CASA STEFAN ZWEIG

about the house

stefan zweig

CONTACT

mail@casastefanzweig.org

caixa postal 50060
20.050-971
Rio de Janeiro/RJ - Brasil

Alberto Dines presents his new book on Zweig in Salzburg

Click to read the presentation held by Alberto Dines on bis book Stefan Zweig in the land of the future, which happened July 28th n Salzburg, Austria.

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Zweig and Ben Huebsch

This picture, which was sent to CASA STEFAN ZWEIG by Jeffrey B. Berlin, emeritus professor of comparative literature at Holy Family University, shows the Austrian writer with his American publisher Ben Huebsch of Viking Press.

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Zweig and his collections of autographed manuscripts

Click here to read an article by Stephen Maughan in the magazine Fine Books & Collections.

A memorial for Zweig

Correspondent Wolfgang Kunath writes on the future Zweig-museum in Petropolis (in German).

Lula pays tribute to Souza Dantas

In a speech to the Knesset last Monday (15/3), President Lula criticized Israel’s expansionist policies, and recalled: "I come from a country which received thousands of Jewish immigrants, persecuted in their homelands by ethnic, cultural and religious intolerance. Many were able to reach Brazil thanks to two humanist employees who are an honour to Brazil diplomacy: Dona Aracy, of the Hamburg Consulate, and ambassador Souza Dantas, from our Paris legation." Read more about Luiz Martins de Souza Dantas, the diplomat who for years was ostracized until his memory was recovered by historian Fabio Koifman, a CSZ team member.

President of the Festival of Salzburg visits Casa Stefan Zweig

The president of the Festival of Salzburg, Helga Rabl-Stadler, accompanied by the musical director Markus Hinterhäuser, went to Petrópolis on 5/3/2010 to visit the house where Stefan and Lotte Zweig lived. The novella Fear is being dramatized this year at the Landestheater in Salzburg as part of the celebrations for the traditional cultural festival’s 90th birthday. This year it runs from 25th July to 30th August (see programme).

New banner in Petropolis

A polemic writer - yesterday, today, forever

An article published in the London Review of
Books about the launch of Zweig's memoirs reveals
what fierce criticisms he provoked among his peers.

Zweig flies high in France

For months now, Zweig’s books have been heading the French bestseller lists. His previously untranslated book Journey into the Past has sold over 200,000 copies since its launch in October 2008 (half of these in the first two months alone). This peak in sales has encouraged numerous reprints of books by the writer and his biographies. So it is no rare sight to see people on the Paris metro engrossed in one of Zweig’s books. According to one critic, Zweig’s enduring success among the French is due to the fact that he carries out an “archeology of our souls”.

photo © Rafael Casé

The incredible story of Captain Américo dos Santos

Surprises from the internet: through the CASA STEFAN ZWEIG website, the Portuguese engineer Henrique Marques dos Santos discovered the book by Belgian writer Rosine de Dijn about her father, Captain Américo dos Santos. The Ship of Destiny tells how, during the whole of World War II, Américo dos Santos commanded the ship Serpa Pinto across the treacherous waters of the Atlantic, transporting both Jewish refugees and Nazis returning to fight among Hitler’s troops.

Click here to read the review by Marlen Eckl of the book, which is being translated into Portuguese by Marina and Kristina Michahelles and is due to be published in the second half of this year by Editora Record.

And click here to read the e-mail we received from the captain’s son..

Dr. Juljan Czapski dies

On 12th January, at the age of 84, a refugee of World War II died who became a famous doctor in the country which took him in: Dr. Juljan Czapski (or just “doctor”, as he was known). Born in Poland, he came to Brazil at the age of 14 and was the great pioneer of “group medicine”. Dr. Juljan also contributed to such varied fields as culture and the environment. According to his daughter, journalist Silvia Czapski, who is writing a book about him, “Dr. Juljan had even more plans and projects than I do. I’ve been amazed these past months by the number of people commenting on his integrity, his struggles and ideas, his realizations and battles for a more just world.” Read more about the saga of the Czapski family’s arrival in Brazil.

TV series: The Refugees in the Land of the Future

The fourth and last episode – The Refugees in the Land of the Future – in the special series marking the 70 years since the beginning of the Second World War made by Observatório da Imprensa on TV Brasil, was broadcast on 1st December, with interviews with exiles who came to Brazil and historians.
In the program’s introduction Alberto Dines spoke about the drama of Stefan Zweig, the most famous European refugee to seek shelter in Brazil during the war. Click for more details about the series and to see the various episodes.

