But if there’s ever been a moment to remember our common bonds, it’s today, on Armistice Day—the anniversary of the end of the conflict that was supposed to be “the war to end all wars.” It has always been the task of historians, writers, artists and philosophers to resurrect reminders of our shared humanity–and there is no better way to do so than through the lens of someone who held high this vision of hope and humanity, even as the world seemed to be unraveling around him.
World War I, tragically, did not end all wars: it quickly set the stage for the rise of National Socialism and the disaster of World War II. But in 1934, when Hitler had just risen to power and was stirring the cauldron of destructive nationalistic fanaticism, the beloved German writer Stefan Zweig sat down to summon the spirit of Erasmus of Rotterdam into his homeland. Erasmus, who was 28 when Columbus set sail for America and died in 1534, was a Dutch-born, European prolific writer, scholar and priest who championed tolerance, freedom and peaceful navigation of disagreement.
Without directly mentioning the rise of Hitler or the brewing conflict he sensed on the horizon, Zweig sketched Erasmus as the ultimate humanist—an intellectual giant and timeless emblem of hope for world peace. He traces the tragedy of Erasmus’s ultimate defeat by two forces: populism and cold, calculated power politics. Just as he was at the pinnacle of public fame, Erasmus was confronted by the tide of Martin Luther’s populist fury. Luther offered up a dangerous cocktail of anger with the church, class resentment and national consciousness, and while Erasmus was terrified of it, he could not stop its intoxicating effect on the people of Europe. Shortly after Erasmus’ death, the continent plunged into a century of religious wars, while its leaders eagerly adopted a new political ethos—“the end justifies the means”—made popular by Machiavelli’s The Prince, a treatise that was published in the year Erasmus died.
In the centuries that followed, wars begat wars, and conflict begat conflict. And yet, hoping against hope, Zweig showed the lineage of Erasmus through the dreamers who followed, from Montaigne to Kant, Schiller and Gandhi. With a voice that only thinly veils his frustration, he pleads for clarity of heart:
“It will be the legacy of Erasmus, who was defeated in this earthly realm, to have given literary life to the idea of humanity, to have instantiated the simplest and at the same time the most eternal thought: that it is the highest task of mankind to become ever more humane, ever more spiritual, ever more understanding…again and again the spirit of understanding stakes its moral claim to power next to the fist’s claim to power by force. It is always at the moments of most ardent discord that faith in possible peace for all of mankind breaks through, for mankind will never ever be able to live and create without the comforting delusion of possible ascent into the moral, without this dream of a final and finite understanding.
And may the clever and cold calculators prove again and again that this Erasmian endeavor is hopeless, and may reality seem to prove them right again and again. There will always be the need for those who point to that which connects people above that which divides us, and who faithfully renew in the heart of mankind the thought of a coming age of a higher humanity. This legacy carries a powerfully creative promise. Only things that point our spirit beyond its own narrow sphere into the all-human can give an individual strength beyond his strength.”
So ends the biography, and Zweig’s invocation of the spirit of our shared humanity. Erasmus, although not integrated into any country’s core curriculum, lives a quiet existence as the namesake of the extensive European educational exchange program that sends students to weave threads of understanding across the borders of their nations.
Today, it’s worth remembering Erasmus through the ardent hope that Zweig attached to his memory. Whatever signals the world around us may be sending, we can choose to light our torch on this flame and carry on, centering love for humanity in all we do.