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Stefan Zweig. Explorer of the human soul

Gymnasium, Zweig entered the University of Vienna, where he studied philosophy and in 1904 received his doctorate.

Already during his studies, at his own expense, he published the first collection of his poems ("Silver Strings" (Silberne Saiten),). The poems were influenced by Hofmannsthal, and also by Rilke, to whom Zweig ventured to send his collection. Rilke sent back his book. Thus began a friendship that lasted until Rilke's death.

After graduating from the University of Vienna, Zweig went to London and Paris (), then traveled to Italy and Spain (), visited India, Indochina, USA, Cuba, Panama (). Last years During the First World War he lived in Switzerland (-), and after the war he settled near Salzburg.

Zweig married Friderike Maria von Winternitz in 1920. In 1938 they divorced. In 1939, Zweig married his new secretary, Charlotte Altmann (Lotte Altmann).

In 1934, after Hitler came to power in Germany, Zweig left Austria and went to London. In 1940, Zweig and his wife moved to New York, and on August 22, 1940 - to Petropolis, a suburb of Rio de Janeiro. Experiencing severe disappointment and depression, on February 23, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a lethal dose of barbiturates and were found dead in their house, holding hands.

Zweig's home in Brazil was later turned into a museum and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig. In 1981, an Austrian postage stamp was issued for the 100th anniversary of the writer.

Novels by Stefan Zweig. Novels and biographies

Zweig often wrote at the intersection of document and art, creating fascinating biographies of Magellan, Mary Stuart, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Joseph Fouche, Balzac ().

IN historical novels it is customary to speculate historical fact the power of creative imagination. Where there were not enough documents, the artist's imagination began to work there. Zweig, on the contrary, has always masterfully worked with documents, discovering psychological background in any letter or memoir of an eyewitness.

"Mary Stuart" (1935), "Triumph and tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam" (1934)

The dramatic personality and fate of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots and France, will always excite the imagination of posterity. The author designated the genre of the book " Mary stuart»(Maria stuart,) as a novelized biography. The Scottish and English queens never saw each other. This is what Elizabeth wanted. But between them for a quarter of a century there was an intense correspondence, outwardly correct, but full of hidden jabs and biting insults. The letters form the basis of the book. Zweig also used the testimonies of friends and foes of both queens to make an impartial verdict on both.

Having completed the biography of the beheaded queen, Zweig indulges in final reflections: “Morality and politics have their own different paths. Events are evaluated differently, depending on whether we judge them from the point of view of humanity or from the point of view of political advantages. For a writer in the early 30s. the conflict of morality and politics is no longer speculative, but quite tangible in nature, concerning him personally.

Heritage

A private charitable organization "Casa Stefan Zweig" was created, which sets as its ultimate goal the creation of the Stefan Zweig Museum in Petropolis - in the house where he and his wife lived for the last months and passed away.

In the work on the article, materials of the book “Foreign Writers. Biobibliographic Dictionary" (Moscow, "Enlightenment" (" Educational literature"), 1997)

Selected bibliography

Poetry collections

"Silver Strings" ()
"Early wreaths" ()

Drama, tragedy

"House by the Sea" (tragedy,)
"Jeremiah" ( Jeremias. . dramatic chronicle)

Cycles

"First experiences: 4 short stories from the country of childhood (At dusk, Governess, Burning secret, Summer novel) ( Erstes Erlebnis.Vier Geschichten aus Kinderland, 1911)
"Three Masters: Dickens, Balzac, Dostoyevsky" ( Drei Meister: Dickens, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, )
"Struggle against madness: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche" ( Der Kampf mit dem Dämon: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, )
"Three singers of their lives: Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy" ( Drei Dichter ihres Lebens, )
"Psyche and healing: Mesmer, Becker-Eddy, Freud" ()

Novels

"Conscience against violence: Castellio against Calvin" ( Castellio gegen Calvin oder. Ein Gewissen gegen die Gewalt, 1936)
"Amok" (Der Amokläufer, 1922)
"Letter from a stranger" ( Brief einer Unbekannten, 1922)
"Invisible Collection" ()
"Confusion of feelings" ( Verwirrung der Gefühle, )
"Twenty-four hours from the life of a woman" ()
"The Star Clock of Humanity" (in the first Russian translation - Fatal Moments) (a cycle of short stories,)
"Mendel book dealer" ()
"Burning Mystery" (Brennendes Geheimnis, 1911)
"At dusk"
"Woman and Nature"
"Sunset of One Heart"
"Fantastic Night"
"Street in the Moonlight"
"Summer Novella"
"The Last Holiday"
"Fear"
"Leporella"
"The Irrevocable Moment"
"Stolen Manuscripts"
The Governess (Die Gouvernante, 1911)
"Compulsion"
"The Incident on Lake Geneva"
Byron's Secret
"An unexpected introduction to a new profession"
"Arturo Toscanini"
"Christina" (Rausch der Verwandlung, 1982)
"Clarissa" (not finished)

legends

"The Legend of the Twin Sisters"
"Legend of Lyons"
"The Legend of the Third Dove"
"Eyes of the eternal brother" ()

Novels

"Impatience of the Heart" ( Ungeduld des Herzens, )
"The frenzy of transformation" ( Rausch der Verwandlung, , in Russian. per. () - "Christina Hoflener")

Fictionalized biographies, biographies

"France Matherel" ( Frans Masereel, ; with Arthur Holicher)
"Marie Antoinette: a portrait of an ordinary character" ( Marie Antoinette, )
"The triumph and tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam" ()
"Mary Stuart" ( Maria Stuart, )
"Conscience against violence: Castellio against Calvin" ()
"The feat of Magellan" ("Magellan. Man and his deed") ()
"Balzac" ( Balzac, published posthumously)
"Amerigo. A Tale of a Historical Mistake"
Joseph Fouche. Portrait of a politician"

Autobiography

"Yesterday's World: Memoirs of a European" ( Die Welt von Gestern, published posthumously)

Articles, essays

"Fire"
"Dickens"
"Dante"
"Speech for the sixtieth birthday of Romain Rolland"
"Speech for the sixtieth birthday of Maxim Gorky"
"The Meaning and Beauty of Manuscripts (Speech at a Book Fair in London)"
"The book is like a gateway to the world"
"Nietzsche"

