Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (19 page)

The mere fact that they had not written to him personally, but had sent him a form invitation printed on the publisher’s notepaper, verged on an affront in his estimation: “I did not feel under any obligation to reply to the printed invitation from the editor and publisher of a major edition of Verlaine, a communication which on the one hand is impersonal, and on the other is in all probability addressed to more persons than realistically qualify here. But in response to your friendly reiteration of the invitation to participate [ … ] I feel it incumbent upon me to state the reasons for my refusal.” These reasons lay in Schaukal’s fear that the anthology would turn out to be a “ragbag of items of varying quality”, in which his own adaptations would be taken out of context, unrelated to the rest of his work. Consequently there could be no question of collaboration on his part: “Please forgive me, therefore, when I ask you to respect the reasons I have given for my refusal.”
¹⁸

Zweig was not about to give up that easily—well aware of the devastating reviews that might issue from Schaukal’s pen if he failed to involve him in the project. And so he set out his own thoughts on the proposed venture in an eleven-page letter, drafted, needless to say, in his neatest handwriting. He confessed that he himself had latterly refused more than once to translate any works other than those of Verhaeren, but now, with this project, he saw an opportunity to produce something unique. He pointed out to Schaukal that his refusal to participate would not only be damaging for the project but possibly also for his own career too, since his abstention would be seen by every literary insider as a pointed gesture that might beg awkward questions. In the end he even got Insel to agree to allow Schaukal to publish his Verlaine translations in any future edition of his own works, irrespective of Insel’s own plans. Courted in this fashion, Schaukal finally agreed to collaborate on the project—much to Zweig’s relief. The plan was to produce three volumes of poems by the spring of 1915, or at the latest by the autumn. But in the end, all Zweig’s efforts and powers of persuasion were to little purpose—the full edition of Schaukal’s works did not appear until decades after his death, and within a few months the ambitious 1915 timetable would have to be abandoned.

By the time Friderike’s first novel
Der Ruf der Heimat
appeared in June under the Schuster & Loeffler imprint, in a deal that Zweig had helped to broker with his former publishing house, her divorce from husband Felix had been granted by the district court in Baden on 28th May 1914. Stefan now spent a number of weeks living near Friderike in Baden, though not
actually under the same roof. He had embarked on an intensive study of the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, and had assembled a vast collection of material, including—of course—an original manuscript of several pages from the hand of the Russian writer. Ensconced here before the gates of the city, he received friends such as Victor Fleischer and Felix Braun; they talked at length, and sometimes Friderike would come and join them. His family still knew nothing—officially, at least—of the relationship, which had now been going on for nearly two years.

On 28th June 1914 Zweig was sitting just inside the Kurpark in Baden, as he later writes in
Die Welt von Gestern
, reading Dimitri Merezhkovsky’s study of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky as background material for his own work. There was not a cloud in the sky, and the park was crowded with Sunday visitors out from Vienna. Although he was immersed in his book, he noticed that the spa orchestra had suddenly stopped playing and was leaving the bandstand. When he looked up, he saw people crowding around a notice that had just been pinned up. The printed sheet announced that the heir to the throne, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, together with his wife Sophie von Hohenberg, had been assassinated by political extremists during a visit to Sarajevo. Since the couple enjoyed limited popularity, as Zweig put it, the bystanders were not unduly shocked by the news. It was only some days later, he tells us, that the newspapers began blaming the Serbs for the murders, and asking whether they should be allowed to go unpunished. Even then the matter did not excite that much interest, given the long history of friction between Serbia and Austria going back to 1878 at least, when the latter had occupied the territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

And so Zweig, like so many others, did not take very seriously these first signs of a crisis that, as we now know, would lead to the outbreak of the First World War. In mid-July, a good two weeks after the fatal shots had been fired, he visited his mother in Marienbad and travelled on from there to Belgium. Friderike meanwhile remained in Austria. On his return journey they had planned to meet up in Zurich and go on together from there to the north Italian lakes for a few weeks.

His itinerary took him in the direction of the coastal resort of De Haan (Le Coq-sur-Mer), from where he planned to head off in August for an extended visit to Verhaeren in Caillou-qui-bique. As a letter from Friderike reveals, Stefan was not travelling alone—Marcelle was accompanying him. “My darling little brother”, wrote Friderike, “because you
are
my darling little brother, are you not, if you have received this letter and are
with your lady friend. I hope you have a few nice days with her. It must be a twofold blessing for her, to get away from the heat and dirt of Paris to be with you.”
¹⁹
In this highly fraught situation he gave serious thought to portraying his and Marcelle’s shared destiny in a work of fiction one day—an idea that never came to anything in the end, perhaps because such a book would have been too close to home for comfort.

