Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (20 page)

When Zweig returned home from Belgium in 1914, the order for general mobilisation had already gone out in Austria. Shortly afterwards Germany declared war on Russia and France—and there was no saying where it would end. A thousand questions begged for answers. Zweig suddenly felt under pressure to state his position. And by his own admission he was a man who preferred to avoid decisions rather than face up to them. But as was his way, he now sought answers not just for himself. He was determined not to give up his work as a feature writer, especially not now. As so often when he found himself in strange places and unusual situations, he sought to record his impressions for his reading public. But these pieces were also written for himself, in an attempt to make sense of the sights and events he had witnessed. The long train journey from Belgium had given him plenty of time to ponder and reflect. When he met up with Friderike again for the first time on the evening of 4th August at the Eiles café in Vienna, he was sporting a full beard, which he had allowed to grow since leaving 
Ostende (though he soon reverted to his normal style of beard, when she joked that he looked like an itinerant labourer).

His first piece,
Heimfahrt nach Österreich
, was written during the journey home, and printed on 1st August in the
Neue Freie Presse
. Starting with the blue summer skies over Ostende, Zweig’s narrative arc took him from the attempt to buy one of the last available rail tickets, via the journey through a Germany that in many places still looked like a country at peace, to Austria, where the first reservists were already assembling on the railway platform in Linz.

On the journey through the German Reich he had been stirred by very curious feelings:

Nuremberg at last! As the train is coming in you see the ancient city spread before you, the mighty bastion of all that Germany stands for. And now you see the houses, bright and shining, strong and clean, the great factories humming with activity, the well-ordered conduct of life in public and private, and again you get a joyous sense, as so often, of Germany’s power and strength. And in this one city you feel the presence of all German cities, the whole wide fruitful land, the strength and resolve of the nation, and you breathe reassurance. Because this, you know for certain, is indestructible and invincible, nothing can break the strength that lies in such a brazen edifice.
³

That sounds patriotic—and yet surely Zweig was Austrian? So he was—or to be more precise, he was Viennese. And he was a Jew. But that did not prevent him from feeling that he belonged to German culture, in ways that went far beyond the common language. On the contrary—and in this he was not alone: many of his countrymen, while they were not German Jews, nonetheless felt themselves to be Jewish Germans. Hitherto all this may well have been reflected in his thinking and in the tradition and the direction of his work, but he had never formulated it in a clear and unequivocal way for public consumption. Now he struck an unaccustomed note in an unaccustomed role.

In the next pieces he published—
Ein Wort zu Deutschland
appeared on 6th August—he continued to make it clear where his sympathies lay, emphasising the national aspect in the most unequivocal terms: “Germany must now strike with both fists, to the right and to the left, to extricate itself from the double pincer movement of its enemies. Every muscle of the nation’s magnificent strength is stretched to the full, every nerve of its will quivers with courage and confidence.”
⁴

In all probability he had volunteered for work in the press department at the War Ministry as soon as he got back to Vienna. What sounds on the surface like an enthusiastic embracing of the general war euphoria in those opening days was in fact troubling him inwardly in ways that he concealed from his reading public. His diary entry for 4th August is very clear on the subject: “I don’t believe we can win against the whole world—if only I could go to sleep now for the next six months, knowing nothing of it, not being there to witness this catastrophe, this ultimate horror. This is the worst day of my entire life—happily F is here again, her presence has a calming effect on me.”
⁵

And calm was needed in these early days, when the country was awash with reports and rumours, especially rumours about who was to be called up for war service. Zweig had still not done any military service, and had been rejected at every medical examination he had been required to attend—but might not all that change overnight now? His mother was already weeping in anticipation for her sons, as he noted, and yet it was her fervent wish that both her children should serve the fatherland. Friderike was equally worried, but did her best to find out who was on the call-up list—thereby demonstrating her practical side and her ability to keep a cool head. Her divorced husband, who in the meantime had found a new partner, had already been conscripted, along with most of Stefan’s friends and acquaintances.

It was important for Zweig to bring order into the chaos—at least in his private life. This was best done by making certain formal arrangements: putting his personal papers into safekeeping, depositing his liquid assets and his precious manuscript collection in a place of safety, making provision for the stewardship of his own work, writing a will. So the letter that Zweig had written to Kippenberg before leaving Belgium was duly followed five days later by a second missive sent from Vienna:

Dear Dr Kippenberg, I will not burden you today with literary or financial matters, but wish to speak to you on a personal note. Within the next few days I shall be called up and sent for training, and in all probability I shall be dispatched to the front in a few weeks’ time. In any event I am today arranging my affairs. Among the dispositions will be a request to you, in the event that something happens to me, to prepare an inexpensive selected edition of my works, to include the titles you have already published and other unpublished material. I will nominate the editor, the time of publication I leave to you. In view of the fact that we have known each other for many years and have always enjoyed the most friendly of relations, I have no doubt that I can count on you to carry out my wishes.

We are sending every last man into the field. Most of our writers, starting with Hofman[n]st[h]al, are already serving in the military. As long as Britain remains neutral I think the signs are good, we all know that everything is at stake this time. May God protect Germany!