Screen adaptations

24 hours from the life of a woman (, Germany) - film adaptation of the short story of the same name, directed by Robert Land.
A burning secret (, Germany) - film adaptation of the short story of the same name, directed by Robert Siodmak.
Amok (, France) - film adaptation of the short story of the same name, directed by Fedor Otsep.
Beware of pity () - adaptation of the novel "Impatience of the Heart", directed by Maurice Elway.
A letter from a stranger () - based on the short story of the same name, directed by Max Ophuls.
Chess short story () - based on the short story of the same name, by the German director Gerd Oswald.
Dangerous pity () - a two-part film by French film director Edouard Molinaro, an adaptation of the novel Impatience of the Heart.
Confusion of feelings () - a film by the Belgian director Etienne Perrier based on the short story of the same name by Zweig.
Burning Secret () - a film directed by Andrew Birkin, which received prizes at the Brussels and Venice Film Festivals.
Hops of Transformation (film, 1989) - a two-part film based on the unfinished work "Christina Hoflener", directed by Edouard Molinaro,.
The Last Holiday is a film based on the short story of the same name.
Clarissa () - TV movie, adaptation of the short story of the same name, directed by Jacques Deray.
A Letter from a Stranger () - the last film of the French film director Jacques Deray
24 hours from the life of a woman () - a film by French director Laurent Bunic, a film adaptation of the short story of the same name.
Love for love () - a film directed by Sergei Ashkenazy based on the novel "Impatience of the Heart"
Promise () - melodrama directed by Patrice Lecomte, film adaptation of the short story "Journey to the Past".
Based on the works, the film "The Grand Budapest Hotel" was made. In the final credits of the film, it is indicated that its plot is inspired by the author's works (the filmmakers mention such works as "Impatience of the Heart", "Yesterday's World. Notes of a European", "Twenty-four hours from the life of a woman").

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Notes

An excerpt characterizing Zweig, Stefan

– Voila un veritable ami! said Helen, beaming, once more touching Bilibip's sleeve with her hand. - Mais c "est que j" aime l "un et l" autre, je ne voudrais pas leur faire de chagrin. Je donnerais ma vie pour leur bonheur a tous deux, [Here is a true friend! But I love both and would not want to upset anyone. For the happiness of both, I would be ready to sacrifice my life.] - she said.
Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, expressing that even he could no longer help such grief.
"Une maitresse femme! Voila ce qui s "appelle poser carrement la question. Elle voudrait epouser tous les trois a la fois", ["Well done woman! That's what is called to put the question firmly. She would like to be the wife of all three at the same time. "] thought Bilibin.
“But tell me, how does your husband look at this matter?” he said, owing to the firmness of his reputation, not afraid to drop himself in such a naive question. Will he agree?
- Ah! Il m "aime tant!" - said Helen, who for some reason thought that Pierre also loved her. - Il fera tout pour moi. [Ah! he loves me so much! He is ready for anything for me.]
Bilibin picked up the skin to indicate the forthcoming mot.
– Meme le divorce, [Even for a divorce.] – he said.
Ellen laughed.
Among the people who allowed themselves to doubt the legality of the proposed marriage was Helen's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was constantly tormented by envy of her daughter, and now, when the object of envy was the closest to the heart of the princess, she could not come to terms with this thought. She consulted with a Russian priest about the extent to which divorce and marriage were possible with a living husband, and the priest told her that this was impossible, and, to her joy, pointed out to her the Gospel text, which (it seemed to the priest) directly rejected the possibility of marriage from a living husband.
Armed with these arguments, which seemed to her irrefutable, the princess early in the morning, in order to find her alone, went to her daughter.
After listening to her mother's objections, Helen smiled meekly and mockingly.
“But it’s directly said: who marries a divorced wife ...” said the old princess.
Ah, maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rien. Dans ma position j "ai des devoirs, [Ah, mama, don't talk nonsense. You don't understand anything. There are responsibilities in my position.] - Helen spoke, translating the conversation into French from Russian, in which she always seemed to have some kind of ambiguity in her business.
But my friend...
– Ah, maman, comment est ce que vous ne comprenez pas que le Saint Pere, qui a le droit de donner des dispenses…
At this time, the lady companion, who lived with Helen, came in to report to her that his highness was in the hall and wanted to see her.
- Non, dites lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse contre lui, parce qu "il m" a manque parole. [No, tell him that I don't want to see him, that I'm furious against him because he didn't keep his word to me.]
- Comtesse a tout peche misericorde, [Countess, mercy to every sin.] - said, entering, a young blond man with a long face and nose.
The old princess rose respectfully and sat down. The young man who entered ignored her. The princess nodded her daughter's head and swam to the door.
“No, she is right,” thought the old princess, all of whose convictions were destroyed before the appearance of his highness. - She is right; but how is it that in our irretrievable youth we did not know this? And it was so simple, ”the old princess thought, getting into the carriage.

At the beginning of August, Helen's case was completely decided, and she wrote a letter to her husband (who she thought was very fond of her) in which she informed him of her intention to marry NN and that she had entered into the one true religion and that she asks him to complete all the formalities necessary for the divorce, which the bearer of this letter will convey to him.
“Sur ce je prie Dieu, mon ami, de vous avoir sous sa sainte et puissante garde. Votre amie Helene.
[“Then I pray to God that you, my friend, be under his holy strong cover. Your friend Elena"]
This letter was brought to Pierre's house while he was on the Borodino field.

