweig explicitly says this as well. And I have the feeling that today is similar—now that, in the middle of Europe, a barbaric war is raging again—showing that even after the two world wars nothing has changed. Here Zweig also brings in Sigmund Freud, whom he saw regularly and who spent his final years as an old man in exile in London, where he and Zweig met again. Freud expresses his conviction that he does not believe humanity will ever shed the barbaric within; perhaps it can be overcome within communities of states, but never within the human being himself.

“Nothing was so fateful for the German Republic as its idealistic attempt to leave freedom to the people and even to its enemies. For the German people, a nation of order, knew not what to do with its freedom and already looked impatiently for those who should take it from them.” (p. 417)

It’s also fascinating how he writes that he was shocked by how aggressively people in the provincial town of Tours reacted in the cinema to footage of the German Kaiser—people who actually lived far from political events. And so it is now, when you read the media and see how propaganda is conducted here as well. This appears in Zweig too: how the press reported the enemy’s great losses and the meagerness of one’s own, how the enemy’s terrible atrocities were described (today we would say Bucha), while the crimes of one’s own troops were not worth mentioning. As Zweig also describes, one’s own country is portrayed as threatened by an evil, ruthless foe, and one must merely defend oneself against this aggressive neighbor. The book contains numerous hints at how society was led, step by step, toward war, and I repeatedly had the uneasy feeling that much of what Zweig writes about the time before the First and Second World Wars fits our present day all too well. He notes, for instance, that the last war had been so long ago that no one really knew anymore what war actually meant. That, too, is the case today—who truly believes that war could come to us? Certainly not the broad majority, otherwise the rhetoric in the media would be quite different.

“[…] right in the first hour he recognized the weakest point of the German economy, at which it later received the fatal blow: the supply of raw materials.” (p. 410)

Of course, as always, nothing is unequivocal, and these parallels I mention here are a vague impression. Just like the quotation above this paragraph. There is also much that is different today. Zweig writes, for example, how Great Britain tried by all means to prevent the Second World War and made major concessions to Hitler. That is completely different today, because by now everyone knows that otherwise it goes on and on, step by step, until Europe once again lies in ruins.

I also found his comparison of the two world wars compelling. People rushed into the First World War with enthusiasm and euphoria, even though there was not even a moral or ideological reason to fight; whereas in the Second World War—essentially a clash of systems—people submitted because they knew they could not escape. It also becomes clear that as an ordinary citizen one could not know what was happening or what was to come, and that war was never foreseeable.

The descriptions of the postwar period after the First World War are also riveting: how hyperinflation first struck Austria. After some time the Austrian krone stabilized, and then hyperinflation hit Germany—far more severe and consequential. What I didn’t know was how profoundly these economic upheavals affected people. In old Vienna, Zweig writes, everyone wanted to be old—men grew beards, put on spectacles—even the young wanted to appear old. After the First World War, it was completely different. The older generation had botched things; everyone felt betrayed—from impoverished, beaten soldiers to investors whose war bonds were worthless. Suddenly youth was in vogue; everyone wanted to be considered young, and no one wished to seem conservative. During Germany’s hyperinflation in 1923, the upheaval was even more intense: a collapse of all values, especially bourgeois ones. Zweig describes how people became uninhibited—sexually and in their value systems—how speculation and cunning were rewarded, whereas bourgeois decency and conservatism were punished with poverty. There was a state of overexcitement, further stoked by the Roaring Twenties. Zweig offers some wonderful anecdotes—for example, how Bavarians took trains into the Salzkammergut to get drunk because inflation had devalued the Austrian krone so much; and when hyperinflation then struck Germany, Austrians traveled to Bavaria to drink beer there. Across the decades, Zweig grants the reader not only such details but also a wide-angle view of society as a whole, and that is simply fascinating.

The book also has a few passages I found rather dull—for example, his time in Switzerland—but those were very few. I read the great majority of the book with fascination. Zweig has something to say; this book contains numerous thoughts that are still relevant, and anyone who reads it will learn a great deal.

I also find Zweig’s style very pleasant—clear and flowing—and at the beginning I read the book at quite a brisk pace. Simply because it reads quickly, without feeling as though you’re missing anything; rather, you’re carried along by the flow. I didn’t find the kind of exquisitely polished sentences you know from the great realists, but I did find many that are beautifully sonorous.

Stefan Zweig, born in 1881 in Vienna as the son of a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer, knew the old world—the Europe of the nineteenth century—and lived through the turbulent decades of the first half of the twentieth. In 1934, when it became clear that Austria too already stood under the influence of the National Socialists, he emigrated to London. His books were banned and even burned in Germany. Later, the Hitler regime even revoked his doctoral title. Very interesting in this context is his collaboration with the composer Richard Strauss, for whom he wrote an opera that—despite Zweig’s Jewish ancestry and contrary to a law—was personally approved by Hitler, because Strauss was one of the few high-ranking artists who had aligned themselves with the regime. Later, the Gestapo intercepted letters from Strauss to Zweig in which Strauss expressed himself very critically about the National Socialists; Strauss then lost his position, and the opera was banned after all. In 1940, Zweig traveled to Brazil, a country that had already warmly welcomed him on earlier trips and that he always remembered fondly. In 1942, he took his own life there, together with his wife, and as a farewell letter confirms, it was a decision made with clear mind. And anyone who has read this book will understand why.

“For the innermost task to which I devoted all the strength of my conviction for forty years—the peaceful unification of Europe—had come to grief. What I feared more than my own death—the war of all against all—had been unleashed for the second time. And I, who all my life had passionately endeavored for human and spiritual connectedness, felt myself in this hour—which demanded unbreakable unity as no other—made useless by this sudden isolation and more alone than ever in my life.” (p. 573)

Conclusion: With his highly personal view of more than forty years of European history—of two world wars, of society, art, and literature—Stefan Zweig has produced a fascinating, instructive, and moving book. For anyone who wants to understand Europe better today, The World of Yesterday is a highly recommended reading tip. The way Zweig portrays society from his perspective—with anecdotes, with an abstracting yet empathetic gaze at what moved people through various upheavals in history—gripped me deeply. The parallels to current events are striking, but the differences from what happened at the beginning of the last century also give hope and confidence. I took many thoughts from the book with me—as I especially notice from how often I’ve found myself recounting them to others. I can highly recommend the book, even in the plain and visually modest edition from Anaconda Verlag. It broadens one’s horizons in many respects.

Book Information: Die Welt von gestern • The World of Yesterday • Anaconda Verlag • 576 Seiten • ISBN 9783866478992