Stefan Zweig (pronounced ZWYGHE or SWYGHE; German: [ˈʃtɛfan t͡svaɪ̯k] or Austrian German: [t͡svaɪ̯g]; November 28, 1881 – February 22, 1942) was an Austrian writer. During the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world, with his books translated into many languages.
He was born into a Jewish family and grew up in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Zweig wrote books about famous writers, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky, in a work called Three Masters (1920). He also wrote about historical events in Decisive Moments in History (1927). His biographies included works about Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935), and Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, 1932). His most famous stories include 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 Beware of Pity (1939), and The Royal Game (1941).
In 1934, because of the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and the creation of a new government in Austria, Zweig moved to England. Later, in 1940, he briefly lived in New York before settling in Brazil. He loved Brazil and wrote about it in a book called Brazil, Land of the Future. However, as time passed, Zweig became more worried about the future of Europe. On February 23, 1942, he and his wife, Lotte, were found dead from an overdose of sleeping pills in their home in Petrópolis. They had died the day before. His books have been made into films. His memoir, The World of Yesterday (1942), describes life in the late years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Emperor Franz Joseph I and is known as the most famous book about the Habsburg Empire.
Biography
Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna, Austria. His parents were Ida Brettauer and Moritz Zweig. Ida was born into a Jewish banking family, and Moritz was a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer. Zweig was related to Egon Hostovský, a Czech writer, who called him "a very distant relative."
Zweig studied philosophy at the University of Vienna. In 1904, he earned a doctorate with a thesis about the philosophy of Hippolyte Taine. Religion was not a major part of his education. Zweig once said in an interview, "My mother and father were Jewish only because of the way they were born." However, he did not reject his Jewish heritage and wrote about Jewish themes, such as in his story Buchmendel. He had a close relationship with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. Herzl, who was a literary editor for the Neue Freie Presse (Vienna’s main newspaper), published some of Zweig’s early essays. Zweig believed in internationalism and European unity, as he wrote in his autobiography, The World of Yesterday: "I was sure in my heart from the first of my identity as a citizen of the world."
Zweig worked in the Archives of the Ministry of War and supported Austria’s war efforts through his writings in the Neue Freie Presse. He often wrote about the capture and deaths of enemy soldiers in his diaries. He described the killing of civilians in Austria as "what filth has made ooze must be cauterized with scalding iron." Zweig referred to Serbian soldiers as "hordes" and expressed pride in speaking German when French soldiers were captured in Metz. However, in The World of Yesterday, he described himself as a pacifist during World War I. He refused to spread false accusations about the enemy, even though his work for the Neue Freie Presse supported Austrian war propaganda. Among his friends, he was the only one who opposed the war.
Zweig married Friderike Maria von Winternitz (born Burger) in 1920. They divorced in 1938. After Zweig’s death, Friderike wrote a book about him and later published a picture book on his life. In the late summer of 1939, Zweig married his secretary, Elisabet Charlotte "Lotte" Altmann, in Bath, England. From 1919 to 1938, Zweig’s secretary in Salzburg was Anna Meingast.
Zweig’s fame did not protect him from danger as a Jew. In 1934, after Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany and Austria became a fascist state called the Ständestaat, Zweig left Austria for England. He first lived in London and later moved to Bath. However, he feared the Nazi threat even in England. In 1940, he and his second wife moved to the United States, settling in New York City. After the war, it was discovered that the Nazis had planned to arrest people in England, including Zweig, as part of Operation Sealion. A list of these people, called the "Black Book," was found after the war. Zweig’s name and London address were listed on page 231.
The Zweigs lived briefly in the United States. They stayed in New Haven, Connecticut, as guests of Yale University for two months and later rented a house in Ossining, New York. In August 1941, they moved to Petrópolis, Brazil, 68 kilometers north of Rio de Janeiro. There, Zweig wrote the book Brazil, Land of the Future and became close friends with Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. Zweig felt deeply troubled about the future of Europe and humanity. In a letter to author Jules Romains, he wrote, "My inner crisis consists in that I am not able to identify myself with the me of passport, the self of exile." He believed that intellectual work and personal freedom were the highest values. On February 23, 1942, Zweig and his wife were found dead from a barbiturate overdose in their home in Petrópolis. Their bodies were discovered holding hands.
After Zweig’s death, his house in Brazil was turned into a cultural center and is now called Casa Stefan Zweig.
Work
Stefan Zweig was a well-known writer during the 1920s and 1930s. He was friends with Arthur Schnitzler and Sigmund Freud. His books were very popular in the United States, South America, and Europe, and are still popular in continental Europe. However, his work was not widely read in Britain. His fame in America decreased until the 1990s, when several publishers, including Pushkin Press, Hesperus Press, and The New York Review of Books, worked to publish his books in English again. Plunkett Lake Press later released electronic versions of his non-fiction works. Since then, his books have been reprinted, and his popularity has grown again.
People have strong opinions about Zweig’s work. Some praise his kindness, clear writing, and emotional style. Others criticize his writing as weak and not deep. In a review called "Vermicular Dither," German translator Michael Hofmann strongly criticized Zweig’s work. Hofmann said Zweig’s writing feels fake, comparing it to "Pepsi of Austrian writing." Hofmann also said that Zweig’s suicide note felt boring and lacked sincerity.
