Zweig, Stefan (shtĕf`än tsvīk), 1881–1942, Austrian biographer, poet, and novelist. Born in Vienna of a well-to-do Jewish family, he was part of the humanitarian, pan-European cultural circle that included Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss. Zweig's first works were poetry and a poetic drama, Jeremias (1917, tr. 1929), which expressed his passionately antiwar feelings. Under National Socialism he went into exile in 1934, emigrating first to England. In 1941 he and his second wife went to Brazil, where they committed suicide. Zweig's best-known works of fiction are Ungeduld des Herzens (1938, tr. Beware of Pity, 1939) and Schachnovelle (1944, tr. The Royal Game, 1944), but his most outstanding accomplishments were his many biographies, which were based on psychological interpretation. The subjects of these include Marie Antoinette, Erasmus, Mary Queen of Scots, Magellan, Balzac, and Verlaine. Zweig's historical perception is best evident in Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928, tr. The Tide of Fortune, 1940).

Bibliography

See his autobiography, The World of Yesterday (1943); biographies by D. A. Prater (1972) and E. Allday (1972).

Zweig, Stefan

(born Nov. 28, 1881, Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire—died Feb. 22, 1942, Petrópolis, near Rio de Janeiro, Braz.) Austrian writer. He was deeply influenced by Sigmund Freud, whose theories on psychology informed Zweig's analyses of historical figures and his subtle portrayal of fictional characters. His essays include studies of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in Three Masters (1920); and Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche, in Master Builders (1925). He achieved popularity with The Tide of Fortune (1928), five historical portraits in miniature. He also wrote biographies, poetry, short stories, dramas, and a novel. Driven into exile by the Nazis in 1934, Zweig and his second wife went to England and then Brazil, where, lonely and disillusioned, they committed suicide.