Stefan Zweig: letter to Eugen Relgis (1939)
Stefan Zweig: letter to Eugen Relgis (1939)
The times have changed. Now that Austria, Italy, Spain, and Czechoslovakia are beyond my reach, I cannot consider the smaller countries as a source of secondary income anymore.
Letter from Stefan Zweig to Eugen Relgis, July 25, 1939
The author Stefan Zwieg, who had lived mostly in England for several years, sensed the danger of the coming war a few weeks before it broke out. During those weeks he decided to purchase a house in Bath, southern England, for himself and for his second wife, Lotte. Even though Zweig was comparatively well-off, the payment for the new house required him to review his foreign contracts. It was a necessary move, especially because of the deteriorating political situation which devastated the book markets and the literary circles.
These circumstances prompted Zweig to write to Eugen Relgis, the Romanian author, publisher, and pacifist. Relgis had officially published the Romanian translations of Zweig’s work for some years. He survived the pro-Fachist regime in his homeland and went into exile to South America in 1947.
Further reading:
Oliver Matuschek: Stefan Zweig. Drei Leben – Eine Biographie. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer 2006
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