Ich kenn von ihm nur wenig, eigentlich fast nur „Die Welt von Gestern“, das zugegeben einen gewissen nostalgischen Reiz verströmt.
Aus anderem Anlass hab ich grad George L. Mosses Buch „German Jews Beyond Judaism“ (Bloomington/Cincinnati, 1985) zur Hand, darin finden sich zu Zweig einige interessante Beobachtungen:
Writers such as Stefan Zweig and Emil Ludwig meant not merely to entertain but to educate, to spread the ideals of Bildung, to encourage the exercise of a critical mind. These men were liberals in the old tradition; for example, like the liberal press, they rejected the militant patriotism of World War I. The substance of their Jewishness, as they saw it, was expressed through their cultural stance, just as it was for many other Jewish intellectuals and many Jewish patrons of German culture.
Men such as Zwieg and Ludwig were progressive but not avant-garde, and that was part of their strength as popular writers. They were not far ahead of their times, and for all their commitment to Bildung and the Enlightenment, a certain nostalgia for continuity in life and politics informed their work. To be sure, Zweig believed that life should be live passionately, but he regarded sustained passion as unhealthy – ending either in death or in a return to so-called normal behavior. [Fussnote: David Turner, „The Humane Ideal in Stefan Zweig’s Novelle: Some Complications and Limitations,“ in Marion Sonnenfeld, ed., Stefan Zweig (Albany, New York, 1983), p. 158.] Bildung and the Enlightenment were permeated by overt or implied praise for the middle-class style of life. here there was no avant-garde predilection for shocking the bourgeois or any left-wing attack upon their lifestyle. Emil Ludwig, for example, pleaded for a balance between pleasure and accomplishment which would keep eroticism in check. [Fussnote: Emil Ludwig, Genie und Charakter, Zwanzig Männliche Bildnisse (Berlin, 1925), pp. 275, 281. These comments were made in a hostile portrait of the melancholy and homosexual writer Hermann Bang.]
Such writers provide a good illustration of what happened when Bildung and the Enlightenment attempted to reach out to popular culture. […] The favorite literary medium for both Zweig and Ludwig was historical biography, perhaps reflecting the search for the individual in a Germany whose politics seemed to shift with the sway of the irrational masses. Their writings durign the Weimar Republic, their attempt to reach out to the people, to overcome Jewish isolation, must be placed within an already established German-Jewish tradition. Berthold Auerbach in his Schrift und Volk had idealized the German people; Zweig and Ludwig were to follow his footsteps over half a century later. […] Auerbach’s attempt to form a unity out of diversity, to unite regional traditions with those of the nation and all of humanity, were continued by Stefan Zweig, who liked to join together the most unlikely characters in his collective biographies.
[…]
Zweig, like Ludwig, wrote historical biographies, but wrote novels and short stories as well, although the biographies were of special relevance for his self-appointed educational task. Readers hungered for history after World War I, for personality and leadership. The urge to follow a leader in times of crisis, which was to have such fateful political consequences, also helped to popularize historical biographies. These centered on well-known men for the most part, statesmen such as Napoleon or Bismarck or writers such as Goethe or Byron, who had become cult figures. […] The human personality was examined in isolation; historical forces which might have helped determine men’s actions were ignored, and only man’s inner life and his self-development counted. Zweig wrote that the masses could not grasp abstract thought; man himself must be subsituted for the idea as a tangible symbol [Fussnote: Quoted in Erich Fitzbauer, ed., Stefan Zweig, durch Zeiten und Welten, (Graz and Vienna, 1961), p. 27]. Both Ludwig and Zweig, unlike those usually associated with Weimar culture, had an insight into needs of popular culture, but neither wanted to use this insight to build national monuments.
~ George L. Mosse: German Jews Beyond Judaism, Bloomington/Cincinnati, 1985, pp. 24-27
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #165: Johnny Dyani (1945–1986) - 9.9., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba