The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography

Stefan Zweig

U of Nebraska Press, Jan 1, 1964 - Biography & Autobiography - 455 pages

This eBook is produced by arrangement with Viking, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

The World of Yesterday, mailed to his publisher a few days before Stefan Zweig took his life in 1942, has become a classic of the memoir genre. Originally titled "Three Lives," the memoir describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two world wars and the Hitler years.


"The best single memoir of Old Vienna by any of the city's native artists." ?¾Clive James

"A book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942." ?¾The Guardian

"It is not so much a memoir of a life as it is the memento of an age." ?¾The New Republic

Contents

• THE WORLD OF SECURITY: 1
• SCHOOL IN THE LAST CENTURY: 28
• EROS MATUTINUS: 67
• UNIVERSITAS VITAE: 92
• PARIS THE CITY OF ETERNAL YOUTH: 126
• BYPATHS ON THE WAY TO MYSELF: 160
• BEYOND EUROPE: 178
• LIGHT AND SHADOW OVER EUROPE: 192
• THE FIRST HOURS OF THE WAR OF 1914: 214
• THE STRUGGLE FOR INTELLECTUAL BROTHERHOOD: 238
• IN THE HEART OF EUROPE: 255
• HOMECOMING TO AUSTRIA: 281
• INTO THE WORLD AGAIN: 304
• SUNSET: 326
• INCIPIT HITLER: 358
• THE AGONY OF PEACE: 390
• OF STEFAN ZWEIG: 443

About the author

¾Stefan Zweig¾(1881-1942) was the most widely read German-language author of the twentieth century. Zweig was a secular Jew, a Pan-European and a pacifist. He was born in Vienna on November 28, 1881 and studied there and in Berlin. As a young man, he translated French poetry by Verlaine, Baudelaire, and Verhaeren into German. He quickly branched out into journalism, fiction, biography and writing for the theater. His plays, including the anti-war¾Jeremiah, were produced throughout Europe. His books were eventually translated into over 50 languages. Today, he is best known for his many works of non-fiction. They include the classic memoir¾The World of Yesterday¾and many biographical essays on famous writers and thinkers such as Erasmus, Tolstoy, Balzac, Stendhal,¾Nietzsche,¾Dostoevsky,¾Dickens,¾Freud¾and¾Mesmer. He lived in Salzburg with¾his first wife Friderike¾until 1933, when his books were burned by the Nazis. In 1934, he emigrated to England where he continued writing and met his second wife Lotte Altmann. In 1941, the couple moved to Brazil where¾they committed suicide in 1942.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The World of Yesterday: An Autobiography; Volume 181 of A Bison book; Bison book. 181
• Author: Stefan Zweig
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: U of Nebraska Press, 1964
• ISBN: 0803252242, 9780803252240
• Length: 455 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Historical; Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs; History / Europe / Austria & Hungary; History / Europe / Western; Political Science / Political Ideologies / Nationalism & Patriotism