Zweig is best known for his short stories, such as Schachnovelle (The Royal Game, 1941), Amok (1921), and Letter from an Unknown Woman (Der Brief einer Unbekannten, 1922), which was made into a film in 1948 by Max Ophüls. He also wrote novels like Ungeduld des Herzens (1939, translated as Beware of Pity and Confusion of Feelings), and The Post Office Girl, which was published after his death. He wrote biographies about Erasmus of Rotterdam, Ferdinand Magellan, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Balzac. His book The Burning Secret was first published in America in 1919 in a pirated edition under the name "Steven Branch," likely because of anti-German feelings at the time. His 1932 biography of Queen Marie Antoinette was adapted into a film by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1938, starring Norma Shearer.
Zweig’s memoir, The World of Yesterday, was completed in 1942, the day before his suicide. The book is often discussed as a record of life in central Europe from 1881 to 1942. It has received both praise and criticism.
Zweig respected psychoanalysis. In a letter to Freud in 1926, he wrote, "Psychology is the great business of my life." He said Freud influenced writers like Marcel Proust, D.H. Lawrence, and James Joyce, helping them express themselves more freely. Zweig believed Freud made autobiography more honest and bold.
Zweig had a close relationship with composer Richard Strauss. He wrote the libretto for Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman). Strauss refused to allow Zweig’s name to be removed from the program for the opera’s first performance in 1935, even though the Nazi government wanted to. Because of this, Goebbels, a Nazi leader, did not attend the performance, and the opera was banned after three shows. Zweig later helped Strauss write the libretto for another opera, Friedenstag, in 1938. A song based on Zweig’s poem Letztes Gedicht, written for his 60th birthday, was composed by Henry Jolles, who also fled to Brazil to escape the Nazis. During his time in Brazil, Zweig wrote Brasilien, Ein Land der Zukunft (Brazil, A Land of the Future), a collection of essays about Brazil’s history and culture.
Zweig collected many important manuscripts. He often wrote to Gisela Selden-Goth, a Hungarian musicologist, about their shared interest in collecting original music scores. Important Zweig collections are held at the British Library, the State University of New York at Fredonia, and the National Library of Israel. The British Library’s collection, donated by Zweig’s family in 1986, includes original handwritten music scores by composers like Bach, Haydn, Wagner, and Mahler. One of the most valuable items is Mozart’s own handwritten list of his works.
The 1993–1994 academic year at the College of Europe was named in Zweig’s honor. He is also credited with helping create the Habsburg myth, a concept that describes the cultural and historical legacy of the Habsburg Empire.
Adaptations
The 1924 German silent film The House by the Sea (Das Haus am Meer), directed by Fritz Kaufmann, was based on a play by Zweig with the same name.
Zweig’s short story Brennendes Geheimnis was made into a 1923 German silent drama directed by Rochus Gliese. It was also adapted again in 1933 as The Burning Secret, directed by Robert Siodmak. A 1988 remake of the same film, Burning Secret, was directed by Andrew Birkin and featured actors Klaus Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway.
Adaptations of Zweig’s Brief einer Unbekannten include an opera and several films, such as Max Ophüls’ Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948), Salah Abu Seif’s Ressalah min emraa maghoula (1962), and Xu Jinglei’s 一个陌生女人的来信 (2004).
The 1946 film Beware of Pity, directed by Maurice Elvey, was based on Zweig’s novel of the same name. A radio adaptation of Beware of Pity by Stephen Wyatt was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2011.
The 2012 Brazilian film The Invisible Collection, directed by Bernard Attal, was based on Zweig’s short story with the same title. The 2013 French film A Promise (Une promesse) was inspired by Zweig’s novella Journey into the Past (Reise in die Vergangenheit). The 2013 Swiss film Mary Queen of Scots, directed by Thomas Imbach, was based on Zweig’s Maria Stuart.
The end credits of Wes Anderson’s 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel state that the movie was inspired by Zweig’s novels. Anderson mentioned that he used parts of Zweig’s Beware of Pity and The Post Office Girl in writing the film. The movie includes actor Tom Wilkinson as a character named "The Author," loosely based on Zweig, and Jude Law as his younger self in flashbacks. A line from the film’s opening—“It is an extremely common mistake: people think the writer’s imagination is always at work…”—was taken from the beginning of Beware of Pity. The film’s main character, Gustave H., played by Ralph Fiennes, was inspired by Zweig. In the film’s opening scene, a teenage girl visits a shrine for "The Author," which includes a bust of him wearing glasses similar to Zweig’s and celebrating him as a "National Treasure."
The 2017 Austrian-German-French film Vor der Morgenröte (Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe) follows Zweig’s travels in North and South America as he deals with his exile from his homeland.
The 2018 American short film Crepúsculo by Clemy Clarke was based on Zweig’s short story “A Story Told in Twilight” and set in a quinceañera in 1980s New York.
The 1988 TV film La Ruelle au clair de lune by Édouard Molinaro was an adaptation of Zweig’s short story Moonbeam Alley.
Schachnovelle, translated as The Royal Game and Chess Story, inspired the 1960 film Brainwashed by Gerd Oswald, as well as two Czechoslovak films: Královská hra (The Royal Game, 1980) and Šach mat (Checkmate, 1964, TV), and the 2021 film Chess Story by Philipp Stölzl.