Montaigne by Stefan Zweig Original text © Atrium Press Ltd, 1976 First published in German in Europäisches Erbe, S. Fischer Verlag, 1960 Translation © Will Stone 2015 First published by Pushkin Press

 

Montaigne by Stefan Zweig Original text © Atrium Press Ltd, 1976 First published in German in Europäisches Erbe, S. Fischer Verlag, 1960 Translation © Will Stone 2015 First published by Pushkin Press

Completed in Petropolis, Brazil - 1942

This is part of our  participation in German Literature 10 -November 2020

This my 8th year as a participant in German Literature Month.  It seems important in these dark times to continue traditions cherishing culture, historical knowledge and literacy.

I first became aware of Stefan Zweig during GL Month in 2013.  He is now one of my favorite writers.   

 Posts on Stefan Zweig

My  favorite works by Zweig are first "Mendel the Bibliophile", then Chess, and The Post Office Girl, and “Twilight”.  

 Stefan Zweig

November 28, 1881 - Vienna, Austria - born 

1941 -  moves with his second wife to Petropolis,Brazil

 to escape what he saw as the destruction of the culture of Europe

February 22, 1942 - Petropolis Brazil  - dies 

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne 

Born: 28 February 1533, Château de Montaigne, Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne, France

Died: 13 September 1592, Château de Montaigne, Saint-Michel-de-Montaigne, France

In his very well done introduction William Stone tells us the background behind Zweig’s move to Petropolis Brazil (located 68 Kilometers North East of Rio de Janeiro).  Zweig was convinced everything he loved in Europe was going to be destroyed by the Germans.  Now 

Petropolis is a get away for affluent Cariocas and a winter playground for Europe’s elite.  I spent some time there twenty years ago and it was then a totally beautiful place.  I imagine the tropical lushness of the area and the beauty of the citizens after leaving war ravaged Europe in 1941 must have been near overwhelming for Zweig.  Maybe Zweig’s spirit was 

damaged beyond recovery.

In a cabinet in his house in Petropolis Zweig, fluent in French, found a copy of the Essays of Montaigne.  Of course he knew of him but he had never read any of his essays.  He saw a Kindred spirit in Montaigne who saw his own time as a period of cultural decline and never ending war. Montaigne was born into an affluent French family and came to inherit a large house and an agricultural enterprise.  He married, was mayor of his town, traveled extensively but around age forty he began to think about the meaning of hid life in a decaying era in France.  He began to retreat into a tower house, reading ever more deeply in his library.  Zweig as Stone details totally identified with Montaigne.

Zweig gives a good bit of biographical information on Montaigne.  He explains why he found him so profound.

I am very glad I read this book, reading time maybe two hours.  

Stone has also translated Zweig’s treatise on Friedrich Nietzsche and I hope to read it soon.

Ambrosia Bousweau

Mel u

I Belong to Vienna: A Jewish Family’s Story of Exhile and Return by Anna Goldenberg - Translated from the German by Alta L. Price 2020

 

I Belong to Vienna:  A Jewish Family’s Story of Exhile and Return 

by Anna Goldenberg - Translated from the German by Alta L. Price 2020

First published in German in 2018 as Versteckte Jahre: Der Mann, der meinen Großvater rettete

There are quite a number of journey of discovery  memoirs by children and grandchildren of victims of the Holocaust.  I Belong to Vienna:  A Jewish Family’s Story of Exhile and Return by Anna Goldenberg is a very moving informative well narrated such work.

In Autumn of 1942 the author’s grandparents and one of her grandfathers were transported from Nazi controlled Vienna to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp.  Their oldest grandchild Hans survives the war by hiding in an apartment in Vienna.  He does make it out to the municipal opera and library.  He comes to have a great passion for opera, one of the glories of the deep culture of Vienna even though he can buy only standing room tickets.  I smiled when I read about how he learned to reuse his tickets.  In America both he and his wife became doctors.

