Post by Marcus Brand

I signed this petition to Austrian authorities today and I'd encourage anyone who cares about European cultural memory to do the same. Stefan Zweig lived and wrote at the Paschinger Schlössl on Salzburg's Kapuzinerberg from 1919 to 1934. He called it "Villa Europa." From there he corresponded with other great minds of his time, and produced some of the most humane writing of the twentieth century before exile, and eventually Petropolis, took it all away. The villa is now being sold. A group of Salzburg cultural figures including historians, writers, musicians, the founding director of the Stefan Zweig Zentrum, are asking the Austrian and Salzburg governments to step in and secure it for public use. This is not a hard case to make. Zweig stands for an idea of Europe that felt lost in 1942 and feels relevant again now: open, literate, deeply uncomfortable with nationalism and chauvinism. Salzburg does well by Mozart, and deservedly so. A proper place to remember Zweig not as a sad footnote but as a serious intellectual and European voice would be something different and something more honest. The Sound of Music without the happy ending. The world of yesterday, remembered properly. https://lnkd.in/egqewKTF