austria-engraved-stamp-1981-stefan-zweig

This engraved stamp was issued November 27, 1981 to commemorate the birth of Stefan Zweig.

Author, playright, journalist and biographer Stefan Zweig was born November 28, 1881 in Vienna and died February 22, 1942 (aged 60) in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was the son of Moritz Zweig (1845–1926), a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer, and Ida Brettauer (1854–1938), the daughter of a Jewish banking family.

At the height of his career, in the 1920s and 30s, Zweig was one of the most popular writers in the world. His biography, Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, 1932 (Original title: Marie Antoinette. Bildnis eines mittleren Charakters) was the basis for the 1938 MGM film starring Norma Shearer.

Stefan-Zweig

Zweig befriended many luminaries of his time including Arthur Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud and Richard Strauss for whom he penned the libretto for Die schweigsame Fra (The Silent Woman). Strauss famously defied the Third Reich by refusing to remove Zweig’s name from the programme for the 1935 premiere in Dresden. As a consequence, Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda boycotted the evening and the opera was banned after only three performances.

Zweig’s memoir, The World of Yesterday, was completed in 1942 on the day before he committed suicide. In Zweig’s own words, it stands as a record of “what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942” in central Europe. It also provided the inspiration for the 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel.

The stamp was designed by Adalbert Pilch and engraved by Werner Pfeiler.

Released November 27, 1981. Perforated 14×13½.