#stefan-zweig — Public Fediverse posts

Clàssics Imprescindibles

Dues formes d'entendre el món s'enfronten en una partida d'escacs, la materialista i pragmàtica i la de la imaginació pura... però vigileu perquè fugir de la realitat també us pot portar a la bogeria. En només 100 pàgines Zweig ens retrata la repressió nazi i la lluita per sobreviure d'un personatge que s'aferra al seu món interior per no ser destruït. Sempre m'ha recordat al "dos i dos fan quatre" del Winston Smith d'Orwell.
(1/5)

#ClàssicsImprescindibles #StefanZweig

Clàssics Imprescindibles

Dues formes d'entendre el món s'enfronten en una partida d'escacs, la materialista i pragmàtica i la de la imaginació pura... però vigileu perquè fugir de la realitat també us pot portar a la bogeria. En només 100 pàgines Zweig ens retrata la repressió nazi i la lluita per sobreviure d'un personatge que s'aferra al seu món interior per no ser destruït. Sempre m'ha recordat al "dos i dos fan quatre" del Winston Smith d'Orwell.
(1/5)

#ClàssicsImprescindibles #StefanZweig

Why didn't he finish his manusript? Is he stupid?

Es beginnt mit Isolation, aber gemeint ist Kontrolle. Philipp Stölzl inszeniert in seinem Film, nach der Novelle von Stefan Zweig, das Innere eines Mannes als Schlachtfeld und Ort der Zersetzung durch Macht. Die Geschichte kennen Sie vermutlich. In jedem Fall gehört die literarische Vorlage zum Kanon der europäischen Selbstbefragung nach dem Faschismus. Doch dieser Film interessiert sich weniger für die historische Spezifität als für die psychologische Verdichtung eines Ausnahmezustands. Das funktioniert leider nur teilweise. Mit Oliver Masucci, Albrecht Schuch und Rolf Lassgård. (ARD, Wh.)

Es beginnt mit Isolation, aber gemeint ist Kontrolle. Philipp Stölzl inszeniert in seinem Film, nach der Novelle von Stefan Zweig, das Innere eines Mannes als Schlachtfeld und Ort der Zersetzung durch Macht. Die Geschichte kennen Sie vermutlich. In jedem Fall gehört die literarische Vorlage zum Kanon der europäischen Selbstbefragung nach dem Faschismus. Doch dieser Film interessiert sich weniger für die historische Spezifität als für die psychologische Verdichtung eines Ausnahmezustands. Das funktioniert leider nur teilweise. Mit Oliver Masucci, Albrecht Schuch und Rolf Lassgård. (ARD, Wh.)

Stefan Zweig, o Brasil e o 25 de abril em Portugal

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://iclnoticias.com.br/stefan-zweig-o-brasil-e-o-25-de-abril-em-portugal/

Stefan Zweig, o Brasil e o 25 de abril em Portugal

https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://iclnoticias.com.br/stefan-zweig-o-brasil-e-o-25-de-abril-em-portugal/

Die Schachnovelle (2021)
verfügbar bis 10.04.2026

https://www.ardmediathek.de/video/Y3JpZDovL2FyZC5kZS9wbGFuQVJEXzFjZGRhYWQ0LWE4MDctNGFmOC05NGE3LTFkY2I2YmMxN2FiZV9nYW56ZVNlbmR1bmc

https://www.imdb.com/de/title/tt12058584

#DieSchachnovelle #Schachnovelle #Schach #film #ard #ardmediathek #mediathek #Deutsch #Krieg #PhilippStölzl #OliverMasucci #DieterBernhardt #EliasGabele #StefanZweig

Es beginnt mit Isolation, aber gemeint ist Kontrolle. Philipp Stölzl inszeniert in seinem Film nach der Novelle von Stefan Zweig das Innere eines Mannes als Schlachtfeld und Ort der Zersetzung durch Macht. Die Geschichte kennen Sie vermutlich. In jedem Fall gehört die literarische Vorlage zum Kanon der europäischen Selbstbefragung nach dem Faschismus. Doch dieser Film interessiert sich weniger für die historische Spezifität als für die psychologische Verdichtung eines Ausnahmezustands. Das funktioniert leider nur teilweise. Mit Oliver Masucci, Albrecht Schuch und Rolf Lassgård. (ARD, Wh.)

