Stefan Zweig is one of the writers often mentioned as someone who should have been awarded with The Nobel Prize for Literature, but never was. He was a Jewish Austrian born in Vienna in 1881 and died in Pétropolis, Brazil in 1942. In the 1920s and 1930s he was one of the most popular and translated writers in the world. His autobiography The World from Yesterday: Memories of a European in which he bears witness of what his age has gone through, is one of the most important books on pre-war Europe. Other much loved books by Zweig are Chess Story, Beware of Pity and Letter from an Unknown Woman.

The German director Maria Schrader made the documentary Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe (Vor Der Morgenröte) in 2016. It drew my attention to Zweig and to the historical period his work is about. The film covers Zweig’s years in exile in Brazil. In 1934 Zweig left Vienna after Hitler took power in Germany and his books were banned. He lived for a couple of years in London, moved to New York and ended up in Brazil in 1941. There he struggled with ever growing feelings of loneliness and despair, ending his life in 1942 together with his second wife. His despair about the future of Europe and his dedication to and love for its culture have restored interest in him in our time of growing pressure on Europe and its union. Schrader’s documentary is an excellent entry into the emotional heaviness on Zweig of seeing the place where he truly belongs being destroyed causing in him an eroding sense of place in the world.

Many of Zweig’s novels and stories have been adapted for film or have been the source of inspiration for filmmakers. Among the ones I’ve seen, I would like to make three recommendations:

• Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) by Max Ophüls
  Arguably one of the most moving stories of doomed love in literature, the setting in Vienna in 1900 and the themes of a respectable outside life and guilt, shame and uncontrollable passion at the inside make it very much into a Zweig story.

• La Paura (The Fear) by Roberto Rossellini (1954)
  In this film adaptation of Zweig’s novel Angst once again we meet the familiar Zweig themes. Irene is the respectable wife of a prominent scientist, who has a ‘civilised’ affair. When she gets blackmailed by the ex-girlfriend of her lover, fear, shame and rage drive her to the edge.
• The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) by Wes Anderson
  Inspired by Zweig’s novels Beware of Pity and The World from Yesterday this film is set in the wartorn years of 20th century Europe. It is a story within a story, about a writer twenty years back in time who tells about moods and events twenty year earlier. It is full of nostalgia about a life and a world lost in Vienna after World War I. And once again the themes of outer respectability and of much darker forces at work at the inside.

Rinus, Nov 2021

*image posted under fair use of copyright material in recommendation of the film