Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), born and raised in the glorious pre-WW1 Vienna of the Belle Epoque, was one of the most outstanding European intellectuals of the 20th century, and a prolific writer of stories, biographies, historical studies, essays, travel journals, memoirs and letters – as well as several plays, two books of poetry, an opera libretto and one completed novel.
Of all his works there is no doubt that his stories have best weathered the test of time and that they are the portion of his legacy that is most read all over the world today.
Here you will find a complete list of all of his 44 short stories, novelettes and novellas in chronological order of initial publication, with for each entry:
- the original title, with a translation in English;
- identification of the publication in which it first appeared;
- an overview of the story;
- our comments on the literary merits of the text;
- the number of words in the original German-language text;
- a rating from 1-10, where :
- 10=> a masterpiece of world literature;
- 9=> a great story, one of his best;
- 8=> a very good read;
- others=> not in the same category as the above, for the reasons indicated.
The complete texts of stories for which the English title is highlighted in green are available elsewhere on the site and can be seen by clicking on the titles.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. THE COMPLETE STORIES: OVERVIEWS, COMMENTS AND RATINGS
3. INDEX OF TITLES IN ALPHABETIC ORDER BY ENGLISH TITLE
4. INDEX OF TITLES IN ALPHABETIC ORDER BY GERMAN TITLE
7. WORKS BY STEFAN ZWEIG SOMETIMES ERRONEOUSLY CLASSIFIED AS STORIES
1. THE COMPLETE STORIES
short story: < 7,500 words; novelette: 7,500-17,499 words; novella: 17,500-40,000 words; novel: > 40,000 words.
no. | date 1st pub. | English_Title_____ | German_Title____ | Theme | Synopsis/Comments__________________________ | Rat-ing |
1 | 1900-07 | Forgotten Dreams [1] 2,000 words |
Vergessene Träume | what might have been | An elegant lady relaxing on the terrace of her magnificent mansion on the Riviera is called upon by a man she had known in her younger days, a man with whom her life might have evolved very differently. Leaving the next day for America, he has come to ask her for an explanation of why she had decided to marry into money rather than take her chances with him back then. She explains honestly the whys and the wherefores and the former beau leaves, but the lady’s self-contentment has gone too.
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8 |
2 | 1900-10 | Springtime in the Prater [2] 4,500 words |
Praterfrühling | life in Vienna | A young woman in an elegant building in the most select part of Vienna is quite beside herself with annoyance because the new gown that she has ordered for the most elegant dance of the year has failed to arrive on time, obliging her to miss the fancy event. Finally she decides to put on her oldest skirt and just go out for a walk on that lovely spring day, dressed anonymously like an average citizen of the poorer districts. When she is admired by a young student who finally works up the courage to ask if he might accompany her, she accepts out of a spirit of adventure, and they have a most enjoyable outing in the great Prater park. The simplicity of it all quite enchants her and one thing leads to another and so on.
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8.5 |
3 | 1901-08 | In the Snow [3] 3,800 words |
Im Schnee | a pogrom | A hair-raising account of the anguish that racks a Jewish ghetto in Germany on the Polish border in the late Middle Ages when news arrives of widespread and approaching pogroms by a rampaging mob blaming Jews for an outbreak of the plague.
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9 |
4 | 1901-11 | A Loser [4] 2,000 words |
Ein Verbummelter | suicide | A wayward student meditates on his unsatisfactory situation on his way to school, where he arrives late as usual to the general mockery of the high-school class. At twenty-one he is the oldest of the class, having had to repeat twice, and he is so utterly involved in his introverted resentment against the world in general and his professor, who was responsible for his having to repeat, in particular that he pays no attention whatsoever to what is being taught. And when he is challenged to repeat what the professor has just said, that sets of a storm that finishes very badly indeed.
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7 |
5 | 1901-11 | Two Lonely Souls [5] 1,330 words |
Zwei Einsame | solitude | Workers stream out of a factory gate at the end of the week’s work, continuing on in a lively group towards the neighbouring town. They are followed at a distance by a disabled and outcast lad who trods his lonely way behind them. He stops at one point when he distinctly hears sobbing near the roadside: it’s one of the workers, a particularly ungracious girl who has been roughly treated and mocked by the others for her ugliness. A quite intense conversation ensues between the two outcasts when each of them consoles the others with examples of their own misfortunes, and the day and the story do not end badly at all.
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8 |
6 | 1902-04 | The Walking Tour [6] 2,050 words |
Die Wanderung | what might have been | A youth in a sultry oriental land in antiquity is sensitive to the widespread atmosphere of a coming great event that will change the world, and on waking up in the middle of one night after hearing a distant voice calling him to Jerusalem he leaves right away with only his staff to go on foot to see the coming Messiah in person. A long hard, weary trek awaits him and in the noonday heat the next day he stops at a house on the way to ask for something to drink, whereupon he faints from exhaustion. The lonely young wife who has sheltered and washed and fed him also tends to other needs and when he eventually sets out again on his pilgrimage, he has missed his chance to witness an event of great and universal significance.
