The constraint

One day, the young painter Ferdinand receives a letter that he had been dreading, one that approached him from a senseless, formless distance, reaching out to him with its rigid, typewritten words, grasping at his warm life and his freedom. It is a draft notice that places him in a compulsive state between a sense of duty and fear. This is a state that Stefan Zweig could deeply empathize with, as he, like his protagonist Ferdinand, found refuge in Switzerland from the First World War as a committed pacifist. Bernt Hahn reads Zweig's socially critical novella with intensity and sensitivity.