Great Moments of Humanity
12 events that shaped history
By
Stefan Zweig
Narrated by
Dan Mellins-Cohen
In this book, Stefan Zweig traces 12 fateful events of world history in his unique artistic style:
from the conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople by the Turks,
to the Battle of Waterloo to Sir Robert Falcon Scott's tragic South Pole expedition.
The human character and sometimes simple fate are decisive historic factors that have led to dramatic and lasting changes in the past.
Often short, coincidental and highly dramatic moments have the potential to change the future of mankind in a decisive manner
– the so called Great Moments of Humanity.
The original book has been published in 1927 in Germany under the title:
Sternstunden der Menschheit. 인류의 위대한 순간.
The audiobook is based on a new translation from 2021 by Philip Knüppel.Public Domain (P)2021 Aureon Verlag GmbH
Release date
14-04-2022
Language
English
Format
Unabridged Audiobook
Length
8 hrs and 34 mins
Publisher
Aureon Verlag
Categories
Literature & Fiction
Release date
14-04-2022
Language
English
Format
Unabridged Audiobook
Length
8 hrs and 34 mins
Publisher
Aureon Verlag
Categories
Literature & Fiction
====
Decisive Moments in History
Decisive Moments in History (German: Sternstunden der Menschheit, lit. 'Stellar Moments of Humankind') is a 1927 history book by the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.[1] It started off with only five miniatures in its first edition and grew to a collection of 14 with later editions. Its first English translation was published in 1940 as The Tide of Fortune: Twelve Historical Miniatures. The miniatures relate historical events that changed the world.
Contents
- Die Weltminute von Waterloo (The World Minute of Waterloo) Napoleon's defeat at the battle of Waterloo.
- Die Marienbader Elegie (The Elegy of Marienbad). Johann Wolfgang Goethe writes the Marienbad Elegy.
- Die Entdeckung Eldorados (The Discovery of Eldorado). An employee of John Sutter discovers gold in Nueva Helvecia, starting the California Gold Rush.
- Heroischer Augenblick (Heroic Moment). The mock execution of Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
- Der Kampf um den Südpol (The Fight for the South Pole). Robert Scott and his expedition reach the South Pole to find that Roald Amundsen's team arrived first.
- Flucht in die Unsterblichkeit (Escape to Immortality). Vasco Núñez de Balboa reaches the Pacific Ocean.
- Die Eroberung von Byzanz (Conquest of Byzantium). Constantinople, the last stronghold of the Byzantine empire falls to the Ottomans.
- Georg Friedrich Händels Auferstehung (Resurrection of Georg Friedrich Händel). Georg Friedrich Händel recovers and writes The Messiah.
- Das Genie einer Nacht (The Genius of a [single] Night). Rouget de Lisle writes La Marsellaise.
- Das erste Wort über den Ozean (The First Word Across the Ocean). Cyrus W. Field establishes the first Trans-Oceanic cable.
- Die Flucht zu Gott (The Flight to God). An additional act to Leo Tolstoy's The Light Shines in the Darkness.
- Der versiegelte Zug (The Sealed Train). Vladimir Ilich Lenin boards a train commissioned by the Central Powers to start the Russian Revolution.
- Cicero (The Head on the Rostrum)
- Wilson versagt (Wilson's Failure)
Only the first five miniatures were included in the first edition of the book. The second (German) edition of 1940 added those listed above as numbers 6 through to 12. The last two were added to later German editions but were already part of the first English edition published under the title "The Tide of Fortune: Twelve Historical Miniatures".
References
- "Stefan Zweig." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 21 Nov. 2010 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
External links
- Sternstunden der Menschheit (German) at Faded Page (Canada)
===
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Joachim Stoop
917 reviews
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October 20, 2015
Only 44 ratings! This is a joke right? I assume thousands of people have read this beauty, but kept it as hidden as their best kept secret. Diamonds in a hidden shelf.
I was already a Zweig-fan, but this collection (by Pushkin Press) not only confirmed but even fortified my admiration.
