Stefan Zweig, Ugandan Zionist? – Liberation

The collection “Cosmopolite” brings together the largely unpublished correspondence of the Austrian novelist around “Jewishness”.

It happens that, in addition to general correspondence, the exchanges of a writer with a single correspondent appear – for example, for Flaubert, those with George Sand, Turgenev and Maupassant. It is rarer to publish letters from a writer to various correspondents but around the same theme – and this is what happens with Cosmopolitanby Stefan Zweig. The collection brings together his largely unpublished correspondence around “Jewishness”although the editor Stefan Litt admits that, in some published letters, “the theme was hidden between the lines, without the concepts of “Jews”, “Jewishness” being formulated”. The subject is not significant since Stefan Litt specifies: “From 1901 to 1904, nor from 1906 to 1913, one cannot identify any relevant writings by Zweig related to Jewishness.” He also notes that in no letter is there the slightest wish “on the occasion of a Jewish holiday”.

Suicide in Brazil after fleeing Europe

“More than any other writer of his time, Stefan Zweig represents the quintessence of the European Jewish intellectual,” writes Denis Charbit in his afterword to the French edition. Born on November 28, 1881 in Vienna and committed suicide on February 22, 1942 in Brazil after first fleeing Austria and then Europe,