Erika Capovilla

Friderike Zweig in American Exile: Cultural Networks and Intellectual Agency, 1940–1971

Although Friderike Maria Zweig (1882–1971) is best known as Stefan Zweig’s first wife, she was herself an accomplished writer, translator, literary agent, and cultural mediator whose work significantly shaped Austrian-American intellectual exchange after her exile to the United States. Drawing on archival materials held in repositories across Europe and the U.S., this project aims to reconstruct her literary activity and transatlantic networks during her American exile (1940–1971), repositioning her as a central yet neglected figure within both the institutional and informal infrastructures of Austrian-American cultural life. In doing so, it sheds new light on the role of Austrian émigré intellectuals in transatlantic cultural exchange during and after the Second World War, and challenges the still male-dominated narratives of exile by foregrounding women’s intellectual agency.