How must Stefan and Lotte Zweig have felt during the five months they spent in the narrow and rather humid bungalow at Rua Gonçalves Dias 34, fron September 1941 to February 1942? Click to watch a reenactment based on letters written by the couple to their relatives and to Zweig’s first wife and see rare images of Petrópolis in the 1940’s.

Antonio Augusto Mariante Furtado plunged into the world and life of Stefan Zweig. See the result (click).

Two composers, on opera.The genesis of the opera Stefan and Lotte in Paradise was in May 2010, when Brazilian composer Marcos Lucas visited his colleague Alan Williams in Salford University, UK. The story of Stefan Zweig was already well known to Marcos, as his wife’s family came from Petropolis, where Zweig spent the last 9 months of his life, in the house at Rua Gonçalves Dias. Gradually, the idea of creating jointly a piece of music theatre about Zweig’s Brazilian exile became reality. Click to read more.

Kept in a plastic sheath at Israel’s National Library, a manuscript recalls the life of a writer who, after watching the European culture he worshiped devour itself in World War II, killed himself in exile exactly 70 years ago: on the 70th anniversary of his death (Feb. 23rd 2012) the National Library of Israel published online letters by Stefan Zweig including his suicide letter. The documents that can be found on the library’s homepage include correspondence Zweig held with famous authors as Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.

Declaracao

“Before leaving the life of my own will and with a sound mind, I am impelled to carry out the duty: thank Brazil, this wonderful country which got me, as well as in my work, a rest so friendly and so hospitable. Every day I learned to love this country more, and I would not have asked to rebuild my life in any other place after the world of my own language sank and was lost to me and my spiritual homeland, Europe, destroyed itself.
But to start everything anew after a man’s 60th year requires special powers, and my own power has been expended after years of wandering homeless. I thus prefer to end my life at the right time, upright, as a man for whom cultural work has always been his purest happiness and personal freedom – the most precious of possessions on this earth.
I send greetings to all of my friends: May they live to see the dawn after this long night. I, who am most impatient, go before them."


Stefan Zweig
Petrópolis, 22. II. 1942

On Friday 17th February the Argentinean newspaper La Nación published a long article about the 70 years since Stefan Zweig’s death, as well as the dramatic letter bidding farewell to the Chilean poet (and Nobel Prize winner) Gabriela Mistral, sent on 3/3/42 to the editor of the literary supplement of the same newspaper, Eduardo Mallea (click to read).

In the middle of this year in which we recall the 70th anniversary of Stefan Zweig’s death, his last home on Rua Gonçalves Dias 34, in Petrópolis, will open its doors. The inauguration should take place in July. As well as the museum destined to preserve the life and message of the great humanist, the house, restored over the last few years, will house the Memorial to Exile, an archive about hundreds of writers, artists, musicians, scientists, professors, advertising professionals and photographers who took refuge in Brazil from 1933-1945. Under the command of historian Fábio Koifman we have put together a virtual archive of refugees to stood out in a field of Brazilian art and culture. Choose a name at our site (click on the work list) and sponsor a chair in our auditorium, where your name will forever be associated to one of the builders of the new Brazil. Send an e-mail to contato@casastefanzweig.org for more details.

Stefan Zweig was born on 28th November 1881 in Vienna. Click to read a report (soon to be translated into English) about the place where the celebrated author spent the last months before putting an end to his life.

The reform works at the house where Lotte and Stefan Zweig lived from September 1941 to February 1942 are advancing. The forecast is that the future Casa Stefan Zweig museum can open its doors in March 2012. Click to read the article published in the newspaper Tribuna de Petrópolis (Portuguese only)