Stefan Zweig. Explorer of the human soul. Stefan Zweig - biography, information, personal life Stefan Zweig and the USSR

(by the way, this is his favorite writer), the depths and abysses of the soul. Zweig the historian was interested in humanity's finest hours and "fatal moments", heroes and villains, but at the same time he always remained a gentle moralist. The finest psychologist. A refined popularizer. He knew how to grab the reader from the first page and not let go until the end, leading him along intriguing paths human destinies. Stefan Zweig loved not only to delve into the biographies of celebrities, but also to turn them inside out so that the bonds and seams of character were exposed. But the writer himself was an extremely secretive person; he did not like to talk about himself and his work. In the autobiography "Yesterday's World" a lot is said about other writers, about his generation, about the time - and a minimum of personal information. Therefore, let's try to draw at least an approximate portrait of him.

Stefan Zweig born November 28, 1881 in Vienna, into a wealthy Jewish family. Father, Maurice Zweig, is a manufacturer, a successful bourgeois, well-educated, drawn to culture. Mother, Ida Brettauer, is the daughter of a banker, a beauty and a fashionista, a woman with great pretensions and ambitions. She dealt with her sons much less than governesses. Stefan and Alfred grew up well-groomed and handsome, in wealth and luxury. In the summer we went with our parents to Marienbad or the Austrian Alps. However, his mother's arrogance and despotism put pressure on the sensitive Stefan. Therefore, upon entering the Vienna Institute, he immediately left his parents’ home and began to live independently. Long live freedom!.. “Hatred of everything authoritarian has accompanied me all my life,” Zweig later admits.

Years of study - years of passion for literature and theater. Stefan started reading from childhood. Along with reading, another passion arose - collecting. Already in his youth, Zweig began collecting manuscripts, autographs of great people, and scores of composers.

Novelist and biographer famous people, Zweig began his literary activity like a poet. He published his first poems at the age of 17 in the magazine Deutsche Dichtung. In 1901, the publishing house “Schuster und Leffler” published the collection of poems “Silver Strings”. One of the reviewers responded: “Quiet, majestic beauty flows from these lines of the young Viennese poet. An enlightenment that you rarely see in the first books of beginning authors. Euphony and richness of images!”

So, a new fashionable poet has appeared in Vienna. But Zweig himself doubted his poetic calling and went to Berlin to continue his education. Meet the Belgian poet Emil Verhaeren pushed Zweig to a different activity: he began to translate and publish Werhaeren. Until the age of thirty, Zweig led a nomadic and rich life, traveling around cities and countries - Paris, Brussels, Ostend, Bruges, London, Madras, Calcutta, Venice... Travel and communication, and sometimes friendship with famous creators - Verlaine, Rodin, Rolland, Freud , Rilke... Soon Zweig becomes an expert on European and world culture, a man of encyclopedic knowledge.

He switches completely to prose. In 1916 he wrote the anti-war drama Jeremiah. In the mid-1920s, he created his most famous collections of short stories “Amok” (1922) and “Confusion of Feelings” (1929), which included “Fear”, “Street in the Moonlight”, “Sunset of One Heart”, “Fantastic Night” , “Mendel the Bookseller” and other short stories with Freudian motifs woven into “Viennese impressionism”, and even flavored with French symbolism. The main theme is compassion for a person squeezed by the “Iron Age”, entangled in neuroses and complexes.

In 1929, Zweig's first fictionalized biography, Joseph Fouché, appeared. This genre fascinated Zweig, and he created wonderful historical portraits: ''Marie Antoinette" (1932), "The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam" (1934), "Mary Stuart" (1935), "Castelio against Calvin" (1936), "Magellan" (1938), "Amerigo, or History one historical mistake" (1944). More books about Verhaeren, Rolland, “Three singers of their lives - Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy.” Above the biography Balzac Zweig worked for about thirty years.

Zweig said to one of his writing colleagues: “History outstanding people- this is the history of complex mental structures... after all, the history of nineteenth-century France without the solution to such personalities as Fouché or Thiers would be incomplete. I'm interested in the paths that certain people took, creating brilliant values, like Stendhal And Tolstoy, or striking the world with crimes like Fouche..."