The second time, already at the end of the Battle of Borodino, having escaped from the Raevsky battery, Pierre with crowds of soldiers headed along the ravine to Knyazkov, reached the dressing station and, seeing blood and hearing screams and groans, hastily moved on, getting mixed up in the crowds of soldiers.
One thing that Pierre now wanted with all the strength of his soul was to get out of those terrible impressions in which he lived that day as soon as possible, return to the usual conditions of life and fall asleep peacefully in the room on his bed. Only under ordinary conditions of life did he feel that he would be able to understand himself and all that he had seen and experienced. But these ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.
Although the balls and bullets did not whistle here along the road along which he walked, but from all sides it was the same as it was there, on the battlefield. There were the same suffering, tormented and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same blood, the same soldier's greatcoats, the same sounds of shooting, although distant, but still terrifying; in addition, there was stuffiness and dust.
After walking about three versts along the high Mozhaisk road, Pierre sat down on its edge.
Twilight descended on the earth, and the rumble of the guns subsided. Pierre, leaning on his arm, lay down and lay for such a long time, looking at the shadows moving past him in the darkness. Incessantly it seemed to him that with a terrible whistle a cannonball flew at him; he winced and got up. He did not remember how long he had been here. In the middle of the night, three soldiers, dragging branches, placed themselves beside him and began to make fire.
The soldiers, looking sideways at Pierre, kindled a fire, put a bowler hat on it, crumbled crackers into it and put lard. The pleasant smell of edible and greasy food merged with the smell of smoke. Pierre got up and sighed. The soldiers (there were three of them) ate, not paying attention to Pierre, and talked among themselves.
- Yes, which one will you be? one of the soldiers suddenly turned to Pierre, obviously meaning by this question what Pierre thought, namely: if you want to eat, we will give, just tell me, are you an honest person?
- I? me? .. - said Pierre, feeling the need to minimize his social status to be closer and clearer to the soldiers. - I'm a real militia officer, only my squad is not here; I came to the battle and lost mine.
- You see! one of the soldiers said.
The other soldier shook his head.
- Well, eat, if you want, kavardachka! - said the first and gave Pierre, licking it, a wooden spoon.
Pierre sat down by the fire and began to eat the kavardachok, the food that was in the pot and which seemed to him the most delicious of all the foods he had ever eaten. While he greedily, bending over the cauldron, taking away large spoons, chewed one after another and his face was visible in the light of the fire, the soldiers silently looked at him.
- Where do you need it? You say! one of them asked again.
- I'm in Mozhaisk.
- You, became, sir?
- Yes.
- What's your name?
- Pyotr Kirillovich.
- Well, Pyotr Kirillovich, let's go, we'll take you. In complete darkness, the soldiers, together with Pierre, went to Mozhaisk.
The roosters were already crowing when they reached Mozhaisk and began to climb the steep city mountain. Pierre walked along with the soldiers, completely forgetting that his inn was below the mountain and that he had already passed it. He would not have remembered this (he was in such a state of bewilderment) if his bereator had not run into him on the half of the mountain, who went to look for him around the city and returned back to his inn. The landlord recognized Pierre by his hat, which shone white in the darkness.
“Your Excellency,” he said, “we are desperate. What are you walking? Where are you, please!
“Oh yes,” said Pierre.
The soldiers paused.
Well, did you find yours? one of them said.
- Well, goodbye! Pyotr Kirillovich, it seems? Farewell, Pyotr Kirillovich! other voices said.
“Goodbye,” said Pierre and went with his bereator to the inn.
"We must give them!" thought Pierre, reaching for his pocket. “No, don’t,” a voice told him.
There was no room in the upper rooms of the inn: everyone was busy. Pierre went into the yard and, covering himself with his head, lay down in his carriage.

As soon as Pierre laid his head on the pillow, he felt that he was falling asleep; but suddenly, with the clarity of almost reality, a boom, boom, boom of shots was heard, groans, screams, the slap of shells were heard, there was a smell of blood and gunpowder, and a feeling of horror, fear of death seized him. He opened his eyes in fear and lifted his head from under his overcoat. Everything was quiet outside. Only at the gate, talking to the janitor and slapping through the mud, was some kind of orderly. Above Pierre's head, under the dark underside of the plank canopy, doves fluttered from the movement he made while rising. A peaceful, joyful for Pierre at that moment, strong smell of an inn, the smell of hay, manure and tar was poured throughout the courtyard. Between the two black awnings one could see a clear starry sky.
“Thank God that this is no more,” thought Pierre, again closing his head. “Oh, how terrible fear is, and how shamefully I gave myself up to it! And they…they were firm, calm all the time, to the very end…” he thought. In Pierre's understanding, they were soldiers - those who were on the battery, and those who fed him, and those who prayed to the icon. They - these strange, hitherto unknown to him, they were clearly and sharply separated in his thoughts from all other people.
“To be a soldier, just a soldier! thought Pierre, falling asleep. – Enter this common life with your whole being, imbue with what makes them so. But how to throw off all this superfluous, diabolical, all the burden of this external person? One time I could be it. I could run away from my father as I wished. Even after the duel with Dolokhov, I could have been sent as a soldier.” And in Pierre's imagination flashed a dinner at the club where he summoned Dolokhov, and a benefactor in Torzhok. And now Pierre is presented with a solemn dining box. This lodge takes place in the English Club. And someone familiar, close, dear, is sitting at the end of the table. Yes it is! This is a benefactor. “Yes, he died? thought Pierre. - Yes, he died; but I didn't know he was alive. And how sorry I am that he died, and how glad I am that he is alive again! On one side of the table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitsky, Denisov and others like him (the category of these people was just as clearly defined in Pierre’s soul in a dream, as was the category of those people whom he called them), and these people, Anatole, Dolokhov loudly shouted, sang; but behind their cry was heard the voice of the benefactor, speaking incessantly, and the sound of his words was as significant and continuous as the roar of the battlefield, but it was pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what the benefactor was saying, but he knew (the category of thoughts was just as clear in the dream) that the benefactor spoke of goodness, of the possibility of being what they were. And they from all sides, with their simple, kind, firm faces, surrounded the benefactor. But although they were kind, they did not look at Pierre, did not know him. Pierre wanted to draw their attention to himself and say. He got up, but at the same instant his legs became cold and bare.
He felt ashamed, and he covered his legs with his hand, from which the overcoat really fell off. For a moment, Pierre, adjusting his overcoat, opened his eyes and saw the same sheds, pillars, courtyard, but all this was now bluish, light and covered with sparkles of dew or frost.
“Dawn,” thought Pierre. “But that's not it. I need to listen to and understand the words of the benefactor.” He again covered himself with his overcoat, but there was no longer any dining box or benefactor. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts that someone said or Pierre himself changed his mind.
Pierre, later recalling these thoughts, despite the fact that they were caused by the impressions of that day, was convinced that someone outside of him was telling them to him. Never, as it seemed to him, was he in reality able to think and express his thoughts like that.
“War is the most difficult subjection of human freedom to the laws of God,” said the voice. – Simplicity is obedience to God; you won't get away from it. And they are simple. They don't say, but they do. The spoken word is silver, and the unspoken is golden. A person cannot own anything while he is afraid of death. And whoever is not afraid of her, everything belongs to him. If there were no suffering, a person would not know the boundaries of himself, would not know himself. The most difficult thing (Pierre continued to think or hear in a dream) is to be able to combine in his soul the meaning of everything. Connect everything? Pierre said to himself. No, don't connect. You can’t connect thoughts, but to connect all these thoughts - that’s what you need! Yes, you need to match, you need to match! Pierre repeated to himself with inner delight, feeling that with these, and only with these words, what he wants to express is expressed, and the whole question that torments him is resolved.
- Yes, you need to pair, it's time to pair.
- It is necessary to harness, it is time to harness, Your Excellency! Your Excellency, - repeated a voice, - it is necessary to harness, it's time to harness ...
It was the voice of the bereytor who woke up Pierre. The sun beat right in Pierre's face. He glanced at the dirty inn, in the middle of which, near the well, the soldiers were watering the thin horses, from which carts rode out through the gates. Pierre turned away in disgust and, closing his eyes, hurriedly fell back into the seat of the carriage. “No, I don’t want this, I don’t want to see and understand this, I want to understand what was revealed to me during sleep. One more second and I would understand everything. What am I to do? Conjugate, but how to conjugate everything? And Pierre felt with horror that the whole meaning of what he saw and thought in a dream was destroyed.
The bereator, the coachman and the janitor told Pierre that an officer had arrived with the news that the French had moved near Mozhaisk and that ours were leaving.
Pierre got up and, having ordered to lay down and catch up with himself, went on foot through the city.
The troops went out and left about ten thousand wounded. These wounded could be seen in the yards and in the windows of houses and crowded in the streets. On the streets near the carts that were supposed to take away the wounded, screams, curses and blows were heard. Pierre gave the wheelchair that had overtaken him to a wounded general he knew and went with him to Moscow. Dear Pierre found out about the death of his brother-in-law and about the death of Prince Andrei.

