Segnitz is a municipality in the district of
Kitzingen
Kitzingen () is a town in the Germany, German state of Bavaria, capital of the Kitzingen (district), district Kitzingen. It is part of the Franconia geographical region and has around 21,000 inhabitants. Surrounded by vineyards, Kitzingen County i ...
in
Bavaria
Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...
in
Germany
Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, 25 km south of
Würzburg
Würzburg (; Main-Franconian: ) is, after Nuremberg and Fürth, the Franconia#Towns and cities, third-largest city in Franconia located in the north of Bavaria. Würzburg is the administrative seat of the Regierungsbezirk Lower Franconia. It sp ...
on the Main river. The village is well known as the home of Renaissance master builder
Hans Keesebrod, horticulture and wine and has less than 850 inhabitants.
Italo Svevo, Samuel Spier and Segnitz
Segnitz is especially famous as the village where
Triestine writer
Italo Svevo
Aron Hector Schmitz (19 December 186113 September 1928), better known by the pseudonym Italo Svevo (), was an Italian and Austro-Hungarian writer, businessman, novelist, playwright, and short story writer.
A close friend of Irish novelist and ...
(pseudonym of Ettore Schmitz) and his Brother Adolfo spent almost five school years (May 1874-September 1878) in a private boarding school, called the Brüsselsche Institut (named after its founder, Julius Brüssel *1802–1855). Another Brother, Elio, came to Segnitz 1876-78. In contrast to his brothers, Elio was weak and homesick, but he wrote a diary about his time in Segnitz. This diary is now an important source for the obviously "social" background in Svevo's writing.
The Brüsselsche Institut existed in Segnitz from 1838 until 1881. After Brüssel’s early death, it was run by his son-in-law Dr. Louis Eichenberg who brought it to international fame and sold it to
Samuel Spier at the height of its importance in 1872. Spier, a teacher and politician, was one of the founding fathers of the
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany ( , SPD ) is a social democratic political party in Germany. It is one of the major parties of contemporary Germany. Saskia Esken has been the party's leader since the 2019 leadership election together w ...
. He came to Segnitz after the
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the War of 1870, was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the North German Confederation led by the Kingdom of Prussia. Lasting from 19 July 1870 to 28 Janua ...
in a self-imposed exile after he had been accused in the first high treason trial of the newly founded German Empire. He spent seven months in prison, during which he lost part of his sizable inherited fortune, because he could not take care of his business. All of the defendants were eventually only found guilty for a minor offense for which Spier received two months but no compensation for his losses and for being in prison more than three times longer.) Samuel Spier is "Mr. Beer" in Svevo's
novella
A novella is a narrative prose fiction whose length is shorter than most novels, but longer than most novelettes and short stories. The English word ''novella'' derives from the Italian meaning a short story related to true (or apparently so) ...
"L'avvenire dei ricordi" ("The Future of our Memories", originally titled by Svevo only by a date, probably the day when he started to write it: 1. 5. 1925) whose action takes place in Segnitz.
[* Hans Michael Hensel (ed.), John Gatt-Rutter: ''Italo Svevo, Samuel Spiers Schüler. (...)''. Segnitz: Zenos Verlag 1996, 19ff.]
References
{{Authority control
Kitzingen (district)