Stefan and Lotte Zweig's South American Letters: New York, Argentina and Brazil, 1940-42 (review)

On February 21, 1942, the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his wife Lotte sat down and wrote their farewells before jointly committing suicide the next day in their home in Petrópolis, a small mountain resort in Brazil. Darién J. Davis and Oliver Marshall have edited this volume of letters that the couple wrote during their final years in South America to shed light on their states of mind and feelings of despair and isolation during that period. The letters, written to Lotte's family who remained in England, the Altmanns, provide insight into their relationship, their feelings about living in South America and learning Portuguese, their anxieties about their friends and family left behind in Europe, and Stefan's frustrations at trying to carry on his work without access to libraries and his papers. The volume also highlights Lotte, a figure who has not received serious treatment from scholars. The letters provide a fascinating window into the Zweigs' world and emotional states in the years leading up to their suicides. In many ways, their experience typifies many of the dilemmas and traumas of the Jewish refugee experience during World War II.

The Zweigs' despair and sense of homelessness is clear throughout the letters. They vacillated between seeking refuge for themselves from the attention they received as celebrities and as European visitors in South America and longing for a connection with their friends and family. What is striking, though, is that there is no indication that they had contemplated suicide until their final letters. What could have set them off to decide to take their own lives and to give up hope for the future?

The volume's introduction describes the Zweigs' lives leading up to their journey to South America. It explores themes such as their political ambivalence, their feelings about Brazil, and their guilt for having fled Europe. As Davis and Marshall point out, the letters challenge several commonly held beliefs about the Zweigs. For example, Lotte is often portrayed as passive, but the letters demonstrate otherwise. Lotte Zweig was "far from silent and did not shy away from stating her opinions...fundamentally, her letters reveal a voice that is strong and distinct, enabling a fuller understanding of her own mental and physical health and placing both Zweigs in a new lights" (2). The letters also challenge common criticisms of Stefan's lack of political awareness and action by demonstrating his generosity, sincere efforts to help others including his former wife Friderike and her daughters to escape Europe, and his participation in charitable activities (19-21). The authors touch on the Zweigs' Jewish identity, although this might have been explored more fully. For example, it is mentioned that Lotte's grandfather had been a rabbi in Frankfurt and her mother was religiously observant, but it is only by reading the "Dramatis Personae" at the end of the book that one learns that Lotte's mother was the granddaughter of Samson Raphael Hirsch, one of the most important German rabbis in the nineteenth century.

The letters are divided into four parts. Part I includes Stefan and Lotte's letters written from Brazil and Argentina, from August 1940 until January 1941. Part II summarizes the time that the Zweigs spent in the United States, from January to August 1941. Part III is comprised of the letters written during the Zweigs' last months, from August 1941 until February 1942, spent living in Brazil. Finally Part IV consists of a letter written by the Zweigs' close friend Ernst Feder sent to Manfred Altmann that describes their final days.

The letters provide details of their daily lives and worries, such as Lotte's declining health (she suffered from asthma) and their guilt for living in relatively good conditions. Still, the decision to end their lives appears abrupt. In fact, their morale seemed to be improving...