New unpublished letters

How many letters did Stefan Zweig write during his lifetime? A selection of his general correspondence fills four heavy tomes, and the letters to his first wife is extensive. It comes as no surprise that a collection has surfaced of five unpublished letters addressed to an unknown cousin in Israel.

See comment by Alberto Dines and the news of the letters in the Haaretz newspaper.

Supplement dedicated entirely to Zweig

Brazil, land of the future still stirs up hearts and minds. The prestigious supplement Mais+ from the newspaper Folha de S.Paulo of October 181h is entirely dedicated to this book of the Austrian writer. Go to Stefan Zweig and Texts to look up the essays (in Portuguese language) by historians José Murilo de Carvalho and Ronaldo Vainfas, do anthropologist Hermano Vianna and sociologist Maria Alice Rezende de Carvalho, among others.

Video

The new video about the history of the CASA STEFAN ZWEIG initiative can be seen on line. Go back upwards at the green column on your right side and click.

Symposium in Fredonia

A symposium on Zweig and his transatlantic connections brought together sixteen European and American specialists during three days at the State University of New York in Fredonia. The historian and specialist in Exile Literature, Marlen Eckl, held a conference during the event and showed a video about CASA STEFAN ZWEIG. Marlen Eckl is the German translator of the biography Morte no Paraíso, by Alberto Dines.

At Fredonia Opera House, film-maker Sylvio Back screened his feature film Lost Zweig and talked about “The Unfathomable Gesture”. He also launched the bilingual edition (Portuguese and English) of the film’s screenplay (Imago, 2008). The University of Fredonia has the largest iconographic Zweig archive in the USA, which was opened in 1981, the centenary of the author’s birth.
Click to read two articles published by the local Observer.

Collection Izabela Kestler

It is with great sadness, and also deep gratitude, that CASA STEFAN ZWEIG announces the generous donation of the exile literature received by the family of the Germanist professor Izabela Kestler, tragically killed in June in the Air France plane crash. Our special thanks go to her husband Milton Correa Lopes Junior, her sister Izana, and her parents. With this gesture, they allow the precious collection of books, magazines, manuscripts, letters and tapes with original recordings of German speaking refugees in Brazil, to become accessible to researchers in this country and all over the world. The material is already being catalogued and will be part of the future archives of CASA STEFAN ZWEIG in Petrópolis. The team that is building the Memorial to Exile, under the coordination of historian Fabio Koifman, is now seeking sponsors in order to be able to digitalize the recordings and to organize the Izabela Kestler Fund. We pay our posthumous tribute to the researcher who, working tirelessly for over two decades, carried out such vital work for the memory of the history of exile in this country. Click to see a partial list of the titles being catalogued.

"A new world of visual stimuli"

Many readers have been writing us, telling how Zweig´s work influenced their lifes. The drawings by André Tavares (china ink, graphite and soft carbon - see below) are part of the series Confusion (Verwirrung der Gefühle). The source of Tavares' inspiration are Zweig's novels, his biography and the pictures of Lotte and Stefan in Brazil. "I've been working with the mountain landscape of Petropolis and spreculating about the Zwei's encounter with that rather magical nature - a new world of visual stimuli", writes Tavares, a professor for History of Art at the Federal University of São Paulo.

Desenhos de André Tavares:

Gallery of pictures

Click here to enter the gallery of photographs of the Zweig home in Petropolis, showing Stefan Zweig, his friends and relatives.

Stefan Zweig and his brother Alfred

Seventy years later, Morin revives the ideas of Zweig

Zweig and Hesse in Spain

The long correspondence between Stefan Zweig and Hermann Hesse, two pacifists and great Europeans, during more than three decades, and the memories of his first wife Friderike have just been published in Spain. Click to read the review (July 4th, 2009) in the literary supplement of El País.

Doctorate rehabilitated posthumously

Due to his Jewish origin, Stefan Zweig lost his "Dr. phil." in 1941, which he had gained in 1904 at the Vienna University with the dissertation The philosophy of Hyppolite Taine). It was only in 2003, 60 years after the end of Nazism, that the University of Vienna gave him the title back posthumously.

The Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938 is accessible as online data base since June 30, 2009
(http://gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at, english version: http://gedenkbuch.univie.ac.at/index.php?id=435&L=2).
It contains roughly 2,200 names and short biographies of victims who were persecuted, driven away and/or murdered - as jews and/or for political reasons, professors, lecturers and students. The project is a 'work in progress'. By a wide online linking of the data base the intention is to reach more persons concerned or their affiliates and ask them to complete the contained information.
More informations: gedenkbuch@univie.ac.at or by telephone +43-1/4277-41236. (Dr. Herbert Posch and Katharina Kniefacz,Department for Contemporary History | University of Vienna
'History and Philosophy of Science'
Forum 'History of the Vienna University in the 20th century'.

