Week #4 The Society of the Cross Keys

The Society of the Crossed Keys is a selection of writings by Stefan Zweig.  These writings were interesting pieces about Eastern Europe before World War I.  The narrator I assume is Stefan Zweig who describes the world around him growing up in the Austrian Monarchy outside of Vienna in the Jewish communities. His father came from Monrovia and his mother from Italy. His words describe what went on within these communities and how they managed to survive within a very structured Viennese culture and still remain East Orthodox Jewish. Mr. Zweig had a very unique way of describing the different aspects of Eastern Europe that you would understand as the lower class people, the middle class, and the aristocratic class in this time. He describes his family’s cosmopolitan views and how it played into his views of the world. He describes the Jewish view of valuing the intellectual in the arts, the music, the poets and the writers rather than being a successful banker or businessman or pedaler.  It was a very interesting picture he painted with these words of Eastern Europe at that time.

In another of Mr. Zweig’s writings, he talks about himself becoming a poet and writer. He was suppose to go to the University, but manages to start writing poems and gets them published.  He does everything but go to school and hangs out at cafes and in small groups of writers and poets.  Mr. Zweig gives great descriptions of what it was like to be in Europe pre-World War I and of the people within the different classes at that time.

The descriptive writings of Eastern Europe by Mr. Zweig were the inspirations for the movie: The Grand Budapest Hotel” produced by Wes Andersen. This is a zany movie about a Lobby Boy, Zero and his mentor, Mr. Gustav, a concierge, at the Grand Budapest Hotel, who steal an expensive Renaissance artwork before World War I starts and tries to keep it hidden. The movie draws on pre-World War Eastern Europe with it aristocratic society that Mr. Zweig describes in his writings. The movie also uses characters from Mr. Zweig’s writings to describe the behaviors of people in that time. I think the writings of Mr. Zweig really helped Wes Andersen create this comedy about people in a fictional place.