Twilight Alley

Stefan Zweig was born on the 28th November 1881 in Vienna, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and into a wealthy Jewish family with interests in banking and textiles. He studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and achieved his degree in 1904. Zweig first published in 1900 and two decades later was a popular and highly regarded author in many parts of the world, although not in England. During the Great War he served in the Archives of the Ministry of War and supported Austria's war effort through his writings in the ‘Neue Freie Presse’. Whilst his work praised his Country’s progress and, on occasions, its excesses and massacres, he later claimed, in his memoir, that he was a pacifist. In 1912 he began an affair with the married, and mother or two, Friderike Maria von Winternitz, but it was only in 1920 that circumstances allowed them to marry. She took care of much of his business interests and supported him artistically. In this decade too many of his most famous works including the short stories; ‘Amok’, and ‘Letter from an Unknown Woman’ (filmed in 1948 by Max Ophüls), novels; ‘Confusion of Feelings’ and biographies including that on Marie Antoinette (filmed by MGM in 1938) were published. He was also the librettist with Richard Strauss of two operas and a keen collector of autographed musical manuscripts. His collection of over two hundred pieces was later donated to the British Library. In 1934, Zweig, as a Jew, and finding life very difficult under his anti-Semitic government and the neighbouring Nazi’s persuaded him to leave Austria for England. In 1940 Zweig, now divorced and married to his second wife, and former secretary, Lotte Altmann, left London and via New York moved to Petrópolis, a German-colonized town 50 miles north of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Although he continued to write he became, along with his wife, increasingly depressed about the situation in Europe and the future for humanity, His memoir ‘The World of Yesterday’ was completed on the 22nd February 1942. The following day the Zweig’s were found in their house dead of a barbiturate overdose, holding each other’s hand. He was 60.