Kann die KI fühlen? Nein. Aber sie versteht unsere Emotionen oft besser als wir selbst. 🧠🤖

Zum Anklicken und Ausprobieren: Interaktives Emotionsrad nach Robert Plutchik zum Analysieren der eigenen Gefühle oder literarischer Szenen.
https://www.matthiaszehnder.ch/wochenkommentar/entwirrung-der-gefuehle-mit-ki/

#KI #KünstlicheIntelligenz #Emotionen #AffectiveComputing #StefanZweig #Psychologie #Selbsterkenntnis #Wochenkommentar #MatthiasZehnder

An epoch approaching extinction while something new is straining to evolve

Towards the end of Stefan Zweig’s 1925 book Nietzsche he reflects on the late warnings of an “atmospheric, whose nerves read in the closeness of the air the oncoming storm”. As Nietzsche wrote: “the ice beneath us is already too thin: we all sense the warm and dangerous breeze heralding the thaw”. For Zweig it seems that “No one felt so keenly that an epoch was approaching extinction and that in the midst of this deadly crisis something new was straining to evolve” (pg 88). He reads Nietzsche as a prophet of impending catastrophe, coupling breathtaking lucidity with incipient madness, as a man “whose nerves were shot but still gave rise to the most courageous thoughts” (pg 85). It’s easy to imagine how potent these warnings would seem to Zweig, writing in the interregnum, surveying the devastation of the first world war in the years before he would be forced to flee Germany.

I was surprised to realise this bleak quote was actually from The Gay Science which I’d always understood as the closest thing Nietzsche produced to a theory of flourishing. Particularly so given I’d just reread it a new translation and had no memory of this evocative warning, which I found so potent when presented as a singular sentence. This is the full passage in David Petault’s translation:

We children of the future, how could we possibly feel at home in this present? We are estranged from all ideals that might allow someone to feel at home even in this fragile, broken transitional period; as for their “realities,” we do not believe they have any permanence. The ice that still supports us today has become very thin: the thawing winds are blowing, and we ourselves, we the homeless, are something that breaks the ice and other too-thin “realities”… We “conserve” nothing; we do not wish to return to any past; we are not “liberal” at all; we do not work for “progress”; we do not need to block our ears against the sirens of the future that the market sings—those who call for “equal rights,” “free society,” “no more masters and no more servants” do not entice us!

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science: A New Translation (p. 272). (Function). Kindle Edition.

I was unsettled reading this to realise how readily I often gloss over passages of Nietzsche which are uncomfortable, difficult to understand or fail to resonate with me. This after all is Daniel Tutt’s claim about Nietzsche in How To Read Like A Parasite: left-Nietzscheans (which I would consider myself to be, even though it’s not a particularly salient intellectual identity for me) selectively read him in a manner which is particularly dangerous given his deeply strategic sense of how readers might relate to him. He was fundamentally a reactionary thinker, argues Tutt, committed to producing political technologies which could hold back the tide of socialism.

What makes it particularly uncomfortable, beyond belatedly seeing Tutt’s point in my own reading, comes from how much parts of this passage resonate with me. When I read it closely there’s so much here which echoes my own experience of losing any sense of political hope from December 2019 onwards, through to a political horizon receding entirely as I was overwhelmed by a rearguard action to prop up my life as it fell apart during the pandemic, through to experiencing a fragile regrowth of a belief in recent months that things can be better. Yet how could we possibly feel at home in this present? Indeed I find it astonishing that anyone could feel at home in this present but what’s more salient is, as Nietzsche puts it, the state of being “estranged from all ideals that might allow someone to feel at home even in this fragile, broken transitional period”.

