Weimar Germany and its Histories

摘要

YEARS later, after the catastrophes of the Third Reich and World War II,nArnold Zweig remembered how he had returned home from anotherndisaster, World War I. “With what hopes had we come back from thenwar!” he wrote.n1 Zweig recalled not just the catastrophe of total war, but alsonthe élan of revolution. Like a demon, he threw himself into politics, then intonhis writing. “I have big works, wild works, great well-formed, monumentalnworks in my head!,” he wrote to his friend Helene Weyl in April 1919. “Inwant to write! Everything that I have done up until now is just a preamble.”2nAnd it was not to be “normal” writing. The times were of galloping stallionsnand wide-open furrows, and talent was everywhere. War and revolution hadndrawn people out of the confining security of bourgeois life. “The times havenonce again placed adventure in the center of daily life, making possible oncenmore the great novel and the great story.”3