The tragic suicide of Stefan Zweig in Brazil on Monday is the subject of editorial comment in the leading New York dailies today. All emphasize the Nazis’ persecution and destruction of the best of German culture and its creators.
The Times states that the Zweig’s are not the exiles but the Nazis, who have exiled themselves from civilization. “Men like Zweig should have a homeland everywhere where culture still exists,” the Times writes, adding that “such man are the salt of our earth. They fought and suffered while many of us were still indifferent, and had no dear spot of ground to which they could return. We take off our hats to them dead. Let us be more thoughtfully kind to the living.”
The Herald-Tribune, recalling that Zweigh was one of the first of the Austrian intellectuals to be banned by the Nazis because of his Jewish origin, declares: “To persons who had known and loved this corner of Europe, as Mr. Zweig had done, the whole Nazi system represented a new barbarianism. If Mr. Zweig had been a little less completely the European he might have survived the shock. But like so many other emigres he was overwhelmed by the past and by the realization that all that he had held most dear had been wantonly destroyed.”
The sun citing the fact that Zweig was financially secure, writes: “But it must not be overlooked that he was an artist, and to the true artist art is more than life. ‘The artist has been wounded in his concentration,’ Herr Zweig told an interviewer in July, 1940. Exile did not kill the body, but it killed the power of creation, and when that was dead the life of the body did not seem to the artist worth living.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
