Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (24 page)

As soon as his travel permit was confirmed, Zweig had notified his publishers of his impending absence from Vienna. His mail was not being forwarded; if the matter was urgent, a telegram beginning “Tell Zweig …” would be sent to Albert Ehrenstein, who would then pass on the message. It was too soon to tell how the visit would turn out, but a little forward planning in his business affairs obviously wouldn’t hurt. So he explicitly asked his publishers to keep the bookshops in Zurich well supplied with all his works, and in particular, of course,
Jeremias.

When he arrived in Switzerland, Zweig was aghast to discover that his efforts had been in vain. He walked through streets with shop windows full of goods that had not been seen in Austria for a long time, except that there was one notable omission in the bookshops—his own books.
Only a few months previously he had had to contend with endless delays before
Jeremias
went into print: now, in a new variation on the same theme, it seemed that his patience was to be tried once again. He lost no time in informing Insel: “During the whole of my travels I have not seen a single copy of my books anywhere, not in the railway stations, not in the bookshops—
not a single copy
, even in busy cities like Salzburg and Zurich! And yet I am due to give readings here, and my play is to be performed! It really is enough to make one despair!”
⁴
In the hope that what he had observed had perhaps been the exception rather than the rule, he roamed the city that same day and carried out spot checks in many more bookshops, which only confirmed his devastating findings. He promptly wrote to Leipzig: “I am bound to ask whether there is not some sort of hidden flaw in your organisation, because it is possible to find every book published by Fischer and Kurt Wolff in every bookshop, but I couldn’t see a single new title from Insel in any of them.”
⁵
Once again, Zweig would not let the matter rest until the shipments of books had finally arrived. And the sales figures justified his concern—although the texts of plays did not normally sell well,
Jeremias
quickly became one of his most sought-after works.

At the end of the month he travelled with Friderike to Villeneuve, where Rolland was staying at the Hôtel Byron. It was a happy reunion, and they talked at length—about present-day events and future projects, but also about Verhaeren, whose fate continued to preoccupy them both. How much Zweig’s mentor had meant to him, despite all the disappointments, was forcibly demonstrated by the memoir
Erinnerungen an Émile Verhaeren,
which he had had privately printed in a limited edition of one hundred copies for distribution to his friends before he left Vienna. Shortly before Verhaeren’s death Zweig had learnt via Rolland that Verhaeren had not wavered in his commitment to their friendship. Rolland had remained in direct contact with Verhaeren by letter until the very end, and he was now able to assure Zweig in person that this was so.

After the weeks of excitement prior to his departure and the unedifying first impressions that followed his arrival in Switzerland, Zweig now calmed down and took time to reflect, rediscovering the fascination that he had long felt for the clarity of Rolland’s thought, his courage and firmness of purpose. In a later text he sought to analyse the reasons for his enthusiasm:

What was it that Rolland wanted? What did he say back then that so excited me? The first thing was that he insisted on our identity as individuals, conceding that we are citizens of the state with a loyalty to the state, and that we must obey the state in all things that it commands us—the state has a claim on our fortune and a claim on our lives—but that our final refuge lies within ourselves. This is what Goethe once called “the citadel” in a letter—the citadel that he defends and that may never be entered by another person. This is the conscience, that citadel, that final court of appeal that cannot be compelled by order—neither to hate nor to love. Rolland simply refused to hate, to take upon himself the obligation of a collective hatred. He regarded it as an inalienable human duty to choose whom he hated and whom he loved, and not to reject at one go a whole nation, or nations, among whom he had very dear friends. The second thing was that Rolland did not share the blind belief in victory as a cure-all. He did not believe that victory of itself is sufficient to make a nation more righteous or make it better. He had a deep distrust of victory in all its forms, because for him, as he once said, world history was nothing but a constant reminder that the victors abuse their power. To his way of thinking victory was just as much of a moral danger as defeat, and in claiming this he was simply reiterating a more strident saying of Nietzsche’s, who likewise rejected all forms of violence in intellectual life.
⁶

With such thoughts in his mind Zweig handed Rolland a sealed envelope a few days later, on his thirty-sixth birthday. This was only to be opened by Rolland in the event of receiving a certain telegram containing a coded message, which would tell him that Zweig had flatly refused to serve under arms and therefore had to expect the direst consequences. The envelope contained a written document that Zweig called his “Testament of conscience”. He had drafted the text over several days, and in it he stated that he would never be coerced into serving as an armed combatant. Although the time he spent with Rolland had strengthened his rejection of war and armed force, Zweig still felt a good deal of uncertainty about the matter. If it came to the crunch back in Vienna, would he have the inner courage then that it took to write these bold words now? It was a question he asked himself in his diary. The only point on which he was firmly resolved was that he would refuse to serve as an armed combatant. When it came to other kinds of military duties, he would probably follow orders. In other words, he would not have refused to continue serving as a member of the military in the War Archive, even though he had no intention of
returning voluntarily to this place, where for years he had been engaged in a window-dressing exercise ordained by the state.

