The World of Yesterday

by Stefan Zweig

In reality it was during the last decade preceding the new century that the war of all against all had already begun in Austria.

The masses rose, and we wrote and discussed poetry.

And only decades later, when roof and walls fell in upon us, did we realize that the foundations had long since been undermined and that together with the new century the decline of individual freedom in Europe had begun.

Our century, however, being an epoch that no longer believed in the Devil and scarcely believed in God, had no heart for so drastic an anathema, but looked upon sexuality as an anarchical and therefore disturbing element, which had no place in its ethics and which was not allowed to see the light of day, because every form of free and extra-marital love was in opposition to middle-class “decency.”

If it was not feasible to do away with sexuality, then at least it must not be visible in the world of morality. A silent pact was therefore reached, by which the entire bothersome affair was not mentioned in school, in the family, or in public, and everything which brought its existence to mind was suppressed.

the entire generation was inhibited in its freedom of speech by the pressure of the times.

But we grew up in this sticky, perfumed, sultry, unhealthy atmosphere. This dishonest and unpsychological morality of secrecy and hiding hung over us like a nightmare, and since true literary and culturally historical documents are lacking because of the universality of this technique of concealment, it may not be easy to reconstruct what already has become incomprehensible.

the modes of a century, with their trends in visual taste, unintentionally also reveal its morals.

These strange figures of yesteryear appear as unnaturally, uncomfortably, unhygienically, and unpractically dressed fools.

Fundamentally, the mode, with this as its obvious motive, merely obeyed the general moral tendency of the time, whose chief care was dissembling and concealment.

What catches the more impartial eye of today, looking at these fashions which sought in despair to cover up every trace of naked skin and honest growth, is not their decency but, on the contrary, their minutely provocative revelation of the radical difference between the sexes.

the sexes in those days set themselves as far apart as they could.

By this unnatural differentiation in external habits the inner tension between the poles, the erotic, was necessarily strengthened, and thus, by its unpsychological method of concealment and reticence, the society of that time achieved the directly opposite effect. While in its incessant fear and prudishness it was constantly tracking down the indecent in all forms of life, literature, art, and dress, in order to avoid every possible incitement, it was actually forced to think constantly of the indecent.

But this fear of everything physical and natural dominated the whole people, from the highest to the lowest, with the violence of an actual neurosis.

And now think of the young people who grew up with eyes wide open in such an era, and how ridiculous these fears over the constant threat to decency must have seemed to them, as soon as they discovered that the cloak of morality, which had been thought to conceal all these things, was threadbare and full of holes.

nothing increased and troubled our curiosity as much as this clumsy business of concealment; and since all that was natural was not permitted to run its course freely and openly, in a big city curiosity created its own not very clean underground outlets.

Everywhere the suppressed sought byways, loopholes, and detours.

For it is only the forbidden that occupies the senses, only the forbidden excites desire; and the less the eyes manage to see and the ears to hear, the more the mind will dream.

the pressure of society on our youth, instead of bringing about a higher morality, brought forth nothing but mistrust and bitterness against all authorities. From the very first day of our awakening, we had felt instinctively that this dishonest morality, with its concealment and reticence, wished to take something that rightly belonged to our age away from us, and our will to honesty was sacrificed to a convention which had long since become false.

But even in those moral times, in Vienna in particular, the air was full of dangerous erotic infection, and a girl of good family had to live in a completely sterilized atmosphere, from the day of her birth until the day when she left the altar on her husband’s arm.

Now I cannot conceal the fact that this innocence lent the young girls of those days a secret charm.

The unmarried maiden became an article left on the shelf, and the left-over became an old maid, the butt of the shallow derision of all the comic papers.

For a society is always most cruel to those who disclose and reveal its secrets, when through dishonesty society itself has outraged Nature.

the entire sexual life of youth was supposed to go on under the moral surface of “society.”

One method of enlightenment was frowned upon by all the authorities: the open and honest method.

Among the proletariat, the worker, before he could get married, lived with another worker in free love. Among the orthodox Jews of Galicia, a bride was given to the seventeen-year-old, that is, at the normal age of puberty, and it was possible for him to be a grandfather at forty. It was only in our middle-class society that such a remedy as an early marriage was scorned. No father of a family would have entrusted his daughter to a twenty- or twenty-two-year-old man, since so “young” a man was not considered sufficiently mature.

generally speaking, prostitution was still the foundation of the erotic life outside of marriage; in a certain sense it constituted a dark underground vault over which rose the gorgeous structure of middle-class society with its faultless, radiant façade.

institution. It is not the police nor the laws that have restricted prostitution in our world. This tragic product of a pseudo-morality, except for a small remnant, has liquidated itself because of a decreased demand.

