A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: Austrian biographer, essayist, short story writer, and cosmopolitan, who advocated the idea of a united Europe under one government. Zweig achieved fame with his biographies of historical characters in which he used psychoanalytical theories. Although firmly rooted in European traditions, Stefan Zweig considered himself a citizen of the world. During the 1920s and 1930s he ranked among the most famous writers in Europe. His works, combining literary excellence with immense popularity, were widely read, admired and translated into many languages. After Zweig’s suicide in 1942, his work was branded as bland and superficial by some and it began to slip into oblivion. However nowadays his talent and his most outstanding works have regained their rightful place in world literature. Zweig became first known as a poet and translator, and later as a biographer, short-story writer, and novelist. Among his works in the 1920s is a study of Friedrich Nietzsche in Master Builders (1925), a biography of the French statesman Joseph Fouché (1929), and short story collection Conflicts (1925). Zweig's essays include portraits of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Hölderlin, and Heinrich von Kleist. He was interested in the teachings of Sigmund Freud, which influenced also his biographies, and translated works from such authors as Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Émile Verhaeren. Several of Zweig's stories have been filmed - the best-know is Letter From an Unknown Woman, directed by Max Ophuls (1947). The most famous of Zweig's biographies is probably that of Mary Stuart. This was published in German as Maria Stuart and in English as (The) Queen of Scots or Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles . At one time his works were published in English under the pseudonym "Stephen Branch" (a translation of his real name), when anti-German sentiment was running high. His biography of Queen Marie Antoinette was later adapted for a Hollywood movie starring the MGM actress Norma Shearer in the title role. Born in Vienna on 28 November 1881, Zweig was the youngest son of Moritz Zweig, a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer, and Ida (Bretautorbuser) Zweig, the daughter of an Italian banking family. His elder brother took charge of the family business, and Stefan was left free to decide his future, studying languages at the University of Vienna and also pursuing other studies in France and Germany. In 1904 he obtained his Dr. phil. In his early years he wrote a thesis on the philosophy of Hippolyte Taine and published articles in several periodicals. In Vienna he was associated with the avant garde Young Vienna movement. Jewish religion did not play a central role in his education. "My mother and father were Jewish only through accident of birth," Zweig said later in an interview. Although his essays were published in the Neue Freie Presse, whose literary editor was the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, Zweig was not attracted to Herzl's Jewish nationalism. From early on he became interested in traveling and in exploring other cultures. His journeys around Europe, Asia and America included visits to Great Britain, Spain, India, Burma, the United States and Cuba. In 1912 he met and fell in love with the writer Friederike von Winternitz. She was married at the time and the mother of two children. The couple began a long relationship but could not marry until 1920 when she finally was divorced. At the same time Zweig’s intellectual life was enriched by close friendships with the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren and the French writer Romain Rolland. His reputation as a writer, an advocate of universal brotherhood and an unwavering pacifist grew steadily. These ideals were soon put to the test with the outbreak of the First World War. The call to arms caught him by surprise in Belgium. On his return to Vienna, however, he was declared unfit for active duty and assigned to the section of archives. While on leave he went to Switzerland where he met with Romain Rolland once again. There he rubbed shoulders with intellectuals and foreign pacifists in exile, such as Hermann Hesse and the poet Pierre-Jean Jouve. His anti-war play Jeremiah, 1917 was first performed in Zurich. After the end of the war Zweig returned to Austria but decided not to reside in Vienna. In 1919 he and Friederike settled down in Salzburg where they remained for fifteen years. During this period he traveled widely and played host to many prominent cultural figures of the inter-war period such as Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Arturo Toscanini and Max Reinhardt. From a literary point of view, these were Zweig’s most productive years. Being a Jew, Zweig fled Austria in 1934, following Hitler's rise to power. He was famously defended by the composer Richard Strauss who refused to remove Zweig's name (as libretitbusst) from the posters for the premiere, in Dresden, of his opera Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman). This led to Hitler refusing to come to the premiere as planned; the opera was banned after three performances. In 1938 he became a British citizen and lived in England (in Bath and London), before moving to the United States. In 1941, after a successful lecture tour in South America, he settled in Brazil. After the fall of Singapore, he believed Nazism would spread over the whole earth. Disillusioned and isolated, Zweig committed suicide with his second wife Lotte (née Charlotte Elisabeth Altmann), in Petrópolis, near Rio de Janeiro on February 23, 1942, using the barbiturate Veronal, despairing at the future of Europe and its culture.Brazil's populist dictator, Getulio Vargas, ordered that his burial expenses should be paid for by the state. His autobiography World of Yesterday, a paean to the European culture he considered lost, was published posthumously in 1943. In the same year appeared his famous novella The Royal Game, which used two games of chess to illustrate the psychology of Nazism. The German writer Stefanie Zweig (b. 1932) is not related to Stefan Zweig. |
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