Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (31 page)

Letter to Insel Verlag 6th November 1922

I
N A COLLECTOR’S EDITION
published in 1920 under the pseudonym Peregrin Steinhövel, which later went through several reprints, the writer Franz Blei had devoted a section to a curious creature dubbed the ‘Steffzweig’. Under the mock baroque title
Bestiarium literaricum, or: An Exact Account of the Beasts of German Literary Life, compiled by Dr Peregrin Steinhövel. Printed for animal lovers in Munich
, he described this creature in the following terms:

The Steffzweig—

Mention must be made of the Steffzweig in this Bestiarium, since there are a few who still regard it as a living being. However, the Steffzweig is an artificial creation, constructed for a writers’ convention in Vienna from feathers, skin, hair etc taken from all manner of European animals. It is, so to speak, a Volapük creature. A belief in its organic existence now survives only in far-distant lands and in certain Genevan circles. There are some who claim to have seen the Steffzweig under a little glass dome in a house at Kurze Strasse 7 in Leipzig.
²

While the artificial language Volapük, developed at the end of the nineteenth century and designed, like Esperanto, to facilitate international communication, was still a familiar concept to people at the time of Blei’s publication, the reference to the habitation of the peculiar “Volapük creature” is likely to have been understood only by the initiated even in those days—Kurze Strasse 7 was the Leipzig office address of Insel Verlag director Anton Kippenberg.

Harmless fun of this kind could not divert Zweig from his commitment to the cause of peace and understanding, even if the thought of ever winning the world over to his way of thinking struck many outsiders as utopian or hopelessly idealistic. In March 1922 he travelled to Paris with the writer
and journalist Berta Zuckerkandl (known in the Zweig household simply by the honorific ‘Die Hofrätin’—her husband held the rank of privy councillor), on a mission to promote the cause of European intellectual unity at a congress. Zweig did not attend as his country’s official representative, however, but simply as a freelance writer. He often talked about organising a similar event in Austria, but nothing ever came of the idea.

Zweig arranged for Thomas Mann to be invited to Salzburg by the Literary Society in 1923 to give a reading from his works, and during his visit Mann stayed as Zweig’s guest on the Kapuzinerberg. Zweig later noted that they had got on well together, without seeing completely eye to eye; but at least there had been no misunderstanding between them. Much as he esteemed Thomas Mann and his work, the two men were never going to be close friends. So it comes as no surprise when Katia Mann, in her “unwritten memoirs”, notes of her husband’s colleagues: “Thomas Mann liked René Schickele and enjoyed reading him. Bruno Frank was his friend, and he respected his talent. He also had a great personal liking for Werfel and thought highly of him, Stefan Zweig not so much.”
³

Another guest was expected in the summer of that year—Romain Rolland stayed with the Zweigs for two weeks and was royally received. Stefan travelled by train to meet him at Bischofshofen, and Friderike was at the station in Salzburg to welcome them in the evening; meanwhile Suse had hung lanterns along the garden path up to the house, along which the host and his guest solemnly processed. For the duration of Rolland’s visit Zweig even gave up his own study and bedroom for the use of his guest. The two men talked at length about Europe and its future prospects, which were not looking very hopeful. In Germany there was growing resentment and opposition to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, and the call for a government that would act decisively in the national interest was voiced more and more openly in many quarters. Aside from these depressing topics of conversation, Zweig will undoubtedly have taken the time to show his esteemed friend the most valuable items in his manuscript collection. As a music specialist who had studied Beethoven’s life and work at length, Rolland was an acknowledged connoisseur of such material, and he was certainly one of the few people in Zweig’s circle who showed any real understanding of his passion for collecting.

Meanwhile Zweig hardly went a day without writing something. In the detailed biography of Balzac he wrote later, one chapter was called ‘The Novel Factory Horace St-Aubin & Co.’, an allusion to Balzac’s tireless and
sustained output. It would have been no great exaggeration to refer to his own enterprise in Salzburg during the 1920s as
The Book Factory Stefan Zweig & Co
. (which indeed happened indirectly, insofar as contemporaries coined the punning name “Erwerbszweig” [“line of business”] for him, in a jibe at the best-selling author’s earnings).

In order to work as efficiently as possible, Zweig needed a highly organised office operation to deal with the day-to-day business, including a voluminous correspondence that continued unabated. Each day the most important tasks for the day were listed on slips of paper stamped at the top with the reminder “To be done today!” Correspondence, filing, making fair copies, proof corrections—all these things had to be dealt with. Then there was the administration of foreign rights, for translations of Zweig’s works now accounted for a significant proportion of his earnings. In order to keep track of everything a large-format ledger was acquired, into which the details of the various publishing contracts were entered. From these entries it was then possible to see exactly when and to whom permission had been granted for which translation or edition, and for which country or language.

Following the success of
Drei Meister
, the book of essays on the novelists Balzac, Dickens and Dostoevsky, Zweig planned a study of three tormented and driven souls. The ‘triad’ of essays, with all their contradictions and similarities, had proved a successful format, and the same basic pattern would be followed for future publications. The subjects for the next project had already been chosen: Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist and Friedrich Nietzsche. Zweig’s editor at Insel, Fritz Adolf Hünich, soon received a letter with a shopping list of items he needed for his reading and research. As part of his research Zweig also planned a visit to “Hölderlin country” in Württemberg.

For the essays he also made a close study of the manuscripts he had managed to acquire for his collection in recent years. And he was able to clarify many points of detail for his work with the Kleist scholar Georg Minde-Pouet. With his customary generosity Zweig offered him the use of his growing collection of manuscript catalogues for his research; it was a matter of regret to him that far too few outsiders thought to consult this extensive collection of material, which was the most complete of its kind to be found anywhere.

