Alberto Dines in 2010
© José Cruz/ABr
Brazilian author, journalist and noted Zweig biographer Alberto Dines has died at age 86 in São Paolo, Brazil.
Former editor-in-chief for the Brazilian newspaper Jornal do Brasil, Dines was also the first President of Casa Stefan Zweig – a museum in Petrópolis, Brazil dedicated to the memory of Zweig and located in the house where the Austrian author spent his final years.
Watch the new video celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stefan Zweig Collection at Fredonia. The video features interviews with Associate Professor of English Birger Vanwesenbeeck, Instructor of Piano/Collaborative Piano Anne Kissel, Archivist Kim Taylor, and several Fredonia students who have worked directly with some of the documents in the collection.
As part of the 2017-2018 Convocation Series at Fredonia, “Transformations”, please join the Archives & Special Collections of Reed Library and the Department of English in celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Stefan Zweig Collection at Reed Library, as well as marking 75 years since the death of the archives’ namesake, the Austrian author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942). The acknowledgment of these momentous dates will include three separate events in October and November 2017, all of which lend variant meanings to the theme of transformation by focusing on questions of exile, race, national identity/nationalism, and loss of cultural heritage as seen through the perspective of a Zweig scholar, a documentary filmmaker, and the archival documents that comprise the Stefan Zweig Collection.
All events are free and open to the public and will be held on the campus of The State University of New York at Fredonia in Fredonia, NY, USA. For directions and lodging information, please visit the Fredonia website.
Zweig at Fredonia: 50 Years of Transformation, exhibit opening reception
25 October 2017, 3:30 p.m.
Daniel A. Reed Library Exhibit Area
The State University of New York at Fredonia
Postcard, Stefan Zweig to Robert Rie, 28 March 1938.
Robert Rie Papers, MSS 24, B10 F39
Archives & Special Collections, Fredonia
The first event will be an opening reception for the exhibit, Zweig at Fredonia: 50 Years of Transformation. Drawing upon correspondence and other archival documents found in both the Stefan Zweig Collection and the Robert Rie Papers, the exhibit will, in part, trace the relationship between Zweig and Dr. Robert Rie, former Professor of German at Fredonia, without whose initial vision and actions Fredonia would not possess the Zweig archive it presently holds. Rie, like Zweig, was an exile who emigrated from Austria to America in 1938 and who, also like Zweig, wrote on issues of race and nationalism. The exhibit will highlight documents from both the Zweig and Rie Collections related to such “transformative” events as the Holocaust, World War I, and the experiences of both men as exiles. However, the focus of the exhibit will be the evolution of the Zweig archive at Fredonia from the earliest accession in 1967 of correspondence between Zweig and his first wife Friderike to later acquisitions from surviving heirs, comprising the bulk of the collection: over 6000 items of correspondence written to Zweig alongside manuscript drafts of many of his works, personal documents, photographs and other materials.
The exhibit will run through 19 November 2017.
Unpublished Racism: Stefan Zweig on Blackness in America, lecture
25 October 2017, 4:30 p.m.
Science Center 105
The State University of New York at Fredonia
Immediately following the exhibit opening, the second event of the evening is the Mary Louise White Lecture featuring Zweig scholar and Professor of German Studies at Hobart and William Smith College Dr. Ashwin Manthripragada.
Dr. Ashwin Manthripragada
Dr. Manthripragada’s lecture will focus on Zweig’s little-known writings on race in America as well as his hitherto largely unknown interactions with black leaders during a 1930s lecture tour in the American South. For his groundbreaking study, Dr. Manthripragada draws in part on key transformative archival documents, including those discovered during a research visit to Fredonia’s Archives & Special Collections in the summer of 2016. The lecture will take place in the Science Center on the campus of Fredonia immediately following the exhibit opening reception.
Read more of Dr. Manthripragada’s scholarship on Zweig, “Stefan Zweig’s Fear of Postcolonialism“, which addresses Zweig’s struggle with the “end of Empire” (TRANSIT, vol. 11, no. 1).
The Destruction of Memory, film screening and post-screening panel
13 November 2017, 5:30 p.m.
McEwen Hall 209
The State University of New York at Fredonia
The final event will be the screening of the recent documentary The Destruction of Memory and a post-screening panel discussion with the film’s director, Tim Slade.
Based on Robert Bevan’s book of the same name (The Destruction of Memory: Architecture at War), the film documents the erasure in this past century of cultural touchstones worldwide, and by default the collective memory of nations and society as a whole, whether through the vehicle of war or other premeditated acts of violence and destruction. It highlights various locations in the Middle East (Palmyra, Syria and the Iraqi National Museum); Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina (whose mosques were destroyed during the Bosnian War); and, most pertinent to Zweig’s time, Dresden, Germany and the devastating effects of the World War II bombings. Though at times geographically and temporally disparate from the world Zweig occupied, the themes of the film, nonetheless, resonate with Zweig’s own personal loss of culture, particularly in the attention paid to the effects of war on European Jewish patrimony.
Filmmaker Tim Slade
Read an interview with Tim Slade about the making of the film on the Studio International website.
The Zweig at Fredonia: 50 Years of Transformation commemorative events are part of Fredonia’s 2017-2018 Convocation Series which is sponsored by the President’s Office. Additional support is provided by The English Department’s Mary Louise White Fund, and the Carnahan-Jackson/Reed Library Endowment Fund.
Questions may be directed to Kim Taylor (taylokr@fredonia.edu), Archivist, or Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck (birger.vanwesenbeeck@fredonia.edu), Associate Professor of English.
Website: http://fredonia.libguides.com/archives/zweig
Blog: https://zweigatfredonia.com/
Twitter: @FREDarchives #zweigatfredonia2017
Pardaad Chamsaz, a twice visiting researcher to the Stefan Zweig Collection at Fredonia, is a Zweig scholar currently completing his PhD via an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnerships Programme between the University of Bristol and the British Library. His research examines not only the persona of Zweig as collector (the British Library holds an extensive collection of both literary and musical manuscripts once owned by Zweig) but also Zweig’s fascination with the creative impetus in general. Chamsaz’s recent article, “Spectres of Balzac: Stefan Zweig’s Collection of Manuscripts and his Rewriting of the Unfinished Balzac” (Working Papers in the Humanities, vol. 11, 2017), sheds significant light on these matters using Zweig’s posthumously published work about the French author to illustrate Zweig’s own process. Fredonia’s collection, known for its vast (over 6,000 items) array of correspondence to Zweig from eminent writers, artists, musicians and others of his time, also contains drafts, notes and other materials for many of Zweig’s works. The holdings pertinent to Balzac prove critical fodder for such studies as Chamsaz’s.
In addition to his own research, Chamsaz is directly involved in numerous activities at the British Library commemorating the 75th anniversary of Zweig’s death, including an exhibit (“Stefan Zweig: the Magic of Manuscripts”, now through 11 June 2017), a full day of events on Monday, 20 March 2017 (“Stefan Zweig: European, Humanist, Collector” and “Music and Poetry from the Zweig Collection”), and, not least, writing the introduction for a forthcoming catalog highlighting Zweig’s literary manuscript collection held by the British Library. An interview with Chamsaz and Susan Reed, Lead Curator for Germanic Collections at the British Library, in which they discuss Zweig’s continuing relevance in contemporary society using the backdrop of Simon McBurney’s much lauded stage adaptation of Zweig’s Beware of Pity can be heard on Complicite’s YouTube channel here.
Fragment from Das Geheimnis des künstlerischen Schaffens
Stefan Zweig Collection, Reed Library Archives & Special Collections
State University of New York at Fredonia (H225, 06)
(l to r) Verena Höller, graduate student assistant (LaS); Lina Maria Zangerl, Archivist (LaS);
Oliver Matuschek, Zweig biographer
© Kim Taylor
(l to r): Oliver Matuschek
and Kim Taylor, Archivist (A&SC)
© Literaturarchiv Salzburg
A recent visit to the Literaturarchiv Salzburg (LaS) by Reed Library Archivist Kim Taylor served to facilitate a new collaboration between the LaS and the Archives & Special Collections at Fredonia (A&SC) focused on the respective Stefan Zweig collections held by both institutions. The project, intended to support the virtual “re-joining” of Zweig’s literary estate via a digital platform, will enable enhanced scholarly engagement with materials that once existed alongside each other and are now separated by an ocean. These materials – such as Zweig’s eulogy for Sigmund Freud, of which the A&SC holds the first page, the LaS the remaining five – will eventually find a surrogate home in the digital world as work begins on both sides of the Atlantic.
The project is the vision of noted Zweig biographer Oliver Matuschek, who has been working with both collections for many years and possesses an intimate knowledge of their contents. It will constitute a joint effort by Mr. Matuschek, Lina Maria Zangerl (Archivist, LaS) and Kim Taylor (Archivist, A&SC). Their work will benefit not only the growing number of Zweig scholars worldwide, but the individual missions of the two repositories as well.
Fragment of Zweig’s eulogy for Freud
(Stefan Zweig Collection, H206, Reed Library A&SC, Fredonia)
Ms. Taylor’s visit was supported in part by a research fellowship program jointly administered by both the City of Salzburg Cultural Department and the LaS, with the encouragement of Dr. Manfred Mittermayer, LaS Director, and Randolph Gadikian, Reed Library Director. Initial launch of the platform is projected for the first part of 2018.
View of Salzburg – Kapuzinerberg (where Zweig lived) is on the left
© Kim Taylor
The National Library of Israel has recently acquired twelve years of correspondence sent by Stefan Zweig to then-aspiring author Hans Rosenkranz between 1921 and 1933. Comprising 26 letters and six postcards, the materials elucidate Zweig’s role (repeated many times during his life) as mentor to the younger Rosenkranz (1905-1956). Their contents, as described by Archivist Dr. Stefan Litt, further, and rather uncharacteristically, reveal Zweig’s sentiments on Judaism, alongside his belief in the importance of acquiring language skills. The accession represents a significant complement to the Library’s already robust Zweig collection, as well as to Zweig scholarship overall.
More details can be found here.
Stefan Zweig, ca. 1935. Photographer unknown. Stefan Zweig Collection, Reed Library Archives & Special Collections.
In February 1935, Austrian Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), commonly regarded as the most translated German language author of his time, wrote to German composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949), “One day, your letters, your decisions, will belong to all mankind.” (Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, A confidential matter: the letters of Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig, 1935-1935, trans. Max Knight. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, 67.) Having recently completed the libretto for Strauss’s opera “Die schweigsame Frau”, this solemn admonition was a response to Strauss’s suggestion that, due to political developments, the two might do well to continue their artistic collaborations in secret. Aware of the impending jeopardy in which his association with Zweig – a Jewish writer with a now-dangerously high profile – was sure to place him, Strauss …
Continuing the recent surge of interest in the Austrian Jewish author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) since Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel, including the premiere of an Austrian biopic selected as that country’s Oscar foreign-language submission (Vor der Morgenröte/Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe), and a host of new critical studies worldwide, Zweig returns to Fredonia this Fall!
Dates and times are now set for the upcoming celebration “Zweig at Fredonia 2016”. Exploring Zweig’s lifelong fascination with music, particularly his collaborative relationship with Richard Strauss (1864-1949) as librettist for Strauss’s opera Die schweigsame Frau, events will include a panel discussion, an exhibit featuring manuscript correspondence between the respective literary and musical giants, a musical performance, and the 4th Biennial Stefan Zweig Lecture.
Please see details below and join us in October!
Zweig at Fredonia 2016
Dates: 3-5 October 2016
Location: The campus of The State University of New York at Fredonia, Fredonia, NY
Contacts: Birger Vanwesenbeeck (vanweseb@fredonia.edu), Kim Taylor (taylokr@fredonia.edu)
3 October 2016
Daniel A. Reed Library Garden Area
3:30 pm, Zweig and Strauss: A Continuing Conversation
Faculty panel led by musicologist Dr. Matthew Werley (Oxford) with Fredonia School of Music Faculty Dr. Bernd Gottinger and Dr. Anne Kissel, among others. Dr. Werley is currently a Gerda Henkel Stiftung Research Fellow at the renowned Richard Strauss Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany and is also co-editing (with Dr. Jeffrey B. Berlin) a forthcoming critical edition of newly translated correspondence between Strauss and Zweig.
5:00 pm, Zweig and Strauss: Artistic Collaboration in a Time of War
Opening of manuscript exhibit featuring correspondence between Strauss and Zweig from Fredonia’s prized Stefan Zweig Collection. The exhibit is co-curated by Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck, Associate Professor of English, and Kim Taylor, Coordinator of Archives & Special Collections, with assistance from current English undergraduate and graduate students at Fredonia. Exhibit runs 3-27 October 2016.
4 October 2016
Rosch Recital Hall
8:00 pm, Selected Songs and Arias of Richard Strauss
Fredonia School of Music faculty Dr. Anne Kissel and Dr. Angela Haas will be joined by School of Music students in a performance of songs and arias of Richard Strauss, including selections from Die schweigsame Frau (libretto by Stefan Zweig), composed during Strauss’s tenure as head of the Reichsmusikkammer (Reich Music Chamber) under the Nazi regime, and excerpts from the Strauss-Zweig correspondence.
5 October 2016
Rosch Recital Hall
6:00 pm, 4th Biennial Stefan Zweig Lecture
Keynote lecture by award-winning author George Prochnik. Prochnik is well known for his biographical treatment of Stefan Zweig, The Impossible Exile: Stefan Zweig at the End of the World (2014), from which filmmaker Wes Anderson loosely drew inspiration for his film The Grand Budapest Hotel. In 2014 NPR’s Robert Siegel interviewed Prochnik, discussing both Anderson’s film and the author’s then forthcoming book (listen here). Prochnik’s other works include In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise (2010) and Putnam Camp: Sigmund Freud, James Jackson Putnam and the Purpose of American Psychology (2006).
