Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (21 page)

In his diary he recorded the event in these terms: “Solemn act: the assessment of my fitness for service [ … ]. It all happened very quickly, though they were running late in the standard fashion of all Austrian officialdom. Passed fit for service! [ … ] I find it all rather boring, to fetch up at the age of thirty-three where others are at eighteen. But at least my mother’s wishes are now fulfilled.”
⁹
Initially he was dispatched to an army supply corps depot, where he was given basic military training during the week of his birthday:

I am being broken in, travelling out to Klosterneuburg every day and gaining an insight into the world of the subaltern. The first sign that things are being done Austrian-style: time-wasting as a way of life. I have to wait around for the lieutenant for hours on end, I observe [ … ] the strained jollity of these clerks shut up indoors, their dull, dreary existence in overheated, poorly ventilated rooms, these crumpled creatures whom life has passed by; and in these few hours I come to understand a great deal. As for the lieutenant, stupid but oozing fairness and elegance, a real character—now I understand how clerks, how Balzac and others became writers and artists.
¹⁰

A few weeks later he was transferred to the War Archive at the War Ministry, housed in the Stiftskaserne barracks complex in Vienna. Zweig now donned his uniform for the first time, which of course, notwithstanding his desk job, included a sabre: “rather ridiculous [ … ], when one is not required to lay about one”.
¹¹
The day before Christmas he was promoted to corporal, a distinction that allegedly left him cold, and in any event failed to lift his mood. Friderike, too, noticed that during these weeks Stefan’s attitude towards her was rather more mocking and less affectionate than usual. But in his diary he now admitted to himself that she was the one who knew him best, and along with Rolland was probably the only person who could deliver him from his bouts of depression.

The task of the ‘literary group’ in the War Archive, to which Zweig was finally assigned, was to compile reports on those soldiers who had been singled out for military awards. The object of the exercise was to celebrate their more or less heroic deeds in polished style and ringing tones. Prepared
in this fashion for consumption by the general public, these “tales” of the army’s courage and bravery then appeared in newspapers and eventually in a series of collections edited by Zweig’s superior, Lieutenant Alois Veltzé.

It was not long before the term “hero factory” started to go the rounds. Joking in general provided welcome light relief, and behind closed doors the title
Österreich-Ungarn in Waffen
[
Austria-Hungary Under Arms
] became
Österreich ungern in Waffen
[
Austria Reluctantly Under Arms
], which was soon closer to the truth. The literary men from the Ministry, whose work in the front line of psychological warfare did not of course go unnoticed in the outside world, had to endure all manner of mockery from that quarter. Karl Kraus paraded them before the readers of his mammoth work,
Die letzten Tage der Menschheit
, and even figures who were not identified by name were instantly recognisable to the initiated. Stefan Zweig was accorded the dubious honour of a mention in the ninth scene of Act III, when the Captain addresses one of the assembled “men of letters”:

And you there, with your article about that French sculptor, Auguste … whatever is her name, it’s something like Rodaun … now that was a smart bit of writing, that was, so you won’t have any problem with doing the foreword for our seminal publication ‘Under the Habsburg Banner’, but it’s got to be stirring stuff, you know, something that really pulls at the heartstrings, and of course you mustn’t forget Her Imperial Majesty, Her Serene Highness the Archduchess Maria Josefa!
¹²

It seems that Zweig very quickly internalised the requirements of his new workplace. Following an informal enquiry from his publishers he advised them in the strongest possible terms not to pursue their intention of sending a copy of the latest
Insel Almanac
to the Archduke Friedrich, as it included a poem by Arno Holz “which contains lines attacking the Czechs and Poles, making the book
completely
unsuitable for semi-official use. I am on the duty roster in the War Archive, and this is where they write up the reports on submissions such as this. And I can tell you now that one line like that is enough to get the book rejected (and rightly so: we
are
supposed to be one nation under arms!).”
¹³

Shortly afterwards he wrote to his publishers on the official notepaper of the Imperial Austrian War Archive, offering a few topical suggestions for the publishing programme over the coming months. “Please ask Dr Kippenberg whether he would like to include something in the Insel-Bücherei that
relates solely to Austria and the war—something about Radetzky or something from the year 1809, war songs, etc. I might then be able to suggest something, and also recommend someone to do it. I myself am completely tied up with my work here. I would just need to know soon; I am quite certain it would make a good impression.”
¹⁴
Although the war had begun to make its presence felt in the forward planning for the Insel catalogue, the reaction from that quarter was rather muted. Zweig was informed that his suggestions for the future direction of the Insel-Bücherei were always welcome, but Anton Kippenberg kindly asked him “to bear in mind, when selecting texts for publication, that the contributions, notwithstanding their patriotic subject matter, must also enjoy a certain standing as literary classics, as has been the case [ … ] with the earlier volumes in the series.”
¹⁵

While Zweig was grappling with these official and semi-official matters, the news coming in from the various fronts was getting steadily worse. But this was not the only reason his thoughts turned to his own writing again. He was disillusioned and exhausted by his work in the War Archive, even though the office hours—9.00 am to 3.00 pm each day—were very congenial. By the spring of 1915 he was planning a new work, which gradually began to take shape in his mind. It was to be a play, that much was clear, and its central theme was to be the story of the biblical prophet Jeremiah. He had thought about writing a play on this subject before: but now, after a few months of sitting in an office and doing a PR job on the war, the story from the days of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem seemed to him to resonate with a new contemporary relevance. One thing was already clear: it would be an anti-war play.

