Ein Osterreicher aus Europa		An Austrian from Europe
	Stefan Zweig
The following text is in English.	Ausstellung/Exhibition	den Text gibt es auch in Deutscher Ubersetzung.

Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution
Stefan Zweig
An Austrian from Europe

The exhibition represents a splendid tribute to the life and work of Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), an Austrian writer of international stature about whose admittedly brief period of residence in their city very few Bathonians appear today to be aware. Yet when Stefan Zweig moved here as a Jewish refugee from Fascism in July 1939 at the age of 57 he enjoyed an international reputation as a distinguished and astonishingly productive poet, dramatist, novelist, essayist, writer of novellas,
biographer, librettist, and translator. He counted among his admirers Sigmund Freud, Richard Srauss, and Thomas Mann, and maintained a voluminous correspondence with leading cultural figures from across Europe.

What he sought in Bath, however, was relief from the pressures which his enormous fame brought, and relief in particular from the hustle and bustle of the refugee's life in London. The constant appeals to his generosity from other emigres less fortunate than himself had become oppressive, so the peace and beautiful countryside around Bath, reminiscent of the Salzkammergut, were very appealing. "I withdrew to Bath (he wrote), and to Bath in particular, because that city reflects more faithfully and impressively than any other in England a more peaceful century, the eighteenth, to the reposed eye; it is the city, too, where many of the best men of England's glorious literature, Fielding above all, achieved their best."

At first he took up residence at Lansdown Lodge in Lansdown Road and, during the unusually warm summer of 1939, he developed the habit of taking long, therapeutic walks in the countryside around the city. In the diary which he kept at the time in his fluent but less than perfect English, he noted:"(....) never has Bath been more beautiful than in those days, it reminds me the glorious days of August 1914 in Baden bei Wien." Restored in some measure by this regime, he made real progress on his biography of Balzac, a project which had accompanied him throughout much of his adult life. In due course, he turned his mind to the autobiography which Donald Prater, who will deliver the Stefan Zweig Lecture at the end of the exhibition of 1st March 1997, has called "his main distraction while he remained buried away in Bath."

On 6 September 1939 Zweig married his second wife, Lotte Altmann, at Bath Registry Office, and at the end of the month they moved to a house of their own - "Rosemount" on Lyncombe Hill, which they purchased from a man well-known in the local community, Mr. John Huntley. With the gracious permission of the house's present owners, Mr. and Mrs. Ron Baker, a plaque has been affixed to the entrance of the house in order to commemorate Zweig's period of residence there. This was unveiled by the Deputy-Mayor of Salzburg, Dr. Heinz Schaden, on 10th February 1997. Its simple message reads "The Austrian-born writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) lived here in 1939-1940".

Although there is evidence that Zweig was known and liked by those who came into contact with him at "Rosemount", he continued to live a quiet life. The local novelist Horace Annesley Vachell, who lived within sight of "Rosemount" at Widcombe Manor and whom Zweig appears to have visited just once, on 11 June 1942, confirms this in his 1946 memoir entitled Now came still evening on. Vachell writes: "He took a house not far from here; he had the sympathy of all who knew him;
but he shunned our companionship. He regarded himself as branded or placed on the Index. He had lost touch with his many friends."

He found it hard to accept the indignity of being treated as a grade B enemy alien, with the restriction this implied to his freedom of movement (for example, he had to apply for special permission to attend and speak at Freud's cremation at Golders Green on 26 September 1939).
With the help of H.G. Wells and others, however, he finally became a British subject by nationalisation on 12 March 1940, followed by his wife a few days later. He let it be known that Bath had given him a new sense of belonging, "the first feeling of home he had for years, happy with his books and papers together", as Donald Prater puts it. When he set out in July 1940 on a visit to South America, he did so with the clear intention of returning by October to Bath " where I have all my possessions, my books, and hoped to live out my life in quiet". But it was not to be. Disillusioned and depressed by Hitler's war, Lotte and Stefan Zweig took their own lives on 22 February 1942 in the little house which they had rented in Petropolis, Brazil. In an important sense we have an opportunity today to welcome them back to the city which offered them a home and to which they became so attached. The Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution if therefore grateful to the City of Salzburg, to the Austrian Cultural Institute in London, and to Austrian Airways, whose generous sponsorship made it possible to bring this internationally acclaimed exhibition to our city.

The exhibition has previously been displayed in Frankfurt, Dresden, Zurich, Merano, and Sao Paulo. Plans are in hand to send it to New York, Tokyo, and Budapest.

Translations into English by Sarah Brophy, Tracy Chisholm, Stuart Elliott, Julian Hale, Kate Lockyer, Miki Reiter, Kerry Shephard, Sophie Willis-Fleming, ZoeWood, and Ian Wallace
(University of Bath UK)

	Stefan Zweig