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7 |
7 | 1904-09 | The Love of Erika Ewald [7] 14,500 words |
Die Liebe der Erika Ewald | seduction | Erika is a young, lonely and innocent young woman who falls increasingly under the charm of a very gifted violinist whom she accompanies on the piano, and finally things come to a brink during a Sunday outing to the outskirts of Vienna where the owner of an establishment where they stop for refreshments politely addresses her as the violinist’s bride, which they both realise she almost is. One thing leads to another until that evening Erika finds herself on the doorstep of the admired and almost-adored young man. Her whole future is decided in that crucial instant.
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9 |
8 | 1904 | The Star Over the Forest [8] 3,000 words |
Der Stern über dem Walde | suicide | François is a waiter in an elegant Riviera hotel who is suddenly and quite irremediably stricken with a slavish worship for the elegant countess Ostrovska when leaning over her shoulder to serve her. There followed a period of blissful adoration and loving care for her service that brutally comes to an end one day when he learns that she was leaving for Warsaw on the train the next day. His despair is so profound that he resolves on a final sacrifice in her honour, a desperate act witnessed only by a single star in the night sky.
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8 |
9 | 1904 | The Miracles of Life [9] 23,000 words |
Die Wunder des Lebens | religion and Renaissance art | A painter is commissioned by a wealthy patron in sixteenth-century Antwerp, then under Spanish rule, to do a painting of a madonna with child for an altar in the cathedral. Lacking inspiration, the elderly painter finally finds a young Jewish girl to act as model and when that doesn’t quite click for him he arranges for the temporary “loan” of a young baby for her to hold in her arms while posing, thinking and hoping that that will induce the young non-believer to get into the right spirit and if possible convert to the true faith. Eventually she becomes enamoured with the child and with the blossoming of her maternal instincts the painter is finally inspired to create a true work of art. But all is not for the best as these are troubled times and rebellion is in the air and there are heretics who incite the envious scum of society to revolt against their masters and there is a dramatic final scene in the cathedral where the young girl has gone to worship the picture of what has become “her” baby.
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6 |
10 | 1906-01 | The Cross [11] 3,300 words |
Das Kreuz | war story | A French officer is cut off behind enemy lines after an ambush during the Napoleonic War in Spain and desperately tries to survive amid the immeasurable hostility of the population.
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9 |
11 | 1906-08 | The Fowler Snared [12] 3,300 words |
Sommernovellette | seduction | An elderly man decides to enliven the summer holiday of a young girl in an Italian lakeside resort by writing her anonymous love letters purporting to be from a young and very enamoured Italian Romeo. And when a handsome young fellow does arrive on a boat in the port sparks do start to fly – but the story then ends rather abruptly in a most non-romantic fashion when the girl’s family intervenes.
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7 |
12 | 1907-12 | The Governess [13] 5,150 words |
Die Gouvernante | conflict of the generations | A young girl confides to her sister late at night that she had heard their governess crying in her room when she had gone to bid her good-night. They conclude that perhaps she’s in love with their cousin Otto who is living with them during his studies and they decide to investigate the matter, which they do most effectively, and soon they overhear their governess telling Otto that she is expecting a baby. Although they cannot understand how that’s possible since the girl isn’t married, they rapidly discover the dark side of life that they hadn’t yet suspected when in rapid succession Otto leaves the house, the girl is dismissed and the chain of sombre events doesn’t even stop there. Their world and their relationship with it have been shattered forever.
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9 |
13 | 1908-05 | Scarlet Fever [14] 18,250 words |
Scharlach | medical drama | A young (seventeen-year-old!) medical student comes to Vienna and has enormous difficulties adjusting to life in the big town, not only because he is under-developed, immature and shy but also because he’s quite overwhelmed by the force of the extroverted and quite domineering older student in the next room, not to speak of the latter’s outspoken and somewhat aggressive girlfriend. But one day the woman nest door, to whom he had never paid any attention, comes to him in tears pleading for his help as a medical student to save her young daughter who has come down with scarlet fever. He does his best to help the child’s doctor care for the young thing, sitting up night after midnight to help her, even though scarlet fever can rarely if ever be overcome by grownups…
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9 |
14 | 1908-05 | Twilight Story [15] 11,200 words |
Geschichte in der Dämmerung | seduction | A young English boy on holiday in the splendid Scottish castle of his relatives wanders into the grounds late at night, fascinated by its somewhat eerie atmosphere. Where he is quite abruptly accosted in the dark by a passionate young woman who vigorously enlaces and embraces him before fleeing. Unable to identify his mysterious and attractive aggressor he lurks under the same tree again the next night and has another encounter with the girl-thing, and although he cannot distinguish her features he clearly perceives a peculiar amulet that she wears on her bracelet. As there are several girls who might have been the passionate one in the woods he does identify the culprit so to speak because of her amulet, and thereafter he openly seeks to deepen the relationship. Eventually he realises that he is hopelessly in love with the girl with the amulet, even though he has – one might say of course – identified the wrong girl. The story ends as gloomily as it started, when many years later the narrator feels overcome by melancholy in the final hours of twilight on a summer day and remembers the incident.