All events are free and open to the public.
For directions and lodging information, please go here.
Website: http://fredonia.libguides.com/archives/zweig
Blog: https://zweigatfredonia.com/
Twitter: @FREDarchives
Zweig at Fredonia 2016 is sponsored with the generous support of Reed Library, the Carnahan-Jackson Endowment Fund, The English Department’s Mary Louise White Fund, and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Stefan Zweig, ca. 1938
The Stefan Zweig Collection
Daniel A. Reed Library
Archives & Special Collections
The State University of New York at Fredonia
Please join the Archives & Special Collections of Reed Library, the Department of English and the School of Music at The State University of New York at Fredonia in a celebration of Stefan Zweig and music at the upcoming Zweig at Fredonia 2016 schedule of events to be held October 3-5, 2016 on the campus of Fredonia in Fredonia, NY: “Zweig and Strauss: Artistic Collaboration in a Time of War”.
Matthew Werley
Highlighting Zweig’s lifelong fascination with music, this three-day event will commence October 3 on Fredonia’s campus with a panel discussion investigating the collaborative relationship between Zweig and German composer Richard Strauss. The panel will be led by noted historical musicologist and Zweig scholar Dr. Matthew Werley. Currently a Research Fellow at the renowned Richard-Strauss-Institut in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Dr. Werley is co-editing, together with Dr. Jeffrey B. Berlin, a forthcoming critical edition of newly translated correspondence between Strauss and Zweig.
A post-panel reception at Fredonia’s Reed Library on the evening of October 3 will open an exhibition featuring select items from Fredonia’s renowned Stefan Zweig Collection illustrating Zweig’s personal connections to contemporary composers (Strauss, Bruno Walter, Arturo Toscanini, among others) in both creative and intellectual terms. The exhibit will also attempt to portray Zweig’s position in relation to the increasingly hostile environment of Nazi Germany within which artistic and musical expression struggled to survive, including a somewhat cryptic telegram sent from Strauss to Zweig on the 1935 premiere in Dresden of Strauss’ opera Die schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman) for which Zweig himself famously wrote the libretto.
On the evening of October 4, Fredonia School of Music faculty and students will perform excerpts from Die schweigsame Frau, which Strauss composed during his tenure as head of the Reichsmusikkammer under the Nazi regime. Strauss’ decision to commission Zweig as his librettist for the opera would ultimately harbinger his resignation from the post under acute Nazi pressure.
George Prochnik
© Elisabeth Prochnik
Finally, on October 5, Fredonia welcomes the return of renowned author and Zweig biographer George Prochnik (The Impossible Exile, Other Press, 2014) as he delivers the keynote 4th Biennial Stefan Zweig Lecture in Fredonia’s Rosch Recital Hall. Prochnik previously participated in the 2009 Zweig Symposium at Fredonia where he presented his paper “The Netherworld of Yesterday: An Imaginary Conversation between Stefan Zweig and Hannah Arendt” (listen to the podcast here). A brief conversation between Prochnik and Paul Holdengräber at the New York Public Library can be viewed here.
Please subscribe to the Zweig at Fredonia blog or follow us on twitter (@FREDArchives) for regular updates on the Zweig at Fredonia 2016 events. Questions may be directed to Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck (Birger.Vanwesenbeeck@fredonia.edu), Associate Professor of English at Fredonia, or Kim Taylor (taylokr@fredonia.edu), Coordinator of Archives & Special Collections at Fredonia.
From the Zweig Collection at Fredonia
Letter from Stefan Zweig to Richard Strauss (13 December 1934) in which he expresses his concerns about a German premiere of Die schweigsame Frau.
German director Maria Schrader’s new film on Stefan Zweig’s life as an exile in Brazil, “Vor der Morgenröte” (“Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe”), recently premiered in Leipzig and is continuing its run in theaters across Germany. In an interview with Deutsche Welle’s Jochen Kürten, Schrader comments on the correlation between Zweig’s own feelings of displacement as an émigré with that of the current refugee crisis in Europe and the resonance such themes hold for contemporary viewers. The film, featuring Austrian actor Josef Hader in the role of Zweig, further explores Zweig’s persistent refusal to take a political stance as events unfolded in wartime Europe. The topic is one of continued debate and interest among Zweig scholars today, and Schrader’s film offers a welcome reexamination of the internal conflict Zweig so obviously experienced during the final years of his life.
© X Verleih
Another brief trailer from DW, along with clips of interviews with Schrader and Hader can be viewed here.
Zweig at Fredonia 