52 pages • 1 hour read
Stefan ZweigThe World of Yesterday: An Autobiography
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1942A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Intellect and the Arts
The arts, intellect, and “the life of the mind” form a key motif within The World of Yesterday. Zweig grew up in Vienna, then a major cultural hub in Europe. From a young age, Zweig was exposed to works by noteworthy thinkers and writers such as Nietzsche and Rilke, and although he disdained the dry curriculum of formal education, he loved learning. Zweig was consciously oriented toward the literature, art, music, and philosophy of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he identified much more as a European intellectual than he did as an Austrian or a Jewish man. To cosmopolitan minds such as Zweig’s, a collective identity based in shared dedication to intellectual pursuits was far superior to identification based on ethno-religious status or national origin. That Zweig and his fellow thinkers were so dedicated to a shared life of the mind stands out as particularly tragic because they came of age during an era that shattered the idea of pan-European unity. And yet, Zweig remained dedicated to learning and intellectual growth for the rest of his life: He made his living as an author and maintained close ties with many important artists, writers, and musicians in Europe and abroad.
Youth
Youth is a key motif within this text, and one whose meaning fluctuates throughout the course of Zweig’s story. During the portion of the memoir that details Zweig’s own childhood and adolescence in Vienna, youth is viewed negatively by his teachers, parents, and Austro-Hungarian society; indeed, the word “young” is typically used as a pejorative. The Austro-Hungarian Empire, which Zweig points out had ruled for a “thousand years” by the time of its dissolution, valued tradition, maturity, and a set of backward-looking beliefs, values, and practices. When Zweig was a young man, there was a sense, particularly in school, that young people ought to be quiet, obedient, and passive. It was in large part because of this orientation toward youth that Zweig found school so dull and uninspiring, and why he instead looked to a new generation of philosophers, writers, and thinkers who, still young themselves, sought to create a new kind of society based on new ideals. Zweig himself published his first book of poems at 19 and played an active role in Vienna’s circle of young, future-oriented intellectuals.
He was also part of a generation that had their youth shattered by an unthinkable, unprecedented war. In the wake of that conflict, he sees an entirely new attitude toward youth emerge, and writes: “[T]hat whole generation was determined to be more youthful; unlike the young people in the world of my parents, everyone was proud of being young” (217). There was a pervasive sense after World War I that the very values of the old world had led to its destruction, and young people cast off 19th-century norms, sexual restrictions, ideas, and beliefs. Meanwhile, art, literature, and music all underwent a massive sea change during what would come to be understood as the beginning of the “modern” era. Part of the historical importance of this text is the way that Zweig describes shifting attitudes toward youth. These changing attitudes are part of a broader historical trend that had implications not only for the world of arts and letters, but for politics and societal organization as well.
Bearing Witness
In the Foreword, Zweig writes that he had never considered himself “important enough” to be the subject of a narrative, and that he would not have been moved to write his memoir had his life not been overshadowed by the incredible rupture of two world wars. He writes that “it seems to be a duty to bear witness to our lifetime” (xv), and he notes that he his generation “have been forced to bear witness” to the series of catastrophes that befell Europe during the first half of the 20th century (xv). As young men in Vienna during what would become the end of the Habsburg Empire, Zweig and his cohort of intellectuals eagerly anticipated the promise of a new century but were unprepared for the way that World War I would change their lives. There is a sense in which Zweig spent the rest of his life trying to make sense out of the senselessness of war, and The World of Yesterday is a case in point. For Zweig, the pain of bearing witness is twofold: Watching the tragedy of World War I unfold around him was the greatest sort of existential rupture imaginable, but coming to terms with it afterward was also exceedingly difficult.
The idea of bearing witness runs through this text, and later, after the conclusion of World War I, Zweig recalls seeing the former emperor on a train bound out of Austria for the last time. He writes that he “was witnessing a historic moment” (308), and in that moment he realizes that the country he’s returning to isn’t the same as the one he left. Indeed, Zweig bore witness not only to the end of Austria but also to the end of Europe as he knew it. Although he worked hard to keep the spirit of cosmopolitanism alive, World War II dashed his hopes for pan-European unity, and he would never be able to reconcile himself with the second death of his beliefs, values, and ideals. For Zweig, part of the great pain of exile was that he could no longer directly bear witness to the historic events unfolding in Europe. First in England and later in the United States and Brazil, Zweig was safe from Nazi persecution, but also cut off from his beloved home. Writing this memoir, which was Zweig’s last book, can be seen as one final act of bearing witness.
