Casa Stefan Zweig, Historical museum in Petropolis, Brazil

The Casa Stefan Zweig is a residential house with European and Brazilian influences, featuring large windows, wooden floors, and a designed garden on a hillside. The building now operates as a museum, displaying the rooms and personal collection of the renowned Austrian writer.

The renowned Austrian writer Stefan Zweig moved into this house in 1940 with his wife Lotte to escape Nazi persecution. Both died here in 1942 under tragic circumstances, making the residence a symbol of displaced European intellectuals.

The house shows how European emigrants lived in Brazil and what traces they left behind. You see personal objects, photographs, and letters that tell the story of people who left their homeland and built new lives.

The museum opened to visitors in 2012 at Rua Gonçalves Dias 34, in Petrópolis north of Rio de Janeiro. It occupies the house where Zweig lived, so plan for a visit on foot through residential streets; the association also runs a four-language website with information on Zweig and exile literature.

Zweig drafted Schachnovelle in this house, but the book was not written here: he revised his autobiography Die Welt von Gestern and sketched his Montaigne essay during the five months in Petrópolis. The novella was published posthumously in 1942, the year he and Lotte died.