The World of Yesterday

When I first read Zweig’s memoir, I initially thought it was pretentious name-dropping, mentioning one prominent fin de siècle Viennese writer or musician after another. Only years later did I warm to his memories describing a world that existed before the cataclysm of World Wars and the ultimate fate of Europe’s Jewish citizens.

In reading other memoirs from the period (such as Ernst Krenek’s–not available in English), it’s possible to see that Zweig was writing from a position of enormous privilege while also reflecting the very essence of cultural life in a world where culture was perhaps its most important… show more.

Subtitled Memoires of a European and conceived as missive to future generations, this book provides an exemplary account of the Continent in the first half of the twentieth century, with its many upheavals, rendered from the perspective of an exemplary individual: “an Austrian, a Jew, an author, a humanist, and a pacifist,” Zweig remarks, “I always stood at the exact point where these earthquakes were the most violent.”

He began writing the book in the mid-thirties when the rise of the Nazi party motivated him to leave Austria, first for England and later Brazil. Along the way, he recounts the… show more.

Some books you love because of where you were when you read them. During my recent sabbatical in Vienna, I was determined to read a book by Stephan Zweig, perhaps the most popular writer in the world during the 1920s, yet one whose works had fallen into relative obscurity over time. A big reason is that he was a Jewish writer in German just before the Nazis purged bookstores and libraries of all such “degenerate” works. 

This book is a memoir of life buffeted by the events of the 20th century. Zweig lived a rich intellectual life in the stability… show more.