Journey into the Past.

The Pushkin Press of London, which is re-editing Zweig's works, informs us that the launching of the book Journey into the Past on 25th June at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London was a total success attracting packed houses. "On Thursday 25th of June Pushkin Press held the launch at the Austrian Cultural Forum in London, which was a great success and full house. The translator Anthea Bell gave a presentation, chaired by the writer Paul Bailey who provided a wonderful introduction published in this edition of Journey into the Past, Laura Hugo of Pushkin Press writes us.
Pushkin Press will also launch in November The World of Yesterday. In January 2010 it expects to launch Fear, both in translations by the prize-winning Anthea Bell.

The New Yorker: "What Are You Reading, Richard Brody?"

The magazine's cinephile and blogger follows Stefan Zweig to Europe between the wars and comments his autobiography The World of Yesterday.

Stefan Zweig, the secret superstar

Read the article by Julie Kavanagh in More Intelligent Life, a supplement of The Economist.

CSZ and German Language Day

CASA STEFAN ZWEIG took part in German Language Day in Petrópolis on 17th June, with a talk by Alberto Dines at the Imperial Museum. Organized by the Catholic University of Petrópolis, the aim of the event was to share aspects of the history, education and new perspectives of Austria and Germany, and was attended by the Austrian Consul, Peter Waas. Pictured, Alberto Dines and the director of the Imperial Museum of Petrópolis, historian Maurício Vicente Ferreira Júnior.

Photo: Jörg Trettler

Symposium in Fredonia

Click to enter the site of the symposium about Zweig, which will take place in October in Fredonia, NY. The CASA STEFAN ZWEIG initiative will also be presented.

Professor Izabela Kestler, 1959-2009, in memoriam

Deeply shocked by the tragic crash of Air France flight 447, the team at CASA STEFAN ZWEIG shares the grief felt by the family, friends, students and colleagues of professor Izabela Maria Furtado Kestler. Author of a fundamental work, Exile and Literature, São Paulo: Edusp, 2003 – Izabela Kestler enthusiastically supported CASA STEFAN ZWEIG right from the start, and was a member of the Archives and Research Commission.
Click to see the notice published by the German Society for Research about Exile.

New book presented in Berlin, Munich and Hamburg

Over a hundred people came to the Brazilian embassy in Berlin on 4th July, to hear about the project CASA STEFAN ZWEIG and the book Stefan Zweig in the Land of the Future, by Alberto Dines. The book was also presented in Munich and Hamburg. Below, photos of the author’s talk on 20th May before a varied audience at the Baukurs Jardim Botânico.

photos: Jörg Trettler

The "culture of hope" in Zweig

Read the text (in Portuguese, soon to be translated) by Alberto Dines, written for the closing session of the 21st National Forum, Rio de Janeiro, from 19th to 21st May 2009 at BNDES.

Jeffrey Berlin about Stefan Zweig in the Land of the Future

One of the greatest specialists in German exile literature, professor Jeffrey Berlin, has highlighted the diversity of new aspects raised by the book Stefan Zweig in the Land of the Future. Read the full e-mail sent to Alberto Dines.

Stefan Zweig schools around the world

Three schools – one in São Paulo, another in Petrópolis and the third in Endingen, southern Germany – have been named after the Austrian writer. CASA STEFAN ZWEIG will introduce them one by one, starting with the Stefan Zweig State School in São Paulo.

Magazine Littéraire

The May edition of Magazine Littéraire devotes its cover to Stefan Zweig and contains a 26-page dossier about the writer, with unpublished photos and an unpublished text about “The United States of Europe” (written in 1932).
Click for a summary of contents

Review in History Magazine

Read the review published in the Brazilian National Library’s History Magazine, July 2009

Press attention for new book about SZ

The literary supplement of Jornal do Brasil, Deutsche Welle online and journalist Luciano Trigo’s blog all highlighted the new book by Alberto Dines, Stefan Zweig in the Land of the Future. Click for more.

