Dr. Birger Vanwesenbeeck, in Salzburg with Stefan Zweig Centrum director Dr. Martina Wörgötter-Peck.
Department of English Professor Birger Vanwesenbeeck gave an invited lecture, “Stefan Zweig's Sprach-Exil,” at the Stefan Zweig Center in Salzburg, Austria.
The lecture, which was held in German, centered on several documents from Daniel Reed Library’s Zweig archive that highlighted the extent to which Zweig experienced his years in exile increasingly estranged from his native tongue, German.
Zweig, who lived in Salzburg from 1917 to 1934 – on a hillside villa visible from the windows of the center’s Europasaal, where Dr. Vanwesenbeeck delivered his lecture – fled the city due to a growing climate of anti-Semitism to never return there. (A Nazi document informing Zweig of a special Jewish property tax levied on his house is preserved at Reed Library’s Zweig archive.)
Announced in the city newspaper, the Salzburger Nachrichten, Vanwesenbeeck’s lecture attracted faculty and students from Salzburg University as well as local community members. During his visit he also conducted research at the Literaturarchiv Salzburg where primary documents related to Zweig’s life and works are held.
Earlier this summer, Vanwesenbeeck participated in the biennial International Pynchon Week conference, held in Belgrade, Serbia, where he delivered a paper (in English) that focused on the influence of the philosopher Herbert Marcuse on American author Thomas Pynchon.
