Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig Read Free

her of all people, among New York’s population of seven million. The relationship between Stefan and his brother was severely tested in the coming months, after Alfred had discovered that Stefan was continuing to correspond with his divorced wife, was even consorting with her socially again before very long, and to cap it all had agreed to pay her an annuity.
    From mid-February to the start of April Stefan and Lotte stayed as planned at the Taft Hotel in New Haven, where he found some peace and quiet to get on with his work. In March the book about Brazil was finished, and the manuscript was sent off immediately to his publisher in Rio, who was keen to get this promising new title on the market as soon as possible. But even in their hotel retreat they could not avoid news about the war and its consequences. On top of their general concerns they had continuing worries about family and friends. Only now did Stefan learn that Erwin Rieger had died the previous year in North Africa under mysterious circumstances, while Lotte was worried about the fate of her brother and his wife in England, which had been under heavy attack from the German Luftwaffe for some time now. The BBC’s Broadcasting House in Portland Place, just around the corner from Stefan’s former apartment in Hallam Street, had been hit by bombs, and the actual building in which he had lived was also badly damaged in an air raid. At least Lotte’s eleven-year-old niece Eva had been sent a few months earlier to a boarding school in Croton, north of New York, where they knew she would be safe.
    From New Haven—a town that offered no other diversions apart from the University library, as Stefan discovered—he returned with Lotte to New York and the Wyndham Hotel, where they moved back into the same suite they had occupied before. One thing was certain—they wouldnot be wanting to stay here for long. Nor would they be able to, as things stood, because their length of stay in America was limited by the fact that both of them only held a transit visa. While Stefan continued to provide guarantees and financial support for other European exiles, he did virtually nothing to advance his own affairs. He felt extremely uncomfortable in his situation, and yet could not escape from the role he was called upon to play. He went on looking after the interests of his colleagues with his customary solicitude, even though, as he said, they often expected miracles from him that he was not in a position to deliver. Zweig dictated letters in his usual suave tone, praised their books and encouraged them to publish further texts. In the case of Ivan Heilbut, a native of Hamburg now living in Manhattan, he even agreed to write a brief foreword to his forthcoming collection of poems.
    Apart from the stresses of the war, Zweig was troubled by other anxieties too. His fear of growing old had surfaced again at the approach of his sixtieth birthday in November. In the spring he arranged to meet Carl Zuckmayer at a French restaurant in Manhattan. The conversation flowed easily while they recalled happy memories of yapping dogs and amusing excursions, but when the talk turned to the time nearly ten years earlier when he had “gone on the run” to escape his fiftieth birthday, which they had then spent together in Munich, Zweig’s mood swiftly altered. Sixty years, he confided to Zuckmayer, were enough, he did not expect to live through any more good times—to which his colleague could offer little by way of reply.
    On 6th May Zweig deposited his will with his New York lawyers, in which Lotte was named as his sole heir. In the event that she died before him, or that they both perished at the same time through an accident or some other misfortune, his estate would pass to Lotte’s brother Manfred, his wife and their descendants.
    At the end of the month Zweig made an appointment with the German-born photographer Kurt Severin, who had been commissioned by the Three Lions Photo Agency to