Von Erasmus zu Don Quijote. Thomas Manns Lektüre von Stefan Zweigs Triumph und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam im Jahre 1934

After a brief reconstruction of the times and methods of the correspondence between Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig, the chapter focuses on the year 1934, a key year, marked among other things by the third and most important meeting between the two authors. In particular, the essay focuses on Thomas Mann‘s controversial reading of Stefan Zweig‘s text entitled Triumph und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam and the consequences that this reading causes in the following days and months in Thomas Mann‘s work. The writer from Lübeck oscillated for several weeks between the idea of giving life to a political pamphlet in which he finally intends to clarify his positions towards the Hitler regime and the idea of concentrating on a writing which, with the necessary differences, appropriates the same indirect methods that Zweig used in his book on Erasmus. Eventually Thomas Mann will opt for this second choice. Only two years later, in 1936, the long-awaited and all too late distancing took place.