We are in a fragile, broken transitional period again. The possibility Nietzsche is alluding to, indeed Tutt argues is proactively seeking to foreclose, arises that shared ideals might allow someone to feel at home in this present. That there might be ways of living and working with others that seek to address the fragility and act reparatively towards this broken world. That ideals can bring people together, making hope normal again in the face of endemic despair. That the horizon of possibility is made rather than given. That it can be remade. While I still think Tutt overstates large swathes of his critique I do now think he’s correct that Nietzsche’s lonely heroic subject can be understood in terms of foreclosing what we might think of as a collective aspiration in the face of nihilism. I was mystified by Tutt’s claim that Nietzsche can be understood as the first (right) accelerationist but I can now see what he means, particularly in this passage. The intention is to be the breaker of the ice rather than to conserve the past or work towards a better future.

Yet I still find the Gay Science a beautiful strange little book. I imagine Nietzsche less like a fascist philosopher and more like a Rust Cole. A broken yet strangely noble man who forces himself to look closely at matters which he feels, with some justification, those around him studiously avoid. Indeed he elevates this position into a passion, even a religion. We can learn from what he’s drawn to, as well as the questions it provokes in him, without accepting his answers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8x73UW8Hjk

Zupančič argues that Nietzsche can be read as a theorist of the Real. In her biography Lesley Chamberlain describes the “beautiful problem” he was preoccupied by. From Lesley Chamberlain’s Nietzsche in Turin pg 121:

The paradox was that the realization of limitation was liberating. The Upper Engadine’s 5,500 feet above sea level stood for the msot desirable capacity in human beings to see far and over the heads of individual nations and people and creeds, the ability to survive by rising above the fray, and the need to go beyond the familiar world in order to see arbitrariness of its values. In Twilight, Nietzsche wrote of this extreme standpoint:

“One would have to be situated outside life, and on the other hand to know it as thoroughly as any, as many, as all who have experienced it, to be permitted to touch on the problem of the value of life at all”

It is a beautiful problem, the moment human beings realize they belong to no other realm but the present and have no God to whom they can pray.

A beautiful problem in a “fragile, broken transitional period” might not seem so beautiful. Particularly if you live an isolated peripatetic existence plagued by ailments which disfigure your capacity for the things in your life which bring you joy. But it remains a beautiful problem which, contra Tutt, I don’t think can be overlooked on the way to collective action. There’s no way round it, only through. The point is not to get stuck where Nietzsche got stuck. Nor to get drawn in by his self-valorising calls to remain there with him. It’s something to pass through, not to end with.

This is why for all his portentousness I find Zweig’s formulation so evocative. In this bleak time we see an epoch approaching extinction while many things are straining to evolve. The duplicity at the heart of Nietzsche is the indifference he preaches in the face of what could be. The point Tutt makes which I now entirely buy is that Nietzsche is a deeply political thinker. There is a political project for him defined by the foreclosure of other political projects, those predicated on what he sees as ressentiment. The books also document that political project as an existential response to Chamberlain’s ‘beautiful problem’. That’s what we need to focus on in left readings of Nietzsche I would argue: the moral psychology of how we respond to nihilism in a broken and fragile world. It’s ok to have ideals but, as he puts it in Ecce Homo, we should “put on gloves before them”. They should be ones we really have arrived at rather than inherited. Chosen rather than assumed.