At the same time he did not see his limited stay in Switzerland as a real opportunity to escape. A subterfuge such as an alleged illness, for example, could have delayed his return for an extended period or even permanently, but he was unwilling to go down this road, as he was to signal openly from abroad his outright refusal to serve. His vacillation explains why he would later write that the “days and weeks in Switzerland during the (long foreseen) agony of the war … [were] the most intense, at moments the most ecstatic, but for the most part the most depressing of my life.”
⁷
While his actions may have struck outsiders as cowardly or indecisive—according to the observer’s temperament—Zweig had at least been brutally honest with himself. Faced with the possibility of having to travel back to Austria in the near future, he unsurprisingly felt committed still to the work he had been doing and to his “propaganda mission”. In December, therefore, he set about planning a themed issue on Switzerland for
Donauland
, “the best [journal] that we have in Austria”, as he wrote to Hermann Ganz of the magazine
Schweizerland
, inviting him to contribute an article on contemporary Swiss writing for the planned issue.
⁸

Stefan and Friderike stayed only a few days with Rolland before travelling on to Geneva, where they visited the head office of the International Red Cross and made some new acquaintances. One of these, the Belgian graphic designer Frans Masereel, was to become a close companion over the coming months. He supplied illustrations for the pacifist journal
La Feuille
, and was soon illustrating various minor pamphlets of Zweig’s with his characteristic woodcuts. As well as collaborating with him professionally, Zweig found him a relaxing companion with whom he could indulge his more frivolous side. Friderike recalls a visit that Masereel paid them in Zurich, “where the general strike had just broken out, and Switzerland was mobilising. The property-conscious Swiss were gripped by a profound fear of communism. Walking along the empty railway tracks in the direction of Zurich, Frans pretended to be a Russian and called Stefan ‘Ivan’. Nobody was taken in by these adolescent pranks, but the two friends were having great fun.”
⁹

From Geneva Stefan and Friderike returned to Zurich via Bern. These weeks and months brought many reunions with old acquaintances such as Hermann Hesse and Ferruccio Busoni, as well as numerous new contacts, among them René Arcos, James Joyce and Pierre-Jean Jouve. Before Zweig left Vienna Jouve had sent him one of his books of poems with “fraternal
greetings”, and now they both arranged a joint reading. It was an occasion fraught with symbolic significance: here were two citizens of states at war with each other, reciting their works together in their native tongues while the fighting was still going on, and shaking hands in front of the audience.

In Zurich Zweig also met Erwin Rieger, the stepson of his superior officer at the War Archive, Colonel Veltzé. Rieger had fled to Switzerland to avoid military service, and was working as a chemist’s assistant. His real interests lay not in pharmacy, however, but in literature, and specifically French literature. So it is hardly surprising that a close friendship soon developed between him and Zweig, which would endure long after the time they spent together in Switzerland.

Meanwhile back home in Vienna Moriz Zweig had retired completely from the family business at the end of 1917—he was now seventy-two years old—and handed over the reins to his two sons. Alfred would continue to take the day-to-day business decisions, while Stefan became a silent partner. But during the second half of the war the factory lay idle for most of the time, and the Zweigs were forced to live off their savings. Moriz had invested a portion of his fortune in war bonds and other Austrian securities, which worked to his financial disadvantage in the years of inflation. Despite his fears and the alarming prospect of losing a considerable amount of his capital, the family was able to maintain the standard of living that it had become accustomed (and attached) to without significant retrenchments. The apartment in the Rathausstrasse was exchanged for another in the nearby Garnisongasse. This time, contrary to their usual practice of renting, the Zweigs decided to buy the house in which they planned to live from now on. The idea behind this was to invest their money before it lost its value in these inflationary times—the same thinking that had influenced Stefan’s decision to buy the house in Salzburg. Except that the parents still knew nothing about their son’s carefully considered purchase.

At the beginning of December Friderike returned to Vienna, her suitcases well-filled with provisions. Apart from seeing her two daughters again and visiting the relatives at Christmas, the main purpose of her trip was to try and get an extension of Stefan’s leave, which was due to end in a few weeks’ time. With this in mind they had called in at the Austrian Embassy during their stay in Bern, but finding a solution to the problem was now becoming a matter of urgency. In the end Zweig’s old school friend Ernst Benedikt, now the editor of the
Neue Freie Presse
, came to their rescue. During her stay in Vienna Friderike managed to arrange for Stefan
to be officially taken on by the paper as its Swiss correspondent, although first of all he had to apply for an extension of his exemption from military service. Initially Benedikt was reluctant to lend his support, as requests of this kind were very common. But Friderike threatened to take her proposal to another newspaper, which would probably mean that Stefan Zweig, a valued contributor for many years, would never work for his paper again. Eventually Benedikt agreed to help, and the application went through successfully. The papers even ended up on the desk of Austria’s Foreign Minister, who added his own marginal note: “The fact long since known to me that Dr Zweig is a shirker. Procedure certainly irregular”.
¹⁰
But he approved the application anyway. It was thanks not least to Friderike’s former father-in-law, who had once again intervened behind the scenes to give her and Stefan some hope of a successful outcome. The day after Christmas 1917 Stefan was able to telegraph Vienna to say that he would sign a contract with the paper. His service leave had now been extended to 28th February 1918. In the event Zweig stayed on in Switzerland after this date, but there is no documentary evidence to show that a further extension was ever requested or officially approved.

Under the terms of his contract with the
Neue Freie Presse
he was expected to deliver two feature articles on some aspect of Swiss life each month, for which he would be paid one hundred francs per article. Bread and butter work, no doubt, but not an insurmountable challenge, especially not at that time, when a keen observer could find more than enough to write about. There was also good reason to hope that the new job would leave him sufficient spare time to pursue his own writing projects. So Zweig now embarked on translations of various works by Rolland, and had already asked Friderike to stop by his apartment in Vienna and pick up the manuscript of the Dostoevsky text that he had started before the outbreak of war, together with the associated sketches and drafts, on which he now planned to resume work. Later on came work on a new play,
Legende eines Lebens,
a chamber piece exploring a father-son conflict, for which Zweig took certain motifs from the biography of Richard Wagner. Friderike had also found work—she was employed by the Gustav Kiepenheuer publishing house to revise an existing new translation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s
Émile ou De l’éducation
, which would give her the means to fund her continuing stay in Switzerland. In actual fact Zweig himself had taken on the commission, but then decided he only wanted to write an introduction and assume the editorial role.