X
On the 30th, Pierre returned to Moscow. Almost at the outpost he met the adjutant of Count Rostopchin.
“And we are looking for you everywhere,” said the adjutant. “The Count needs to see you. He asks you to come to him immediately on a very important matter.
Pierre, without stopping home, took a cab and drove to the commander-in-chief.
Count Rostopchin only arrived in town this morning from his country dacha in Sokolniki. The antechamber and reception room of the count's house were full of officials who came at his request or for orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and explained to him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it would be surrendered. Although these news were hidden from the inhabitants, the officials, the heads of various departments knew that Moscow would be in the hands of the enemy, just as Count Rostopchin knew it; and all of them, in order to lay down their responsibility, came to the commander-in-chief with questions about how they should deal with the units entrusted to them.
While Pierre entered the reception room, the courier, who came from the army, left the count.
The courier waved his hand hopelessly at the questions addressed to him, and passed through the hall.
While waiting in the waiting room, Pierre looked with tired eyes at the various, old and young, military and civil, important and unimportant officials who were in the room. Everyone seemed dissatisfied and restless. Pierre approached one group of officials, in which one was his acquaintance. After greeting Pierre, they continued their conversation.
- How to send and return again, there will be no trouble; and in such a situation one cannot answer for anything.
“Why, he writes,” said another, pointing to the printed paper he held in his hand.
- That's another matter. This is necessary for the people,” said the first.
- What is this? Pierre asked.
- And here's a new poster.
Pierre took it in his hands and began to read:
“The Most Serene Prince, in order to quickly connect with the troops that are coming towards him, crossed Mozhaisk and stood in a strong place where the enemy would not suddenly attack him. Forty-eight cannons with shells have been sent to him from here, and his Serene Highness says that he will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is ready to fight even in the streets. You, brothers, do not look at the fact that government offices have been closed: things need to be cleaned up, and we will deal with the villain with our court! When it comes to something, I need fellows, both urban and rural. I'll call a call for two days, but now it's not necessary, I'm silent. Good with an ax, not bad with a horn, and best of all is a triple pitchfork: a Frenchman is not heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow, after dinner, I am taking Iverskaya to the Ekaterininsky hospital, to the wounded. We will sanctify the water there: they will recover sooner; and I am now healthy: my eye hurt, and now I look both ways.

On February 23, 1942, newspapers around the world came out with a sensational headline on the front page: "The famous Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his wife Charlotte committed suicide in the suburbs of Rio de Janeiro." Under the headline was a photograph that looked more like a scene from a Hollywood melodrama: dead spouses in bed. Zweig's face is peaceful and calm. Lotta touchingly put her head on her husband's shoulder and gently squeezes his hand in hers.

At a time when human slaughter was raging in Europe and the Far East, daily claiming hundreds and thousands of lives, this message could not remain a sensation for long. For contemporaries, the writer's act caused rather bewilderment, and for some (for example, Thomas Mann) it was just indignation: "selfish contempt for contemporaries." Suicide of Zweig and after more than half a century looks mysterious. He was counted as one of the shoots of that suicidal harvest that the fascist regime gathered from the fields of German-language literature. Compared with similar and almost simultaneous actions of Walter Benjamin, Ernst Toller, Ernst Weiss, Walter Hasenklever. But there are no similarities here (except, of course, for the fact that all of the above were German-speaking writers - immigrants, and most of them Jews) there is no. Weiss opened his veins when the Nazi troops entered Paris. Hazenklever, who was in the internment camp, poisoned himself, fearing that he would be extradited to the German authorities. Benjamin took poison, fearing to fall into the hands of the Gestapo: the Spanish border, on which he ended up, was blocked. Abandoned by his wife and left penniless, Toller hanged himself in a New York hotel.

Zweig did not have any obvious, ordinary reasons for taking his own life. No creative crisis. No financial hardship. No fatal disease. No problems in personal life. Before the war, Zweig was the most successful German writer. His works were published all over the world, translated into 30 or 40 languages. By the standards of the then writing environment, he was considered a multimillionaire. Of course, since the mid-1930s, the German book market was closed to him, but there were still American publishers. The day before his death, Zweig sent one of them his last two works, neatly reprinted by Lotta: The Chess Novella and the book of memoirs Yesterday's World. Unfinished manuscripts were later found in the writer's desk: a biography of Balzac, an essay on Montaigne, an untitled novel.

