Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig (5 page)

You’ll search in vain for the postage stamp

Which costs a tidy sum each year.
⁷

The poem excited a good deal of merriment in the family, and Alfred Zweig could still recite it by heart at the age of eighty. But, as he went on to say, the number of replies really did increase once Stefan began to follow Stettenheim’s advice and enclose return postage with his letters to authors—placing considerable strain on his pocket money as a result.

This interest in writing, and in the writers themselves, began to take up more and more of Zweig’s leisure time. As well as new volumes of poetry he buried himself in a comprehensive illustrated history of literature, which he virtually learnt off by heart. He not only read the texts, but also pored intently over the reproduced samples of the authors’ handwriting. He was able to make comparisons with the autographs and writing samples
he had already collected, and he tried his hand at copying the signatures. For a while he contemplated writing a work of his own on the history of literature, but then concluded that an academic approach, and a historical-biographical format, were not really where his interests lay.

Poetry appealed to him much more, particularly when he started to make his own discoveries in this field. As well as some older volumes of poetry he had also got hold of the recently published works of Rainer Maria Rilke—and had also read some works by a certain “Loris”, which had made a profound impression on him. Concealed behind the pseudonym was none other than Hugo von Hofmannsthal, then considered something of a phenomenon in literary circles. Initially it was commonly supposed that the author of such perfectly formed works must be an older man, who—for whatever reason—had decided to adopt a nom de plume. Hermann Bahr later told Zweig about his first encounter with Hofmannsthal, and what a surprise it had been. Having read a text sent to him by the aforementioned Loris, Bahr had immediately written to the unknown author requesting a meeting. Great, then, was his astonishment when, at the appointed hour and place, the Café Griensteidl in Vienna, a grammar-school boy in short trousers appeared before him and introduced himself. The word “wunderkind” sprang inevitably to mind.

Zweig’s own admiration and respect for the genius of Hofmannsthal, who was just seven years his senior, amounted to an almost unbounded reverence. So it was somewhat galling that Hofmannsthal, with whom he was in contact in later years by letter and in person, showed not the slightest interest in Zweig’s own writing and did not rate him much as a person either.

As a young author Zweig had readily taken to letter-writing as a means of communication. He kept up a steady stream of correspondence, not just to request autographs from writers, but also to obtain all kinds of information about the literature of the day. And many of his letters were concerned with the publication of his own works. Initially he signed his letters “Stephan” Zweig, but around 1900 he decided to use the form “Stefan”, as it appeared on his birth certificate; and in later years he would react angrily when even his publishers sometimes used the “ph” spelling.

Before long he was writing up to three letters a day, and had to ask his correspondents to be patient if he was unable to acknowledge their contributions immediately. But in point of fact anyone who responded to his requests could be certain of hearing back from him promptly. After the
author and archaeologist Georg Ebers had responded to the fifteen-year-old’s question about his then very popular historical novels, he received a poem of several verses singing his praises by way of thanks, to which the young Zweig appended the following self-deprecating remark: “By sending me such a friendly reply you have acted very impractically, because—as you see—here I am, back again with more questions!”
⁸

A favourite correspondent during these early years was Karl Emil Franzos, the Berlin-based founder and editor of the twice-monthly journal
Deutsche Dichtung.
Zweig regularly offered him poems, essays and other short pieces, taking the liberty of adding (as indeed he could afford to) that payment for any submissions that might be accepted was entirely irrelevant. Not every idea was destined to succeed. Among his many offerings was a rather more substantial novella entitled
Peter der Dichter
. It told the story of a young working-class poet who achieves great success with his work, and is even lionised as the fashionable poet of his day, but who in the end cannot adapt to his new role in unfamiliar social circles and finally returns to his working-class roots. But the work seems never to have made it into print, and the manuscript has been lost. It probably shared the same fate as a historical drama about the Swedish king Gustavus Adolfus, which Zweig had written at the age of seventeen with much labour and intensive study of source material, only to throw it on the fire after several self-critical rereadings.