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9 |
15 | 1908-05 | History of a Downfall [16] 12,000 words |
Geschichte eines Untergangs | the fall from power | The young and vivacious Mme de Prie, mistress of the realm’s intendant during the reign of the young Louis XV and at twenty-five the most powerful woman in France, discovers one day that she is in disgrace after the fall from power of her lover, and that she must leave Paris and the court immediately, not to be allowed to come back to Paris for years, if ever. She puts on a bold face but is inwardly devastated by this banishment, and after only a few days of solitary isolation in her Normandy property she is already in the depths of despair. We follow her unsuccessful attempts to find distractions in the arms of a young but boorish local fellow and to recreate the gay and lavish atmosphere of Parisian festivities in her new realm, but her physical and mental conditions rapidly deteriorate until her ultimate and finally fruitless fatal gesture of resentment at her fate.
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9 |
16 | 1911 | Burning Secret [17] 23,400 words |
Brennendes Geheimnis | seduction | In a mountain resort an Austrian nobleman, an experienced lady-chaser, sets his sights on an attractive woman who has come there with her sickly twelve-year-old son for a cure, and cleverly first strikes up a friendship with the boy as a way to his mother’s heart. This stratagem is brilliantly successful, but the baron makes the mistake of ignoring the boy from then on and the story switches to an in-depth investigation of the boy’s evolving feelings of bewilderment, resentment, hostility and finally outright violence as he tries to understand what the baron’s aims are and why he has been ostracised and rejected by his mother. His crisis of adolescence finally bursts into violence and drama as he evolves into a new, more grown-up phase of his life.
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10 |
17 | 1913-08 | Fear [18] 21,000 words |
Angst | blackmail | The story of a respectably married woman who has faulted with a seductive young pianist and is blackmailed by an aggressive young woman who threatens to denounce her to her husband. The blackmail is increasingly successful and the lady is overcome with anguish and finally sees only one fatal way out of her dilemma.
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10 |
18 | 1914-07 | Moonbeam Alley [19] 6,400 words |
Die Mondscheingasse | passion | The narrator’s ship has arrived late in a French port, obliging him to spend an extra day there before continuing his journey. investigating the maze of little streets in the seamier part of the town, he hears a German song in one of the dives there, and when he goes in the singer breaks off her efforts to entertain him by violently shouting in her native tongue at a somewhat wretched-looking fellow-countryman. Who servilely accepts any humiliation the lady proffers him, urging in vain his money on her until he is evicted from the establishment amid the laughter and scorn of all the bystanders save one. The narrator follows him out and learns the tragic story of his unrelenting passion for the lady.
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9 |
19 | 1916-12 | The Legend of the Third Pigeon [20] 1,300 words |
Die Legende der dritten Taube | mock legend | A mock-legendary account of what happened to Noah’s third pigeon: the first had come back empty-beaked so to speak, signifying that it hadn’t been able to find any land; the second a week later had returned with an olive branch, signifying that it had found the tip of an olive tree sticking out of the water, and the third hadn’t returned at all another week later, signifying that it had succeeded in finding dry land. The fate of the third in its leafy heaven where it had gained eternal life did not turn out as well as might be expected though, as its longevity brought it up to our own less-than-ideal period of the Earth’s evolution.
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8 |
20 | 1917-07 | The Woman and the Countryside [21] 8,050 words |
Die Frau und die Landschaft | seduction | On vacation in a valley in the Tyrol suffering from a long drought, the narrator has a strange, almost mystical but very real nighttime experience with a young woman whom he had seen that day staring at the clouds in the distance seeming to pray for the summer storm that finally broke out during their unexpected nighttime encounter – that she had quite forgotten the next morning.
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8 |
21 | 1919-07 | The Refugee. Episode on Lake Geneva [22] 2,500 words |
Der Flüchtling. Episode am Genfer See | anecdote | At night on Lake Geneva during the First World War a fisherman comes across a man in the middle of Lake Geneva paddling a makeshift raft. He rescues the fellow, who is naked and cannot speak a word of French, and brings him back to his port, where the polyglot director of the local hotel finds that he is a Russian soldier who had been brought to France with his division to fight on the western front, where he had been wounded, had escaped, and he was now trying to make his way back to his homeland. He is housed and fed by the townspeople but the poor man, who is utterly lost and just wants to return to his wife and children and his status as semi-serf on the plains there, is utterly despairing when it is explained to him that he cannot leave until the end of the war at an indeterminate date in the future. The story does not end well for him.
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8 |
22 | 1920 | Compulsion [23] 12,000 words |
Der Zwang | pacifism in wartime | Ferdinand is a German artist who has gone to live in an obscure village in Switzerland, avoiding contact with the local citizens in the hope that he will be able to escape the notice of the German authorities. But one day the postman delivers his mobilisation papers and a convocation to the German consulate in Zürich, where he is told that he must return immediately to his fatherland for military service. As both he and his wife are convinced pacifists the decision to submit to – or refuse to obey – what they both consider a criminal enterprise is not an easy one to make.
