2 - A SELECTION OF STEFAN ZWEIG STORIES AND ESSAYS

A young medical student comes to Vienna and has enormous difficulties adjusting to life in the big city, not only because he’s still 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 in his dwelling, not to speak of the latter’s outspoken and somewhat aggressive girlfriend. But one day the landlady comes to him in tears pleading for his help as a medical student to save her young (...)

A fifteen-year-old English boy on holiday in the grand Scottish castle of his relatives wanders into the grounds late at night, fascinated by its somewhat eerie atmosphere. Where he’s abruptly accosted in the dark by a passionate young woman who vigorously embraces him before fleeing. Unable to identify his mysterious aggressor he lurks under the same tree again the next night and has another encounter with the ghostly girl, and thereafter desperately seeks to identify the culprit and to (...)

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.
An episode impregnated with the atmosphere of the Paris of the time, (...)

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 Derby Day has failed to arrive on time, obliging her to miss the fancy event. Finally she decides to put on her oldest dress and just go out for a walk on that lovely spring day. When she’s 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 (...)

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. About to leave 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.
Stefan Zweig’s first published story, a remarkable achievement by the 19-year-old author.
Translated specially for this site. (2,100 words) An e-book, with the original text in an annex, (...)

Erika Ewald 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, that they both realise she almost is.
An intense and very convincing exploration of the profound emotional, psychological and (...)

A middle-aged woman writes to an old friend to recount how during a brief holiday in the Tyrolean mountains she’d encountered an actor that they both had utterly worshipped in their adolescence and who’d 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 finally paid back the debt she owed him.
One of Stefan Zweig’s best stories, this late work was completed in his penultimate year, 1941. (...)

In this story within a story 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.
Soberly recounted with sensitivity and in-depth psychological penetration: one of the most powerful masterworks of the celebrated Viennese author of Letter From an Unknown Woman. (23,300 words) An e-book is available for downloading below, with the original German-language text in an (...)

A well-to-do married woman who has faulted with a seductive young pianist is aggressively blackmailed by a coarse young woman who threatens to denounce her to her husband. The blackmail is increasingly successful, the lady is overcome with fear and anguish and finally she sees only one fatal way out of her dilemma.
One of the major works of the celebrated author of Letter From an Unknown Woman. An e-book, with the original text in an annex, is available for downloading below.
The (...)

A well-off and rather idle reserve officer in Vienna in June 1913 quite by hazard finds himself at the races in the Prater, the great Viennese public park, and watches the excited behaviour of the crowd during the races with a detached eye. His day and his whole existence are thrown head over heels when he starts paying attention to an alluring person next to him and he rapidly goes through a major life-changing experience.
A memorable account of the glories of a summer pre-WW1 Viennese (...)