Prostitution was recognized as a profession among the other professions; but – and here is the rub of morality – it was not quite fully recognized.

The strict discipline, the pitiless surveillance, the social ostracism, applied only to the army of thousands and thousands who defended, with their bodies and their humiliated souls, an old and long since undermined moral prejudice against free and natural love.

This gigantic army of prostitution, like the real army, was made up of various branches, cavalry, artillery, infantry, and siege artillery. In the ranks of prostitution the siege artillery was the group which had occupied certain streets in the city as their quarter.

The same world that so pathetically defended the purity of womanhood allowed this cruel sale of women, organized it, and even profited thereby.

The youth of those pseudo-moral times were much more romantic and yet more unclean, much more excited and yet more depressed, than the novels and dramas of their official writers depict them.

“Now we lack the wine, now we lack the cup.” One and the same generation is rarely granted both. If morality gives man freedom, then the State confines him. If the State permits him freedom, then morality attempts to enslave him.

youth of today is free of fear and depression and enjoys to the full that which was denied us in our time: the feeling of candor and self-confidence.

To be a university student accorded definite rights to the young academician and conferred upon him privileges far beyond those of the others of his own age.

the German student assumed a sort of “student honor” in addition to the civil and common code of honor.

being a real student meant giving proof of one’s manhood by participating in as many duels as possible, and bearing the evidence of such heroic deeds in the shape of scars on one’s face; smooth cheeks and a nose that had not been disfigured were not worthy of a genuine Germanic academician.

But the effect of this inane and brutal activity was highly repulsive, and whenever we met one of these beribboned hordes, we prudently turned the corner; for to us, who cherished the freedom of the individual as the most sacred of all things, this passion for the aggressive, which was likewise servility to mob rule, too plainly manifested the worst and the most dangerous elements of the German spirit. What is more, we knew that this artificial romantic mummery hid slyly calculated and practical aims, for membership in a dueling Burschenschaft assured the members the protection of the “old boys” of the association in high positions and eased the way to careers later on.

Carlyle’s axiom that the true university of these days is a good collection of books has remained valid as far as I am concerned, and even today I am convinced that one can become an excellent philosopher, historian, philologist, lawyer, or what you will, without having attended a university or even a Gymnasium.

those unforgettable moments of happiness in the life of a writer which never repeat themselves even after his greatest successes, the arrival of a letter with the seal of the publisher, which I held in my trembling hands, lacking the courage to open it.

The feuilleton editor of the Neue Freie Presse was Theodor Herzl, and he was the first man of world importance whom I had encountered in my life – although I did not then know how great a change his person was destined to bring about in the fate of the Jewish people and in the history of our time.

Destiny always knows how to find the way to a man whom it needs for its secret purposes, even if he desires to hide himself.

In Paris Theodor Herzl had had an experience which convulsed his soul, one of those hours that change an entire existence. As a newspaper correspondent he witnessed the public degradation of Alfred Dreyfus, had seen them tear the epaulets from the pallid man while he cried aloud: “I am innocent.” At that moment he knew in the depth of his heart that Dreyfus was innocent and that he had brought the horrible suspicion of treason on himself merely by being a Jew.

he had then formulated the fantastic plan to end the Jewish problem once and for all: Jewry was to unite itself with Christianity by means of a mass baptism.

separation was inevitable, he said to himself, then let it be a complete one. If humiliation is to be our constant fate, then let us face it with pride. If we suffer because of our homelessness, then let us build our own homeland!

“The Jewish State,”

Jewish people. They had to create a new homeland of their own in their old home, Palestine.

Why should we go to Palestine? Our language is German and not Hebrew, and beautiful Austria is our homeland. Are we not well off under the good Emperor Franz Josef? Do we not make a decent living, and is our position not secure? Are we not equal subjects, inhabitants and loyal citizens of our beloved Vienna? Do we not live in a progressive era in which in a few decades all sectarian prejudices will be abolished? Why does he, who speaks as a Jew and who wishes to help Judaism, place arguments in the hands of our worst enemies and attempt to separate us, when every day brings us more closely and intimately into the German world?

Without realizing it, Herzl with his pamphlet had brought to flame the glowing coal of Judaism, long smoldering in the ashes, the thousand-year-old messianic dream, confirmed in the Holy Books, of the return to the Promised Land.