Jewish-Austrian writer Stefan Zweig is one of the most translated German writers of all time.
His life experience is as remarkable as his work.
The Austrian writer Zweig achieved great literary fame in the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century.
After Hitler came to power, Zweig was forced to flee his homeland and start a new life in Brazil.
As a traveler and lover of European culture, Zweig found it difficult to adapt to a world that was being closed.
On February 22, 1942, he and his second wife committed suicide.
Zweig was born into an upper-class Jewish family in Vienna, the capital of Austria.
When he was born in 1881, Austria was still a monarchy ruled by the Habsburgs.
Vienna is a gathering place for artists and intellectuals. Zweig soon fell in love with the literary traditions of his culturally rich homeland and developed a special passion for theatre.
This led him to later write several plays, such as the anti-war drama Jeremias.
Although Zweig is best known for his literary works such as "The World of Yesterday" and "The Burning of the Heart", he also loved theater.
Although he has never had the same success as a playwright in the field of ** and biographical writing, about a dozen of his plays have been staged in several cities in Germany and Austria.
The most famous of these is a play called Jeremias, which delves into the story of the Jewish prophets and the fall of Israel.
The work, which Zweig described as an expression of his pacifist values, premiered in Zurich during the First World War.
What makes this work particularly revolutionary is that it promotes the values of peace and brotherhood at a time when most European countries were at war with each other.
Zweig grew up in a social class, which made him financially capable of traveling to major European cities and making friends with artists from all over the continent.
However, after the outbreak of the First World War, many European writers were actively involved in the creation of war propaganda.
This was extremely traumatic for Zweig. Despite the excitement about the war, Zweig still considered himself first and foremost a European citizen.
Although this stance made him extremely isolated during the First World War, it strengthened his pacifist ideals.
Although Zweig gained literary fame through his writing, he was also a fan of other people's works.
He invested a lot of time and money throughout his life to buy autographs and originals from famous composers, writers, and artists.
His collection includes Beethoven's desks, paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Kafka's manuscripts, and scores by composers such as Mozart.
But Zweig was not only passionate about collecting manuscripts, sheet music, and drawings, he was also a collector of stories.
He was particularly interested in the life and psychological characteristics of historical figures, publishing books on figures such as Nietzsche, Mary, Queen of Scots, Casanova, and Marie-Antoinette.
In his work Marie-Antoinette, Zweig uses his fast-paced and highly emotional writing style to transport the reader into a story about a controversial French queen.
Like many male artists of the time, Stefan Zweig relied on his wife's help to take care of the household so that he could concentrate on writing.
Zweig married Friedrich Berg in 1920, and this is how she describes their family life in Salzburg.
The most important thing is to maintain an atmosphere of peace, digging trenches around his spiritual casting.
As the guardian of his inner world, I had to stay away from the outside world, which was always full of distractions.
So it's a fact that I rarely admit publicly, that I don't have a world of my own, I don't have a job of my own, and that can take me away from my duties.
In her memoirs, she also mentions his frequent mood swings of depression and anxiety.
However, her portrayal of the marriage is largely positive, and she seems to enjoy serving as his family"Peacekeepers"。
While the name Friedrich Berg will never be as well-known as the name of her famous husband, her contribution to Zweig's artistic creation is unquestionable.
In addition to taking care of the household chores and acting as a hostess on the visits of famous artists and European intellectuals, Frederick also helped Zweig with research, editing and proofreading.
Around 1934, Zweig began having affairs with his research assistant and multilingual secretary, Lot-Altmann.
Three years later, he divorced his first wife and decided to marry his secretary.
Lott was 27 years younger than him, and the divorce process was challenging, but Zweig and his first wife remained friends until his death.
His first wife, Frederick Berger, wrote in her memoirs:"There is an unbreakable friendship between me and my partner, and the intuitive sympathy for his feelings has never been completely destroyed, surviving all conflicts.
Lott Altmann continued to support Zweig's creations, keeping him away from everyday worries and serving as his assistant.
Zweig's full-length novel "The Anxiety of the Heart," which depicts the emotional turmoil of a young man who is pressured to marry a bedridden woman, may have been inspired in part by Lot, who suffers from asthma.
Zweig's literary works are more than 60 books translated into many languages.
Although he enjoyed great fame in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century, Hitler's rise brought his life as an elite of Austrian society to an abrupt end.
During the book burning in 1933, Nazi supporters burned and confiscated many of Zweig's books, declaring them unaesthetically incompatible with German aesthetics.
Zweig's residence in Salzburg was also searched by the authorities, and after an equally painful experience, the writer decided to flee Austria.
Thanks to his international readership, the writer continued to publish new works despite the ban. However, the loss of his homeland and the experience of German readers left him extremely traumatized.
Zweig apparently could not remain in Austria, so he tried to establish his own base in England.
Fearful of a German invasion, he crossed the Atlantic and spent several months in the United States.
Eventually, he and his second wife settled in the Brazilian town of PetrĂ³polis.
The film is based on Zweig's book, which was written during Zweig's stay in Brazil, where one might think that everything was going well with him.
But his overly enthusiastic praise of the country that gave him the opportunity to exile only turned out to be a desperate man who had lost the will to live.
Zweig has always considered himself a citizen of the world. However, when he lost his home in Austria, the travel enthusiast and writer suffered greatly.
A firm believer in pacifism, freedom of movement and freedom of thought, he could not watch his beloved Europe be embroiled in the most devastating war in history.
On February 22, 1942, the writer and his wife were found dead in their bed, dying by suicide.
In his farewell letter to his first wife, Zweig said that he was too weak to endure the pain any longer.
In his suicide note, he said that he no longer had the strength to start over.
These are just the tip of the iceberg of Zweig's life and career, the life story of a writer who lived through two wars and experienced the ups and downs of life.