Sternstunden der Menschheit. Schmuckausgabe mit Kupferprägung

by Stefan Zweig

Hardcover

About the author

Stefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Among his most famous works are Beware of Pity, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. He and his second wife committed suicide in 1942.
Zweig studied in Austria, France, and Germany before settling in Salzburg in 1913. In 1934, driven into exile by the Nazis, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, to Brazil by way of New York. Finding only growing loneliness and disillusionment in their new surroundings, he and his second wife committed suicide.
Zweig's interest in psychology and the teachings of Sigmund Freud led to his most characteristic work, the subtle portrayal of character. Zweig's essays include studies of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Drei Meister, 1920; Three Masters) and of Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche (Der Kampf mit dem Dämon, 1925; Master Builders). He achieved popularity with Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928; The Tide of Fortune), five historical portraits in miniature. He wrote full-scale, intuitive rather than objective, biographies of the French statesman Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935), and others. His stories include those in Verwirrung der Gefühle (1925; Conflicts). He also wrote a psychological novel, Ungeduld des Herzens (1938; Beware of Pity), and translated works of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Emile Verhaeren.
Most recently, his works provided the inspiration for 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Reviews

[Coffee & Words (Markus) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gut kann ich verstehen, dass Stefan Zweig seinerzeit der beliebteste deutschsprachige Autor war: Seine Version der Moderne ist frei von der experimentellen Überforderung eines Canetti oder Musil, seine Sujets sind - zumindest in diesen zwölf Miniaturen - historisch und entführen jeweils in eine nachträglich heimelig anmutende Vergangenheit. Aufregendes wie die Eroberung von Byzanz oder die tragische, tödlich endende Reise Kapitän Scotts zum Südpol erzählt er, als seien es Märchen, in geschliffenem, aber nicht überkandideltem Stil, der den Leser durch alle Abenteuer trägt und ihn am Ende sanft einlullt. So ist es ihm gelungen, einen nach wie vor massentauglichen Klassiker der Moderne zu verfassen, an dem auch heute noch Erwachsene sowie Kinder und Jugendliche ihre Freude haben.

[Cossake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice start with really interesting anecdotes about historic events regarding exploration and individual audacity. The second half on the other hand includes works of literature, as in 1 to 1 copies, without any annotation, explanation or other embedding in the historical context as done in previous chapters.
Would have made more sense to me to exclusively focus on either historical events or (subjectively) good works of literature.