Three Lives: A Biography of Stefan Zweig Read Free Page B

in which I myself am the main character, or rather the focal point. But nothing could be further from my mind than the desire to thrust myself forward, unless it be in the role of one who presents a slide show. The images are furnished by the times, I merely speak the words to accompany them: and the story I shall tell will not be so much my own personal destiny, but rather that of an entire generation—a unique generation, that has been burdened with destiny like no other in the course of history.
    This is followed by chapters on his childhood and adolescent years in Vienna, his early travels to Paris and other continents, the First World War and the years in Salzburg, culminating in the police search of his house and his retreat to England. The book ends on the first day of the Second World War, with his description of the scene inside the registry office in Bath (and Zweig merely notes that he was about to get married there for the second time; neither Lotte nor Friderike is specifically referred to or mentioned by name anywhere in the book). The passage on the preparations for the wedding does not appear in the Ossining manuscript, but at the point where it would have stood there is a page reference to an earlier draft, from which the paragraphs in question were evidently to be lifted. And sure enough, the full account is included in the published book. For dramatic effect Zweig has the English registrar—whom he had so admired in his diary for his calm and collected demeanour—informing the happy couple there and then that they would henceforth be classed as enemy aliens, whereas in factStefan and Lotte only learnt of this three days later, when they went to the police station to register their personal details. When the door of the registry office was opened and they heard the news about the outbreak of war, the story continued as follows:
Meanwhile the other official, who had already started to write out our marriage certificate, had put down his pen, struck by a thought. The fact was we were foreigners, it now occurred to him, and in the event of war we would automatically be classed as enemy aliens. He was not sure whether a marriage was admissible in this case. He said he was sorry, but he would have to contact London for instructions. Then followed two days of waiting, hoping and fearing the worst, two days of agonising suspense. On the Sunday morning the radio broadcast the news that Great Britain had declared war on Germany. 9
    At the end of the sixteenth and last chapter, below where he had written the date, Zweig had appended the following sentences in the manuscript, which he later crossed out and did not include in the final draft: “This was the first day. Others followed, light and dark, stale and empty, and the whole rolling time of the war, which I shall not speak of. As I write these pages, its hand is inscribing its iron chronicle with ever more cruel and bloody script, and still we are only at the beginning of the beginning. Only when it ends will it be fitting for us to begin again.”
    After Lotte had typed up the complete text and all the corrections had been incorporated, Stefan donated the handwritten draft to the Library of Congress in Washington DC—a gesture of gratitude for the many instructive hours he had spent in public libraries in America, as he noted in a dedication on the title page.
    The work progressed well, and even Lotte found the hours spent in Friderike’s company not unpleasant. It looked as if they had been able to find a modus vivendi. Even Suse now came to visit, and took a whole series of photographs with her camera showing Stefan sitting in a basket chair on the front lawn of his house at 7 Ramapo Road. His gaze in these pictures seems distracted and frozen. He tries to manage a smile in some of the photos, but his face wears a tired and stony look.
    During their time in Ossining Lotte discovered through spending time with other writers that Stefan was not the only one