Stefan ZWEIG Signed Autographed Letter Exile Card in London 1934

  
Size: 14 x 9 cm. With frame (included): 21 x 15 cm. A charming postcard in French written in purple ink to his publisher at Éditions Grasset. Zweig confides respectively the success and progress of two important biographies: Erasmus (which explores the unequal struggle according to Zweig between the serene and pacifist humanism of Erasmus and the revolutionary fanaticism of Luther) and Mary Stuart, a biography that straddles narrative fiction and historical truth, where Zweig seeks to uncover the mystery of this political woman beset by prejudice, swept away by her emotions and impulses, and who reminds him of another, Marie Antoinette, guillotined in 1793. Defeated, Mary Stuart will enter History. At the moment of laying her head on the block, he writes, "none of her words, none of her gestures express fear. The daughter of the Stuarts, the Tudors, the Guise has prepared herself for death with dignity." It is hard not to think of the end of Zweig himself, as all the values that constituted his world collapsed. Dear friend, it will please you to hear that Erasmus has been chosen by the Book Guild of London as the "book of the month." Mary Stuart is progressing and will be completed before Christmas. I have already sent the first chapters to Hella. The talented translator Alzir Hella, who worked extensively with Zweig and translated many works and novels from German, including All Quiet on the Western Front. Fleeing Nazism, Zweig took refuge in London in February 1934, a few months before our postcard. He then began the biography of Mary Stuart. The character interests him, just as Marie Antoinette does, as their two destinies illustrate the ruthless side of politics that Zweig abhors.

He also begins an affair with Lotte (Charlotte Elisabeth Altmann), his secretary, while Friderike refuses to join him in London, deeming her husband's fears unfounded. She and many friends, blind to the ever-darkening clouds gathering over Europe, reproach him for acting as a prophet of doom.

Zweig will persist in his fears and intuitions and refuse to choose his side, like Erasmus in his time, favoring neutrality and individual conscience over alignment with a political current.