Both of her grandparents, but not her great grandparents, survived the war and moved to New York City.  Almost all surviving Austrian Jews wanted out of the country, once thought a safe haven during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, that totally turned on them.  It was not easy for a Jew to get out of Nazi controlled Vienna.  You had to give up almost everything you owned, secure a sponsor in America, and book passage.

The author was born in Vienna but moved to  in New York City in 2012 to study.  She feels driven to return, to trace her family’s time in Nazi Germany.  She tried to deal with the deep chasm of the magnificent past of Vienna and the barbaric city it became.  Goldenberg has given us a valuable addition to Holocaust studies.

From The Forward

“Absorbing … What distinguishes Goldenberg’s book from much of the vast library of Holocaust literature is its distance from the campaign to exterminate European Jewry. It is the story of a young woman’s attempt to make sense of history more than it is a direct evocation of the roundups, cattle cars, and gas chambers …  Will leave Americans fascinated by the cruelty and loyalty born in the city of Sigmund Freud, Gustav Mahler, and Anna Goldenberg.”

— The Forward

 

Anna Goldenberg is the author of I BELONG TO VIENNA. Born in 1989 in Vienna, she studied psychology at the University of Cambridge and journalism at Columbia University. Goldenberg worked at the Jewish newspaper The Forward in New York before returning to Vienna where she now writes as a journalist for various newspapers.

This work was published by New Vessal Press

newvessalpress.COM - a few minutes on their website Will likely add numerous works to your wish list.

Mel u

In the Snow (Im Schnee, 1901) - A Short Story by Stefan Zweig - translated by Anthea Bell - included in The Collected Short Stories of Stefan Zweig - 2013 -

In the Snow (Im Schnee, 1901) - A Short Story by Stefan Zweig - translated by Anthea Bell - included in The Collected Short Stories of Stefan Zweig - 2013 - 

German Literature 10 - November 2020

This my 8th year as a participant in German Literature Month.  It seems important in these dark times to continue traditions cherishing culture, historical knowledge and literacy.

I first became aware of Stefan Zweig during GL Month in 2013.  He is now one of my favorite writers.   

My Posts on Stefan Zweig

My favorite works by Zweig are first "Mendel the Bibliophile", then Chess, and The Post Office Girl, and “Twilight”.  

 Stefan Zweig

November 28, 1881 - Vienna, Austria

February 22, 1942 - Petropolis , Brazil 

Some critics of Zweig suggest he never faced in his writings the fate of Jews in Europe.  They have never read “In The Snow” which gives a vivid treatment of an attack by a group of  German Flagellants on a peaceful Jewish community.

“The Flagellants were abroad in Germany, wild, fanatically religious men who flailed their own bodies with scourges in Bacchanalian orgies of lust and delight, deranged and drunken hordes who had already slaughtered and tortured thousands of Jews, intending to deprive them of what they held most holy, their age-old belief in the Father. That was their worst fear.” - from the story

There is no dates given in the story.  Many in Europe felt the Black Death 

was caused by Jews.  The Flagellants made it their mission to kill as many Jews as they could.  The peak period for this was 1347 to 1351.  We do know the story takes place in a Jewish community in Germany in the 14th century:

“A small  MEDIEVAL German town close to the Polish border, with the sturdy solidity of fourteenth-century building: the colourful, lively picture that it usually presents has faded to a single impression of dazzling, shimmering white. Snow is piled high on the broad walls and weighs down on the tops of the towers, around which night has already cast veils of opaque grey mist.”

The worship session is in process at the Synagogue, held in the large house of the Rabbi.  A stranger approaches with terrible news. All the Jews in a neighboring community have been killed by a hoard of Flagellants.  They are now heading toward them.  The man turns out to be the fiancé of a woman at the service.  Everyone has friends and relatives who they fear are lost.  The community begins to pack up all they own to try to escape.  They will ultimately all freeze to death as they run.

