Professor Mark H. Gelber, one of the world’s most eminent authorities on the works of the Jewish-Austrian author Stefan Zweig, will deliver the first Biannual Stefan Zweig Lecture on Thursday, Nov. 11 at 4:30 p.m. in the Japanese Garden section of Reed Library.
Dr. Gelber was born in New York City and received his Ph.D. from Yale University. He is currently Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for German and Austrian Studies at Ben-Gurion University in Israel. He has published numerous articles and books on German and Austrian Jewish writers, with a focus on issues concerning acculturation, Jewish identity, anti-Semitism and Cultural Zionism. Dr. Gelber has extensive publications on the work of Stefan Zweig and has done research on the archival materials in SUNY Fredonia’s Stefan Zweig Collection, the largest of its kind in North America.
The Reed Library Zweig collection contains published novels, short stories, plays, poems, essays, correspondence and other writings by the renowned author. Zweig was known in the literary community as a humanitarian thinker whose prolific literary career and extraordinary life offer unique insight into the artistic and political turbulence of the first half of the 20th century.
Born in 1881, Zweig was forced into exile during Hitler’s rise to power in Germany. Zweig, whose books were burned by the Nazis, fled Vienna in 1934, later moving to England, the U.S. and, in 1941, Brazil. Shortly after arriving in Brazil, and distraught by the fact that yet another war was ravaging his European homeland and its culture, Zweig took his own life through a suicide pact with his second wife, Lotte, in 1942.
Students, faculty and the community are all invited to attend the free lecture that will focus on Zweig’s contribution to world literature.
To learn more, contact Professor Birger Vanwesenbeeck of the department of English at vanweseb@fredonia.edu or 716-673-3847. Reed Library's holdings can be accessed by using the online catalog at www.fredonia.edu/library
