Rüdiger Görner

Expert in German and Austrian literature Professor Rüdiger Görner takes a fresh look at the life of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and assesses his considerable place in world literature and the Austro-Jewish tradition.

Görner says that Zweig’s work was always rooted in the flair of fin de siècle Vienna despite his travels to London, New York and Brazil. He looks at his influential time in England and his final years in the United States and Brazil. And he says Zweig was a towering figure of a form of writing that was bursting with life and was written in the knowledge that there can only be a future if we remain conscious of the past.

Görner was professor of German with comparative literature at Queen Mary University of London, founder of the Ingeborg Bachmann Centre for Austrian Literature and the founding director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations. He has previously written biographies of Rainer Maria Rilke, Georg Trakl, and Oskar Kokoschka.

Part of the festival’s programme of Jewish and Hebrew literature and culture.