Stefan Zweig: Conscience against violence

The 1936 book Conscience Against Violence by the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig is a genre straddling the border between essay and historical novel and is a remarkable excursion into the Reformation, but at the same time a kind of universal defence of human freedom, mutual tolerance and tolerance against any totalitarian ideology. The story begins in Geneva at the beginning of the 16th century, when John Calvin takes over the government of this Swiss city. Although young, he rules with a steely hand and does not tolerate a single opponent in the name of God - he is even able to go to the very limit of life and condemn for heresy to death by burning. One of those brave and unruly who speak out in defence of freedom and tolerance is the French scholar Sebastian Castellio. Although Zweig chooses a time so distant, the story is so universal that it applies to other dictatorships that take place many centuries later. It is almost surprising that the novel was first published in the Czech Republic at the beginning of the normalisation in 1970. It reads: František Derfler