Zweig studied his great predecessors carefully and lovingly, trying to unravel their actions and movements of the soul, while he did not like winners; he was closer to losers in the struggle, outsiders or madmen. One of his books is about Nietzsche, Kleiste and Hölderlin - this is what is called “The Fight against Madness.”

Zweig's short stories and historical biography novels were read with rapture. In the 20-40s he was one of the most popular authors. It was readily published in the USSR as a “revealer of bourgeois morals,” but at the same time they never tired of criticizing it for its “superficial understanding social development only as a struggle between progress (humanism) and reaction, the idealization of the role of the individual in history.” The subtext read: not a revolutionary writer, not a singer of the proletariat, and not ours at all. Zweig was not one of the Nazis either: in 1935, his books were burned in public squares.

At his core, Stefan Zweig is a pure humanist and citizen of the world, an anti-fascist who worshiped liberal values. In September 1928, Zweig visited the USSR and wrote very restrained memoirs about this trip. Having seen the unprecedented enthusiasm of the masses in the country, he at the same time could not communicate directly with ordinary people(he, like any foreigner, was carefully watched). Zweig especially noted the situation of Soviet intellectuals who found themselves in “difficult conditions of existence” and found themselves “in a tighter framework of spatial and spiritual freedom.”

Zweig put it mildly, but he understood everything, and his guesses were soon confirmed when many Soviet writers fell under the steamroller of repression.

In one of the letters to Romain Rolland, a great admirer Soviet Russia, Zweig wrote: “So, in your Russia Zinoviev, Kamenev, veterans of the revolution, the first comrades Lenin shot like mad dogs - repeats what Calvin did when he sent Servetus to the stake because of a difference in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. Like Hitler like Robespierre : ideological differences are called “conspiracy”; Wasn’t applying the link enough?”

What kind of person was Stefan Zweig? Perman Kesten in the essay “Stefan Zweig, my friend” wrote: “He was the darling of fate. And he died as a philosopher. In his last letter to the world, he once again stated what his goal was. He wanted to build new life" His main joy was intellectual work. And he considered personal freedom to be the highest good... He was an original, complex person, interesting, curious and cunning. Thoughtful and sentimental. Always ready to help and cold, mocking and full of contradictions. Comedian and hard worker, always excited and full of psychological subtleties. Sentimental like a woman and easy on pleasure like a boy. He was talkative and true friend. His success was inevitable. He was a real treasure himself literary stories. In fact, he was a very modest person who perceived himself and the whole world too tragically...”

For many others, Zweig was simple and without special psychological nuances. “He is rich and successful. He is fate’s favorite” - this is a common opinion about the writer. But not all rich people are generous and compassionate. And this is exactly what Zweig was, who always helped his colleagues, even paying some of them a monthly rent. He literally saved the lives of many. In Vienna, he gathered young poets around him, listened, gave advice and treated them to fashionable cafes “Grinsteidl” and “Beethoven”. Zweig did not spend much on himself, avoided luxury, and did not even buy a car. During the day he liked to communicate with friends and acquaintances, and to work at night, when nothing interfered.

. Biography of Zweig
. Suicide in a hotel room
. Zweig's aphorisms
. The Last European
. Biographies of writers
. Austrian writers
. Sagittarius (by zodiac sign)
. Who was born in the Year of the Snake

Years of life: from 11/28/1881 to 02/22/1942

Austrian writer, critic, biographer. Known primarily as a master of short stories and fictionalized biographies.

Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna into the family of Moritz Zweig, a wealthy owner of a textile factory; the writer's mother came from a family of bankers. Little is known about Zweig’s childhood and adolescence; he himself did not like to talk about this topic, emphasizing that his childhood was ordinary for a Jewish boy. In 1900, Zweig graduated from high school and entered the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Already during his studies, he published his first collection of poems, “Silver Strings” (Silberne Saiten, 1901), at his own expense. Zweig took the risk of sending the book to Rilke, and he in return sent him a book of his poems, and so a friendship began between them that lasted until Rilke’s death in 1926. Zweig graduated from the University of Vienna in 1905 and received his doctorate with the work "The Philosophy of Hippolyte Taine".