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8 |
23 | 1921-05 | The Eyes of My Brother, Forever [24] 12,900 words |
Die Augen des ewigen Bruders. Eine Legende aka: Virata |
mock legend | Introduced with quotes from the Hindu classic Bhagavad-Gita and beginning with the declaration: “This is the story of Virata that his people celebrated with the four names of the virtues…” the text recounts the various life-changing stages in the hero Virata’s career, from the moment, as the most renowned warrior of a mythical pre-Buddhist kingdom, he had led loyal forces on a daring and victorious nighttime attack on the headquarters of a rebel army, only to discover afterwards the dead body of his elder brother whom he had mistaken for an enemy during the struggle. The impact of the eyes of his dead brother staring at him led him to renounce the king’s offer to assume leadership over all his armed forces, declaring that he now realised that nothing could ever justify taking the life of another man and that he wanted henceforth to only serve the cause of natural justice. Whereupon the king appointed him as the foremost judge of the realm, until a man he had condemned to life imprisonment and whippings for having slaughtered a whole family pointed out to him that he was unworthy of condemning others to a punishment that he himself had never suffered and therefore could not understand. Renouncing his position of judge to deepen his understanding of the concept of justice, he thus embarks on a further series of transformations of his values and his occupations until the cycle is complete when the king one last time grants him his ultimate wish – that explains just why this hero who had been so famous in each of his previous life-stages was never chronicled in any of the historical chronicles and was finally utterly forgotten by humanity.
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9 |
24 | 1922-01 | Letter From an Unknown Woman [25] 14,200 words |
Brief einer Unbekannten | passion | A well-known novelist returns home after a holiday in the mountains to find a long letter awaiting him there from a woman he had once known but quite forgotten. She on the other hand has never forgotten him, for good reasons as the letter explains.
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10 |
25 | 1922-05 | The Fantastic Night [26] 20,700 words |
Phantatische Nacht | life in Vienna | We follow the events in one day of the life of a well-off, rather idle, somewhat bored and very blasé thirty-six-year-old reserve officer in Vienna in June 1913 as he quite by hazard finds himself at the races in the Prater, the great Viennese public park, and watches with a detached eye the excited behaviour of the crowd during the races. His day and his whole existence are thrown head over heels when he starts paying attention to an alluring person next to him and rapidly goes through a life-changing experience that ends late that night when he finally comes home and on opening the door of his apartments suddenly thinks: “I then felt overwhelmed by anguish at the idea that I would return to my previous ordinary life on entering the dwelling of the man I had been until then, in sleeping in his bed, on having contact with everything that this night had so effectively undone.”
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10 |
26 | 1922-06 | Amok [27] 19,200 words |
Amok aka: Der Amokläufer |
passion | An expatriate doctor on the verge of a nervous breakdown in a remote outpost in the Dutch East Indies after seven years of service in the jungle there receives the visit of an elegant lady from the European community in the area’s capital who offers him a large sum of money to perform an illegal operation. Although he does need the money, her arrogant and humiliating attitude provokes him into making her a dishonourable counter-proposition that she tauntingly refuses. Losing all sense of reason and his mental equilibrium, he runs amok – goes on what might be called a psychological rampage – and there is intense drama for him and the lady and her entourage from that instant onwards.
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9.5 |
27 | 1925-05 | The Invisible Collection [28] 5,050 words |
Die unsichtbare Sammlung | ultra-inflation | An antiquarian travels to a small town in Germany during the period of ultra-inflation after WW1 in search of a former client of his gallery who had over the years amassed a fabulous collection of drawings. He does find the old man, who recounts to him in great detail and with heartfelt emotion the wonders of his unique collection.
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9.5 |
28 | 1925-12 | Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman [29] 23,300 words |
Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau | passion | In this story within a story, both on the theme of deep-running sensual passions overriding all other considerations, subtly enlarged to encompass the overwhelming passion of gambling, a woman recounts a decisive moment in her life when she had tried to help a young nobleman whose passion for the roulette table had lead him to the brink of self-destruction.
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10 |
29 | 1929 | Rahel Confronts God [30] 5,300 words |
Rahel rechtet mit Gott. Legende | mock legend | The people of Jerusalem have been worshipping foreign gods and sullying the holy places of worship with their sacrilegious behaviour and bloody acts of violence for so long that He unleashes endless mighty storms that permanently darken the skies in punishment, disregarding all mankind’s lamentations and pleadings for forgiveness. His anger is so great that even the angels hide from his sight, and the violence of his retribution is so intense that the dead are awakened, but even the pleadings of the awakened bones of the most sacred of them all are ignored by the power on high. So the mother of Israel’s tribe, Rahel, gets up from her tomb too and reveals to Him in a dramatic speech how she had managed to forgive her own father and sister when they had plotted to substitute her ugly elder sister for her in the bridal ceremony with Jacob that she had been waiting for seven years. She revolts against the Lord’s refusal to show misericord for his children when she herself had managed to overcome her repugnance at having to renounce her own love for Jacob out of pity for her beloved elder sister, and finally wins the day with her spirited reasoning.
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8 |
30 | 1927-04 | The Dissimilar Doubles [31] 7,900 words |
Die gleich-ungleichen Schwestern | mock legend | The narrator spots an unusual building with two identical towers in a southern town (in Aquitaine in France as it turns out) and asks a local citizen sipping wine at a nearby table for an explanation. Who obligingly explains the tale of the two identical twin sisters, whose father had been a very ambitious ruler fallen on hard times and their mother a strikingly beautiful local girl. The two girls were not only absolutely identical but also very accomplished and beautiful, always vying to outdo one another in everything. One day one of them ran away with a young lord she had seduced and launched herself on a career of wanton luxury that brought her renown among all the men and especially lords and the reprobation of all the women. In reaction, her sister devoted herself to caring for the aged and ill in a convent and became equally renowned for her dedication and sanctity. But the conflict between the two came to the flashpoint when the wanton one challenged the pure one to a test of her resistance to the lures of the flesh which was haughtily accepted, somewhat foolishly as it turned out, as the pure sister hadn’t reckoned with the wiles of her sister and the effect of wine and spices and perfumes and the charm and virility of the challenger to her virginity that the sister faced her with. So virtue lost the day and the battle against the urges of the flesh – or did it? – as the story doesn’t end there and the tale becomes less of a parable and more of a perfectly believable and credible tale with a moral of its own.
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8 |
31 | 1927-08 | The Wedding in Lyon [32] 3,100 words |
Die Hochzeit von Lyon | totalitarian repression | This account of a nighttime marriage in the face of imminent death during the ferocious Stalinist-type repression of enemies of the State during the 1794 Terror period of the French Revolution so vividly recreates the atmosphere of those tragic days that anything else seems anticlimactic. | 10 |
32 | 1927 | Downfall of the Heart [33] 10,700 words |
Untergang eines Herzens | conflict of the generations | An elderly man is deeply shocked when in the middle of the night he sees his nineteen-year-old daughter coming out of the bedroom of another guest of the hotel in an Italian coastal resort where he’s on vacation with his family for health reasons. The shock is severe and affects both his physical and psychic equilibrium, driving him to desperate measures as he comes to grips with the relational and moral gulf between himself and the rest of his family. His mental and physical health rapidly decline as he and the reader realise that the end is rapidly approaching.
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8 |
33 | 1927 | Confusion of the Sentiments [34] 27,000 words |
Verwirrung der Gefühle | hidden homo-sexuality | A university professor reflects on his career when honoured by his colleagues and students with an elaborate 200-page biography on the occasion of his sixtieth anniversary, and is struck by the contrast between the outward image he has represented to the world and his inner vision of himself. In particular he remembers his tumultuous first year as a student and his life-changing encounter with an inspired professor with whom he had had the most important relationship in his life, a relationship that evolved from enthusiastic collaboration on an editorial research project to an intense and passionate relationship between the two and that culminated in one final, unforgettable scene that was perhaps the most important moment in his life.
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9.5 |
34 | 1929-11 | Mendel the Book-dealer [35] aka The Old-Book Peddler 10,300 words |
Buchmendel | life in Vienna | The narrator recounts how he had taken shelter unexpectedly in a suburban café where he suddenly remembered having met twenty years beforehand Mendel, a book handler who possessed a phenomenal memory for the slightest details of any book he had ever seen or read about. Famous in his day, he was now quite forgotten by everyone in the café where he had officiated all day every day, except for the washerwoman, who recounts to the author the sad fate of the famous expert whose life, like so many others, had been utterly uprooted by the First World War.
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9 |
35 | 1929 | Leporella [36] 8,300 words |
Leporella | passion | Crescentia is an awkward, ungainly and excessively introverted kitchen-maid from the mountains in Tyrol whose whole existence is uprooted when the lady of the house leaves for a cure and her handsome and frivolous husband, the baron F., treats her in a most friendly manner, involves her is his extra-marital escapades, and baptises her Leporella after the complacent servant of Don Juan, Leporello. But all good things come to an end and the high-strung madame returns one day and the tensions in the house and with Crescentia/Leporella explode.
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9 |
36 | 1929 | Fragment of a Novella [37] 2,700 words |
Fragment einer Novelle | passion | An engineer on a remote construction project in Mexico has been feverishly awaiting the long-awaited date of departure of his boat to return to Germany and his beloved fiancée whose letters he has read and reread so often that he knows them all by heart. Only to discover one catastrophic day that war has been declared in Europe and that his separation from his beloved will last far longer than he had imagined. Life carries on however and he builds a new life.
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7 |
37 | 1934-05 | Unexpected Acquaintance with a Craft [38] 13,800 words |
Unvermutete Bekanntschaft mit einem Handwerk | life in Paris | Returning to Paris after a two-year absence, the narrator decides to just do nothing other than soak up the atmosphere of the boulevards and watch the crowds passing by there. Which enables him to identify a pickpocket and to study the fellow’s expert technique. When he follows the man on his peregrinations to the central auction house at the Hotel Druot the man passes into action and the narrator himself gets involved.
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9 |
38 | 1936-12 | The Buried Candelabrum [39] 34,000 words |
Der begrabene Leuchter | mock legend | The story, or rather fable, starts with the detailed description of the meticulous looting of Rome of all its wealth by a Vandal army in the year 453, and the despair of the Jewish community as the looters take away the sacred candelabrum that the Romans had brought back with them from Jerusalem when they had conquered it – and destroyed the Temple there – almost four hundred years beforehand. A group of elders follows the last of the Germanic warriors down to the sea to try to somehow prevent the sacred candelabrum from being taken away over the seas, and the young boy Benjamin, whom they had brought with them as a witness of the scene for future generations, makes a mad rush at the very last moment to try to wrest the candelabra from a Vandal soldier’s grasp. To no avail, but he does touch the sacred object and is henceforth an object of worship throughout the Jewish communities everywhere for his brave deed. In his old age he is sent by his community to Constantinople where the Byzantine army that had just conquered the Vandals had brought the candelabrum. He is granted an interview with the mighty Emperor, who agrees to save the candelabrum from destruction, but refuses to sell it to the unbelieving Jews and orders it to be installed instead in a new church to be consecrated in Jerusalem. Although Benjamin and the other Jewish delegates are in despair at their failure to recuperate the precious relic of Solomon’s Temple, where there is a will there is a way and both the candelabrum and Benjamin end their peregrinations in the holy land.
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7 |
39 | 1939-10 | An Unforgettable Man [40] 2,500 words |
Ein Mensch, den man nicht vergißt | anecdote | The narrator remembers Anton, a thirty-year-old poorly-dressed and penniless man who could always be found wandering about his little home town just helping people and even animals, doing odd jobs and living from day to day, accepting in payment for his friendly and efficient services only what he needed to get through the day, nothing more. He had been one of the most influential people in the narrator’s life.
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8 |
40 | 1941-06 | The Debt Paid Late [41] 10,000 words |
Die spät bezahlte Schuld | what might have been | A middle-aged woman writes to an old friend to recount how during a brief holiday in the Tyrolean mountains she had encountered an actor they had both utterly worshipped in their adolescence and who had since fallen on hard times. She reveals to her old friend how the actor had played a key role in an absolutely crucial moment in her life, and how she had paid back the debt that she owed him during that encounter in the remote mountain village.
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9.5 |
41 | 1942-12 | Did He Do It? [42] 10,500 words |
War er es? | anecdote | Betsy has retired with her husband to a lovely spot on a small hillside overlooking an abandoned canal in the countryside near Bath in England, and she recounts their relationship with their young neighbours, an extraordinarily warm-hearted fellow and his wife, to whom Betsy had given a puppy for company as they had remained childless. The dog becomes the central figure in this increasingly-dramatic story as he assumes ever-greater mastery over his owner, who had soon become his willing slave/servant, until the arrival at last of a baby relegates the animal to a secondary role in the household that the arrogant, very clever and very powerful dog refused to accept, with tragic consequences.
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9 |
42 | 1942-12 | Chess Story [43] aka: The Royal Game 18,300 words |
Schachnovelle | the power of the intellect | Having learnt that the world chess champion is on board the ship that is taking him from New York to Buenos Aires, the narrator organises a match at high stakes – the hard-nosed champion only plays for money – against the combined forces of the chess enthusiasts on the boat. The champion scornfully humiliates them but in the revenge match a bystander intervenes to prevent the group from playing the obvious move, and then plays the rest of the game to a draw. Recognizing the force of the newcomer the champion proposes another match just with him, which does take place in an atmosphere of great tension and drama, particularly for the narrator who had spent the previous afternoon listening to the newcomer recount how he had used mental chess in his cell to overcome the intense psychological torture that he had been submitted to by the Gestapo after the fall of the democratic government in Austria.
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10 |
43 | 1987 | The Resistance of Reality [44] 10,500 words |
Widerstand der Wirklichkeit aka: Die Reise in die Vergangenheit |
passion | Ludwig is a young man from a poor background who’s hired as a specialist in an important chemical firm in Leipzig on graduating with a doctor’s degree in chemistry (at the age of twenty-three!). Soon afterwards the owner of the firm takes him on as his private secretary and he’s given a large room of his own in the ailing owner’s luxurious home, where he is received in a particularly friendly manner by the lady of the house, an elegant young woman with an eleven-year-old son. Ill at ease in such luxurious surroundings because of his lifelong poverty Ludwig nevertheless soon falls hopelessly in love with the lady, a feeling that was about to become mutual not to say consummated when Ludwig is sent on a two-year mission to oversee the creation and exploitation of a major mining operation in Mexico. He feverishly memorises all the long letters his almost-mistress sends him, and counts the days until his long-awaited return to the fatherland and the boy’s mother. But shortly before the date set for departure, war breaks out in Europe and Ludwig has to wait until the war ends to return. As the war drags on Ludwig carries on with his wheelings and dealings and acquires a family too, but one day at last, nine years after his departure, he does return to Germany on a business trip and arranges to meet at long last the desired one. They take the train to romantic Heidelberg but that doesn’t work out quite as well as planned and their passions sort of peter out on an undecided note.