Book lovers of all countries unite! Not only book lovers: but also history lovers, peacekeepers, ...fuck it: people in general, should read this. It shows once again that history and factual anecdotes can be grander and greater and crazier than fiction.
In an insightfull, fresh & compelling way Zweig tells 10 history defining stories who were strangely marked or altered by one decision, pure (un)luck or weird coincidence. It leaves the reader wondering:
what would have happened if Byzantium remained Christian,
if Napoleon have had a different admiral,
if President Wilson could have pushed his eternal peace ideology some more in Europe...
It's like reading about Newton's apple or Franz Ferdinand's bullet. But it's also as magical and thought provoking as reading Borges, Calvino or Millhauser, but then ... real, true, our history.
I would almost start a crusade for this book ;-)
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Emilio Gonzalez
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August 11, 2023
Un libro magnífico, del cual lo primero que destaco es que como todo lo que he leído hasta ahora de Zweig, tiene una prosa formidable que siempre parece tener el ritmo y equilibrio perfecto.
Por otro lado le doy un enorme valor a la parte histórica. El libro se compone de 14 relatos que narran distintos acontecimientos que bien podríamos decir han marcado de alguna manera algún punto de inflexión importante en la historia, como por ejemplo la muerte de Ciceron, la conquista de Bizancio en 1453 o el desenlace de la batalla de Waterloo. Los detalles de la mayoría de los relatos me eran desconocidos, así que la lectura ha sido muy rica y despertó una gran curiosidad para que ahonde con más detalle en varios de los temas tratados.
Y por último, algo que también me maravilló en su momento leyendo la biografía de Maria Antonieta, y es la notable capacidad de Zweig para convertir cualquier situación, ficticia o histórica en un relato memorable. Zweig puede tomar cualquier hecho diminuto y convertirlo en estelar, porque principalmente es un escritor que sabe cómo contar una historia.
Un libro super recomendable; y si todavía no leyeron a Estefan Zweig, haganlo, que difícilmente los desilusione.
A magnificent book, the first thing I highlight about it is that, like everything I've read by Zweig so far, it has formidable prose that always seems to have the perfect rhythm and balance. On the other hand, I attach enormous value to the historical section. The book is composed of 14 stories that narrate different events that, in some way, marked an important turning point in history, such as the death of Cicero, the conquest of Byzantium in 1453, or the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo. The details of most of the stories were unknown to me, so the reading was very enriching and sparked a great curiosity to delve deeper into several of the topics covered. And finally, something that also amazed me at the time when reading the biography of Marie Antoinette is Zweig's remarkable ability to turn any situation, fictional or historical, into a memorable story. Zweig can take any tiny fact and turn it into something stellar, because above all, he's a writer who knows how to tell a story. A highly recommended book; and if you haven't read Stefan Zweig yet, do so; you're unlikely to be disappointed.
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César Carranza
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November 19, 2020
Zweig muestra la capacidad que tiene para contar historias, en este pequeño libro con miniaturas históricas se puede sentir su poder lírico, aún con algunos episodios que no eran de mi interés en especial, la manera de contarlos es tal que quiero saber más, escuchar más Handel, leer a Cicerón nuevamente, saber más del imperio Otomano. Se lee muy fácil y nos preguntamos de verdad, ¿Que hubiera sido de todo si eso no hubiera sido como fue? Seguro tantas cosas pasan ahora así, nos hace falta nuestro Zweig contemporáneo)
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522 / 5,000
Zweig shows his ability to tell stories. In this small book with historical miniatures, you can feel his lyrical power. Even with some episodes that weren't of particular interest to me, the way he tells them is such that I want to know more, listen to more Handel, read Cicero again, learn more about the Ottoman Empire. It's a very easy read, and we genuinely wonder, what would have happened if everything hadn't been the way it was? Surely so many things happen like that now; we miss our contemporary Zweig.
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Marc
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October 26, 2021
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was a magnificent storyteller, and he proves this once again in this collection of historical stories. He presents 10 episodes from history in which the behavior of an individual was decisive, both positively and negatively. Both the descriptive and contemplative scenes are gems of writing, to the extent that he really manages to bring the past back to life. From the point of view of historians, there is of course something to criticize about that literary panache (see my commentary in my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), but these ‘shooting stars’ at least offer a nice spectacle.