After graduating from university, Zweig went to London and Paris (1905), then traveled to Italy and Spain (1906), visited India, Indochina, the USA, Cuba, Panama (1912). Recent years During the First World War he lived in Switzerland (1917-1918). During the war, Zweig served in the archives of the Ministry of Defense and very quickly became imbued with the anti-war sentiments of his friend Romain Rolland, whom he called in his essay “the conscience of Europe.” The short stories “Amok” (1922), “Confusion of Feelings” (1927), “Humanity’s Finest Hours” (1927) brought Zweig first European and then world fame. In addition to short stories, Zweig’s biographical works are also becoming popular, especially “The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam” (1934) and “Mary Stuart” (1935).

With the Nazis coming to power, Zweig, as a Jew by nationality, found it impossible to remain in Austria and in 1935 he emigrated to London. Then the writer wanders between Latin America and the United States, eventually settling in the small Brazilian city of Petropolis. Stefan Zweig was very sensitive to the very fact of the outbreak of World War II and the successes of the Nazis. The experiences were aggravated by the fact that Zweig found himself cut off from friends and practically deprived of communication. Deeply depressed and despairing over the expected collapse of Europe and Hitler's victory, Stefan Zweig committed suicide in 1942 by taking a lethal dose of sleeping pills. His second wife also passed away with him.

Erich Maria Remarque wrote about Zweig’s suicide in his novel “Shadows in Paradise”: “If on that evening in Brazil when Stefan Zweig and his wife committed suicide, they could have poured out their souls to someone, at least over the phone, their misfortunes, it probably wouldn't have happened. But Zweig found himself in a foreign land among strangers.”

Bibliography

Fiction
Die Liebe der Erika Ewald (1904)
(1913)
(1922)
(1922)
Angst (1925)
(1925)
The Invisible Collection (1926)
Der Fluchtling (1927)
(1927)
(1927)
(1939) novel
Chess novella (1942)
(1982) unfinished, published posthumously

Biographical writings
Emile Verhaeren (1910)
(1920)
Romain Rolland. Der Mann und das Werk (1921)
(1925)
Sternstunden der Menschheit (1927)
(1928)
(1929)
(Healing by Spirit) (1932)
(1932)

German Stefan Zweig - Stefan Zweig

Austrian writer, playwright and journalist

Brief biography

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

Having received his education at the gymnasium, Stefan became a student at the University of Vienna in 1900, where he studied German studies and novels in depth at the Faculty of Philology. While still a student, his debut poetry collection “Silver Strings” was published. The aspiring writer sent his book to Rilke, under the influence of whose creative style it was written, and the consequence of this act was their friendship, interrupted only by the death of the second. During these same years, literary critical activity also began: Berlin and Vienna 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 a period of active travel in Zweig’s life. 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, and 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 articles, plays, and short stories of an anti-war orientation. He called Rolland himself “the conscience of Europe.” During these same years, he created a number of essays, the main characters of which were M. Proust, T. Mann, M. Gorky and others. Throughout 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 under the title “World Builders” ( Balzac , Fyodor Dostoevsky , Nietzsche, Stendhal, etc.). At the same time, S. Zweig was engaged in short stories, and works of this particular genre turned him into popular writer not only in our country and on the continent, but throughout the world. His short stories were built according to his own model, which distinguished Zweig's creative style from other works of this genre. Biographical works also enjoyed considerable success. This was especially true of “Triumph and Tragedy,” written in 1934. Erasmus of Rotterdam” and “Mary Stuart” published in 1935. The writer tried his hand at the novel genre only twice, because he understood that his calling was short stories, and attempts to write a large-scale canvas turned into failure. From his pen came only “Impatience of the Heart” and the unfinished “Frenzy of Transfiguration,” which was published four decades after the author’s death.

The last period of Zweig’s life was associated with a constant change of residence. Being a Jew, he could not remain living in Austria after the Nazis came to power. In 1935, the writer moved to London, but did not feel completely safe in the capital of Great Britain, so he left the continent and in 1940 found himself in Latin America. In 1941, he temporarily moved to the United States, but then returned to Brazil, where he settled in the not very large city of Petropolis.

Literary activity continues, Zweig publishes literary criticism, essay, collection of speeches, memoirs, works of art, however state of mind very far from calm. In his imagination, he painted a picture of the victory of Hitler’s troops and the death of Europe, and this led the writer to despair, he plunged into severe depression. Being in another part of the world, he did not have the opportunity to communicate with friends, he experienced acute feeling loneliness, although he lived in Petropolis with his wife. On February 22, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a huge dose of sleeping pills and voluntarily died.