Three years earlier, Zweig had married his secretary, Charlotte Altman, who was 27 years his junior and devoted to him to death, literally, not figuratively, as it turned out. Finally, in 1940, he accepted British citizenship - a measure that relieved the emigrant ordeals with documents and visas, vividly described in Remarque's novels. Millions of people, squeezed into the millstones of a giant European meat grinder, could only envy the writer, who settled comfortably in the heavenly town of Petropolis and, together with his young wife, made trips to the famous carnival in Rio. A lethal dose of veronal is usually not taken in such circumstances.

Of course, there were many versions about the reasons for suicide. They talked about the loneliness of the writer in a foreign Brazil, longing for his native Austria, for a cozy house in Salzburg plundered by the Nazis, a famous collection of autographs stolen, about fatigue and depression. Quoted letters to ex-wife (“I continue my work; but only 1/4 of my strength. It’s just an old habit without any creativity…”, “I’m tired of everything…”, “ best times irrevocably sunk ...") They recalled the writer's almost manic fear of the fatal figure of 60 years ("I am afraid of illness, old age and addiction"). It is believed that the last straw that overflowed the cup of patience was newspaper reports about the capture of Singapore by the Japanese and the offensive of the Wehrmacht troops in Libya. There were rumors that a German invasion of England was being prepared. Perhaps Zweig feared that the war from which he fled, crossing oceans and continents (England - USA - Brazil - his route of flight), would spill over into the Western Hemisphere. The most famous explanation was given by Remarque: “People who had no roots were extremely unstable - chance played a decisive role in their lives. If on that evening in Brazil, when Stefan Zweig and his wife committed suicide, they could pour out their hearts to someone, even by phone, the misfortune might not have happened. But Zweig found himself in a foreign land among strangers” (“Shadows in Paradise”).

The heroes of many of Zweig's works ended the same way as their author. Perhaps, before his death, the writer remembered his own essay about Kleist, who committed double suicide with Henrietta Vogel. But Zweig himself was never a suicidal person.

There is a strange logic in the fact that this gesture of despair ended the life of a man who seemed to his contemporaries a darling of fate, a favorite of the gods, a lucky man, born "with a silver spoon in his mouth." “Perhaps I was too spoiled before,” Zweig said at the end of his life. The word "maybe" is not very appropriate here. He was lucky always and everywhere. He was lucky with his parents: his father, Moritz Zweig, was a Viennese textile manufacturer, his mother, Ida Brettauer, belonged to the richest family of Jewish bankers, whose members settled all over the world. Wealthy, educated, assimilated Jews. He was lucky to be born a second son: the eldest, Alfred, inherited his father's company, and the youngest was given the opportunity to study at the university in order to receive a university degree and maintain the family reputation with the title of doctor of some sciences.

Lucky with time and place: Vienna late XIX century, Austrian silver Age»: Hofmannsthal, Schnitzler and Rilke in Literature; Mahler, Schoenberg, Webern and Alban Berg in music; Klimt and "Secession" in painting; performances of the Burgtheater and the Royal Opera, Freud's psychoanalytic school... The air is saturated with high culture. "The Age of Reliability," as the nostalgic Zweig dubbed it in his dying memoirs.

Good luck with school. True, Zweig hated the “educational barracks” itself - the state gymnasium, but he ended up in a class “infected” with an interest in art: someone wrote poetry, someone painted, someone was going to become an actor, someone studied music and did not miss a single concert, and someone even published articles in magazines. Later, Zweig was also lucky with the university: attending lectures at the Faculty of Philosophy was free, so that classes and exams did not exhaust him. It was possible to travel, live for a long time in Berlin and Paris, meet celebrities.

He was lucky during the First World War: although Zweig was drafted into the army, he was sent only to an easy job in the military archive. At the same time, the writer - a cosmopolitan and a convinced pacifist - could publish anti-war articles and dramas, participate, together with Romain Rolland, in the creation of an international organization of cultural figures who opposed the war. In 1917, the Zurich theater took up the production of his play Jeremiah. This gave Zweig the opportunity to get a vacation and spend the end of the war in prosperous Switzerland.

Good luck with looks. In his youth, Zweig was handsome and very popular with the ladies. A long and passionate romance began with a "letter from a stranger" signed with the mysterious initials FMFV. Friederika Maria von Winternitz was also a writer, the wife of a major official. After the end of the First World War, they got married. Twenty years of cloudless family happiness.

But most of all, of course, Zweig was lucky in literature. He began to write early, at the age of 16 he published his first aesthetic-decadent poems, at 19 he published a collection of poems "Silver Strings" at his own expense. Success came instantly: Rilke himself liked the poems, and the formidable editor of the most reputable Austrian newspaper, the Neue Freie Presse, Theodor Herzl (the future founder of Zionism), took his articles for publication. But the real glory of Zweig was brought by works written after the war: short stories, "romanized biographies", a collection of historical miniatures " star clock humanity”, biographical essays collected in the series “Builders of the World”.

He considered himself a citizen of the world. Traveled all continents, visited Africa, India and both Americas, spoke several languages. Franz Werfel said that Zweig was better prepared than anyone else for life in exile. Zweig's acquaintances and friends included almost all European celebrities: writers, artists, politicians. However, he was defiantly not interested in politics, believing that “in real, in real life, in the field of action of political forces, it is not outstanding minds, not carriers of pure ideas, that are of decisive importance, but a much baser, but also more dexterous breed - behind-the-scenes figures, people of dubious morality and little intelligence," like Joseph Fouche, whose biography he wrote. The apolitical Zweig never even went to the polls.

While still a schoolboy, at the age of 15, Zweig began collecting autographs of writers and composers. Later, this hobby became his passion, he owned one of the best collections of manuscripts in the world, including pages written by the hand of Leonardo, Napoleon, Balzac, Mozart, Bach, Nietzsche, personal belongings of Goethe and Beethoven. There were at least 4,000 directories alone.

