Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (29 page)

One might have expected (and Friderike might reasonably have hoped) that the new husband would hurry straight off to the station and catch the next train back to Salzburg in order to celebrate the memorable event, if only in the bosom of his immediate family. But not so—Stefan informed his new wife that train travel was suspended, preventing his immediate return, so unfortunately he would not be coming home straightaway, and she would have to be patient for a couple of days longer. She replied in a letter that began with the eminently reasonable question: “So how did you spend your wedding night, my dear?” She dwelt only briefly on her own feelings:

Steffi, it occurs to me that perhaps I should have written a bridal letter to your parents. But I cannot do it, as you must surely see. As things are, I don’t feel that anything has changed. And that’s because you have weaned me off my natural sentimentality. If it were operating normally, I would write you a letter that you could frame. I have a dim notion of what I would say to you—but as I say, I can’t manage it, and my prayers, my darling, I can still pray when you are with me.

Friderike quickly abandoned the attempt to describe her feelings at this time. Instead she devoted the rest of the letter to various administrative matters, for she was just then attempting to sort out Stefan’s papers that had arrived from Vienna. But she could not resist a little dig:

I’m having a lot of trouble filing the letters to women from the time when I thought there wasn’t room for much else apart from me, while on the other hand there are letters there that would make you look a real Don Juan in the eyes of the respectable Frau M. [Anna Meingast] So you couldn’t possibly give her the correspondence to look through. You’ve clearly forgotten yourself what some of these letters are like, and how impossible so many of them are. But I’ll get it all sorted out in time.
¹⁸

Before signing off the letter with “Kisses from Mumu”, she mentioned an autograph manuscript that Thomas Mann had sent as a gift for Stefan’s collection—coincidentally on their wedding day. On a recent visit to Mann’s home in Munich the translator Alexander Eliasberg had spoken of Zweig’s passion for collecting, and Thomas Mann had not been at all averse to the idea of immortalising himself alongside famous figures in his colleague’s collection by sending him the manuscript of his novella
Die Hungernden
. Zweig was naturally thrilled to receive this free gift, and it suited him admirably to have precious items such as this sent to him unsolicited and free of charge, so that the collection effectively grew by itself. As soon as he got back to Salzburg he sent a reply to Munich, and shortly afterwards Thomas Mann noted in his diary the receipt of the “respectful letter” from Salzburg.
¹⁹

Today the name of Stefan Zweig is closely associated with Salzburg, yet the strength of his own attachment to the city remains open to question. In the early days of his new residency he clearly made an effort to contribute to the local cultural life. At the beginning of July 1920 he writes in a letter: “We have recently founded a Literary Society here in Salzburg, which organises lectures and theatre performances and has some very special things planned”,
²⁰
but the project enjoyed few notable successes during the time of his involvement. Friderike on the other hand made an active effort to engage with the life of the city and make new contacts. In her memoirs she tells of the establishment of a so-called ‘People’s University’, in which she and Erwin Rieger taught classes; here too Stefan Zweig’s own involvement was only a passing phase.

Initially Zweig may have had sound practical reasons for holding back from an overly time-consuming participation in local cultural life. He was keen to use every available hour to work on new book projects. His biography of Romain Rolland appeared in 1921, and the year before that he had brought out the book on the French poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore that he had started before the war. In parallel with this Zweig was working on a major project that he hoped to undertake in collaboration with Insel Verlag, which had been the subject of negotiations between himself and Anton Kippenberg for some considerable time—a series to be called
Bibliotheca mundi
. The plan was to publish works of world literature, not in translation but in the original language, in editions produced to the usual Insel standards—a truly international publishing project. Zweig had high expectations of the enterprise, and had little doubt that the volumes in the series would sell well; there were restrictions on the importation of foreign
books at that time, so there was every reason to think they had identified a gap in the market that they could fill. Kippenberg agreed to the project, but to everyone’s disappointment—like the earlier Austrian Library edited by Hofmannsthal—it was destined never to be realised in the form originally envisaged.

During the planning phase Zweig not only declared himself very willing to collaborate as an editor on the project, but also offered suggestions for the choice of texts and the publication schedule for the volumes in the series. In parallel with
Bibliotheca mundi
Insel also launched two other new series—
Pandora
for shorter foreign-language texts, and
Libri librorum
for longer works of fiction. Zweig had already drawn up plans for the publicity campaign—a letter introducing the series would be circulated to all booksellers, timed to coincide with advertisements in the major newspapers. His idea was to launch the series with Spinoza’s
Ethica
, followed by Charles Baudelaire’s
Les Fleurs du mal
, then works by Alfred de Musset and Stendhal. Long letters were devoted to discussion of the literary content and format of the series, as well as to printing issues and the choice of editors. One problem arose over the sourcing of the typefaces for a volume containing Hebrew texts.