Biography from Wikipedia

(German: Stefan Zweig - Stefan Zweig; November 28, 1881 – February 22, 1942) was an Austrian writer, playwright and journalist. Author of numerous novels, plays and fictionalized biographies.

He was friends with such famous people as Emile Verhaeren, Romain Rolland, France Maserel, Auguste Rodin, Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Hermann Hesse, H.G. Wells, Paul Valéry , Maxim Gorky, Richard Strauss, Bertolt Brecht.

Stefan was born in Vienna into a wealthy Jewish family. Father, Moritz Zweig (1845-1926), owned a textile factory. Mother, Ida Brettauer (1854-1938), came from a family of Jewish bankers. Little is known about the childhood and adolescence of the future writer: he himself spoke about it rather sparingly, emphasizing that at the beginning of his life everything was exactly the same as that of other European intellectuals of the turn of the century. After graduating from high school in 1900, Zweig entered the University of Vienna, where he studied philosophy and received his doctorate in 1904.

Already during his studies, he published his first collection of poems at his own expense (“Silberne Saiten”, 1901). The poems were written under the influence of Hofmannsthal, as well as Rilke, to whom Zweig risked sending his collection. Rilke sent his book in response. Thus began a friendship that lasted until Rilke’s death in 1926.

After graduating from the University of Vienna, Zweig went to London and Paris (1905), then traveled to Italy and Spain (1906), visited India, Indochina, the USA, Cuba, Panama (1912). During the last years of the First World War he lived in Switzerland (1917-1918), and after the war he settled near Salzburg.

In 1920, Zweig married Friederike Maria von Winternitz. They divorced in 1938. In 1939, Zweig married his new secretary, Charlotte 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. Feeling severely disappointed and depressed, on February 22, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a lethal dose of barbiturates and were found dead in their home, holding hands.

Zweig's house in Brazil was later turned into a museum and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig. In 1981, for the 100th anniversary of the writer, it was published postage stamp Austria.

Novels by Stefan Zweig. Novels and biographies

Zweig's short stories - “Amok” (Der Amokläufer, 1922), “Confusion of Feelings” (Verwirrung der Gefühle, 1927), “Mendel the Bookseller” (1929), “The Chess Novelle” (Schachnovelle, finished in 1941), as well as the cycle historical novels " Finest Hours humanity" (Sternstunden der Menschheit, 1927) - made the author's name popular throughout the world. The short stories amaze with their drama, captivate with unusual plots and make you reflect on the vicissitudes of human destinies. Zweig never tires of convincing how defenseless the human heart is, what feats, and sometimes crimes, passion pushes a person to.

Zweig created and developed in detail his own model of the short story, different from the works of generally recognized masters of the short genre. The events of most of his stories take place during travels, sometimes exciting, sometimes tiring, and sometimes truly dangerous. Everything that happens to the heroes awaits them along the way, during short stops or short breaks from the road. Dramas play out in a matter of hours, but these are always the main moments of life, when personality is tested and the ability to self-sacrifice is tested. The core of each Zweig story is a monologue that the hero utters in a state of passion.

Zweig's short stories are a kind of summary of novels. But when he tried to develop a separate event into a spatial narrative, his novels turned into drawn-out, wordy short stories. Therefore, novels from modern life Zweig generally did not succeed. He understood this and rarely turned to the novel genre. These are “Impatience of the Heart” (Ungeduld des Herzens, 1938) and “Frenzy of Transfiguration” (Rausch der Verwandlung) - an unfinished novel, first published in German forty years after the author’s death in 1982 (in Russian translation “Christina Hoflener ", 1985).

Zweig often wrote at the intersection of document and art, creating fascinating biographies of Magellan, Mary Stuart, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Joseph Fouché, and Balzac (1940).

IN historical novels it is customary to speculate historical fact the power of creative imagination. Where documents were lacking, the artist’s imagination began to work. Zweig, on the contrary, always masterfully worked with documents, discovering a psychological background in any letter or memoir of an eyewitness.