Click here to read:
Deutsche Welle
Jornal do Brasil
Máquina de escrever (Luciano Trigo's blog)

Consul Steinberger dies in Peru

Alberto Dines and consul Steinberger, April 2009. Photo: Jörg Trettler
The team at CASA STEFAN ZWEIG offers its condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of the Austrian consul Reinhold Steinberger, who passed away on 30th April in Ica, Peru. The consul general in Rio de Janeiro several years ago, Steinberger was an early enthusiast for the idea to reform the house where Stefan Zweig lived and died in Petrópolis. He always supported the initiative. He opened up his residence for the official launch of the CASA STEFAN ZWEIG project, in 2006. A week earlier, at the same house, in the presence of ambassador Hans-Peter Glanzer, he hosted the ceremony in which the president of CSZ, Alberto Dines, received the Austrian Order of Merit for Science and Arts. Steinberger died suddenly at the age of 55 in a car accident. His wife Jane Steinberger, who was accompanying him on the trip to see the Nazca lines, was trapped in the wreckage, but suffered only grazing. Reinhold Steinberger was buried a few days later in Austria. He is survived by his wife and two children.

SZ in the land of the future

"Utopia or myopia, political project or travel brochure – Brasil, a Land of the Future, by Stefan Zweig, has little consensus to this day. It is debatable, an open question. One thing is certain: rarely has a travel book managed to produce such a broad range of admirers."
This is the opening of Stefan Zweig in the Land of the Future – the biography of a book, by Alberto Dines, journalist, Zweig’s biographer and chairman of CSZ.

A telescope in the soul

Read the speech given by Alberto Dines upon accepting the Austrian Order of Merit of Science and Arts...

A bridge between “The World of Yesterday” and the Austria of today

...and read the speech by the Austrian ambassador, Hans-Peter Glanzer.

Salzburg-Petrópolis

In a message of congratulations, the director of the International Stefan Zweig Society, Hildemar Holl, shares his wish to strengthen ties between the new Stefan Zweig Center of Salzburg and CSZ.

Zweig’s transatlantic connections

A symposium from 1st to 3rd October at the University of Fredonia will discuss Zweig’s life and work, emphasizing his transatlantic connections. During the event, the film Lost Zweig by Sylvio Back will be shown.
Contact: Birger Vanwesenbeeck via e-mail vanweseb@fredonia.edu.
It will be possible to stay on after the symposium to research in the university’s Zweig archives, one of the world’s most comprehensive collections about the writer.

Postfräuleingeschichte among the best translations into English in 2008

A book by Stefan Zweig which was only published posthumously, Postfräuleingeschichte is in the list of best translations of 2008 chosen by the New York Review of Books: The Post-Office Girl, translated by Joel Rotenberg.

Serpa Pinto, the ship of destiny

Refugees of Nazi Germany coming from Lisbon to Brazil. Germans returning to fight alongside the Führer in the homeland. A book tells the fantastic saga of the passenger ship which spent the entire war crossing the Atlantic. The review is by researcher Dra. Marlen Eckl.

Rosine De Dijn narrates the adventurous story of the Portuguese luxury cruiser Serpa Pinto, highlighting the disasters and absurdities of World War II. In spring 1942, the Serpo Pinto brought German National Socialists living in Brazil and keen to fight for the "Führer" and fatherland back to Europe. At the same time, this ship became the last hope of escape for Jewish refugees.

In 1942 the Serpa Pinto plied the fateful Atlantic route Rio de Janeiro – Lisbon – New York. The passengers on the ship of Captain Americo Do Santos could hardly have been more different. On the way from South America to Lisbon, the Serpa Pinto would take German expats who had emigrated to Brazil during the years of inflation and economic crisis "back to the Reich", where they wanted to go to war for Hitler. The journey from Rio de Janeiro to Lisbon was a luxury cruise compared to the Atlantic crossing in the opposite direction. This time, the Serpa Pinto became the last hope, the final escape for hundreds of refugees leaving Europe via neutral Portugal.
The story of the Serpa Pinto shows – in a kind of micro cosmos – the dramas of the Second World War. On the one hand there was the fanaticism of National Socialism, which went to such extremes that people left the security of their homes in Brazil to set off for war-shaken Europe. On the other hand, however, there were people who had irrevocably lost their homes and roots and become refugees.

Visit the Stefan Zweig Center in Salzburg

Click to enter the site (in German) of the Stefan Zweig Center in Salzburg, Austria, where the writer lived from 1919 to 1934

Zweig in taz newspaper

The newspaper taz, published in Berlin with a daily print run of 45,000, has devoted a page to Stefan Zweig and to his house in Petrópolis.
Click to read the article (in German

Journey into the Past

Journey into the Past, the love story, has become a big seller in France, where 43 titles by Zweig are available in paperback, with a total of 4 million copies sold. The biggest seller continues to be The Royal Game, with 900,000 sales (it is regularly adopted in classrooms), followed by Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (530,000), Beware of Pity (350,000) and Amok (300,000). See a review about Zweig’s novella published in Le Figaro in December 2008.

Zweig-Segall Correspondence

The exhibition catalogue Navio de emigrantes (Ship of Emigrants) contains a facsimile of the correspondence between Stefan Zweig and Lasar Segall. Its price is R$60 and can be found in the lobby of the Lasar Segall Museum in São Paulo.

Marcel Reich-Ranicki about Zweig

In two articles published in the prestigious newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, the critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, known and feared for his sharp tongue, states that, in spite of a few literary “defects”, Zweig remains as popular as ever.

Symposium discusses exile

The search for new guidelines by intellectuals, writers and other artists, following the radical experience of exile, was the theme of a symposium by the North American Society for Exile Studies, held in October and organized by Professor Reinhard Andress of Saint Louis University (SLU). The germanist Marlen Eckl took part, alongside scientists from various parts of the USA, Germany, Austria, France and Croatia.

New sketch of the house in Petrópolis

The start of the reforms of the house in Petrópolis is approaching. Click to see the new sketches.

How did you discover Zweig?

How was your interest in Stefan Zweig awoken? See text by student Bruno Felipe Rothbarth Decker, aged 25, graduate of the German Language and Literature course at the Federal University of the State of Santa Catarina.

Stefan Zweig Center in Salzburg opens on 29th November

The future Stefan Zweig Center is being installed in Salzburg at Edmundsburg castle, high up on Mönchsberg, with a splendid view of the cathedral (photo), the castle and Kapuzinerberg. The building will also house the Center for European Studies of the University of Salzburg.

Zweig’s first press conference in Brazil, 1936

Read the press conference in which Stefan Zweig spoke about Marie Antoinette, Joseph Fouché and Europe under the Fascist threat, during his first visit to Rio de Janeiro in August 1936. It was published in the Jornal do Commercio on 26.08.1936. [ ... ]

Photos - Aufbau

CSZ has a vast collection of photographs of Stefan Zweig and his time. See two photos of Zweig published on the cover of the magazine Aufbau (v. VIII, nr. 9 New York, N. Y., Friday, 27the February 1942), kindly provided by Renate Seib of the German National Library.

CSZ forms partnership with University and School

Coordinated by CASA STEFAN ZWEIG, students of the Departments of Literature and Communications of Estácio de Sá University, of Petrópolis, will take part in projects at the Stefan Zweig Municipal School of Petrópolis...

Busts of Stefan Zweig

The oldest bust of Stefan Zweig is in Salvador, Bahia. It was unveiled in 1943 and is by the Italian sculptor Heitor Usai (photo). There are also busts of SZ in Paris and Salzburg...

Further donations of books and documents

Since May 2007, CSZ has been receiving donations of books and documents for the future archives of the museum in Petrópolis. This month, the collection received an important addition with donations by the Austrian ambassador Werner Brandstetter (leaflets about the relations between the two countries since the Empire); by Tobias Cepelowicz, Rio de Janeiro (Romain Rolland, by Stefan Zweig, 1st US edition, 1921, Thomas Seltzer, New York, original bindings) and two new box sets of books published by S. Fischer Verlag (1987), donated by Williams Verlag. Contact us if you have books by or about Zweig and his time and which you wish to donate...

Videos

See trailer and excerpts from films based on works by SZ: La confusion des sentiments, Schachnovelle and Letter from an Unknown Woman...

Stefan and Selma

Tribute to the young woman and ardent admirer, which the writer unfortunately never met, in an unpublished Portuguese translation...

Postcards

Choose a lovely postcard of Rio de Janeiro in the 30’s, when Zweig visited Brazil for the first time.

Welcome

Welcome to the world of yesterday, today. To the magnificent land of the future which has never managed to solve its present. To the gallery of world builders, defeated heroes and victorious antiheroes. To the commotion of feelings, to letters from strangers and friends. To stellar hours and to moments of misery from which we learn so many lessons.
Welcome to pacifism, although we are aware that the world is in a state of permanent war. To humanism and tolerance, in this world which is increasingly dominated by intolerance.
Welcome to Casa Stefan Zweig, to meet the man, the writer, his life, his work and his legion of friends – from yesterday and today – and to share his ideas and hopes.
Alberto Dines, chairman of Casa Stefan Zweig

CALENDAR

65 years of The royal game
[to see]

Documentário, 2009
Click to see a video (8 min.) about CASA STEFAN ZWEIG