In parallel with this major new project Zweig had also resumed work on the edition of Verlaine’s works that he had planned in 1914 and then put to one side. For the poetry volumes he had already received translations from Dehmel, Rilke and other contributors. But it was not until the summer of 1922 that the volume containing the adaptations was finally complete. The long interruption had led to all kinds of complications; first of all the old contacts had to be re-established, and all the existing paperwork reassembled. After having to correct an error at the last minute, Zweig wrote apologetically to his publishers: “This mistake has only occurred [because] all my correspondence that was put together eight years ago had become disorganised through two changes of location and the small matter of a world war. As you know, I am normally very precise and meticulous about such things.”
²¹

Zweig’s relations with Insel Verlag were closer now than they had ever been, and this is reflected in the more relaxed tone of his correspondence with his publishers. Instead of addressing his letters formally “Dear Sirs”, he often adopted an affably conversational tone now when writing to his editor Fritz Adolf Hünich and also to Anton Kippenberg himself. When he felt that he had been waiting long enough for a reply to a query about a
planned new volume in the Insel-Bücherei series, Zweig chased the matter up in the following terms: “Hopefully your silence will not force me to go to the competition around the corner, Philipp Reclam. I am really keen to have this novella
Die Augen des ewigen Bruders
published as soon as possible in a cheap edition because it stands alongside the new volume of novellas, and the contrast between them means that each one serves as a foil to the other.”
²²
His threat—if he really meant it—had the desired effect, and the story
Die Augen des ewigen Bruders
appeared in the Insel-Bücherei series in parallel with the substantial novella collection
Amok
. His track record of success, not least in this particular Insel series, was impressive—by 1919 nearly 30,000 copies of
Brennendes Geheimnis
had been sold, while sales of Verhaeren’s
Hymnen an das Leben
in Zweig’s translation were already nudging 40,000 copies at that time.

In fact his books were now so popular that Zweig and his publishers were faced with the problem of preventing their appearance in pirated editions. In a particularly blatant instance of copyright infringement, publishers Scott & Seltzer in New York had brought out a book by a certain Stephan Branch under the title
The Burning Secret
, which turned out to be an unauthorised translation of his novella
Brennendes Geheimnis
published under a directly anglicised form of the author’s own name. Zweig formally denounced the rogue publication in the journal
Das literarische Echo,
though there was little prospect, if he sued, that an American court would rule in his favour. But it was important to him to issue a public statement making it clear that he had not officially sanctioned the use of his name in English translation in order to disguise his origins and thus escape the attentions of any anti-German tendencies abroad. His
Jeremias
did appear in the USA in 1922 under the title
Jeremiah
, and under the author’s real name; the publisher was Thomas Seltzer, one of the partners running the very enterprise in question, Scott & Seltzer. So evidently they had come to some arrangement in the matter of ‘Stephan Branch’.

To secure an income Friderike took on some translation work from the French, including works by Émile Verhaeren. His
Fünf Erzählungen
were published by Insel in her translation in 1921, followed two years later by
Der seltsame Handwerker und andere Erzählungen
. Both volumes were illustrated with numerous woodcuts by their friend Frans Masereel, who visited them in Salzburg from time to time.

In the summer of 1920 Friderike wrote in a letter to Victor Fleischer that she was well, that she had very few worries with her daughters, but that
she could not say the same for her “boy”, who sometimes “lost his temper” even in front of other people, which she could not always endure with equanimity. On top of that were the “unwelcome attentions of intellectual women ready for the plucking”, who were keen to try out their wiles on Stefan (the “boy” in question), so that she is “already pretty disgusted” with her own sex. In a postscript to the same letter Stefan Zweig sought to make the situation a little clearer—Salzburg was like a city under siege, for on the very day when the letter was dispatched the first Salzburg Festival had been inaugurated with a performance of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s
Jedermann
in the production by Max Reinhardt. People were “swarming like flies”, wrote Zweig, “and my work has gone out of the window. And I’ve got so much to do!” Picking up on Friderike’s remarks, he noted drily: “Fritzi is very jealous, although my indiscretions can be counted on the fingers of one hand [ … ]. But that is her weak point—and mine, unfortunately.” He also added a note at the head of the letter: “Fritzi has opened this letter again
secretly
, to see what I have written.”
²³

When Stefan travelled to Vienna that year, he was pleased to see his old friends again, but in a letter to Friderike he revealed his shock at the state he found his parents in.

It is deeply sad to see these old people, for whom everything is a complication and a torment, who have much unhappiness (Papa is quite alone, he has lost all his friends, can’t adapt to the modern world, and Mama with her deafness) and are too set in their ways to make things easier for themselves. Instead of recognising that they are entering their declining years, so it doesn’t make a scrap of difference whether the boarding house in Bad Gastein charges 180 kronen a day or 170, they get worked up every day just thinking about the figures. And the funniest part is that each of these two people, incapacitated by old age and frailty, thinks that the other one is the problem. Mama is the least understanding of the two, of course.

Alfred too is constantly worried and fearful, and likewise looks set to become a real odd customer. He never goes to the theatre, never goes to parties, his whole life is just business and women, without any real pleasures. His complete lack of interest in all things intellectual is quite painful to see.
²⁴

A few months later Zweig was on a reading tour in Germany—to “sing for his supper”, as he himself liked to put it—and he had left home in the best of spirits. Victor Fleischer, whom he had met in Frankfurt, reported
back to Friderike on Stefan’s reading there: “He sang beautifully, and didn’t get thrashed.”
²⁵
The next day, however, when he was in Stuttgart, Stefan received an express letter from Alfred with the news that their father had collapsed in the street. As so often, Alfred had immediately become overwrought, and his agitation threatened to infect his brother. Friderike sought to find out what was happening and updated Stefan with the latest news, doing all she could to reassure him: “Mama says it was just ‘a little passing stroke’, as she put it. But I don’t think it was, since Marie [the parlour maid] told me that Papa was his usual self, and was talking normally and walking about, but just felt a little weak. [ … ] You know how it is with the elderly and infirm, my dear—you have to go through this kind of thing for years.”
²⁶
Nevertheless Stefan tried to cancel the remaining dates on his tour so that he could get back home as soon as possible. His worries about his parents now weighed increasingly on his mind, not least because it was on his conscience that he had left Alfred to shoulder this burden more or less alone.