Yours sincerely, Stefan Zweig
⁶

With so much happening, Zweig’s literary work was now put aside for the time being. The German edition of Verlaine in several volumes, which had been so many months in the planning, now had to be shelved completely. Had it been possible to contemplate a major publishing project in this situation, it would certainly not have involved the works of any Frenchman. Nor was there any way of telling where the tide of war over the coming weeks and months would leave the large number of translators lined up for the project—to say nothing of their subsequent fate. Instead Zweig went so far as to tell Kippenberg—who had talked about his own service on the Western front—that he envied him because he could not go to war against France himself. But had he ever seriously considered this as a possibility—let alone a desirable one? Squaring his official self-image as a patriot and ardent national—an image concocted hastily and under the most extreme circumstances—with the ideals by which he had lived hitherto was to cost Zweig a good deal of effort further down the line.

In October at any rate, still a civilian, he wrote an open letter
An die Freunde im Fremdland
—“To my friends in foreign lands”—in which he bade farewell to his like-minded colleagues and their shared European ideals for the duration of the war. This earned him an immediate and sharp rebuke from Romain Rolland, who made it abundantly clear that he himself was not about to give up on the common cause or abandon anyone. He was now in Geneva, working for the Prisoner of War Information Bureau run by the International Red Cross. Switzerland’s neutrality meant that he and Zweig could continue to correspond—an opportunity that both men exploited to the full, with the result that Rolland became his most important correspondent for the next few years. In order not to provoke the censor unnecessarily they now switched to writing in German rather than French. Even so, it became apparent that the occasional letter did
fall foul of the censor—on one occasion Rolland apologised for the angry tone of his last letter, only to be informed by Zweig that he had never received it.

Meanwhile Verhaeren’s literary output had actually increased, and the poems he published in the
Mercure de France
and elsewhere were outspoken in the extreme. It was not long before they appeared in collections with lurid titles such as
La Belgique sanglante, Parmi les Cendres—La Belgique dévastée
and
Les Ailes rouges de la guerre,
in which he directed the full force of his eloquence against the German invaders and their “Teutonic sadism”. Although he became increasingly resigned as the war dragged on, he kept up a steady stream of lectures and publications vehemently attacking the nations that were waging war against Belgium and France.

Zweig had got hold of one of these poems, and he promptly wrote a letter to Romain Rolland in which he struggled to maintain his composure:

My dear friend, I write to you at one of the most difficult moments of my life. Only today have I fully comprehended the appalling devastation that the war has wrought in my own personal and intellectual world. Like a refugee I am forced to flee, naked and destitute, from the burning house of my inner life—whither, I know not. Well, to you first of all, to lament and tell the full extent of my horror. I read a poem by Verhaeren (which I enclose, along with his very facile commentary), and I felt as if I were plunging into an abyss. I think you know very well how much Verhaeren means to me: a man whose kindness I loved because it was so unbounded that I almost felt obliged to criticise it as too excessive. I have never heard him utter a hateful word or fly into a rage, for a great capacity for empathy made him incapable of holding on to his own anger. And now this!!

I did not expect Verhaeren to observe his country’s tragedy in silence, and indeed justice would have demanded otherwise. He is the voice of the nation, and that voice
had
to be raised in a cry of anguish and hatred. I was expecting him to curse and reject us. But what he actually wrote is so appalling for
him
! Does he
really
believe that German soldiers packed the hacked-off limbs of babies in their heavy knapsacks as food for the journey? If such tasteless horror stories are given credence by such as him, then no fury, no hatred is too great for those who pervert the truth in this manner.
⁷

As their correspondence continued to grow, Zweig and Rolland did not always see eye to eye on everything, of course. But at least they could
communicate with each other and tried to understand the other man’s point of view. Verhaeren, on the other hand, seemed to have become unreachable in every sense.

In these turbulent months Friderike made a—very carefully formulated—attempt to make her relationship with Stefan officially known. She offered herself as a sort of ‘companion’ for Ida Zweig, after Stefan had complained to her that his mother only had him to talk to apart from her husband (and not very often at that).

But Stefan rejected the idea out of hand. There were several reasons why he wanted to keep the relationship from his parents. In the event of an official announcement it would have been hard to avoid the issue of early legalisation, or in other words marriage. But this was precisely where their situation became problematic. While Friderike’s marriage to Felix von Winternitz had been dissolved by a court of law, this was not recognised by the Catholic Church. If Friderike remarried, this would be an offence under existing law, and therefore impossible for the present. And quite apart from all that, Stefan’s uncertainty about committing to a permanent relationship was still far from resolved.

Alfred Zweig was probably the only family member who knew that his brother had entered into a serious relationship. It is even possible that he had already met Friderike in person, since she asked Stefan in a letter if his brother had misgivings about their relationship. If they had already met by that time, Friderike’s instinct would not have been wrong—from the beginning, Alfred tried his best to respect her, but he never liked her.

A good three months after the outbreak of war Stefan Zweig finally embarked on his military career. His friend and fellow writer Franz Karl Ginzkey had been working behind the scenes to ensure that he would be conscripted for a specific purpose, as it were, and that Zweig would be fast-tracked into the press department, where he wanted to be. Given the reports coming in from the front, it was certainly a reassuring prospect to be serving in an office rather than in the trenches. One would be doing one’s duty, while safe from the worst of the danger for now.

On 12th November 1914 Stefan Zweig, born 1881, marital status: single, religion: Jewish, profession: writer, presented himself once again for a medical examination. His personal description read as follows: black hair and eyebrows, brown eyes, nose and mouth are well proportioned, the chin pointed, the face elongated, no special distinguishing characteristics were noted. The scar left by the operation on his costal pleura a few years
previously was listed as a possible physical defect, and a re-examination of the scar would be required in order to grade his overall fitness. The examinee had already been vaccinated, wrote and spoke German, measured 1.74 metres in height and needed size seventeen footwear.
⁸