A few days ago I posted on a very illuminating book, Drunk on Genocide: Alcohol and Mass Murder in Nazi Germany by Edward Westermann (forthcoming March 15, 2021), which demonstrated that during the Holocaust those doing the killing were intoxicated by the joy it brought them.  They inflamed their joy with alcohol.  Ordinary Germans would get drunk watching mass shootings, often taking pictures with dead bodies. This same spirit was alive and well in Germany in the 14th century.

I hope to read a few more Zweig short stories this month.

.

(The flagellant movement and the pogroms against the Jews, although not always uncontrolled, were certainly hysterical—highly emotional— responses to the Black Death. Flagellation, or whipping—performed for a variety of motives including penitential atonement, mortification of the flesh, imitation of Christ, or divine supplication—was not unusual in the Middle Ages. As a punishment for sinful behavior it appears from an early date in Christianity and was included in the first monastic rules from the fourth to the sixth centuries. Self-inflicted flagellation became common in Christian observance during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. In 1260, there arose in Perugia, Italy, a public, collective, processional movement of voluntary flagellants, the forerunner of the movement during the Black Death...from Bedford Series)

Mel u

 

“Heilbling’s Story” - A Short Story by Robert Walser - 1904 - translated by Christopher Middleton

Home of German Literature Month 10

"Walser’s virtues are those of the most mature, most civilized art. He is a truly wonderful, heartbreaking writer"'. Susan Sontag

"Since then I have slowly learned to grasp how everything is connected across space and time, the life of the Prussian writer Kleist with that of a Swiss author who claims to have worked as a clerk in a brewery in Thun, the echo of a pistol shot across the Wannsee with the view from a window of the Herisau asylum, Walser’s long walks with my own travels, dates of birth with dates of death, happiness with misfortune, natural history and the history of our industries, that of Heimat with that of exile. On all these paths Walser has been my constant companion. I only need to look up for a moment in my daily work to see him standing somewhere a little apart, the unmistakable figure of the solitary walker just pausing to take in the surroundings."  William Sebald

Mel first encountered the work of Robert Walser during German Literature Month in 2013, he followed up with posts on short stories in  2014 and in 2015 on his novel The Tanners. There were also posts on him during German Literature Month in each of the last four years.  We are returning to him this year through a very Walserian story, "Heibling’s Story”

“Heibling’s Story”, told in the first person, is the Short Story elevated to high art (see “Notes on Camp”).  Heibling, a bank employee, begins the narrative on his walk home at lunch. Walking plays a big role in the work of Walser.  He launches into what seems a depressive repudiation of his worth.  Under this I see a rejection of any power others think they have over him.  Heibling is both above and below the world he finds himself in.

“The moral core of Walser’s art is the refusal of power; of domination. I’m ordinary—that is, nobody—declares the characteristic Walser persona” - Susan Sontag 

Mel hopes once again to  reread Kleist in Thun this month 

Oleander Boussweau 

Forgotten Dreams” - A Short Story by Stefan Zweig - first published in The Vergessene Träume, 1900- translated by Anthea Bell - 2013 - included in The Collected Short Stories of Stefan Zweig from Pushkin Press

 

“Forgotten Dreams” - A Short Story by Stefan Zweig - first published in The Vergessene Träume, 1900- translated by Anthea Bell - 2013 - included in The Collected Short Stories of Stefan Zweig from Pushkin Press

Website of German Literature 10

This will be my 8th year as a participant in German Literature Month.  It seems important in these dark times to continue traditions fostering culture, historical knowledge and literary depth. 

I first became aware of Stefan Zweig during GL Month in 2013.  He is now one of my favorite writers.   

My Posts on Stefan Zweig

My favorite works by Zweig are first "Mendel the Bibliophile", then Chess, and The Post Office Girl, and “Twilight”.  

