According to their political thoughts and literary works, Stefan Zweig and Bertolt Brecht were apparently two of the most different figures, seemingly poles apart, in the spectrum of the German Exile Literature of the 20th century. But on second thought there’s an interesting connection between them: Both Zweig’s Castellio against Calvin (1936) and Brecht’s Life of Galilei (1938-1939) are, in spite of their different stylistic peculiarities, examples of historical personalities of the recent past who vigorously fought against the use of political violence linked to religious power – respectively the Calvinist “Discipline” and the Christian Inquisition – in the everlasting battle of humanity in the name of individual freedom of speech and thought. In both works the sharp critique of violent authorities during the 16th and 17th centuries is a clear reference to the contemporary rise of Hitler and his violent supremacy over the European people and their inalienable right to freedom of expression, which is, according to both authors, the one and only fight that humanity can never afford to give up.
