Segnitz

Segnitz is especially famous as the place in which Triestine writer Italo Svevo (pseudonym of Ettore Schmitz) and his Brother Adolfo spent four school years (1874-1878) in a famous private boarding school, called the Brüsselsche Institut. Another Brother, Elio, came to Segnitz 1876-78.[2] In contrast to his brothers he got homesick, but wrote a diary about his time in Segnitz. This diary is now an important source for the obviously "social" background in Svevos writing.[3]

The Brüsselsche Institut existed from 1838 until 1881 and was run by director Samuel Spier, who had been one of the founding fathers of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Spier had come to Segnitz 1872 after the Franco-Prussian War in a self-imposed exile after he had been accused in the first high treason trial of the newly founded German Empire. (Spier was eventually found guilty for a minor offense for which he received two months in prison.) Samuel Spier is "Mr. Beer" in Svevos Novella "L'avvenire dei ricordi" ("The Future of our Memories", originally titled by Svevo only by a date: 1. 5. 1925) whose action takes place in Segnitz.[4]