All this success and brilliance had, however, a downside. In the writer's environment, they caused jealousy and envy. In the words of John Fowles, "the silver spoon eventually began to turn into a crucifix." Brecht, Musil, Canetti, Hesse, Kraus left frankly hostile remarks about Zweig. Hofmannsthal, one of the organizers of the Salzburg Festival, demanded that Zweig not appear at the festival. The writer bought a house in small, provincial Salzburg during the First World War, long before any festivals, but he kept this agreement and every summer, during the festival, he left the city. Others were not so outspoken. Thomas Mann, who was considered the No. 1 German writer, was not too pleased with the fact that someone overtook him in popularity and sales ratings. And although he wrote about Zweig: “His literary fame penetrated into the remotest corners of the earth. Perhaps since the time of Erasmus, no writer has been as famous as Stefan Zweig, ”in the circle of his relatives, Mann called him one of the worst modern German writers. True, Mann's bar was not low: Feuchtwanger and Remarque fell into the same company along with Zweig.

"Non-Austrian Austrian, non-Jewish Jew". Zweig really didn't feel like an Austrian or a Jew. He recognized himself as a European and all his life stood up for the creation of a united Europe - an insanely utopian idea in the interwar period, implemented several decades after his death.

Zweig said of himself and his parents that they "were Jews only by chance of birth." Like many prosperous, assimilated Western Jews, he had a slight disdain for the Ostjuden, who came from the Pale of Settlement's poor, traditional way of life and spoke Yiddish. When Herzl tried to recruit Zweig to work in the Zionist movement, he flatly refused. In 1935, when he was in New York, he did not speak out about the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany, fearing that this would only worsen their situation. Zweig was condemned for this refusal to use his influence in the fight against rising anti-Semitism. Hannah Arendt called him "a bourgeois writer who never cared about the fate of his own people." In fact, everything was more complicated. Asking himself what nationality he would choose in a united Europe of the future, Zweig admitted that he would prefer to be a Jew, a person with a spiritual rather than a physical homeland.

It is hard for the reader of Zweig to believe that he lived until 1942, survived two world wars, several revolutions and the onset of fascism, that he traveled the whole world. It seems that his life stopped somewhere in the 20s, if not earlier, and that he never traveled outside of Central Europe. The action of almost all of his short stories and novels takes place before the war, usually in Vienna, less often in some European resorts. It seems that Zweig in his work tried to escape into the past - into the blessed "golden age of reliability."

History was another way of escaping into the past. Biographies, historical essays and miniatures, reviews and memoirs occupy creative heritage Zweig has much more space than original works - a couple of dozen short stories and two novels. Zweig's historical interests were not unusual, all German literature of his time was embraced by a "tendency for history" (critic W. Schmidt-Dengler): Feuchtwanger, the Mann brothers, Emil Ludwig ... The era of wars and revolutions required historical understanding. “When such great events in history take place, one does not want to invent in art,” said Zweig.

The peculiarity of Zweig is that for him history was reduced to separate, decisive, crisis moments - "high points", "truly historical, great and unforgettable moments." At such hours, the unknown captain of the engineering troops Rouge de Lisle creates the Marseillaise, the adventurer Vasco Balboa discovers the Pacific Ocean, and because of the indecision of Marshal Pear, the fate of Europe is changing. Zweig also celebrated such historical moments in his life. Thus, the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire for him was symbolized by a meeting on the Swiss border with the train of the last Emperor Charles, who sent him into exile. He also collected celebrity autographs for a reason, but was looking for those manuscripts that would express a moment of inspiration, a creative insight of a genius that would allow “to comprehend in the relic of the manuscript what made immortals immortal for the world.”

Zweig's short stories are also the stories of one "fantastic night", "24 hours from life": a concentrated moment when the hidden possibilities of the individual, dormant abilities and passions break out. The biographies of Mary Stuart and Marie Antoinette are stories of how "ordinary, everyday life turns into a tragedy of ancient proportions", the average person turns out to be worthy of greatness. Zweig believed that every person has some kind of innate, "demonic" beginning that drives him beyond his own personality, "to danger, to the unknown, to risk." It was this breakthrough of the dangerous - or sublime - part of our soul that he liked to portray. He called one of his biographical trilogies “Fighting the Demon”: Hölderlin, Kleist and Nietzsche, “Dionysian” natures, completely subordinate to the “power of the demon” and opposed by him to the harmonic Olympian Goethe.

Zweig's paradox is the ambiguity to which "literary class" he should be attributed. He considered himself a "serious writer", but it is obvious that his works are rather high-quality popular literature: melodramatic plots, entertaining biographies of celebrities. According to Steven Spender, Zweig's main readership were teenagers from European middle-class families - they eagerly read stories that behind the respectable facade of bourgeois society hide "burning secrets" and passions: sexual desire, fears, manias and madness. Many of Zweig's novels seem to be illustrations of Freud's studies, which is not surprising: they revolved in the same circles, described the same respectable and respectable crowns, hiding a bunch of subconscious complexes under the guise of decency.

With all its brightness and external brilliance, something elusive, obscure is felt in Zweig. He was more of a private person. His writings are by no means autobiographical. “Your things are only a third of your personality,” his first wife wrote to him. In Zweig's memoirs, the reader is struck by their strange impersonalism: it is more a biography of an era than an individual. Not much can be learned about the writer's personal life from them. In Zweig's short stories, the figure of the narrator often appears, but he always keeps in the background, in the background, performing purely auxiliary functions. Oddly enough, the writer gave his own traits to far from the most pleasant of his characters: to the annoying celebrity collector in Impatience of the Heart or the writer in Letter from a Stranger. All this is more like a self-caricature - perhaps unconscious and not even noticed by Zweig himself.

Zweig is generally a writer with a double bottom: if you wish, you can find associations with Kafka in his most classic works - that's who he seemed to have nothing in common with! Meanwhile, "The Sunset of One Heart" - a story about the instantaneous and terrible breakup of a family - is the same "Transformation", only without any phantasmagoria, and the reasoning about the court in "Fear" seems to be borrowed from "The Trial". For similarity storylines"Chess novel" with Nabokov's "Luzhin" critics have long paid attention. Well, the famous romantic “Letter from a Stranger” in the era of postmodernism is tempting to read in the spirit of Priestley’s “Inspector’s Visit”: a prank that created a story of great love out of several random women.

