Jeremiah: A Drama in Nine Scenes

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Stefan Zweig wrote this nine-scene drama about the prophet Jeremiah during the First World War, completing it in 1917 as an explicit antiwar statement — Jeremiah as the lone voice warning against destruction while his people march toward catastrophe. The play draws on the Book of Jeremiah but transforms the prophet into a figure of absolute pacifist conviction, isolated and despised by leaders drunk on nationalism. Zweig, a pan-European humanist horrified by the war engulfing his world, used the Old Testament frame to say what could not be said directly in wartime Austria. The drama was eventually performed in Zurich in 1918 and gained wider attention in the Weimar years. It remains one of the most unusual and overlooked works in the expressionist tradition.