Scope and Content Note
The papers of Joseph Wechsberg (1907-1983) span the years 1943-1983, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the period between 1964 and 1979. The collection focuses on Wechsberg's work as a journalist and author and consists of three series: Correspondence , Writings , and Miscellany . Included in the papers are correspondence, drafts and related material, notes, newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, and other material pertaining to Wechsberg's career. Roughly a third of the collection is written in German with small amounts in French and Czech. The remainder is in English.
The Correspondence series contains letters to and from Wechsberg's literary agent in the United States, Paul Revere Reynolds, as well as many of his publishers, such as Alfred A. Knopf, Doubleday, G. P. Putnam's Sons, Kindler & Schiermeyer Verlag, Little, Brown & Company, Macmillan Company, Rowohlt Verlag, S. Fischer Verlag, Time-Life Books, Viking Press, and Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The series also contains correspondence with authors, journalists, political figures, musicians, chefs, restaurateurs, and other notables, such as Joseph Alsop, W. H. Auden, Rudolf Bing, Paul Bocuse, Willi Boskovsky, Willy Brandt, Janet Flanner, Michel Guérard, Ronny Jaques, Teddy Kollek, Lotte Lehmann, Jean Monnet, Fernand Point, Henri Soulé, Isaac Stern, George Szell, Simon Wiesenthal, and Paul Wittgenstein.
The Writings series constitutes the largest portion of the collection and is divided into three major sections: articles, books, and notebooks. During his writing career, Wechsberg authored hundreds of articles and over two dozen works of nonfiction. His works were published in numerous magazines and journals, including Canadian Food Journal, Esquire, Feinschmecker, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Gourmet, Holiday, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Opera, Stuttgarter Zeitung, Travel & Leisure, and Die Welt. Articles are arranged alphabetically by title according to drafts and printed versions and include newspaper columns, magazine articles, essays, special features, profiles, letters from abroad, musical program notes, restaurant reviews, travel narratives, and other short literary forms.
Much of Wechsberg's writing is imbued with nostalgia for life during the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and disappointment with its successor states. His works reflect fundamental themes of traditional Viennese life and culture, namely appreciation of music, haute cuisine, and the architectural beauty and charm of the grand old cities of the former Empire coupled with reprehension for what he felt was a banal and dreary existence imposed by communism on most of Central Europe after World War II.
Wechsberg was an accomplished amateur violinist and chamber musician and owned a violin made by the famous Italian maker Stradivarius. He wrote several books on music and musicians including biographies of Nellie Melba (Red Plush and Black Velvet), Giuseppe Verdi (Verdi), Franz Schubert (Schubert: His Life, His Work, His Time), and the Strauss family (The Waltz Emperors), as well a history of opera (The Opera) and the violin (The Glory of the Violin).
Wechsberg devoted much of his life to the appreciation of gastronomy. His extensive gustatory experiences and numerous friendships with many of Europe's leading chefs and restaurateurs is evident in Blue Trout and Black Truffles, Dining at the Pavillon, The Best Things in Life, and The Cooking of Vienna's Empire. Based on his own extensive travels and observations, Wechsberg portrays the bygone splendor of Central Europe's grand old cities in such works as Vienna, My Vienna; Prague, the Mystical City; Dream Towns of Europe; and The Lost World of the Great Spas. Wechsberg's distaste and contempt for communism surface in many of his works. Journey through the Land of Eloquent Silence reveals daily life under communism in East Germany; The Voices details the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968; and his novel, The Self-Betrayed, deals with love, political ambition, and communism and their effects upon one another in his postwar homeland. Wechsberg's broad scope of interest is further manifest in his histories of nineteenth-century banking in Europe (The Merchant Bankers) and of the Weizmann Institute in Israel (A Walk through the Garden of Science). Works of a more autobiographical nature include The First Time Around and The Vienna I Knew. In 1967 Wechsberg coauthored with Simon Wiesenthal Murderers among Us, a collection of essays recounting atrocities of the Holocaust and the pursuit of Nazi war criminals.
Wechsberg wrote the majority of his books in English, many of which were published simultaneously in the United States and in Great Britain but by separate publishers under different titles. Many of these works were also later translated and published in German and other languages. For the most part, Wechsberg's books are organized in this collection by the title published in the United States with related material by differing titles filed appropriately. Freude am Wein, Land mit zwei Gesichtern, and Lebenskunst und andere Künste appear not to have been published in English. The Writings series also contains several unpublished works as well as a small number of book reviews by Wechsberg and contributions to works by others. Throughout the years, Wechsberg kept notes and jotted down ideas in hundreds of small notebooks which are arranged alphabetically according to subjects he supplied.
The Miscellany series consists of biographical material, menus from French restaurants, newspaper clippings, photographs, and printed matter citing Wechsberg.