"Mary Stuart" (1935), "The 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 “Maria Stuart” (Maria Stuart, 1935) as a novelized biography. The Scottish and English queens have never seen each other. That's what Elizabeth wished. But between them, for a quarter of a century, there was intense correspondence, outwardly correct, but full of hidden jabs and caustic insults. The letters form the basis of the book. Zweig also used the testimony of friends and enemies of both queens to render an impartial verdict on both.

Having completed the life story of the beheaded queen, Zweig indulges in final thoughts: “Morals and politics have their own different paths. Events are assessed differently depending on whether we judge them from the point of view of humanity or from the point of view of political advantages.” For the writer in the early 30s. the conflict between morality and politics is no longer speculative, but quite tangible in nature, affecting him personally.

The hero of the book “The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam” (Triumph und Tragik des Erasmus von Rotterdam, 1934) is especially close to Zweig. He was impressed that Erasmus considered himself a citizen of the world. Erasmus refused the most prestigious positions in the church and secular fields. Alien to vain passions and vanity, he used all his efforts to achieve independence. With his books, he conquered the era, because he was able to say a clarifying word on all the painful problems of his time.

Erasmus condemned fanatics and scholastics, bribe-takers and ignoramuses. But he especially hated those who incited discord between people. However, as a result of monstrous religious discord, Germany, and after it the whole of Europe, were stained with blood.

According to Zweig's concept, the tragedy of Erasmus is that he failed to prevent these massacres. Zweig believed for a long time that the first world war- a tragic misunderstanding that it will remain the last war in the world. He believed that, together with Romain Rolland and Henri Barbusse, together with German anti-fascist writers, he would be able to prevent a new world massacre. But in those days when he was working on a book about Erasmus, the Nazis raided his house. This was the first alarm.

Recent years. "Yesterday's World"

Zweig was very upset about the impending European catastrophe. This is why his final memoir, “Yesterday’s World,” is so elegiac: the old world disappeared, and in the present world he felt like a stranger everywhere. His last years were years of wandering. He flees Salzburg, choosing London as his temporary residence (1935). But even in England he did not feel protected. He went to Latin America (1940), then moved to the USA (1941), but soon decided to settle in the small Brazilian city of Petropolis.

On February 22, 1942, Zweig committed suicide with his wife, taking a large dose of sleeping pills.

Erich Maria Remarque wrote about this tragic episode in the novel “Shadows in Paradise”: “If that evening in Brazil, when Stefan Zweig and his wife committed suicide, they could have poured out their souls to someone, at least over the phone, their misfortunes , perhaps, would not have happened. But Zweig found himself in a foreign land among strangers.”

Stefan Zweig and the USSR

Zweig fell in love with Russian literature during his high school years, and then carefully read Russian classics while studying at the Universities of Vienna and Berlin. When in the late 20s. In the Soviet Union, a collection of Zweig's works began to appear, he, by his own admission, was happy. The preface to this twelve-volume edition of Zweig’s works was written by Maxim Gorky: “Stephan Zweig is a rare and happy combination of the talent of a deep thinker with the talent of a first-class artist.” He especially highly appreciated Zweig's novelistic skill, his amazing ability to openly and at the same time most tactfully talk about a person's most intimate experiences.

Zweig came to the Soviet Union in 1928 for celebrations marking the centenary of the birth of Leo Tolstoy. Met with Konstantin Fedin, Vladimir Lidin and others. Zweig for many years was the most popular and published Austrian writer in the USSR. Later his attitude towards Soviet Union became critical. On September 28, 1936, Zweig wrote to Romain Rolland: “... in your Russia, Zinoviev, Kamenev, veterans of the Revolution, Lenin’s first comrades-in-arms were shot like rabid dogs... The technique is always the same as that of Hitler, like that of Robespierre: ideological differences are called “conspiracy.” This led to a cooling between Zweig and Rolland.

Heritage

In 2006, a private charitable organization "Casa Stefan Zweig" was created, with the ultimate goal of creating a Stefan Zweig Museum in Petropolis - in the house where he and his wife lived recent months and passed away.

