International symposium dedicated to acclaimed Modernist author Stefan Zweig

Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck, assistant professor of English at SUNY Fredonia, guides graduate students Lauren Kerzee and Don Boody in examining Stefan Zweig’s official "Certificate of Identity," one of many documents on display as part of a free exhibit the university is hosting about the internationally renowned author’s life. The international symposium on Stefan Zweig opens Thursday at 4 p.m. with a reception in the Japanese Garden area of Reed Library. Welcoming remarks will be delivered by SUNY Fredonia President Dennis Hefner, followed by a keynote address at 5 p.m. given by Matuschek Individual presentations by scholars will be delivered throughout the day on Friday and Saturday morning in room S104 of the Williams Center. A complete schedule for the symposium>>

Scholars from across the U.S. and throughout the world will assemble Thursday, Oct. 1, at SUNY Fredonia — the home of one of the world’s most significant collections of Stefan Zweig personal items and written materials. 

These researchers will take part in a three-day symposium devoted to the life and works of the prominent early 20^th-century Austrian-Jewish author. Highlights of the symposium — the first scholarly Zweig conference held in the U.S. in a quarter-century — include keynote addresses by Klaus Weissenberger, a professor of German studies at Rice University, and biographer Oliver Matuschek, author of “The Three Lives of Stefan Zweig.”

The symposium will also include an exhibition of numerous archival materials from the university’s internationally renowned Zweig collection, many of which will be on public display for the very first time.

The symposium presentations will address the following themes: Transatlantic Zweig; Zweig’s Connections; Zweig and Brazil; and Zweig and Politics.

The U.S. premiere of the Brazilian feature film, “Lost Zweig” (2002), will be shown Friday at 7 p.m. at the Fredonia Opera House in the village of Fredonia. Filmmaker Sylvio Back, its director, will be present at the event and answer questions from the audience following the screening.

In addition to the symposium, a semester-long exhibit, “The Life, Works & World of Stefan Zweig,” is now available for viewing at the Daniel Reed Library on the Fredonia campus. The exhibit presents an overview of Zweig’s life and works, as well as the significance he held during the European Modernism period of the 1920s and 1930s.

Zweig’s prolific literary career and extraordinary life offer unique insight into the artistic and political turbulence of the first half of the 20^th century, explained Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck, symposium co-chair and SUNY Fredonia assistant professor of English. “As a self-styled humanist and pacifist as well as a longtime advocate for European unification, Zweig was deeply affected by the carnage of World War I and subsequently sought to redeem its trauma through artistic-cultural solidarity,” Vanwesenbeeck said.

In the 1920s, Zweig’s stories and his biographies of Erasmus, Marie-Antoinette and other historical figures made him the most translated author in the world, according to one study published in that era.

Born in 1881, Zweig — like many other Austrian and European Jews — was forced into exile during Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Zweig, whose books were burned by the Nazis, fled Vienna in 1934, moving first to England, then to the U.S. and, in 1941, Brazil. Shortly after moving to Brazil, and distraught by another war that was ravaging his European homeland and its culture, Zweig took his own life through a suicide pact with his second wife, Lotte, in 1942.

SUNY Fredonia’s connection to Zweig was made through the late Robert Rie, who served the campus as a professor of Modern Languages from 1963 to 1981. He was also a longtime colleague of Zweig and his first wife, Friderike, said symposium co-chair Jeremy Linden, head of Archives and Special Collections at Reed Library.

Rie’s enduring friendship with Zweig began while both were living in Austria. Following the author’s death, Rie remained in regular contact with Friderike, who ultimately entrusted him and SUNY Fredonia with many of the late author’s personal effects. The materials on display from the SUNY Fredonia collection include personal items such as Zweig’s signature seal, naturalization papers and family photographs, as well as manuscript drafts of plays, essays, poetry and short stories.

His stature in the literary world is revealed in hand-written and typed letters between Zweig and William Butler Yeats, Joseph Roth, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and other early 20^th-century European artists, also on display.

Personal correspondence is viewed as the collection’s most valuable component, said SUNY Fredonia reference librarian Gerda Morrissey, who also serves as associate curator of the collection. More than 8,000 pieces of correspondence, manuscripts and assorted personal and family items comprise the full collection, which is SUNY Fredonia’s largest and most significant collection.

The symposium opens Thursday at 4 p.m. with a reception in the Japanese Garden area of Reed Library. Welcoming remarks will be delivered by SUNY Fredonia President Dennis Hefner, followed by a keynote address at 5 p.m. given by Matuschek. Individual presentations by scholars will be delivered throughout the day on Friday and Saturday morning in room S104 of the Williams Center.

All symposium events are free and open to the public, as is the semester-long exhibit.