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Simona B
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July 1, 2019
The first two pieces, the discovery of the Pacific Ocean and the fall of Bysantium, had me bewitched. I read the first in line to embark a plane and the second on a beach in my beloved Sicily, both right after a grueling exam session, so part of my enthusiasm might be due to the fact that it had been way too long since I had taken a couple of hours just to read a book that had nothing to do with school. But I found both these accounts extremely moving and skillfully told. What caught me was not just the form, the style, but rather the content, and the rightness I felt in the choice, on Zweig's part, of these two moments as "stellar hours" of human history.
Actually, in all honesty, the choice of the discovery of the Pacific ocean baffled me a little at first. I believe I had subconsciously interpreted the title as moments when men's decisions were critical in the shaping of the course of history. My guess is this happened because I read the book in Italian, and the Italian title reads Momenti fatali, meaning moments ruled by fate and/or decisive for the future, as the English title recites. The overlapping of these two meanings in Italian had me think this collection would include accounts of events where things could have gone very very differently, had it not been for one silly twist of fate or one single decision (or lack thereof) of a single man. And in some cases, this supposition of mine proved to be right, as in the Waterloo story about Grouchy's indecisiveness, or the Bysantium story and the Kerkaporta inexplicably left unprotected. But the discovery of the Pacific baffled me, as I said. It would have been discovered, sooner or later, wouldn't it? Why was it fatale, fateful? And then I worked it out in my head: it wasn't the moments per se, but rather the men who carried these moments out.
I find it interesting that Zweig cites no historical sources whatsoever. This apparent lack of bibliography is what might be argued to place Decisive Moments in the realm of metahistory. How do we know how Balboa felt when he lay his eyes, first of the Westerners, on the Pacific ocean? Zweig reconstructs precisely this, the mind of the man. In doing so, however, in presenting historical moments in such a fictionalized and subjectivistic mode, he also gives way to his own personal bias. The result is often an overly-dramatic and excessively romanticized account where spontaneous genius rules true art, ambition can't lead but to ruin, and it's amoral to admire cunning but ruthless men. (The utter absence of women is another problem altogether, but we'll let it pass since the book dates back to 90 years ago.)
The collection also includes portraits of various artists (Handel, Goethe, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy) and I think these are the weakest pieces of the volume. I profoundly disagree with Zweig's Sainte-Beuverian view of arts, meaning I cannot relate to his account on the composition of Goethe's Marienbad Elegy, even though the core facts are of course true. Toltoy's piece was certainly creative, formally speaking, but so cloying, so partial on telling instead of showing (and I won't accept the theatrical form as a justification for this) that I couldn't help skipping a couple of paragraphs just out of self-preservation.
My conclusion is that I expected something different from what I actually got, and that might have distorted my perceptions a bit, but on the other hand, my tastes, especially stylistically and also ideologically (my preference here is for neutrality), run in a completely different direction than what Zweig presented the reader with in his Decisive Moments. Conceptually, this is a wonderful collection, but I'll grant myself the right to disagree on the modes of its realization.
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هدى يحيى
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ساعات القدر في تاريخ البشرية
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ترشيحات بلال فضل
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E. G.
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November 20, 2017
Foreword
--Flight into Immortality: The Discovery of the Pacific Ocean, 25 September 1513
--The Conquest of Byzantium, 29 May 1453
--The Resurrection of George Frideric Handel, 21 August 1741
--The Genius of a Night: The Marseillaise, 25 April 1792
--The Field of Waterloo: Napoleon, 18 June 1815
--The Discovery of El Dorado: J.A. Sutter, California, January 1848
--The First Word to Cross the Ocean: Cyrus W. Field, 28 July 1858
--The Race to Reach the South Pole: Captain Scott, 90 Degrees Latitude, 16 January 1912
--The Sealed Train: Lenin, 9 April 1917
--Wilson's Failure: The Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919
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