Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881. After obtaining a degree in philosophy, he had the opportunity to travel extensively and live in a number of European cities. These experiences made him a cosmopolitan soul with a great interest in the wealth of innovations in European thought and culture. First and foremost among these was psychoanalysis, whose echoes are frequently found in his literary works. He debuted in his early twenties with a collection of poems. After that, his body of work developed in several directions, as if to reflect his universalist and humanist leanings: he wrote plays, novels and short stories, biographies, poems, many of them successful, including Amok, Decisive Moments in History and The Royal Game. Because of his anti-nationalist stances and Jewish origins, his life in Austria at the rise of Nazism became difficult: in 1933 his books were put on the list of those to be burned. The following year, he was subjected to a raid that compelled him to emigrate first to London, then, in 1940, to New York and finally, Brazil. On 23 February 1942, in the city of Petrópolis, disheartened by the vision of the destruction of the world and the ideals in which he believed, and plagued by fits of depression, he took his own life along with his second wife.