 Stefan Zweig

November 28, 1881 - Vienna, Austria

February 22, 1942 - Petropolis, Brazil 

“Forgotten Dreams”, a brief work, begins with a description of the exquiste view from a magnificient Villa:

“THE VILLA LAY CLOSE TO THE SEA. The quiet avenues, lined with pine trees, breathed out the rich strength of salty sea air, and a slight breeze constantly played around the orange trees, now and then removing a colourful bloom from flowering shrubs as if with careful fingers. The sunlit distance, where attractive houses built on hillsides gleamed like white pearls, a lighthouse miles away rose steeply and straight as a candle—the whole scene shone, its contours sharp and clearly outlined, and was set in the deep azure of the sky like a bright mosaic.”

If Zweig’s body of work had to be summed  up in a sentence it might be described as an elegy to the lost glories of a culture in decline.

The plot is about a man revisiting a woman he once loved long ago.  When a servant gives her his card she is quite surprised.

“She reads the name with that expression of surprise on her features that appears when you are greeted in the street with great familiarity by someone you do not know. For a moment, small lines appear above her sharply traced black eyebrows, showing how hard she is thinking, and then a happy light plays over her whole face all of a sudden, her eyes sparkle with high spirits as she thinks of the long-ago days of her youth, almost forgotten now.”

Of course she is described as besutiful.

In their ensuing conversation we learn the woman once had dreams, hopes and values.   Over years, she settled for wealth and comfort.

Maybe Anthea Bell choice this as the lead story in the collection as it is a very Zweigian work, embodying his values.

I have still not read all the Short Stories in The Collected Short Stories of Stefan Zweig from Pushkin Press.  I hope to post on a few more this month.

The Little Berliner - A Short Story by Robert Walser - 1914 - translated from German by Helen Watts

German Literature Month, November, 2019

Works so far read for German Literature Month, 2019

1. Allmen and The Pink Diamond by Martin Suter, 2011

2. The Marquise of O by Heinrich Von Kleist, 1808

3. Memoirs of a Polar Bear by Yoko Tawada - 2014

4. Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada - 1947

5. "The Little Berliner" by Robert Walser, 1914

"Walser’s virtues are those of the most mature, most civilized art. He is a truly wonderful, heartbreaking writer"'. Susan Sontag

"Since then I have slowly learned to grasp how everything is connected across space and time, the life of the Prussian writer Kleist with that of a Swiss author who claims to have worked as a clerk in a brewery in Thun, the echo of a pistol shot across the Wannsee with the view from a window of the Herisau asylum, Walser’s long walks with my own travels, dates of birth with dates of death, happiness with misfortune, natural history and the history of our industries, that of Heimat with that of exile. On all these paths Walser has been my constant companion. I only need to look up for a moment in my daily work to see him standing somewhere a little apart, the unmistakable figure of the solitary walker just pausing to take in the surroundings."  William Sebald

Mel first encountered the work of Robert Walser during German Literature Month in 2013, he followed up with posts on short stories in  2014 and in 2015 on his novel The Tanners.  We are returning to him this year through a very Walserian story, "The Little Berliner".

1878 to 1956 - Switzerland

"The Little Berliner" is narrated by a 12 year old girl from an affuent Berlin family.  The story really is enchanting, magic.  We see how the girl totally has the views of her class.  She knows her main destiny is to marry and have children.  

One very good way to get into Walser is through the Selected Stories collection pictured above.

Oleander Bousweau

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Anne-Marie O’Connor - 2012 - 370 pages

Website of Anne-Maria O’Connor

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Anne-Marie O’Connor - 2012 - 370 pages 

Gustav Klimt (1862 to 1918- Austro Hungarian Empire)

Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881 to 1925 - Vienna)

1907 - Lady in Gold completed and first exhibited 

March 12, 1938 - Austria comes under German Control

In 1941 Lady in Gold was Stolen by the Nazis and classified as degenerate  Jewish Art

September 2, 1945 - Germany surrenders

After the war, The painting remained in the  custody of an Austrian Museum.

