Sternstunden der Menschheit
[This page by Arnhilt Hoefle]
Sternstunden der Menschheit [literally: Great Moments of Humanity; translated title: Decisive Moments in History]
Stefan Zweig’s essay collection Sternstunden der Menschheit is among the most successful works of the Austrian writer. The first edition of 1927 included five historical miniatures, which Zweig had already created from 1912 on:
Die Weltminute von Waterloo [The World Minute of Waterloo]
Die Marienbader Elegie [The Elegy of Marienbad]
Die Entdeckung Eldorados [The Discovery of Eldorado]
Heroischer Augenblick [Heroic Moment]
Der Kampf um den Südpol [The Fight for the South Pole]
In the posthumously published edition of 1943 the following seven essays were added:
Flucht in die Unsterblichkeit [Escape to Immortality]
Die Eroberung von Byzanz [The Conquest of Byzantium]
Georg Friedrich Händels Auferstehung [The Resurrection of Georg Friedrich Händel]
Das Genie einer Nacht [The Genius of a Night]
Das erste Wort über den Ozean [The First Word Across the Ocean]
Die Flucht zu Gott [The Flight to God]
Der versiegelte Zug [The Sealed Train]
Contemporary editions include two more essays, which had been included in an English edition of 1940 already:
Cicero [The Head on the Rostrum]
Wilson versagt [Wilson's Failure]
As Zweig explained in his preface, he had picked out so-called Sternstunden, decisive moments in history that outshine the night of evanescence like bright stars. His essays are dramatically concentrated episodes, where Zweig again focuses on elaborating the psychological, inner processes of his protagonists.
Only very few essays, however, are devoted to stories of actual success. The essay entitled Das erste Wort über den Ozean [The First Word Across the Ocean] celebrates the technical success of running cables through the Atlantic Ocean for the first time in 1858. Der versiegelte Zug [The Sealed Train] is dedicated to Lenin’s return to Petersburg following his exile in Switzerland in 1917. In Heroischer Augenblick [Heroic Moment] Stefan Zweig tries to reproduce the moment, in verse, when Dostojewski, whose sentence of death is about to be executed, is finally reprieved in 1849.
The heroism of many of the portrayed characters and their influence on the stream of history lies, on the other hand, in their failure to succeed. This is demonstrated, for example, in the episodes Der Kampf um den Südpol [The Fight for the South Pole], which depicts the British explorer Captain Robert F. Scott, who failed to reach the South Pole before his Norwegian competitor Captain Roald Amundsen, and died on his return journey in 1912. In Die Entdeckung Eldorados [The Discovery of Eldorado], Zweig portrays J. A. Suter, the betrayed owner of California, who loses everything during the gold rush in the 19th century. Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to discover the Pacific Ocean in 1513 who is then executed by his competitors, is the protagonist in Flucht in die Unsterblichkeit [Escape to Immortality]. Other essays deal with the murder of Cicero in 43 BC (Cicero [The Head on the Rostrum]) and Woodrow Wilson’s failure in the peace treaty negotiations after the First World War (Wilson versagt [Wilson's Failure]). The defeat of Napoleon in Waterloo in 1815 and General Grouchy’s failure to come to his support is the subject of Die Weltminute von Waterloo [The World Minute of Waterloo]), while Zweig deals with the death of Leo Tolstoi in 1910 in Die Flucht zu Gott [The Flight to God] (written in dramatic scenes) and the conquest of Byzantium by the Turkish sultan Mahomet in 1453 in Die Eroberung von Byzanz [The Conquest of Byzantium].
Other episodes are dedicated to the attempt of capturing the fugitive moment of creativity, which had always fascinated Zweig, especially the essays Georg Friedrich Händels Auferstehung [The Resurrection of Georg Friedrich Händel] on the creation of Händel’s Messiah in 1741, and Das Genie einer Nacht [The Genius of a Night] on the creation of the Marseillaise in 1792. Die Marienbader Elegie [The Elegy of Marienbad], similarly, depicts the aged Goethe who is able to convert his disappointment at the rejection of his proposal to Ulrike von Levetzow creatively into poetry.
English translation
Stefan Zweig, Decisive Moments in History. Twelve Historical Miniatures, trans. by Lowell A. Bangerter (Riverside: Ariadne Press, 1999)
Further Reading
Stephen Howard Garrin, ‘History as Literature. Stefan Zweig's Sternstunden der Menschheit’, in The World of Yesterday's Humanist Today. Proceedings of the Stefan Zweig Symposium, ed. by Marion Sonnenfeld (New York: State University of New York Press, 1983), pp. 118-27
Lionel B. Steiman, ‘The Worm in the Rose. Historical Destiny and Individual Action in Stefan Zweig’s Vision of History’, in The World of Yesterday's Humanist Today. Proceedings of the Stefan Zweig Symposium, ed. by Marion Sonnenfeld (New York: State University of New York Press, 1983), pp. 128-56
David Turner, ‘History as Popular Story. On the Rhetoric of Stefan Zweig’s Sternstunden der Menschheit’, Modern Language Review 84 (1989), 393-405
