Berlin exhibit borrows from library's Zweig archives

Fifteen objects from Reed Library’s Stefan Zweig Collection are part of an exhibit on the life of the renowned Austrian author Stefan Zweig currently showing at the German Historical Museum in Berlin. The exhibit,  "The Three Lives of Stefan Zweig,” opened March 8 and will run through May 12.

In the past few years Reed Library has had a number of requests for Stefan Zweig materials for exhibits in Europe. Usually scans are sent rather than originals, noted Gerda Morrissey, curator of the Zweig Collection at Reed Library.  "But since this Berlin exhibit is very special and prestigious with articles on loan from many sources (among them the British Library in London), Reed Library sent the original items," she said.  Ms. Morrissey will see the exhibit when she attends a meeting with Zweig scholars at the museum on April 16.

"The German Historical Museum made all the arrangements and covered the cost for insuring, packing and shipping the valuable objects from Fredonia," Ms. Morrissey said. The items were transported from Fredonia to Washington, D.C. by a special art shipper and from there to Berlin via Diplomatic Pouch of the Austrian Embassy.

The German Historical Museum (“Deutsches Historisches Museum”) is the foremost museum of German history and was established by the German government after reunification. It is housed in the famous Zeughaus, a Baroque-style building dating to 1730 that was built as a weapons arsenal and remained a symbol of German military strength as well as architectural significance until it was severely damaged by Allied bombs in World War II.

In an interesting coincidence, the Zweig exhibit is being shown in the modernistic addition to the Zeughaus which was designed by I. M. Pei, the same architect responsible for Reed Library's design on the Fredonia campus.

The Zweig Collection at Reed Library

Reed Library owns the largest Stefan Zweig Archive in North America. It contains correspondence, typescripts and manuscripts, family photos and documents, notebooks and other materials related to the renowned Austrian author. There is also an extensive collection of most of Zweig’s published works, biographies, short stories, essays, plays, poems and other writings as well as literature about the author. Zweig’s works were translated into over fifty languages of which the library has a good sampling.

The manuscript correspondence is the most important part of the Zweig Collection. It consists of over 6000 letters written to Zweig between 1901 and 1942 by many well known personalities from the world of literature and the arts. Among them are Martin Buber, Sergei Eisenstein, Albert Schweitzer, Alfred Einstein, James Joyce, Klaus Mann, Luigi Pirandello, Jules Romains, Joseph Roth, Richard Strauss, Bruno Walter and many others.

The collection also contains nearly 2000 manuscript letters that were exchanged between Stefan Zweig and his first wife Friderike (who also was a writer). Many scholars and Zweig devotees around the world use this unique collection for research and publication.