Stefan Zweig Biography: Chapter One - Early Life
Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881. His parents, Moritz and Ida, were members of the wealthy, Jewish elite. Stefan and his brother, Alfred, grew up in an atmosphere of affluence. Neither of the boys wanted for anything. Their futures were secured by the sound investments of their father, Moritz.
Moritz Zweig is a mysterious figure to historians. A prominent business leader in his time, he certainly had a paper trail. Very little of that trail, however, leads to an accurate depiction of the man himself. There is only one surviving document in existence that he actually wrote. The few photos that remain of him illustrate little, as well. Though the pictures span several decades, he wears the same expression in each: bland and emotionless. There is never a hint of the nature of the man those photos portray. Stefan himself said little about him, and the rest of the family seemed content to leave the memory of their father as an unexplored ghost, in a back corner of their lives.
Moritz was born in 1845, in Moravia of the Czech Republic. Records indicate that the Zweig family line can be traced to that place, well into the 18th century. Moritz’s father oversaw a textile empire, and Moritz followed suit in 1878. He used part of his family’s money, and his own, to purchase his own textile mill, and then moved to Vienna. Moritz grew up with parents who had built their wealth from the ground up, and Moritz was no stranger to hard work. Though he started rather small, having not inherited all of his family’s money, it did not take him long before he oversaw his own, thriving textile empire. Moritz was very careful with his money and neither he, nor his wife, was prone to excess. It was a point of pride with him that he never incurred debt, even when he first purchased his mill. In fact, considering their great wealth, the Zweig family lived rather modestly.
He married Stefan’s mother, Ida Brettauer, in 1878. Her youth had been spent much differently than that of Moritz. She had moved to Vienna when she was sixteen, and came from a wealthy banking family. She grew up with far more affluence than Moritz. She had lived in a home that was both metropolitan, and multi-lingual. A life of ease, and effortless erudition, were well known to her. Their first child, Alfred, was born in 1878, just a year after their marriage. Stefan himself arrived two years later.
Ida’s pregnancy with Stefan was rather unremarkable and his birth, easy. Not long after Stefan was born, however, Ida became sick. Diagnosed with a hormonal disorder, the sickness led to the chronic inflammation of both of her eardrums. The condition, little understood at the time, quickly led to the near-complete loss of her hearing. The deafness of his mother became a formative influence on Stefan’s life.
She did not deal with her deafness well, and could fly into rages at any time. A woman of influence, Ida often attended plays, operas, and other performances. After the ravages of her illness, however, she could no longer do so. She had to carry around a large ear horn that allowed her to magnify sound, and to make the most use out of her damaged ears. This device, usually reserved for the elderly, served to highlight her in any crowd. She gave up attending live performances, and turned her attention to the cinema, which at the time, was silent. It allowed her to channel her passion for performances into something that was suited to her deafness. Her deafness also made her a bit of an outsider with the rest of her immediate family. She did not form a typical, loving relationship with her children.
A woman of her time, Ida often held small parties at her home. These so-called “salons” were a frequent activity of the wealthy, and influential. The salons were usually very lavish affairs. Great writers, composers, and artists would attend them, often to entertain the elite. Ida did not invite the usual celebrities of the time, however. Known to be rather odd, and not as ostentatious as her wealth would allow, Ida’s friends and attendees were the wives of bankers, business owners, and lawyers. The Jewish elite of Vienna usually attended her salons.
The Zweig family was Jewish, but not observant. They only attended synagogue on major holidays, but did not observe those holidays at home. At this time in Vienna, it was not strange to see an unorthodox, Jewish family celebrating Christmas, especially if that family had moved away from their faith. The Zweig family was an exception. They did not celebrate either holiday. Later, both Stefan and Alfred wrote that the absence of this holiday in their life was one of their biggest childhood disappointments, especially since the Zweig elders often erected a small tree for their servants each year, and presented those servants with gifts, in front of the boys.
Ida and Moriz treated both of their children equally. However, they did not participate in the day-to-day rearing of their two children. As wealthy members of Viennese society, both Stefan and Alfred were given into the care of a nanny. This was typical of the time, and often expected. Ida and Moriz were far too busy being socially elite. They could spare no time to attend to such matters as parenting.
Stefan, folded into the strict routines of the wealthy, became accustomed to velvet suits, good manners, polite society, and no end of boredom. Though his family enjoyed fantastic privilege, it came with its own version of servitude and unyielding tradition. Zweig’s early life served as material that would later resurface, in the form of many of Zweig’s short stories and characters.