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From 1907 to 1914, Zweig studied German, art history, modern languages, philosophy and psychology in Breslau, Göttingen and Berlin, in accordance with his family's wishes, in order to later become a teacher. Zweig became active in literature while he was still a student; he and others founded the student magazine "The Guests," in which he published his first works. He did not complete his studies. In the early drama "Abigal and Nabal", published in 1913, Zweig's Jewish identity is revealed in the Old Testament story on which it is based, but this is also evident in later works such as "The Mission of Semael" (1918) or "The Repentance of the Apostate" (written in 1914 , published in 1925).
The symbiosis between German and Jewish identity at the time was expressed in the fact that Zweig was enthusiastic about the First World War and volunteered to fight. The writer first ended up on the Western Front in Verdun, France, then in the press department of the Commander-in-Chief in the East. The Prussian enthusiasm for war can be found literary in the stories in the book "The Beast" (1914). However, due to the cruelty and hopelessness of his wartime experiences, Arnold Zweig became a determined opponent of the war. He moved to Lake Starnberg and worked there as a freelance writer. In 1923 he worked as an editor for the "Jüdische Rundschau" in Berlin. In 1933, the year Adolf Hitler came to power, Zweig emigrated via Prague and Vienna, Switzerland and France to Haifa in Palestine. There the Jewish consciousness condensed into a Zionist attitude.
After the end of the war, Zweig returned to Germany, where he settled in the Soviet-occupied eastern part of Berlin and became a communist. After the founding of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Zweig was a member of the GDR People's Chamber from 1949 to 1967. From 1950 to 1953 he was president of the Academy of Arts. In 1957 he was appointed president of the "German P.E.N. - Center East and West", and since 1967 of the "P.E.N. - Center GDR". Arnold Zweig dealt with the Jewish faith in numerous early plays, such as "Ritual Murder in Hungary". For this work he received the Kleist Prize in 1915. He brought his psychological novel style to its climax in "Novellen um Claudia" (1912), which also became the most important work of this genre. The novel is characterized by the sensitive description of marriage and love shocks, mental anguish and the transgression of social norms, which fit entirely into the literary aesthetic of its time.
With the war experiences there was also a turn to humanistic and anti-war themes in Zweig's stories. He made a name for himself as a German realist novelist who dealt with war and its moral and human consequences. In 1927 his novel "The Controversy of Sergeant Grischa" was published as a preprint in the "Frankfurter Zeitung". This gave Arnold Zweig his breakthrough as a writer. His pacifist attitude is also reflected in this, as Zweig shows the reversal of state legal and moral concepts through the state of war and thus processes his experiences and insights from the First World War. From this, Zweig had planned a cycle entitled "The Great War of the White Men" within the period from the First World War to the October Revolution. But the work remained fragmented.
The novels "Young Woman of 1914" (1931), "Education before Verdun" (1935), "Appointment of a King" (1937), "The Ceasefire" (1954) and "The Time is Ripe" (1957) were completed. . During his time in Palestine, Zweig wrote the novel "The Hatchet of Wandsbek", which also deals with the topic of fascism and bandwagonism in a psychologically sensitive way. The novel was first published in Hebrew. Zweig's interest in psychology and psychoanalysis went back, among other things, to his friendly relationship with Sigmund Freud. There are three main influences in Zweig's work - Zionism, communism and psychoanalysis. Zweig's literary work is in the tradition of the Russian and French novelists of the 19th century. Theodor Fontane, but also Gottfried Keller and Thomas Mann can be named as role models. Zweig's epic works take a critical look at current events and analyze them in depth psychology.
In addition, Arnold Zweig also worked as an editor for works by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Georg Büchner and Heinrich von Kleist. In his essays he dedicated himself, for example, to Carl Sternheim. His study of "Caliban, or Politics and Passion" (1927) treats anti-Semitism as a collective phenomenon. To the other works of Arnold Zweig include, among others, "The East Jewish Face" (1920), "Called Shadows" (1923), "The New Canaan" (1925), "Jews on the German Stage" (1927), "De Vriendt returns home" (1932 ) or "Balance of the German Jewish era in 1933" (1934).
Arnold Zweig died on November 26, 1968 in East Berlin.