This is an orientation of care as much as distance, recognising the worth of what we have alongside the possibility for damage. It means that collective projects confront the lack of guarantees, such that people are equipped to leap in spite of them. This was for many people I suspect, certainly myself, what was missing in 2019 and why the defeat of Corbynism was so utterly crushing. It’s the collective corollary of what Daniel Gaztimbide describes here in a more individualised mode:

I often find that it’s going through the pessimism, the darkness, the struggle, that you wind up creating a pocket where there is no other option but joy. The way it comes up with many clients is getting to a place of, ‘well, given that we’re screwed in all of these conceivable ways, what would you want to do? Not, what do you have to do to survive, or appease the Other, but what would you just want? … It’s wrestling with that precipice of death, where all you’re left with is your own desire. And oftentimes that desire is oriented to something. I want. I want to be with loved ones. I want a tomorrow, regardless of whether that tomorrow will come.

Can this ever ultimately be separated? Even for Nietzsche they couldn’t, with his works filled with the effort to repress a collective dimension which Tutt convincingly argues saturates his work. For the rest of us they certainly can’t be. In his less bleak moments I wonder if Nietzsche doubted this as well:

It seems to be written in the language of thaw: there is arrogance, restlessness, contradiction, and April weather in it, so that one is constantly reminded both of the proximity of winter and of the victory over winter, which is coming, must come, perhaps has already come…

The Gay Science

Writing this prompted me to finally finish Tutt’s book. I realise that he’s advocating something similar in the sense of working through Nietzsche rather than simply dismissing him. But he conceives of this in explicitly political terms which overlooks the point I’m trying to make here. As Jacob Burckhardt put it, quoted by Zweig, Nietzsche’s books “Increased independence in the world… independence in the world, not independence of the world”. In this we can find, in Zweig’s terms, “an atmosphere, a clear atmosphere of higher lucidity permeated by passion, of a demonic nature, which discharges itself only in storms and destruction”. There’s something of this conveyed in Tutt’s description of sweating out the parasite but I think the contribution it makes to our wellbeing is lost in that metaphor. Can we linger for a bit in this atmosphere? Can we persist through the storms and destruction? If so can we come to our ideals afterwards in a freer, more knowing and more independent way? I suspect we can and therein for me lies the continued existential appeal of Nietzsche in spite of the terrible politics which, persuaded by Tutt, I now concede cannot simply be passed over in any adequate reading of him.

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

T.S. Eliot - East Coker

#Nietzscheans #accelerationism #Activism #DanielGaztimbide #DanielTutt #DavidPetault #EcceHomo #hope #LesleyChamberlain #Nietzsche #RustCole #StefanZweig #TheGayScience #Zupančič

Two of my favorite 5-star reads this year have a great deal to say about authoritarianism, “implicit submission,” resistance, and our shared humanity. I know I will be thinking about both of these works in 2026: The World of Yesterday (1942) by #StefanZweig (nonfiction) and Sunrise on the Reaping (2025) by #SuzanneCollins (fiction). #Books #Bookstodon

Two of my favorite 5-star reads this year have a great deal to say about authoritarianism, “implicit submission,” resistance, and our shared humanity. I know I will be thinking about both of these works in 2026: The World of Yesterday (1942) by #StefanZweig (nonfiction) and Sunrise on the Reaping (2025) by #SuzanneCollins (fiction). #Books #Bookstodon

"Wahrhaftigkeit
und
Politik
wohnen
selten unter
einem Dach.

Stefan Zweig

Guten Morgen zusammen ☕️

#Politik
#Wahrhaftigkeit
#stefanzweig

"Wahrhaftigkeit
und
Politik
wohnen
selten unter
einem Dach.