In 2004 Lady in Gold was returned by court order to a descendent of The Blochs living in Los Angeles 

In 2006 it was sold for $135 Million at Auction in London by Christie’s.  This was at The time a World Record price for a painting.

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch  should be read by anyone interested in Belle-epoque Vienna (normally considered to be from 1900 and ending in 1914), in the art of the period, especially that of Gustav Klimt, upper class Jewish society, and the politics of the closing days of the Austria-Hungarian Empire.  Vienna's  climate of acceptance resulted in a great flourishing of Jewish society in Vienna.  O’Connor elegantly describes this society while flourishing and under fatal attack.

This was a period where the painting of portraits was a lucrative profession.  Every affluent Viennese wanted flattering portraits of his family, men of their mistresses.  Klimt painted some of the women from the richest Jewish families in Vienna.  Much of the opening narrative of the book turns on Klimt’s reputation as a glamorous womanizer, never married but with numerous high society affairs attributed to him.  A portrait could take years of work, The Lady in Gold took three years, and long hours of posing privately with the artist. O'Oconor loved this era and made it come to life for me.

Of course we know the terrible changes coming to the Jewish community in Vienna. O'Connor skillfully contrasts the artistic career of another young Austrian, an aspiring artist, Adolph Hitler.  There is speculation that his rejection by a Viennese art school was part of the cause of his hatred of Jews.  As one must, O'Connor goes into life in Nazi Vienna, mentioning figures such as Sigmund Freud, Billy Wilder, Heddy Lamar, and Stefan Zweig. The Nazis considered work by Gustav Klimt and other Jewish artists of the period as "degenerate". So called German art experts began stealing these works.  Klimt's paintings were considered very decadent, antithetical to "Aryan values".  O'Connor explains the fate of Klimt's work.  

The narrative opens in Los Angeles, California in 2002 or so.  An elderly descendent of the Bloch-Bauer family has engaged an attorney to try to recover the Klimt paintings stolen from her family.  In 1998 Austrian laws were passed requiring the return of Art stolen by the Germans to their rightful owner. In 2004, with the assistance of the US Supreme Court, the Klimt portraits were turned over to family members.

Being there at the sale of the Klimt works at Christie's was a lot of vicarious fun.

The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Anne-Marie O’Connor is a fascinating look at how the Holocaust impacted the art world.

This fine book motivated me to look at images of the work of Gustav Klimt, works of stunning beauty. For that alone I am grateful to Anne-Marie O'Connor

There is just so much to learn from this book.  I admit I knew nothing about Mark Twain's visit to Vienna, the involvement, including a possible romance of women from the family of Joseph Pulitzer with Klimt, he painted numerous women from the family, and much more.  

I loved this copiously illustrated documentary on the life and work of Klimt linked below.  

https://youtu.be/QjqjPNgf22U

From the author's website. 

https://www.annemarieoconnor.com/

The website has images of numerous paintings, pictures of various portrait subjects.  

Anne-Marie O’Connor is a veteran foreign correspondent and culture writer who has covered everything from post-Soviet Cuba to American artists and intellectuals. O’Connor attended Vassar and the San Francisco Art Institute and graduated from the University of California at Berkeley, where she and fellow students co-created an award-winning documentary on the repression of mural artists after the 1973 military coup in Chile. She covered the wars in El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala as a Reuters bureau chief in Central America; the Shining Path guerrillas in Peru, coups in Haiti and U.S. interventions in Haiti and Panama; and covered Cuba and Haiti for a newspaper chain. At the Los Angeles Times she chronicled the violence of Mexico’s Arellano-Felix drug cartel, U.S. political convention; and profiled such figures as Nelson Mandela, George Soros, Joan Didion, John McCain, and Maya Lin. Her story on Maria Altmann’s effort to recover the family Klimt collection appeared in the Los Angeles Times Magazine in 2001. She has written for Esquire, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor. She currently contributes to The Washington Post from Jerusalem. 

I  give a complete endorsement to The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer by Anne-Marie O’Connor.  

Mel u