Friderike did everything she could to encourage him, quickly recognising that working on his own writing could be his salvation, making up for the tedium of his day job. By the end of June he had almost finished the first act of the play. A little over two weeks later he set off for a field trip to Galicia, which, initially occupied by Russian troops, had just been retaken by the Austrian army. The purpose of the trip was to write a piece on the Russian invasion of the country which had been commissioned for a substantial official publication. In order to form a more accurate impression of events on the ground, Zweig, who so far had only read about the war and observed it from a safe distance, applied for a travel permit, which was promptly granted. One of his tasks was to collect any documents that could be tracked down locally which might be helpful in writing an account
of the combat operations. He was also instructed to take photographs as a visual record of the events.

He wrote copious diary notes while away on this expedition between 14th and 26th July, recording many seemingly minor but telling details that only served to amplify the brutal impact of a theatre of war that had just been fiercely fought over. The first drama was enacted even before his train left Vienna’s Nordbahnhof bound for Cracow:

Only third-class compartments. And a smell in there that you never forget. It reeks of the sickbay, Lysol, and everything else. Hard benches like pallets, a few officers, and otherwise just the confused mass. The tragedy of Austria, in a nutshell. How lost they look, these fine lads, all speechless, they stand there like meek animals ready to be driven into any pen. The obedience here, unlike the German variety, is entirely unconscious, just instinct and discipline. Most of them are South Slavs. One of them who wants to go to Tetschen has boarded the train for Teschen. They try to explain to him, he stares at them with a frightened look, as if he has committed some crime, but he doesn’t understand a word, not a word. As they get him off the train his childlike face wears an expression of nameless fear, as if he has done something wrong. Maybe in Floridsdorf they’ll ship him out on the Nordwestbahn, or maybe he’ll just stay there, without food, without anything. A life blighted in the very first hour.
¹⁶

Two days later he had travelled the route from Vienna via Mährisch-Ostrau to Cracow. On the way he marvelled at the ceaseless rail traffic headed in all directions: “Whole trains filled with forces’ mail and troops, back and forth like a conveyor belt that never stops. [ … ] Soon a German hospital train from Hamburg, all fifty coaches gleaming like mirrors, every bedsheet white and without a crease—you almost wanted to get in and lie down.”
¹⁷
After looking round the Old Town he had driven out into the countryside, where the signs of devastation could no longer be avoided.

At last I see the Galician road, which lives up to its evil reputation. The weather has turned it into a chocolate quagmire, and waves of water splash up around the car. We pass destroyed houses, some of them whole corpses of which only the white skeleton remains, others badly mutilated, with a wing shot away here, a balcony torn off there, leaning over like cripples. And everywhere the remains of trenches, in part swallowed up by the ground again, and every now and then a pitiful wooden cross. Debica itself in an appalling state due to the destruction of the Wisloka Bridge, which has collapsed after suffering fearful damage. Its iron girders are folded and crumpled as if by a giant fist, the railway tracks are dangling in thin air like so many wires. The station itself is burnt to the ground, only the remains of walls from which the odd utensil, like a stovepipe or a chopping board, pokes forth mockingly. The town itself a picture of horrific devastation [ … ]. The people here are completely cowed by terror, they’ve either fled the scene or they are living in the most wretched conditions. It’s like something out of Grimmelshausen.
¹⁸

On his return, haunted by what he had seen on his travels, Zweig went to stay with Friderike in Baden for a few days before going back to work in the office.

Although the outbreak of war had made the planning of major publishing projects seem unthinkable, ways and means were found in the coming months, not least at Zweig’s own publishing house, to prepare new books for the press, despite the absence of many members of staff. Hugo von Hofmannsthal was working for Insel Verlag on the Austrian Library series of titles he himself had proposed, and he was now asked to compile an
Austrian Almanac
as well. Kippenberg had realised by now that his two authors Hofmannsthal and Zweig were not a combination that worked well, but he requested nonetheless that Zweig be asked to contribute an essay to the volume. Insel owed him a great debt of gratitude, he explained, and it would be difficult to make a plausible case for excluding him from this of all projects. Hofmannsthal had already drawn up a provisional list of contributions, which consisted principally of older texts (a strategy designed in part, no doubt, to shield him from the wrath of slighted contemporaries). He wrote back to Kippenberg in the following terms:

Your wish that I should solicit the collaboration of Mr Z is one that I am, on the one hand, happy to accommodate for the reason that it is your wish, but on the other hand, as you rightly surmise, I do so with reluctance. Never in my wildest dreams would it have occurred to me to invite this gentleman to contribute to an Austrian Almanac, of all things. Nothing seems to me less Austrian than these Viennese men-of-letters types. (I should point out that I have deliberately not included in this Almanac the great majority of—far more distinguished—living Austrian writers. [ … ] All of them far more distinguished writers than Z.) But I think I know how we can get around the problem. I shall ask him very nicely to send me either a piece of prose about Slavic (Austrian) literature, or something about the exploits of the Austrian army in 1914–15. This will satisfy his vanity and spare me the need to carry the baggage of some lightweight “literary” piece completely out of keeping with the rest of the Almanac.
¹⁹

He promptly wrote to Zweig in his customary obliging tone to ask for a piece on Austrian literary history or an essay about some officer or distinguished military unit he had encountered in the course of his present work. He was careful to add that he also hoped to have the benefit of Zweig’s advice and assistance, and of course his critical acumen. Tellingly, Zweig chose not to submit an account of any contemporary hero, but an essay he had written back in 1909 about the Czech writer Otokar Brˇezina, and he gave Hofmannsthal permission to edit the text to the required length.

Next year the sixteenth volume in the not very successful Austrian Library series appeared, a selection of letters from Nikolaus Lenau to Sophie von Löwenthal. Zweig had again been invited by Hofmannsthal to edit the material, but had passed the work on to Friderike von Winternitz, merely contributing a postscript himself. Both of them, however, wisely chose not to be credited for their work in the published edition.