The literary fate of Zweig is a mirror version of the romantic legend about unrecognized artist, whose talent remained unappreciated by his contemporaries and recognized only after his death. In the case of Zweig, it was exactly the opposite: in the words of Fowles, "Stefan Zweig experienced, after his death in 1942, the most complete oblivion of any other writer of our century." Fowles, of course, exaggerates: even during his lifetime, Zweig was still not “the most widely read and translated serious writer in the world,” and his oblivion is far from absolute. In at least two countries, Zweig's popularity never waned. These countries are France and, oddly enough, Russia. Why Zweig was so loved in the USSR (his collected works in 12 volumes were published in 1928-1932) is a mystery. The liberal and humanist Zweig had nothing in common with the communists and fellow travelers beloved by the Soviet government.

Zweig was one of the first to feel the onset of fascism. By a strange coincidence, from the terrace of the Salzburg house of the writer, located not far from the German border, a view of Berchtesgaden, the Fuhrer's favorite residence, opened. In 1934, Zweig left Austria - four years before the Anschluss. The formal pretext was the desire to work in the British archives on the history of Mary Stuart, but in the depths of his soul he guessed that he would not return.

During these years, he writes about loners, idealists, Erasmus and Castellio, who opposed fanaticism and totalitarianism. In Zweig's contemporary reality, such humanists and liberals could do little.

During the years of emigration, an impeccably happy marriage came to an end. Everything changed with the arrival of a secretary, Charlotte Elizabeth Altman. For several years, Zweig rushed about inside the love triangle, not knowing whom to choose: an aging, but still beautiful and elegant wife, or a mistress - a young, but some kind of nondescript, sickly and unhappy girl. The feeling that Zweig felt for Lotte was more pity than attraction: he gave this pity to Anton Hofmiller, the hero of his only completed novel, Impatience of the Heart, written at that time. In 1938, the writer nevertheless received a divorce. Once Friederike left her husband for Zweig, now he himself left her for another - this melodramatic plot could well form the basis of one of his short stories. "Internally" Zweig did not completely part with ex-wife, wrote to her that their break was purely external.

Loneliness approached the writer not only in family life. By the beginning of World War II, he was left without spiritual guidance. In Zweig's talent and personality itself, something feminine slips through. The point is not only that the heroines of most of his works are women, that he was probably one of the most subtle experts in female psychology in world literature. This femininity was manifested in the fact that Zweig was in essence more of a follower than a leader: he constantly needed a “teacher” whom he could follow. Before the First World War, such a "teacher" for him was Verharn, whose poems Zweig translated into German and about whom he wrote memoirs; during the war - Romain Rolland, after it - to some extent Freud. Freud died in 1939. Emptiness surrounded the writer from all sides.

Having lost his homeland, Zweig felt like an Austrian for the first time. In the last years of his life, he writes memoirs - another escape into the past, to Austria at the beginning of the century. Another version of the "Habsburg myth" is nostalgia for a vanished empire. A myth born of desperation - as Joseph Roth said, "but you still have to admit that the Habsburgs are better than Hitler ..." Unlike Roth, his close friend, Zweig did not become either a Catholic or a supporter of the imperial dynasty. And yet he created a panegyric full of painful longing for the “golden age of reliability”: “Everything in our almost thousand-year-old Austrian monarchy seemed to be designed for eternity, and the state is the highest guarantor of this constancy. Everything in this vast empire firmly and unshakably stood in its place, and above everything - the old Kaiser. The nineteenth century, in its liberal idealism, was sincerely convinced that it was on the straight and true path to "the best of all possible worlds."

Clive James in "Cultural Amnesia" called Zweig the epitome of humanism. Franz Werfel said that Zweig's religion was humanistic optimism, a belief in the liberal values of his youth. "The obscuration of this spiritual sky was a shock to Zweig that he could not bear. All this is true - it was easier for the writer to die than to come to terms with the collapse of the ideals of his youth. He ends his nostalgic passages on the liberal age of hope and progress with the characteristic phrase: “But even if it was an illusion, it is still wonderful and noble, more human and life-giving than today's ideals. And something in the depths of the soul, despite all the experience and disappointment, prevents you from completely renouncing it. I cannot completely renounce the ideals of my youth, the belief that someday again, in spite of everything, a bright day will come.

IN farewell letter Zweig was told: “After sixty, special forces are required to start life anew. My strength is exhausted by years of wandering away from my homeland. In addition, I think that it is better now, with head held high, to put an end to an existence whose main joy was intellectual work, and supreme value- personal freedom. I greet all my friends. May they see the dawn after a long night! And I'm too impatient and leave before them.

Biographical information

Creation

In 1910, Zweig wrote three volumes of Verharn (a biography and translations of his dramas and poetry). Zweig considered the translations of Verhaarn, as well as C. Baudelaire, P. Verlaine, A. Rimbaud, as his contribution to the spiritual community of European peoples dear to him.

In 1907 Zweig wrote a tragedy in verse, Thersites, which takes place near the walls of Troy; the idea of the play is a call for compassion for the humiliated and lonely. The premiere took place simultaneously in Dresden and Kassel.

In 1909, Zweig began to write a book about O. de Balzac, on which he worked for about 30 years. The book was never finished (published in 1946, after Zweig's death).

In 1917, Zweig published the anti-war drama Jeremiah based on the plot of the book of the prophet Jeremiah. The pathos of the play is the rejection of violence. Jeremiah predicts the fall of Jerusalem and calls to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, for "there is nothing more important than peace."

Scourge of vices, Jeremiah sees a way out in moral perfection. Exactly following the events set forth in the Bible, Zweig makes one digression reflecting his position: in the book, the blinded king of Judea, Tsidkiyahu, is taken captive in chains; in Zweig’s drama, he is solemnly brought to Babylon on a stretcher. "Jeremiah" - the first anti-war play on the European stage - was staged in 1918 in Zurich, in 1919 - in Vienna.

The legend “The Third Dove” (1934) symbolically expresses the pacifist denial of war and the idea of the impossibility of achieving peace: the third dove sent by Noah in search of land does not return, it circles forever above the earth in vain attempts to find a place where peace reigns.

Jewish theme

The Jewish motif is present in Zweig's anti-war short story "Mendel the second-hand book dealer" (1929). The quiet Jew from Galicia, Jacob Mendel, is obsessed with books. Its services are used by book lovers, including university professors.

Mendel is not interested in money, he does not know what is happening behind the walls of the Viennese cafe, where his desk is. During the war, he is arrested and charged with espionage after discovering that he sent a postcard to Paris to a bookstore owner.

