Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig (/zwaɪɡ, swaɪɡ/;[1] German: [ˈʃtɛ.fan t͡svaɪ̯k] ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) 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.[2]
Not to be confused with Stefanie Zweig.
Stefan Zweig
22 February 1942
University of Vienna (PhD, 1904)
- Novelist
- playwright
- librettist
- journalist
- biographer
-
Lotte Altmann(m. 1939)
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 Standestaat 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.[3]
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#0__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#0__subtitleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#1__descriptionDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__titleDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__descriptionDEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__heading--0DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__description--0DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__heading--1DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__description--1DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__heading--2DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__description--2DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__heading--3DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
$_$_$DEEZ_NUTS#2__description--3DEEZ_NUTS$_$_$
Adaptations[edit]
The 1933 Austrian-German drama film The Burning Secret directed by Robert Siodmak was based on Zweig's short story Brennendes Geheimnis. The 1988 remake of the same film Burning Secret was directed by Andrew Birkin and starred Klaus Maria Brandauer and Faye Dunaway.
Letter from an Unknown Woman was filmed in 1948 by Max Ophüls.
Beware of Pity was adapted into a 1946 film with the same title, directed by Maurice Elvey.[44]
Letter from an Unknown Woman was filmed in 1962 by Salah Abu Seif.
An adaptation by Stephen Wyatt of Beware of Pity was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2011.[45]
The 2012 Brazilian film The Invisible Collection, directed by Bernard Attal, is based on Zweig's short story of the same title.[46]
The 2013 French film A Promise (Une promesse) is based on Zweig's novella Journey into the Past (Reise in die Vergangenheit).
The 2013 Swiss film Mary Queen of Scots, directed by Thomas Imbach, is based on Zweig's Maria Stuart.[47]
The end-credits for Wes Anderson's 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel say that the film was inspired in part by Zweig's novels. Anderson said that he had "stolen" from Zweig's novels Beware of Pity and The Post-Office Girl in writing the film, and it features actors Tom Wilkinson as The Author, a character based loosely on Zweig, and Jude Law as his younger, idealised self seen in flashbacks. Anderson also said that the film's protagonist, the concierge Gustave H., played by Ralph Fiennes, was based on Zweig. In the film's opening sequence, a teenage girl visits a shrine for The Author, which includes a bust of him wearing Zweig-like spectacles and celebrated as his country's "National Treasure".[48]
The 2017 Austrian-German-French film Vor der Morgenröte (Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe) chronicles Stefan Zweig's travels in the North and South Americas, trying to come to terms with his exile from home.
The 2018 American short film Crepúsculo by Clemy Clarke is based on Zweig's short story "A Story Told in Twilight" and relocated to a quinceañera in 1980s New York.[49]
TV film La Ruelle au clair de lune (1988) by Édouard Molinaro is an adaptation of Zweig's short-story Moonbeam Alley.[50]
Schachnovelle, translated as The Royal Game and as Chess Story, was the inspiration for the 1960 Gerd Oswald film Brainwashed,[51] as well as for two Czechoslovakian films—the 1980 Královská hra (The Royal Game) and Šach mat (Checkmate), made for television in 1964[52]—and for the 2021 Philipp Stölzl film Chess Story.[53][54]