Refashioning the Jewish Body: An Examination of the Sartorial Habits of the Family of Viennese Writer, Stefan Zweig (1881–1942)

This article examines the sartorial habits of the family of renowned Viennese writer, Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), in conjunction with the perceived norms of sartorial respectability and Jewish bodily difference in Austria–Hungary during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The topic probed here is the development of the modern notion of a “Jewish” appearance within the context of acculturation and antisemitism. It will be examined through a comparison of photography and written sources that lead to a further understanding of conflicting manifestations of Jewish bodily stereotypes and the reality of self–fashioning in one of Europe’s capitals of modernist culture, Vienna. This article argues that the adoption of modern dress and other aspects of German culture, was not simply a matter of “assimilation” in which individuals hoped to facilitate the dissolution of “Jewishness” and Jewish identity, but rather part of developing and performing modern and multifaceted European identities.