Mendel is held for two years in the camp, he returns a broken man. "Mendel the second-hand book dealer" is the only story by Zweig in which the Jewish hero is a contemporary of the writer.

The theme of Jewry occupies Zweig in philosophical aspect; he refers to her in the legend “Rachel murmurs against God” (1930) and the story dedicated to Sh. Ash “The Buried Lamp” (1937; Russian translation - Jer., 1989).

The third - "Three poets of their lives" (1927) - J. Casanova, Stendhal, L. Tolstoy. Zweig believes that their works are an expression of their own personality.

For many years Zweig painted the historical miniatures The Starry Clock of Mankind (1927, expanded ed. - 1943).

The book "Meetings with People, Books, Cities" (1937) contains essays about writers, about meetings with A. Toscanini, B. Walter, an analysis of the work of I. V. Goethe, B. Shaw, T. Mann and many others.

Posthumous edition

Zweig considered Europe his spiritual homeland, his autobiographical book Yesterday's World (1941; published 1944) is filled with longing for Vienna, the center of cultural life Europe.

Notification: The preliminary basis for this article was the article

Stefan Zweig (German Stefan Zweig - Stefan Zweig; November 28, 1881 - February 23, 1942) - Austrian critic, author of many short stories and fictionalized biographies.

Short story writer, novelist, poet, author literary biographies. Born in Vienna in the family of a wealthy Jewish merchant who owned a textile manufactory. After graduating from the University of Vienna, he went to London, Paris, traveled to Italy and Spain, visited India, Indochina, the USA, Cuba, Panama.

The solid state of the parents makes it possible to easily publish the first book - "Silver Strings" (1901). Zweig ventured to send the first collection of poems to his idol, the great Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke. He sent back his book. Thus began a friendship that lasted until Rilke's death.

Zweig's short stories - "Amok", "Confusion of feelings", "Chess novel" - made the author's name popular all over the world. They amaze with drama, captivate with unusual plots and make you think about the vicissitudes of human destinies. Novels from modern life Zweig generally did not succeed. He understood this and rarely addressed the genre of the novel. These are "Impatience of the Heart" and "Fever of Transfiguration", printed in German for the first time forty years after the death of the author, in 1982.

Zweig often wrote at the intersection of document and art, creating fascinating biographies of Magellan, Mary Stuart, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Joseph Fouche, Balzac, Marie Antoinette. The writer has always masterfully worked with documents, discovering psychological background in any letter or memoir of an eyewitness. These include the following works "Three singers of their lives" (Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy), "Fight with the demon" (Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche).

In the 20-30s. many Western writers have a growing interest in the USSR. They saw in this country the only real power that can resist fascism. Zweig came to the USSR in 1928 for the celebrations on the occasion of the centenary of the birth of Leo Tolstoy. His attitude towards the Land of the Soviets could then be characterized as benevolently critical curiosity. But over the years, goodwill waned, and skepticism grew.

The last years of Zweig's life - the years of wandering He flees from Salzburg, choosing London as a temporary residence. Then he went to Latin America (1940), moved to the USA, but soon decided to settle in the small Brazilian city of Petropolis, located high in the mountains.

Stefan Zweig - Austrian writer, famous mainly as the author of short stories and fictional biographies; literary critic. He was born in Vienna on November 28, 1881 in the family of a Jewish manufacturer, the owner of a textile manufactory. Zweig did not expand on childhood and adolescence, talking about the typicality of this period of life for representatives of his environment.

Having been educated at the gymnasium, in 1900 Stefan became a student at the University of Vienna, where he studied German and Roman studies at the Faculty of Philology. While still a student, his debut poetry collection Silver Strings was published. The novice writer sent his book to Rilke, under the influence of whose creative manner it was written, and the result of this act was their friendship, interrupted only by the death of the second. In the same years, literary-critical activity also began: Berlin and Viennese magazines published articles by the young Zweig. After graduating from university and receiving his doctorate in 1904, Zweig published a collection of short stories, The Love of Erica Ewald, as well as poetic translations.

1905-1906 open in the life of Zweig a period of active travel. Starting from Paris and London, he subsequently traveled to Spain, Italy, then his travels went beyond the continent, he visited North and South America, India, Indochina. During the First World War, Zweig was an employee of the archives of the Ministry of Defense, had access to documents and, not without the influence of his good friend R. Rolland, turned into a pacifist, wrote anti-war articles, plays, and short stories. He called Rolland himself "the conscience of Europe." In the same years, he created a number of essays, the main characters of which were M. Proust, T. Mann, M. Gorky and others. During 1917-1918. Zweig lived in Switzerland, and in the post-war years, Salzburg became his place of residence.

In the 20-30s. Zweig continues to write actively. During 1920-1928. biographies are coming out famous people, united by the name "Builders of the World" (Balzac, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Stendhal, etc.). In parallel, S. Zweig was engaged in short stories, and the works of this particular genre turned him into a popular writer not only in his country and on the continent, but throughout the world. His short stories were built according to his own model, which distinguished creative manner Zweig from other works of this genre. Biographical writings also enjoyed considerable success. This was especially true for the Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam written in 1934 and Mary Stuart published in 1935. In the genre of the novel, the writer tried his hand only twice, because he understood that short stories were his vocation, and attempts to write a large-scale canvas turned out to be a failure. From his pen came out only "Impatience of the Heart" and the remaining unfinished "Freak of Transfiguration", which was published four decades after the death of the author.

The last period of Zweig's life is associated with a constant change of residence. As a Jew, he could not stay in Austria after the Nazis came to power. In 1935, the writer moved to London, but he did not feel completely safe in the capital of Great Britain, so he left the continent and in 1940 ended up in Latin America. In 1941, he temporarily moved to the United States, but then returned to Brazil, where he settled in the small city of Petropolis.

Literary activity continues, Zweig prints literary criticism, essay, collection of speeches, memoirs, works of art However, his state of mind is very far from calm. In his imagination, he painted a picture of the victory of the Nazi troops and the death of Europe, and this drove the writer into despair, he plunged into a severe depression. Being in another part of the world, he did not have the opportunity to communicate with friends, experienced sharp feeling loneliness, although he lived in Petropolis with his wife. On February 23, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a huge dose of sleeping pills and voluntarily passed away.