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7 |
44 | 1990 | Wondrak [45] 8,700 words |
Wondrak | solitude | Ruzena has always been an outcast from society because of her deformed (noseless) face from birth onwards, and lives far away from the nearest town in a forest. But she is aggressed brutally by three marauders and nine months later gives birth to a perfectly normal boy who is the central point of her life, even when he is taken away from her during the week to do his schooling. But when he becomes eighteen and is drafted at the height of the First World War, Ruzena obliges him to desert and to hide with her in the forest. Wondrak, the rather kindly secretary of the mayor, who had arranged for the boy to be christened, warns her that a special detachment of gendarmes is on its way to round up deserters, and even though she hides Karl (who had been given Wondrak’s forename) even deeper in the forest, the gendarmes root him out with a bloodhound and arrest Ruzena too when she in despair violently assaults the squad’s officer. But when Karl and his mother are dragged bitterly protesting through the town, the Czech-speaking townsfolk, all of whom resent the oppression of their Austrian overlords and are waiting for the Russians to deliver them, group menacingly around the prison where the two have been imprisoned for the night. Unfortunately, this 35-page fragment, found in the author’s papers after his death, stops there.
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8 |
2. NOVELS BY STEFAN ZWEIG
3. INDEX OF TITLES IN ALPHABETIC ORDER BY ENGLISH TITLE
A Loser (Ein Verbummelter)
Amok
An Unforgettable Man (Ein Mensch, den man nicht vergißt)
Beware of Pity (Ungeduld des Herzens)
Burning Secret (Brennendes Geheimnis.)
Chess Story (Schachnovelle)
Clarissa
Compulsion (Der Zwang)
Confusion of the Sentiments (Verwirrung der Gefühle)
Did He Do It? (War er es?)
Downfall of the Heart (Untergang eines Herzens)
Fantastic Night (Die phantatische Nacht)
Fear (Angst )
Forgotten Dreams (Vergessene Träume)
Fragment einer Novelle (Fragment of a Novella)
In the Snow (Im Schnee)
Leporella
Letter From an Unknown Woman (Brief einer Unbekannten)
Mendel the Bookdealer (Buchmendel)
Moonbeam Alley (Die Mondscheingasse)
Rahel Confronts God (Rahel rechtet mit Gott. Legende)
Scarlet Fever (Scharlach)
Snow Winter (Schneewinter)
Springtime in the Prater (Praterfrühling)
The Buried Candelabrum (Der begrabene Leuchter)
The Cross (Das Kreuz)
The Debt Paid Late (Die spät bezahlte Schuld)
The Dissimilar Doubles (Die gleich-ungleichen Schwestern)
The Eyes of my Brother, Forever (Die Augen des ewigen Bruders. Eine Legende)
The Fowler Snared (Sommernovellette)
The Governess (Die Gouvernante)
The Invisible Collection (Die unsichtbare Sammlung )
The Legend of the Third Pigeon (Die Legende der dritten Taube)
The Love of Erika Ewald (Die Liebe der Erika Ewald)
The Miracles of Life (Die Wunder des Lebens)
The Post Office Girl (Rausch der Verwandlung)
The Refugee. Episode on Lake Geneva (Der Flüchtling. Episode am Genfer See)
The Resistance of Reality (Widerstand der Wirklichkeit)
The Royal Game (Schachnovelle)
The Sealed Train (Der versiegelte Zug)
The Star Over the Forest (Der Stern über dem Walde)
The Walking Tour (Die Wanderung)
The Wedding in Lyon (Die Hochzeit von Lyon)
The Woman and the Countryside (Die Frau und die Landschaft)
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau)
Twilight Story (Geschichte in der Dämmerung)
Twilight (Geschichte eines Untergangs)
Two Lonely Souls (Zwei Einsame)
Unexpected Acquaintance with a Craft (Unvermutete Bekanntschaft mit einem Handwerk)
Virata (Die Augen des ewigen Bruders. Eine Legende)
Wondrak
4. INDEX OF TITLES IN ALPHABETIC ORDER BY GERMAN TITLE
Amok
Angst
Brennendes Geheimnis
Brief einer Unbekannten
Buchmendel
Clarissa
Das Kreuz
Der Amokläufer
Der begrabene Leuchter
Der Flüchtling. Episode am Genfer See
Der Stern über dem Walde
Der versiegelte Zug
Der Zwang
Die Augen des ewigen Bruders. Eine Legende
Die Frau und die Landschaft
Die gleich-ungleichen Schwestern
Die Gouvernante
Die Hochzeit von Lyon
Die Legende der dritten Taube
Die Liebe der Erika Ewald
Die Mondscheingasse
Die Reise in die Vergangenheit
Die spät bezahlte Schuld
Die unsichtbare Sammlung
Die Wanderung
Die Wunder des Lebens
Ein Mensch, den man nicht vergißt
Ein Verbummelter
Fragment einer Novelle
Geschichte eines Untergangs
Geschichte in der Dämmerung
Im Schnee
Leporella
Phantatische Nacht
Praterfrühling
Rahel rechtet mit Gott. Legende
Rausch der Verwandlung
Schachnovelle
Scharlach
Schneewinter
Sommernovellette
Ungeduld des Herzens
Untergang eines Herzens
Unvermutete Bekanntschaft mit einem Handwerk
Vergessene Träume
Verwirrung der Gefühle
Vierundzwanzig Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau
Virata
War er es?