Another piece offered to Franzos was a story described by Zweig himself as a “Jewish novella”, which, as he had discovered, was virtually impossible to place in the daily press. He had found that most newspapers avoided the genre for political reasons, and he did not want to give the work to a Jewish journal because, as he said to Franzos, it contained “absolutely no national calling or message”.
⁹
For his part he wanted the story—entitled
Im Schnee
—to be seen as a work of art and nothing more. But Franzos would not take it on either, and a few days later he sent the manuscript back to Zweig, who appeared unfazed:

I was not at all surprised when you returned my MS. As soon as I had posted it I had a strong sense of all its many faults and weaknesses. I know very well that this novella is like most of my things, hasty and dashed-off, but—and I don’t know what to call this quirk of mine—I find I cannot change a thing once I have written the last word, and normally I don’t even bother to check the spelling and punctuation. It’s just my careless and headstrong way of working, of course, but I am fully aware that it will prevent me ever producing anything of any substance. I haven’t mastered the art of being conscientious and painstaking. [ … ] I know what it’s like, in a minor way, to write with gritted teeth, and I’ve burned hundreds of my own manuscripts; but I’ve never changed or revised a single line. It’s unfortunate, but it cannot easily be changed, because it’s not just some superficial quirk, but something that may be deeply rooted in my character. And so it’s lucky for me that writing is not going to be my vocation, and that I haven’t given a moment’s thought to becoming famous or even well-known.
¹⁰

The last sentence sounds coyly disingenuous to anyone who knows how serious and tireless was Zweig’s commitment to literature. There can be no doubt that he was driven in part by dreams of fame. But even Alfred Zweig reports that at the time his brother was not at all sure what profession he would be taking up. Writing was still just a hobby for him.

But from his remarks on the subject of manuscript corrections it is clear that literature, and in particular his own writing, was becoming the focus of Stefan Zweig’s future plans. Although he had said, in the letter quoted above, that he was incapable of revising his own texts, he was also coming to realise that even the greatest poets do not necessarily produce perfection with their first drafts. Indeed, he now developed an enormous fascination for tracing the evolution of a work through successive drafts. That fascination was fed by the first more substantial manuscripts he had added to his autograph collection. Straightforward signatures soon ceased to be of interest, and he was much more excited by a manuscript page peppered with the author’s own emendations than by letters or the finished draft of some poem or other text. Franzos himself was not just a writer but a fellow collector of autographs, and in another letter to him Zweig first formulates his own priorities as a collector: “Mindful of your great renown as a collector of autographs, which will soon rival your illustrious renown as a writer, I take the liberty of sending you a number of quite interesting letters, which are of little value to me as a collector of manuscripts and original poems. I am very happy to let you have them.” The material he was offering to swap was impressive enough. Zweig lists the items in a postscript to the letter: “4-page letter from Wieland to Gleim (very interesting), Goethe discussing the correct pronunciation of the name Hafiz (only “Yours faithfully, Goethe” in his own hand), Anzengruber, a signed handwritten note from Beethoven, with very strong language, etc—if any of these are of interest, I will be very happy to let you have them.”
¹¹

Regarding his own works, he notes elsewhere that he has already written under five or six different pseudonyms. The texts in question were written
in very different styles, he tells us, and for these reasons his name had hitherto remained largely unknown. But the choice of a pen name was also dictated by practical, not to say necessary reasons, which had little to do with the opportunity to try out all manner of genres and styles incognito. It was strictly forbidden for grammar-school pupils to publish their own work in newspapers or any other printed medium. However, none of these alleged pen names—leaving aside the aforementioned autograph hunter “Stefanie Zweig”—has ever come to light. And “Stefanie” is unlikely to have published anything under a name that hardly qualifies as a pseudonym anyway. Nor has any anonymous contribution from that time yet been attributed with certainty to Stefan Zweig.

