Stefan Zweig

Austrian novelist

Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer.

At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most

popular writers in the world.

Important facts about his childhood and youth.

• Stefan Zweig was born on November 28, 1881 in Vienna, Austria.

• Being the son of a wealthy Jewish businessman, he was able to pursue his education with complete freedom, guided only by his taste.

• He was interested in literature, philosophy and history. 

• At 23, he received a doctorate in philosophy.

Zweig's parentsStefan, 5, and his brother Alfred, 7

The cosmopolitan atmosphere of imperial Vienna favored in young

Zweig a curiosity of the wider world, pushing him towards all theater premieres, all new titles not yet critically acclaimed, all

new forms of culture. 

Beginning the career

How it all started

Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844 – 1896)

He started writing beautiful poems influenced by

Hofmannsthal and Rilke, such as "Silver Strings" (1900) and

"Precocious Garland" (1907).

He also won the poetry prize Bauernfeld, one of the highest literary awards in his country.

Zweig then published a booklet of verse, a translation of Verlaine's best poems, and wrote stories. 

Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874 – 1929)

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 – 1926)

Passionate about theater, Zweig soon began to write dramas:

"Thersites" (1907), "The House on the shores of the Sea" (1911). 

State Opera, Vienna

Looking for new

experiences

On the way

 In 1904 he went to Paris where he stayed several times.

A tireless traveler, always looking for new experiences, he then lived in Belgium. 

Zweig also lived in Rome, Florence, Provence, Spain, Africa. 

He visited England, toured the United States, Canada, Cuba, Mexico. 

He spent a year in India.

The result …

Visiting new countries didn't prevent Stefan Zweig from pursuing his literary work, without effort, one might think, since he says: "Despite the best intentions, I do not remember having worked during that period. But this is contradicted by the facts since I have written several books and plays that have been played on almost all the scenes of Germany and also abroad ...". 

His multiple trips were bound to develop the love he felt from his youth for foreign literature, and especially French literature.

This love, which subsequently turned into a cult, he showed with remarkable translations of Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, his friend Verhaeren, Suares, and Romain Rolland (whose books Zweig was one of the first, if not the first, to bring to the attention of German-speaking countries and who had a considerable moral influence over Zweig). 

When World War I broke out, Zweig could not resign himself to sacrifice the superior reality of culture across borders to unleashed nationalism.

An ardent pacifist, he was deeply marked and hurt by this war.

It inspired him violent protests at the time ("Jeremiah", 1916).

The war was the source of Stefan Zweig's constant concern not to be duped by the fake moral values of a

society in decay, which we can find in many short stories and he explains

with fervor in "The World of Yesterday." 

By 1915, he married Friederike von

Winternitz. 

Life in Salzburg

He left Vienna in 1919 and settled in Salzburg, where he wrote many of his most famous short stories such as "Twenty-four hours in the

life of a woman," "Amok", "Confusion of Feelings ", " Fear “ and others … 

In less than ten years, Stefan Zweig, who once considered his work "as a simple beam of life, as something secondary,"

published a dozen short stories.

Hitler and his Nazis had seized power in Germany, and acts of violence

against opponents were multiplying. Soon Austria, already half Nazified,

would be invaded …

As early as 1933, in Munich and other cities, the books of the "Jew"

Zweig were burnt in bonfire.

Zweig saw with despair the same brutal and destructive forces of the first World War return, in the even

worse form of Nazism. 

In 1934 Stefan Zweig went to Bath in England. 

 In 1938, he divorced Friederike, with whom he kept a close

friendship. 

He later remarried with a young English secretary, Charlotte Elizabeth Lotte Altmann.

But since leaving his Salzburg residence his restless soul left him no rest … He traveled back to North America,

then to Brazil, made brief visits to France, Austria, where the Nazis were tormenting his dying mother.

And war broke out. 

His moral anxiety was undermining all stability. On 15 August 1941, he sailed to Brazil and settled in Petropolis, where he was still

hoping to find peace of mind. In vain. 

On February 22, 1942, Stefan Zweig wrote the letter before his death. The next day, Stefan Zweig was no longer.

To escape life he had taken drugs, a suicide without brutality that perfectly fit his nature. His wife followed him in death.