Our Vision

Collecting is itself an act (and art) of creation

Stefan Zweig is not some hidden and obscure secret. At the height of his career, in the nineteen-twenties and thirties, he was in fact the most translated writer in Europe. Yet one facet of his life and work is perhaps lesser known to his audience today. On the first page of his, in exile written, autobiography he introduces himself thus: “as an Austrian, a Jew, an author, a humanist, and a pacifist”. He could however have rightfully added one more noun to incorporate in this legacy; that as a collector.

Indeed he did look upon his collection as a work of art in its own right. He even goes as far as saying that he was aware that with his collection he had created something that, as a whole, was more worthy of lasting than his own works. Of that, we are none to judge. What we do know is the lasting impact of his thought — a thought that Atelier Zweig is built upon, as an homage to and a continuation of his philosophy of collecting. 

From running after the poets, singers and actors roaming the Viennese streets as a schoolboy, Stefan Zweig’s collection, and philosophy on collecting, evolved through the decades in harmony with his humanist ideals. From mere signatures, to autographed leaves, and finally to handwritten manuscripts and first drafts. Developing in the process a desire to grasp the most secret moment of all moments: that of creation. A moment that still remains a mystery.

Zweig was drawing on Goethe who had the same conviction, that one cannot fully understand a work of art by seeing them in their finished form. One must know them in the process of creation. For Zweig, his collecting became a strive to see the evidence of greatness at play, and to possess the moments which shaped the intellectual heritage of our world. 

It was never his intention to possess these moments for ever and for himself — he rather viewed himself as a guardian of time. Tragically his own time was cut short by living through history himself as part of the “tested generation”. “How much of it is today scattered to the winds, along with other, lesser pleasures”, he wrote of his collection from his exile in 1942.

We are pleased to see that the winds blew you here to us today and hope to see you becoming the next Guardian of time to one of our pieces. Or rather: to a moment of inspiration, of creation, and of history, to the pieces in which “the earthly genius was embodied in a moment of eternity”.