Alberto Dines Brazilian journalist and writer Date of Birth: 19.02.1932 Country: Brazil

1. Early Life and Education
2. Career and Writing
3. Dictatorship and Censorship
4. The House of Stefan Zweig
5. Recognition and Legacy

Early Life and Education

Alberto Dines was born and raised in Vila Isabel, Rio de Janeiro. He attended the Escola Popular Israelita Brasileira Sholem Aleichem, a Jewish school, where he studied Yiddish literature. At a young age, he became interested in socialism through his involvement with the left-leaning "Obreira Internacionalista" group. In 1940, he witnessed a visit to his school by Stefan Zweig, inspiring a lifelong fascination with the author's work.

During World War II, Dines worked as a journalist for a small newspaper published by his Jewish high school. He briefly attended Andrews College in Botafogo but left due to his socialist beliefs, which led him to reject the need for a university degree.

Career and Writing

With fellow university students, Dines pursued a passion for filmmaking, despite the lack of formal training in Brazil. He worked under Isaac Rosenberg in documentary filmmaking. In 1950, he became a film critic for a magazine covering the film industry.

Dines also covered cultural news and worked for five years as a journalist for Visão magazine in São Paulo, writing on culture, politics, and economics. He later worked for other magazines and became assistant editor-in-chief at the age of 25. From 1962 to 1974, he worked at Jornal do Brasil.

Dictatorship and Censorship

Following a military coup in Brazil in 1964, Dines faced censorship and repression as editor-in-chief of Jornal do Brasil. In 1968, he expressed his opposition to government censorship, leading to his arrest. In 1973, he was dismissed after defying a ban on the publication of news about the assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile.

In 1974, amidst political isolation, Dines accepted an invitation to lecture at the journalism school of Columbia University.

The House of Stefan Zweig

In 1942, after the tragic death of Stefan Zweig, Dines was among the journalists and writers who sought to establish a museum to commemorate the author in Petrópolis. Over sixty years later, this idea came to fruition, with Dines serving as president of the Stefan Zweig House Society.

Recognition and Legacy

In 2007, Alberto Dines received the Austrian Holocaust Memorial Award. In 2009, he became an honorary member of the Austrian Society for Science and Culture. He was also a senior researcher at the Laboratório de Estudos Avançados em Jornalismo, a research center that publishes the journal Observatório. Dines dedicated much of his later years to studying the life and work of Stefan Zweig, publishing a biography titled "Death in Paradise: The Tragedy of Stefan Zweig" in 1981.