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Stefan Zweig (; German: [ˈʃtɛ.fan t͡svaɪ̯k] ; 28 November 1881 – 22 February 1942) was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. He wrote historical studies of famous literary figures, such as Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky in Drei Meister (1920; Three Masters), and decisive historical events in Decisive Moments in History (1927). He wrote biographies of Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935) and Marie Antoinette (Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman, 1932), among others. Zweig's best-known fiction includes Letter from an Unknown Woman (1922), Amok (1922), Fear (1925), Confusion of Feelings (1927), Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927), the psychological novel Ungeduld des Herzens (Beware of Pity, 1939), and The Royal Game (1941). In 1934, as a result of the Nazi Party's rise in Germany and the establishment of the Standestaat regime in Austria, Zweig emigrated to England and then, in 1940, moved briefly to New York and then to Brazil, where he settled. In his final years, he would declare himself in love with the country, writing about it in the book Brazil, Land of the Future. Nonetheless, as the years passed Zweig became increasingly disillusioned and despairing at the future of Europe, and he and his wife Lotte were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in Petrópolis on 23 February 1942; they had died the previous day. His work has been the basis for several film adaptations. Zweig's memoir, Die Welt von Gestern (The World of Yesterday, 1942), is noted for its description of life during the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire under Franz Joseph I and has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire. Biography Zweig was born in Vienna, the son of Ida Brettauer (1854–1938), a daughter of a Jewish banking family, and Moritz Zweig (1845–1926), a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer. He was related to the Czech writer Egon Hostovský, who described him as "a very distant relative"; some sources describe them as cousins. Zweig studied philosophy at the University of Vienna and in 1904 earned a doctoral degree with a thesis on "The Philosophy of Hippolyte Taine". Religion did not play a central role in his education. "My mother and father were Jewish only through accident of birth", Zweig said in an interview. Yet he did not renounce his Jewish faith and wrote repeatedly on Jews and Jewish themes, as in his story Buchmendel. Zweig had a warm relationship with Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, whom he met when Herzl was still literary editor of the Neue Freie Presse, then Vienna's main newspaper; Herzl accepted for publication some of Zweig's early essays. Zweig, a committed cosmopolitan, believed in internationalism and in Europeanism, as The World of Yesterday, his autobiography, makes clear: "I was sure in my heart from the first of my identity as a citizen of the world." According to Amos Elon, Zweig called Herzl's book Der Judenstaat an "obtuse text, [a] piece of nonsense". Zweig served in the Archives of the Ministry of War and supported Austria's effort for war through his writings in the Neue Freie Presse and frequently celebrated in his Diaries the capture and massacre of opposing soldiers (for instance, writing about the innumerable citizens killed at gunpoint under the suspicion of espionage that "what filth has made ooze must be cauterized with scalding iron".) Zweig judged Serbian soldiers as "hordes" and stated that "one feels proud to talk German" when thousands of French soldiers were captured in Metz. Conversely, in his memoirs, The World of Yesterday, Zweig portrays himself in the role of pacifist at the time of the First World War, states that he refused "to participate in those rabid calumnies against the enemy" (although, through his work in the official Neue Freie Presse, Zweig promoted the war propaganda issued from the Austrian crown) and affirms that among his intellectual friends he was "alone" in his stance against the war. Zweig married Friderike Maria von Winternitz (born Burger) in 1920; they divorced in 1938. As Friderike Zweig she published a book on her former husband after his death. She later also published a picture book on Zweig. In the late summer of 1939, Zweig married his secretary Elisabet Charlotte "Lotte" Altmann in Bath, England. Zweig's secretary in Salzburg from November 1919 to March 1938 was Anna Meingast (13 May 1881, Vienna – 17 November 1953, Salzburg). As a Jew, Zweig's high profile did not shield him from the threat of persecution. In 1934, following Hitler's rise to power in Germany and the establishment of the Standestaat, an authoritarian political regime now known as "Austrofascism", Zweig left Austria for England, living first in London, then from 1939 in Bath. Because of the swift advance of Hitler's troops westwards, and the threat of arrest or worse – as part of the preparations for Operation Seelöwe a list of persons to be detained immediately after conquest of the British Isles, the so-called Black Book, had been assembled and Zweig was on page 231, with his London address fully mentioned – Zweig and his second wife crossed the Atlantic to the United States, settling in 1940 in New York City; they lived for two months as guests of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, before renting a house in Ossining, New York. On 22 August 1940, they moved again to Petrópolis, a German-colonized mountain town 68 kilometres north of Rio de Janeiro. There, he wrote the book Brazil, Land of the Future and developed a close friendship with Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. Zweig, feeling increasingly depressed about the situation in Europe and the future for humanity, wrote in a letter to author Jules Romains, "My inner crisis consists in that I am not able to identify myself with the me of passport, the self of exile". He had been despairing at the future of Europe and its culture. He wrote: "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth". On 23 February 1942, the Zweigs were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in the city of Petrópolis, holding hands. The Zweigs' house in Brazil was later turned into a cultural centre and is now known as Casa Stefan Zweig. Work Zweig was a prominent writer in the 1920s and 1930s, befriending Arthur Schnitzler and Sigmund Freud. He was extremely popular in the United States, South America and Europe, and remains so in continental Europe; however, he was largely ignored by the British public. His fame in America had diminished until the 1990s, when there began an effort on the part of several publishers (notably Pushkin Press, Hesperus Press, and The New York Review of Books) to get Zweig back into p.... Discover the Joseph Conrad Odon Von Horvath Philipp G popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Joseph Conrad Odon Von Horvath Philipp G books.