His enthusiastic embracing of the writer’s life came at a price. During the school day little importance was attached to free time or breaks, and with the reading and writing he did after lessons were over he was now stretched to the limit. Every free moment was spent in studying new books and journals, and Stefan suffered constantly from lack of sleep. He had acquired the habit of reading every night until one or two o’clock, but then had to get up at seven the next morning. There was only time for a quick wash before he hurried off to school, eating a slice of buttered bread on the way. A strange sight must have greeted the teachers on entering the classroom, given that the boys “looked gaunt and green, like unripe fruit”.
¹²

For all the seriousness with which he liked to invest himself, both at the time and when looking back at this period in later years, Zweig was not detached from the everyday world. He continued to exchange letters full of nonsense with his classmates, and together with Alfred he wrote a piece for a family celebration under the title
Der Pantoffel
[
The Slipper
], which he described as a
“Once-a-Century Journal for the Diversion of the Married Couple Isidor and Irene Elias on their Honeymoon”
. “To see in them a set of youths who never put down the lyre, so to speak, would not be entirely correct …”,
¹³
as Friderike Zweig later observed—entirely correctly—of Stefan and his school friends. On the other hand, in a group he was very quiet, and could almost come across as shy—if he wasn’t fired up with enthusiasm for something. Self-control, or at least the appearance of self-control, seems to have been important to him: “Stefan was boisterous like the others, but more discreet, more cautious, never giving offence”,
¹⁴
recalls Ernst Benedikt.

In his last two years at the grammar school Zweig needed intensive private tuition in mathematics and physics. As luck would have it, both
subjects, in which he showed little interest anyway, were taught by a master suffering from a serious gastric-bilious complaint, who took out his resulting ill humour on his pupils. Surprisingly, Zweig’s interest in modern languages during his early grammar-school years was likewise confined to the bare minimum. For the present, German-speaking writers and their works were the focus of his (largely extracurricular) attention. He did at least bring with him sufficient knowledge of French from home to be able to do well in the subject at school.

As he prepared to sit his school-leaving examinations in the spring of 1900 the whole family was worried about the outcome—with some justification. But to everyone’s amazement Stefan came home with a leaving certificate that was one of the best in his year. What had saved him, apart from his intensive study of mathematical formulae and problems in physics, was his German essay paper. Not only had he written the longest essay handed in since the school’s foundation nearly thirty years earlier, but it was singled out for special praise by the provincial schools superintendant who chaired the examination board.

In an early version of his autobiography
Chronik eines Lebens
[
Chronicle of a Life
] published in the 1950s, Siegfried Trebitsch had mentioned that Zweig’s parents had purchased their son’s release from military service as soon as he was born, but that a serious difference of opinion arose when he left school because Stefan did not want to enter the family business. According to this account, tempers flared to the point where Stefan and his father came to blows, and his father suffered a broken finger. In later editions of the text this passage has been removed; Trebitsch had sent the book to Alfred Zweig with a friendly dedication, only to have Alfred round on him and threaten legal action to prevent the dissemination of these allegations. Although Trebitsch then admitted that he had got it wrong in this passage from the book, and that the pugnacious factory owner’s son was not Stefan Zweig but another of his classmates, the allegations contained in the first version of the text persisted as a rumour.

In fact it would not have been necessary to purchase his release from the military. Stefan Zweig volunteered for military service when he left school, but was rejected on several occasions because he was “rather sickly”.
¹⁵
As far as his future career choice was concerned, his parents had certainly planned for him to go to university. Doubtless they were thinking more in terms of medicine or law, but the main thing was that the boy would one day obtain his doctorate, which would reflect well on the whole family.
Alfred Zweig, on the other hand, had seriously flirted for a while with the idea of a medical career, but there was never really any doubt that he would take over the factory from his father, especially since, in view of his future career path, he had been sent to a
Realgymnasium
, a different kind of grammar school that eschewed the study of the classics in favour of more modern and practical subjects. In the end family counsels and his sense of duty prevailed, helped no doubt by the realisation that his younger brother would have been completely out of place as a company director, given his abilities and interests. Apart from the fact that he had been groomed from childhood for his future role, Alfred was a much more pragmatic, cooler and less emotional man than Stefan, and therefore clearly far better suited to the job.