Widerstand der Wirklichkeit
Wondrak
Zwei Einsame
5. ANALYSES
5.1 ANALYSIS BY THEME
THEME | NO. OF TITLES | % | AVG. RATING |
passion | 7 | 16% | 8.8 |
mock legend | 5 | 11% | 8 |
seduction | 5 | 11% | 8.6 |
anecdote | 3 | 7% | 8.3 |
life in Vienna | 3 | 7% | 9.2 |
what might have been | 3 | 7% | 8.2 |
conflict of the generations | 2 | 5% | 8.5 |
solitude | 2 | 5% | 8 |
suicide | 2 | 5% | 7.5 |
blackmail | 1 | 2% | 10 |
hidden homosexuality | 1 | 2% | 9.5 |
life in Paris | 1 | 2% | 9 |
medical drama | 1 | 2% | 9 |
pacifism in wartime | 1 | 2% | 8 |
a pogrom | 1 | 2% | 9 |
religion and art | 1 | 2% | 6 |
the fall from power | 1 | 2% | 9 |
the power of the intellect | 1 | 2% | 10 |
totalitarian repression | 1 | 2% | 10 |
ultra-inflation | 1 | 2% | 9.5 |
war story | 1 | 2% | 9 |
TOTAL | 44 | 100% | 8.6 |
5.2 ANALYSIS BY PERIOD
PERIOD | NO. OF TITLES | % | AVG. RATING |
1900-1908 | 15 | 34% | 8.1 |
1911-1942 | 29 | 66% | 8.8 |
TOTAL | 44 | 100% | 8.6 |
5.3 ANALYSIS BY LENGTH OF STORY
short story: < 7,500 words; novelette: 7,500-17,499 words; novella: 17,500-40,000 words
LENGTH OF STORY | NO. OF TITLES | % | AVG. RATING |
short stories | 18 | 41% | 8.2 |
novelettes | 16 | 36% | 8.7 |
novellas | 10 | 23% | 9.1 |
TOTAL | 44 | 100% | 8.6 |
6. QUALITY ASSESSMENT
RATING | NO. OF TITLES | % | AVG. RATING | QUALITY ASSESSMENT |
1-6 | 1 | 2% | 6 | Poor |
7 | 6 | 14% | 7 | Average |
8 | 13 | 30% | 8 | Good |
9-10 | 24 | 54% | 9.4 | Excellent/Masterwork |
TOTAL | 44 | 100% | 8.6 |
QUALITY COUNT = Good+Excellent = 37 |
QUALITY RATIO = Good+Excellent = 84% |
EXCELLENCE RATIO = Excellent = 54% |
THIS IS THE HIGHEST QUALITY RATIO OF ANY OF THE AUTHORS ANALYSED ON THIS SITE
7. WORKS OF STEFAN ZWEIG SOMETIMES ERRONEOUSLY CLASSIFIED AS STORIES
date 1st published |
English Title___________ | Original Title__________ | Genre_______ | Comments_____________________________________ |
1911 | First Experience | Erstes Erlebnis aka: Die Kette (The Chain) |
short-story collection | This is the title of a collectIon of four short stories (Twilight Story, The Governess, Burning Secret and The Fowler Snared), preceded by a poem. |
1925 | The Struggle With the Devil | Der Kampf mit den Dämon | historical essays | This is a series of literary analyses of the works of Kleist, Hölderlin and Nietzsche, and not a work of fiction. |
1940 | The Sealed Train | Der versiegelte Zug | historical essay | This account of Lenin’s trip across Germany in the middle of WW1 (with the approval of the German authorities) on his way to destroy the Russian empire is not (unfortunately, one might say) a work of fiction. |
2016 | Snow Winter | Schneewinter | poetry | This is a collection of poetry, not a work of fiction. |
8. REFERENCES
8.1. SITES
Project Gutenberg: downloadable Stefan Zweig stories in German
Stefan Zweig bibliography in Wikipedia.
This bibliography (see below) contains 47 titles, of which 36 are titles of stories, the others being titles of anthologies (7), novels (3) and a collection of poems (1).
The difference between the 36 storied identified in Wikipedia and our count of 44 is because the following 8 stories are missing from the Wikipedia list:
- The Walking Tour (Die Wanderung);
- The Cross (Das Kreuz);
- The Woman and the Countryside (Die Frau und die Landschaft);
- The Wedding in Lyon (Die Hochzeit in Lyon);
- Fragment of a Novella (Fragment einer Novelle);
- Casual Knowledge of a Craft (Unvermutete Bekanntschaft mit einem Handwerk);
- An Unforgettable Man (Ein Mensch, den man nicht vergißt);
and - Wondrak (Wondrak).
Wikipedia bibliography of Stefan Zweig stories
8.2. ANTHOLOGIES
Stefan Zweig - Gesammelte Werke (Paperless, digital edition; 6,802 pages)
Stefan Zweig – Romans, nouvelles et récits (Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 3012 pages)
The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig (Pushkin Press, 720 pages)
The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig (Pushkin Press, 384 pages)