Stefan Zweig [1881-11-28 Vienna, Austria to 1942-02-22 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil] was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Born into a Jewish family, Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Influenced by: Sigmund Freud, Knut Hamsun, Jens Peter Jacobsen, Grigol Robakidze Spouse: Charlotte E. Altmann (m. 1939–1942), Friderike Maria Zweig (m. 1920–1938) Parents: Moritz Zweig, Ida Brettauer
What happened to Stefan Zweig? Nonetheless, as the years passed Zweig became increasingly disillusioned and despairing at the future of Europe, and he and his wife Lotte were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in Petrópolis on 23 February 1942; they had died the previous day. His work has been the basis for several film adaptations.
What is his most famous works? Zweig's best-known fiction includes Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922), Amok (1922), Fear (1925), Confusion of Feelings (1927), Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927), the psychological novel Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity, 1939), and The Royal Game (1941).
Is the Grand Budapest Hotel based on Stefan Zweig? When the credits roll at the end of Anderson's latest film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, the first one goes to Stefan Zweig, whose writings inspired it. “It's basically plagiarism,” the director joked at a press conference before the film's premiere at the Berlin Film Festival.
What is Zweig's famous quote?
Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life. No guilt is forgotten so long as the conscience still knows of it.
Why was Stefan Zweig exiled? Zweig, an assimilated Jew who took pride in his atheism, was forced, along with many Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals, to leave Vienna after Hitler's annexation of Austria in 1938, which was followed by the brutal treatment of its Jewish population.
Biography
Born into a Jewish family, Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He wrote historical studies of famous literary figures, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in Drei Meister (1920; Three Masters), and decisive historical events in Decisive Moments in History (1927). He wrote biographies of Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935) and Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, 1932), among others. Zweig's best-known fiction includes Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922), Amok (1922), Fear (1925), Confusion of Feelings (1927), Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927), the psychological novel Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity, 1939), and The Royal Game (1941).
In 1934, as a result of the Nazi Party's rise in Germany and the establishment of the Ständestaat regime in Austria, Zweig emigrated to England and then, in 1940, moved briefly to New York and then to Brazil, where he settled. In his final years, he would declare himself in love with the country, writing about it in the book Brazil, Land of the Future. Nonetheless, as the years passed Zweig became increasingly disillusioned and despairing at the future of Europe, and he and his wife Lotte were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in Petrópolis on 23 February 1942; they had died the previous day. His work has been the basis for several film adaptations. Zweig's memoir, Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday, 1942), is noted for its description of life during the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Franz Joseph I and has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire.
Zweig was born in Vienna, the son of Ida Brettauer (1854–1938), a daughter of a Jewish banking family, and Moritz Zweig (1845–1926), a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer. He was related to the Czech writer Egon Hostovský, who described him as "a very distant relative."
Zweig studied philosophy at the University of Vienna, and in 1904 earned a doctoral degree with a thesis on "The Philosophy of Hippolyte Taine". Religion did not play a central role in his education. "My mother and father were Jewish only through accident of birth", Zweig said in an interview. Yet he did not renounce his Jewish faith and wrote repeatedly on Jews and Jewish themes, as in his story Buchmendel. Zweig had a warm relationship with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, whom he met when Herzl was still literary editor of the Neue Freie Presse, then Vienna's main newspaper; Herzl accepted for publication some of Zweig's early essays. Zweig, a committed cosmopolitan, believed in internationalism and in Europeanism, as The World of Yesterday, his autobiography, makes clear: "I was sure in my heart from the first of my identity as a citizen of the world."
Zweig served in the Archives of the Ministry of War & supported Austria's war efforts through his writings in the Neue Freie Presse and frequently celebrated in his Diaries the capture and massacre of opposing soldiers (for instance, writing about the innumerable citizens killed at gunpoint under the suspicion of espionage that "what filth has made ooze must be cauterized with scalding iron".) Zweig viewed Serbian soldiers as "hordes" and stated that "one feels proud to talk German" when thousands of French soldiers were captured in Metz. Conversely, in his memoirs, The World of Yesterday, Zweig portrays himself in the role of pacifist at the time of the First World War, states that he refused "to participate in those rabid calumnies against the enemy" (although, through his work in the official Neue Freie Presse, Zweig promoted the war propaganda issued from the Austrian crown) and affirms that among his intellectual friends he was "alone" in his stance against the war.
Zweig married Friderike Maria von Winternitz (born Burger) in 1920; they divorced in 1938. As Friderike Zweig she published a book on her former husband after his death. She later also published a picture book on Zweig. In the late summer of 1939, Zweig married his secretary Elisabet Charlotte "Lotte" Altmann in Bath, England. Zweig's secretary in Salzburg from November 1919 to March 1938 was Anna Meingast (13 May 1881, Vienna – 17 November 1953, Salzburg).
Friderike Maria Burger [1882-1971] first met Stefan Zweig in 1908, and four years later they started an affair when she was 30 and still married to her first husband. They did not marry for a long time, partially due to divorce being impossible in the Catholic Austro-Hungarian Empire, and married only in 1920 once the Austrian Republic was established. After the wedding they moved into a small house in Salzburg found by Friderike on an earlier visit.[2][4] During the years of their life in Salzburg, Friderike took on the role of a hostess for many of Zweig's literary friends. Equally, she played a big part in supporting Zweig's artistic endeavours by being the housekeeper and providing help on translations and editing, as well as acting as a support during his bouts of depression and anxiety. At first, Friderike tried working as a literary journalist, but this did not earn enough money and instead, she started teaching French and history. During her marriage to Zweig she often helped him with research and translation as well as reading books he was sent, making excerpts from them and writing letters of acknowledgement in his name. Friderike was also a founder of the Stefan Zweig Society. In 1946 Friderike wrote a memoir, Married to Stefan Zweig, recounting the years she spent being married to Zweig. Her correspondence with Zweig from 1912 to 1942 has been translated and published in English.