For each of his biographies he amassed a large amount of study material. Having selected what he needed from this, Zweig committed his thoughts
to paper in a lengthy first draft, which he then proceeded to edit down in several stages until he had a manuscript that was ready to go to press. The essay on Dostoevsky came out at a little over one hundred pages in the printed version, but allegedly this had been cut down from an initial rough draft of approximately one thousand pages. A laborious undertaking, requiring great concentration at every stage of the editing and proofreading process. Certainly Zweig had moved on a long way from his early working practice, when, as he himself admitted, he did not even bother to check the spelling and punctuation of the sentences he had dashed off. Zweig was doubtless persuaded to change his earlier bad habits in part by his close study of the manuscript pages in his collection, which showed only too clearly, with their deletions, insertions and revisions, that even the great masters had sometimes had to struggle long and hard to find the right turn of phrase. Instead of rushing his works into print, he too now acquired the habit of reworking and revising his texts with painstaking care. Unfortunately little survives of the drafts he worked on during the Salzburg years, so that it is not really possible to follow the process in detail by studying specific examples.

Over time Zweig had evolved a taut and effective work schedule for the production of his books. The winter months were spent in assembling the material, the spring was used for working up the early drafts, so that the final draft could be completed during the summer and the manuscript then sent off to the publisher as soon as possible. This allowed the typesetting and proofreading to be completed in good time by the autumn, in order to get the printed and bound copies into the bookshops in time to catch the Christmas trade.

In the meantime Zweig had commandeered various places in the house and garden for his writing work. While an office had been set up for his secretary in the corridor leading to the library, Zweig increasingly liked to retreat to the small summer house in the garden in fine weather. Friderike often talked about wanting to create a special ambience for Stefan that she thought conducive to his work. But her attempts in this direction were not always successful. When he was away on his travels he struggled repeatedly with her reports on the post that had come in, which were usually vague and rambling, so that many matters could not be attended to in a timely fashion, leaving him with piles of letters to answer when he got home—the very thing he had sought to avoid. Friderike usually pointed the finger of blame for the office chaos at the secretary, with whose work
Zweig himself was very satisfied. He rarely had a word of criticism for Anna Meingast. One angry outburst over a careless slip she had made, documented in one of his letters to his publisher, remains very much the exception. On the occasion in question the page proofs of his new book had been sent to him very late in the day while he was away on his travels, and with the book about to go to press he discovered that some pages had ended up in the wrong chapters. He wrote to Insel in some agitation: “
It has been typeset all wrong. I had already put a note in the proofs, and hoped it would be put right in the page makeup
, please refer back to my corrected galleys and put it right immediately: otherwise it will be a
total disaster
. [ … ] The
one time
I go away and leave my secretary to deal with the second proofreading, this happens!”
⁴
In contrast to this rare outburst, Friderike was liberal with her catty comments, and in view of Stefan’s liking for Frau Meingast [literally “my guest”] she took to calling her “Deingast” [“your guest”] in her letters to him: “As you know, I cannot work with Deingast. She tries her best, but she is so scatterbrained. I keep my distance, because with her the work is only half as much fun, and often there’s twice as much of it. I try very hard to get past this hostility and appreciate her merits, but just the sight of her handwriting is enough to spoil the atmosphere that I am trying to create for you.”
⁵

Nonetheless the books continued to appear with pleasing regularity. In 1924, in a departure from the normal run of biographical studies and novellas, Insel Verlag brought out Zweig’s
Collected Poems
, which were largely drawn from earlier publications with relatively few more recent additions, since Zweig had effectively abandoned the writing of poetry in the meantime.

In the spring of 1924 he revived youthful memories (and no doubt youthful experiences) with a trip to Paris, which agreed with him immensely: “I am more enchanted than ever this time (for which my hotel is partly responsible)”, he wrote to Friderike, “though I have sentimental moments when I’m almost ashamed of the emotion I feel. You don’t know what it meant to me, the time I spent here before—it was my liberation from Vienna, just discovering what it was to be human.”
⁶
At the same time he enjoyed the rest from his everyday routine and the opportunity to stroll around and browse in bookshops and look through the wares of antiquarian booksellers: “My greatest pleasure in being here—
flâner dans les rues, bouquiner
—is not something I’m keen to sacrifice to meetings or other social obligations.”
⁷

During his stay in Paris Frans Masereel painted a portrait of Zweig, who was delighted with the results. Friderike on the other hand, who thought very highly of Masereel in general, reacted with dismay to the oil painting (now lost), which she only knew from a photograph at this stage:

I am very sorry to say that I don’t like it at all. [ … ] You look like an American whose mother lost her virtue in the Chinese quarter. Your dear slender hands are coarse and bony, like those of a butcher. No, I can’t go along with that. Thank heavens I wasn’t hoping for much anyway, so I’m not all that offended by it. But I pity posterity, that will not get to see you as I see you. Your ears! No, I really am quite angry. And so will your mother be, for certain. To turn you into an anaemic dandy staring off into space—it’s not what you expect from a friend! [ … ] No, no, no, no and no again!
⁸

Trips like this one to Paris were not always necessitated by business obligations, readings or attendances at first nights, but on the other hand they were rarely undertaken purely for rest and relaxation. Zweig frequently resorted to travel to escape from the streams of visitors who disrupted his life on the Kapuzinerberg and from the tedious routine of the office and the confinement of the town. On these occasions he seldom made elaborate preparations for his departure. He just upped and left, travelling light—so light that he more than once forgot to take important items with him.

Friderike’s mother died at Christmas 1923 in Vienna. During Stefan’s stay in Paris Friderike sought to distract herself from her grief by following up a major project that could only be carried out during his absence. In a reference to the inhospitable living conditions in their house during the winter months he had sent the dramatist Ernst Lissauer the following invitation in verse: