- Person
- Stefan Zweig
- Lived
- 1881–1942
- Field
- Literature
- From
- Austrian
The story
After the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Stefan Zweig's books were placed on a blacklist and publicly burned on 10 May that year. Following a police search of his home in Salzburg, he left Austria for London in 1934. According to the Austria-Forum biography, he avoided making public political statements or joining the campaigns of exiled intellectuals. Rather than writing manifestos, he turned to history, exploring the roots of nationalism and the early champions of intellectual freedom.
In 1934 he published Triumph und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam, a biography of the great Renaissance humanist scholar who tried to reconcile the warring sides of the Reformation and lost out to the more forceful Martin Luther. Literary scholars have seen in Erasmus a figure with whom Zweig identified: a man of moderation and learning caught between fanatics.
In 1936 he followed it with a book about Sebastian Castellio, the sixteenth-century French scholar who was one of the first Protestant champions of religious tolerance and freedom of conscience. In October 1553 the theologian Michael Servetus was burned in Geneva for heresy, with John Calvin's approval. Castellio, then teaching in Basel, answered with writings that denounced the execution, including a treatise on whether heretics should be persecuted. His most famous line declared that to kill a man is not to defend a doctrine; it is simply to kill a man. Zweig's book, titled in German Castellio gegen Calvin oder Ein Gewissen gegen die Gewalt, appeared in English as A Conscience Against Violence and as The Right to Heresy: Castellio against Calvin.
Zweig explained that he was always drawn not to the so-called heroes but to the one who is right only in the moral sense: Erasmus and not Luther, Castellio and not Calvin. By retelling Castellio's stand, he celebrated freedom of thought against persecution at the very moment when a new dictatorship was burning books, including his own.
It was a quiet but powerful argument for tolerance and human dignity. Castellio's plea that people with different opinions can learn to live together peacefully, retold by Zweig, still speaks to anyone facing intolerance today.
Why it matters
These biographies kept alive the tradition of humanist tolerance, encouraging readers to resist fanaticism and defend freedom of conscience.
About Stefan Zweig
Viennese Jewish novelist and biographer, among the world’s most translated writers of the interwar years, whose exile memoir The World of Yesterday mourns a lost Europe.
More about Stefan Zweig
- Stefan Zweig's Chess Story became his most-read workWritten in exile in 1941, Stefan Zweig's Chess Story (Schachnovelle) became his most successful and most widely read work, inspiring several films.
- Zweig's Decisive Moments in History made the past vividStefan Zweig's Sternstunden der Menschheit (1927), historical miniatures of turning points, appeared in English as The Tide of Fortune (1940) and as Shooting Stars (2013).
- Zweig's manuscript collection is at the British LibraryStefan Zweig assembled a great collection of autograph manuscripts, including Mozart's handwritten catalogue of his works. His heirs donated it to the British Library in 1986.
- Stefan Zweig worked for peace and European understandingAfter the First World War, Stefan Zweig became a pacifist who worked for understanding between European countries and lasting peace, long before European unity had institutions.
- Stefan Zweig wrote the libretto for a Richard Strauss operaStefan Zweig wrote the libretto for Richard Strauss's opera Die schweigsame Frau. At the 1935 Dresden premiere Strauss refused to remove Zweig's name from the programme.
- Zweig's The World of Yesterday preserved a lost EuropeStefan Zweig's memoir The World of Yesterday, sent to his publisher in 1942, has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire.
Sources
- Stefan Zweig Wikipedia
- Sebastian Castellio Wikipedia
- Zweig, Stefan Austria-Forum
- Stefan Zweig Wikipedia (German)
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.