Stefan Zweig

Guten Morgen zusammen ☕️

#Politik
#Wahrhaftigkeit
#stefanzweig

Eindelijk uit. Must-read voor alle Europeanen. #stefanzweig

Eindelijk uit. Must-read voor alle Europeanen. #stefanzweig

#Lesenswert

Kaum einer versteht noch #Israel. Vielleicht tun sie es?
Unser Autor sucht Hoffnung in einem Krieg, der hoffnungslos erscheint – bei den Literatur-Stars des Landes
von #VolkerWeidermann #Gaza #stefanzweig

https://www.zeit.de/2025/24/israelische-schriftsteller-krieg-gaza-hoffnung

#Lesenswert

Kaum einer versteht noch #Israel. Vielleicht tun sie es?
Unser Autor sucht Hoffnung in einem Krieg, der hoffnungslos erscheint – bei den Literatur-Stars des Landes
von #VolkerWeidermann #Gaza #stefanzweig

https://www.zeit.de/2025/24/israelische-schriftsteller-krieg-gaza-hoffnung

(11/27) ... sur les paillasses baraquements insalubres + #avortement interdit = les Berceaux de Rouen, jamais reconnue légalement comme une œuvre d'adoption, d'Edith Paradis -> prise en charge payante des femmes enceintes quelque temps avant leurs accouchements -> naissance avec bébés déclarés "né de parents inconnus" quelques jours plus tard en mairie = mise en tutelle rapide de ...

#Livre Le #monde d'hier de #StefanZweig (cf 2024 2025).

#year1941 #anthropocene #climat #climate #climatechange

(11/27) ... quelque temps avant leurs accouchements -> naissance avec bébés déclarés "né de parents inconnus" quelques jours plus tard en mairie = mise en tutelle rapide de l'enfant -> début trafic d'adoption illégal de bébés achetés par par les familles adoptantes #business (cf 1921 1973).
- Bessarabie roumaine annexée par Staline (cf 1940) : reprise par les Roumains (cf 1945).

#Livre Le #monde d'hier de #StefanZweig (cf 2024 2025).

#year1941 #anthropocene #climat #climate #climatechange

In Salzburg, the Porsche family's private tunnel project faces unexpected resistance.

Wolfgang Porsche, 81, plans to build an underground route to access the villa of writer Stefan Zweig, which he acquired in 2020.

The discreetly prepared project has sparked protests from many Salzburg residents.

https://mediafaro.org/article/20250408-in-salzburg-the-porsche-familys-private-tunnel-project-faces-unexpected-resistance?mf_channel=mastodon&action=forward

#Austria #Porsche #Salzburg #StefanZweig

Ans Meer im Februar... Gent, Brügge, Ostende
#Stadtstreunerei und unterwegs auf literarischen Spuren mit #StefanZweig #JosephRoth

https://leggieroblog.wordpress.com/2025/03/05/ans-meer-im-februar/

Ans Meer im Februar... Gent, Brügge, Ostende
#Stadtstreunerei und unterwegs auf literarischen Spuren mit #StefanZweig #JosephRoth

https://leggieroblog.wordpress.com/2025/03/05/ans-meer-im-februar/

Podcast Erklär mir die Welt #327
Erklär mir die Geschichte Israels, Michael Brenner #erklarMirDieWelt
https://xn--erklrmir-3za.at/2024/12/03/327-erklaer-mir-die-geschichte-israels-michael-brenner/

Hervorragende Episode über die Geschichte, wie sich das Judentum bis zur Staatenfindung von #Israel entwickelt hat.

Eine Reihe von Aha-Effekten für mich. Es ist wesentlich komplexer als bereits gedacht und räumt mit etlichen Unwahrheiten wegen Verkürzung auf! 👍

#Palestinenser #Palestina #Araber #Zionismus #Antizionismus #Gaza #Westjordanland #Siebentagekrieg #UNO #Judentum #TheodorHerzl #StefanZweig #Zweistaatenlösung

Podcast Erklär mir die Welt #327
Erklär mir die Geschichte Israels, Michael Brenner #erklarMirDieWelt
https://xn--erklrmir-3za.at/2024/12/03/327-erklaer-mir-die-geschichte-israels-michael-brenner/

Hervorragende Episode über die Geschichte, wie sich das Judentum bis zur Staatenfindung von #Israel entwickelt hat.