During a brief stopover in Brussels he and Verhaeren met up unexpectedly, ahead of the planned visit, at the house of the latter’s friend, the painter Constant Montald, where he was sitting for a portrait. As always when he met Verhaeren, Zweig was instantly energised:

How good it was to see him there! We spoke about his work, the new book [ … ], from which he read the last poems to me, about his play [ … ], about friends and about the summer, which we were looking forward to enjoying together again. We sat there for three or four hours, the garden looking green and resplendent in the sunshine, the sheaves of corn tossing in the wind, and the world seemed a place of peace and fruitfulness. We made little of our leave-taking, as we were expecting to meet again soon in the seclusion of his house, and he embraced me one more time as we parted. I was due to come to him on the second of August, and he called out after me to remind me: the second of August! Little did we know what date we had so casually chosen! The tram took me back through the summery fields. I saw him standing next to Montald and waving for ages, until he vanished from sight for ever.
²⁰

Zweig returned to Le Coq-sur-Mer, where he planned to spend a few quiet days by the sea. The beach was packed with summer visitors, many of whom had come across from Germany. The carefree holiday mood now gradually gave way to something else, as worrying news came in from abroad—or rather from home—at ever-decreasing intervals. On 23rd July Austria had issued an ultimatum to Serbia consequent upon the assassination of the heir to the Imperial throne, demanding an immediate end to all nationalist activities and a thorough investigation of the murder plot. The qualified Serbian acceptance of the Austrian demands led to military threat and counter-threat, and Zweig now moved to the nearest larger town, Ostende, where a number of friends from home and other countries were already staying.

In the meantime events began to move very fast. Russia had let it be known that it would support Serbia in the event of war. The Austrian declaration
of war on Serbia followed on 28th July; its troops were already drawn up in readiness on the border with Russia. It was clear from the existing system of alliances that the German Empire and France would soon be entering the war on opposite sides. With war threatening, Germany had demanded free passage for its troops through Belgium to attack France. Zweig witnessed the response to the German ultimatum at first hand:

I could hear drums in the distance, soldiers marched past: Belgium was mobilising. It seemed to me incomprehensible that Belgium, the most peaceable nation in Europe, was preparing for war, and I joked about the machine guns drawn by dogs, made fun of the small detachment of soldiers that came marching past looking so serious. But my Belgian friends were not laughing. They were deeply worried.
²¹

Zweig wrote this retrospective account three years after the event. Siegfried Trebitsch, who saw him in Ostende during those summer days of August 1914, describes in his memoirs how Zweig in fact became visibly more agitated by the hour, as the bad news kept coming in. Having secured a rail ticket for the return journey to Vienna, he practically begged him, Trebitsch, not to stay a moment longer, but to come home with him.

His last letter from Belgium was sent to his publisher, Anton Kippenberg, on 30th July 1914:

I’m leaving Belgium today and travelling straight to Vienna. Although I am not a front-line soldier, I don’t want to be away from home at a time like this. Maybe I will just come over to Leipzig—although books must be the last thing on any decent person’s mind at the moment, and I don’t want to pester you with trivial matters at such a difficult time—unless, of course, everything resolves itself soon. I’m sorry I shan’t be spending time with Verhaeren now—but I suppose such personal regrets must be sacrificed to the more important concerns of the present hour. Sincerely yours, Stefan Zweig.
²²

That same day he set off for home on the Ostende Express, the last eastbound train to leave the country. On 4th August German troops marched across the border into Belgium.

NOTES

1
Stefan Zweig to Benno Geiger, 21st March 1914. In: Briefe I, p 291.

2
Friderike Maria von Winternitz to Stefan Zweig, 25th July 1912. In: Briefwechsel Friderike Zweig 2006, p 7 f.

3
Friderike Maria von Winternitz to Stefan Zweig, 30th July 1912. In: Briefwechsel Friderike Zweig 2006, p 13 f.

4
10th September 1912, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 9.

5
23rd September 1912, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 15.

6
Stefan Zweig to Gerhart Hauptmann, 27th October 1912, SBB Berlin, Hauptmann literary estate.

7
27th September 1912, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 25.

8
Kalbeck 1912.

9
12th November 1912, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 29.

10
Zweig F 1964, p 36.

11
4th December 1912, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 32.

12
21st December 1912, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 36.

13
Late February 1913, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 41.

14
17th March 1913, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 51.

15
Stefan Zweig to Hans Feigl, 22nd August 1913, WSLB Vienna, HIN 129.339.

16
25th March 1914, Zweig GW Tagebücher, p 76.

17
Prater questionnaire, SLA Salzburg.

18
Richard Schaukal to Stefan Zweig (draft of letter), 3rd May 1914, WSLB Vienna, HIN 224.988/4.

19
Friderike Maria von Winternitz to Stefan Zweig, 16th July 1914. In: Briefwechsel Friderike Zweig 2006, p 5 f.

20
Zweig GW Verhaeren, p 310.

21
Zweig GW Verhaeren, p 310 f.

22
Stefan Zweig to Anton Kippenberg, 30th July 1914. In: Briefe I, p 298.

Inside the War Reporting Unit [Kriegspressequartier] in Zsolna (Galicia). Stefan Zweig is standing third from right, sitting immediately in front of him is the writer Alexander Roda-Roda.

In the Hero Factory

World history is gruesome, seen up close.
¹

Diary 2nd August 1914

“I
DO NOT ESTEEM IT
any special merit of mine (as others have kindly done) that I recognised the calamitous folly of Europe’s self-immolation from the very outset, and opposed the war with all my heart and with all my soul. To me the common destiny and unity of Europe were something I took for granted like the air I breathe, so what was scarcely felt by others became to me an unbearable agony, the sealing-off of borders to start with, and even more the heroic lie [ … ]. Happily I was spared the most fateful test of all: as someone with no prior military service I was never assigned to the field, and no weapon was ever forced upon me (which I would have refused to take up).”
²
Such were Zweig’s thoughts on the events of those days, written nearly four years after the end of the war in 1922. When this text was published he was regarded as a confirmed pacifist (and rightly so); but at the time the matter had been a little more complicated than he seeks to portray it here.