Materials from the book “ Foreign writers. Biobibliographic Dictionary" (Moscow, "Enlightenment" (" Educational literature"), 1997)

Selected bibliography

Poetry collections

"Silver Strings" (1901)
"Early Wreaths" (1906)

Dramas, tragedies

"House by the Sea" (tragedy, 1912)
"Jeremiah" ( Jeremias, 1918, dramatic chronicle)

Cycles

"First experiences: 4 short stories from the land of childhood (At dusk, The Governess, The Burning Secret, Summer novella) (Erstes Erlebnis.Vier Geschichten aus Kinderland, 1911)
"Three Masters: dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky" ( Drei Meister: Dickens, Balzac, Dostoyevsky, 1919)
“The fight against madness: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche” ( Der Kampf mit dem Dämon: Hölderlin, Kleist, Nietzsche, 1925)
“Three singers of their lives: Casanova, Stendhal, Tolstoy” ( Drei Dichter ihres Lebens, 1928)
"Psyche and Healing: Mesmer, Becker-Eddy, Freud" (1931)

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)
"The Invisible Collection" (1926)
"Confusion of feelings" ( Verwirrung der Gefühle, 1927)
"Twenty-four hours in the life of a woman" (1927)
“Star Hours of Humanity” (in the first Russian translation - Fatal Moments) (cycle of short stories, 1927)
"Mendel the Bookseller" (1929)
"Chess Novella" (1942)
"The Burning Secret" (Brennendes Geheimnis, 1911)
"At Twilight"
"Woman and Nature"
"One Heart's Sunset"
"Fantastic Night"
"Street in the Moonlight"
"Summer Novella"
"The Last Holiday"
"Fear"
"Leporella"
"Irreversible moment"
"Stolen Manuscripts"
"The Governess" (Die Gouvernante, 1911)
"Compulsion"
"An Incident on Lake Geneva"
"Secret Byron »
“An unexpected acquaintance with a new profession”
"Arturo Toscanini"
"Christine" (Rausch der Verwandlung, 1982)
"Clarissa" (unfinished)

Legends

"The Legend of the Twin Sisters"
"Lyon Legend"
"The Legend of the Third Dove"
"The Eyes of the Eternal Brother" (1922)

Novels

"Impatience of the Heart" ( Ungeduld des Herzens, 1938)
"Frenzy of Transfiguration" ( Rausch der Verwandlung, 1982, in Russian. lane (1985) - "Christine Hoflener")

Fictionalized biographies, biographies

"France Maserel" ( Frans Masereel, 1923; with Arthur Holicher)
"Marie Antoinette: a portrait of an ordinary character" ( Marie Antoinette, 1932)
"The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam" (1934)
"Mary Stuart" ( Maria Stuart, 1935)
"Conscience Against Violence: Castellio versus Calvin" (1936)
"Magellan's Feat" ("Magellan. Man and His Deeds") (1938)
"Balzac" ( Balzac, 1946, published posthumously)
“Amerigo. The Tale of a Historical Mistake"
"Joseph Fouche. Portrait of a politician"

Autobiography

"Yesterday's World: Memoirs of a European" ( Die Welt von gestern, 1943, published posthumously)

Stefan Zweig is an Austrian writer who became 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 factory. Zweig did not talk about his childhood and adolescence, speaking about the typicality of this period of life for representatives of his environment.

In the 20-30s. Zweig continues to write actively. During 1920-1928. biographies of famous people are published, united under the title “Builders of the World” (Balzac, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Stendhal, etc.). At the same time, S. Zweig worked on short stories, and 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 Zweig's creative style from other works of this genre. Biographical works also enjoyed considerable success. This was especially true of “The Triumph and Tragedy of Erasmus of Rotterdam” written in 1934 and “Mary Stuart” published in 1935. The writer tried his hand at the novel genre only twice, because he understood that his calling was short stories, and attempts to write a large-scale canvas turned into failure. From his pen came only “Impatience of the Heart” and the unfinished “Frenzy of Transfiguration,” which was published four decades after the author’s death.

Literary activity continues, Zweig publishes literary criticism, essays, a collection of speeches, memoirs, works of art, but his state of mind is very far from calm. In his imagination, he painted a picture of the victory of Hitler’s troops and the death of Europe, and this led the writer to despair, he plunged into severe depression. Being in another part of the world, he did not have the opportunity to communicate with friends, and experienced an acute feeling of loneliness, although he lived in Petropolis with his wife. On February 22, 1942, Zweig and his wife took a huge dose of sleeping pills and voluntarily died.

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