Stefan Zweig und der Europa-Gedanke by Stefan Resch (review)

Confronted with a public figure as shy to commit himself to concrete political views as Stefan Zweig—even in the years leading up to the Third Reich—Stefan Resch has decided to examine statements in his essays and correspondence in greater detail. The focus of his book Stefan Zweig und der Europa-Gedanke is on pacifism and on Zweig's hope for a united Europe. Resch succeeds in following up and tracing Zweig's convictions, such as they were, by piecing together details from his autobiographical and fictional work.

Resch makes a convincing case that the roots of Zweig's pacifism are to be sought in his experiences as a German-speaking Jew. Zweig came from a wealthy, long-since-assimilated Viennese family. This also placed Zweig at skeptical distance to Zionism. And yet Zweig never converted to Catholicism. Parallels with two other great Austrian-Jewish intellectuals of his day spring to mind: Sigmund Freud and Arthur Schnitzler. Both, although neither practicing Jews nor Zionists, upheld their assimilated Jewish identity nonetheless. It appears that for all three, holding on to their Jewish background was a question of character and moral integrity rather than a specific religious or political statement. Converting would have been, for them, a sign of weakness.

Resch points to Nietzsche's understanding of the Jews as the true bearers of European culture, since they were neither fettered by the shackles of Christianity nor susceptible to the temptations of nationalism. It seems likely that it was in reading his first volumes of Nietzsche that Zweig also encountered that philosopher's notion of a united Europe, beyond the antagonisms of individual nation-states.

This supra-national attitude moved Zweig to his retrospective glorification of Austria-Hungary, beginning in Die Welt von Gestern, as a "land without patriotism." Switzerland became a positive example for him after 1918. His moderately pessimistic mindset in the face of the economic and political instability following the First World War was reinforced by reading Spengler's comprehensive study in European cultural history, Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Pacifism became Zweig's answer for the future, influenced not only by ideas of Tolstoy, whom he adored, but also by his correspondence with his close friend, the French author and pacifist Romain Rolland. It was Rolland who also pushed Zweig towards pan-European ideas, such that Zweig subscribed to Coudenhove-Kalergi's journal Pan-Europa starting with from the first issue. In a letter to the editor, dated from June 1924, Zweig openly states his support for Coudenhove-Kalergi's ideas and offers his assistance in establishing an organization with the same goal (196–97).

The key figure in the development of Zweig's pacifism is, however, Alfred Hermann Fried. Like Zweig, Fried was born into an assimilated Jewish family; he later came to edit the journal Die Waffen nieder! together with Bertha von Suttner. Fried has hardly been considered in scholarship on Zweig to date, so it is most welcome that Resch grants Fried the sections he is due in the chapter on Zweig's antiwar stance.

Resch shows clearly how Zweig's understanding of Jewishness, his pacifism, and his notions of a united Europe were inextricably intertwined, and how one almost led to the other. The question arising from this, then, is why Zweig remained reluctant for so long to take a clear stance against National Socialism. Resch presents one statement from August 1933: Zweig writes to Rolland about half a million Jewish "hostages" in Germany who would be exposed to brute violence if he spoke out (270).

It was fear that his numerous friends still living in Germany and Austria would come to harm that helps to explain Zweig's hesitation. It seems also, from what Resch's study suggests, that Zweig was, in character, essentially more of an aesthete than a politician. And yet, this should not distract from the fact that Zweig did have concrete convictions. Just because he was not an activist does not mean that he was an...