Штефани Цвейг: Жизнь и творчество немецкой писательницы

20th and 21st century German writer

Stefanie Zweig (19 September 1932 – 25 April 2014) was a German Jewish writer and journalist. She is best known for her autobiographical novel, Nirgendwo in Afrika (Nowhere in Africa) (1995), which was a bestseller in Germany. The novel is based on her early life in Kenya, where her family had fled to escape persecution in Nazi Germany. The film adaptation of the novel (2001) won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Her books have sold more than seven million copies, and have been translated into fifteen languages.

Zweig was born in Leobschütz, Germany (now Głubczyce, Poland). She is not related to the Austrian writer, Stefan Zweig [1881 1942]. She and her parents, being Jewish, fled to Africa in 1938 to escape persecution in Nazi Germany. They went from a prosperous urban life in Breslau (now Wrocław) to a poor farm in Kenya; Zweig was five years old. Paul Vitello writes in his obituary that, "The parents endured grinding work and bouts of depression. Stefanie, who had been withdrawn, blossomed into a venturesome, Swahili speaking teenager." In 1941, the family received a postcard from Zweig's grandmother saying, "We are very excited, we are going to Poland tomorrow". Zweig's father explained that the grandmother was being sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp, which was operated by the German occupiers of Poland. She and many others were murdered there. Zweig attended an English boarding school while in Kenya, which was a British colony at the time. Zweig's father became a British soldier during World War II (1939–1945), when Britain was fighting Germany and the other Axis powers, but in 1947 he took his wife, daughter and infant son back to Germany. The family's original home had been in Upper Silesia, which was in the east of prewar Germany. After the war, most of the region became part of Poland and the German residents had to move. Zweig's father had been offered a position as a judge in Frankfurt in western Germany. His appointment was part of the "denazification" of the judicial system in postwar Germany; only Germans without connections to the Nazi party could serve as judges. Zweig was enrolled in the Schiller School in Frankfurt. Having become primarily an English speaker in Kenya, she needed to relearn German. She later wrote, "Learning German so that I could read and write and get rid of my English accent took me a couple of months; the assessment as to which is my mother language is still going on. I count in English, adore Alice in Wonderland, am best friends with Winnie the Pooh and I am still hunting for the humour in German jokes." From 1959 to 1988 Zweig worked in Frankfurt for Abendpost and its successor Abendpost/Nachtausgabe [Evening Post/Night Edition]j. She directed the arts section ("Feuilleton") from 1963. Abendpost/Nachtausgabe folded in 1988, after which Zweig became a freelance journalist and writer. Hans Riebsamen wrote in 2012 that "In retrospect, both Zweig and her readership can be happy that Abendpost/Nachtausgabe folded in 1988."

While working for Abendpost, Zweig wrote a number of children's books, commencing with Eltern sind auch Menschen [Parents are people too] (1978). Her first African novel was the novel for young adults Ein Mundvoll Erde [A Mouthful of Earth] (1980). It describes an infatuation with a Kĩkũyũ boy; the book won several awards, including the Glass Globe of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society. Zweig explained in an interview that the success of Ein Mundvoll Erde encouraged her to write her first novel for adults. She said, "I thought to myself, 'You really are a fool to waste all your life in a children's book, why don't you tell the true story?'" Nirgendwo in Afrika [Nowhere in Africa] appeared in 1995. Zweig described it simply as "the story of a courageous father who taught his daughter not to hate." The 2002 film adaptation of Nirgendwo in Afrika was written and directed by Caroline Link. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the German Film Award for Best Fiction Film, and several other prizes. While the film attracted international attention to Zweig, she was not directly involved in its making. Zweig died on 25 April 2014 after a short illness. Her partner Wolfgang Häfele predeceased her in 2013.