The works and thought of Jewish-Austrian author Stefan Zweig are inseparable from his “idea of Europe”. His vision encompasses a nostalgic lament for a world that has been lost (along with a way of seeing and inhabiting it), the longing for a dream yet to be realised, and the construction of utopian spaces through experience and memory.
Both dimensions of Zweig’s Europe – past and future, nostalgia and utopia – come alive and intertwine in his 1942 autobiography The World of Yesterday. Its subtitle, “Memoirs of a European”, gives more than a hint as to the importance of Europe in understanding the author’s life, work and spiritual legacy.