Eine Reihe von Aha-Effekten für mich. Es ist wesentlich komplexer als bereits gedacht und räumt mit etlichen Unwahrheiten wegen Verkürzung auf! 👍

#Palestinenser #Palestina #Araber #Zionismus #Antizionismus #Gaza #Westjordanland #Siebentagekrieg #UNO #Judentum #TheodorHerzl #StefanZweig #Zweistaatenlösung

@CitizenWald

BTW … Well, there is just always the danger of wanting to add the own drop of water to the ocean with a grand gesture.

But … do you already know this movie about Stefan Zweig? „Vor der Morgenröte“ …?

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vor_der_Morgenröte

#history #literature #StefanZweig

@CitizenWald

BTW … Well, there is just always the danger of wanting to add the own drop of water to the ocean with a grand gesture.

But … do you already know this movie about Stefan Zweig? „Vor der Morgenröte“ …?

https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vor_der_Morgenröte

#history #literature #StefanZweig

@CitizenWald

Some of his fiction is very good too. I would recommend "Beware of Pity":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beware_of_Pity_(novel)

#StefanZweig #BewareOfPity

@CitizenWald

Some of his fiction is very good too. I would recommend "Beware of Pity":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beware_of_Pity_(novel)

#StefanZweig #BewareOfPity

« #Cosmopolite », de #StefanZweig : près d’un demi-siècle d’échanges avec ses contemporains #lemonde #lemondedeslivres #livres #bookstodon
https://www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2024/10/19/cosmopolite-de-stefan-zweig-pres-d-un-demi-siecle-d-echanges-avec-ses-contemporains_6355802_3260.html

Beim Lesen der heutigen Nachrichten ist mir ein Zitat aus der diesjährigen #Urlaublektüre in den Sinn gekommen:
Triumph und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam, von #StefanZweig, Erschienen 1934
#Krieg #Frieden

“But aren’t we guilty of being insultingly disparaging if we refer to chess as a game? Is it not also a science, an art...a unique synthesis of all opposites; ancient and yet always new, mechanical in its structure yet animated only by the imagination, limited to a geometrically petrified space yet unlimited in its permutations... an art without works, an architecture without materials"

#chess #StefanZweig

Full quote at https://idiolect.org.uk/notes/2024/07/16/quote-325/

“But aren’t we guilty of being insultingly disparaging if we refer to chess as a game? Is it not also a science, an art...a unique synthesis of all opposites; ancient and yet always new, mechanical in its structure yet animated only by the imagination, limited to a geometrically petrified space yet unlimited in its permutations... an art without works, an architecture without materials"

#chess #StefanZweig

Full quote at https://idiolect.org.uk/notes/2024/07/16/quote-325/

Soon to be midnight, I'm on bed and my babies are sleeping now. I have a good ebook in my hand to read before I sleep: "Letter from an Unknown Woman", from Stefan Zweig, published in 1922.
As I heard, it may be an heart-touching story, hope not to cry at the end. #Book #Reading #StefanZweig #ClassicLiterature

Soon to be midnight, I'm on bed and my babies are sleeping now. I have a good ebook in my hand to read before I sleep: "Letter from an Unknown Woman", from Stefan Zweig, published in 1922.
As I heard, it may be an heart-touching story, hope not to cry at the end. #Book #Reading #StefanZweig #ClassicLiterature

Sismique
L’histoire se répète-t-elle ? Réflexion sur Le Monde d’Hier - STEFAN ZWEIG
https://mcinformactions.net/l-histoire-se-repete-t-elle-reflexion-sur-le-monde-d-hier-stefan-zweig
#Histoire #StefanZweig #nazisme #extremedroite #racisme

Darkness must fall

For it’s always that way with the sacred value of life. We forget it as long as it belongs to us, and give it as little attention during the unconcerned hours of our life as we do the stars in the light of day. Darkness must fall before we are aware of the majesty of the stars above our heads.

~ Stefan Zweig

slip:4a1064.