Stefan Zweig

Zweig was an immensely successful novelist, playwright, and librettist in early 20th century Europe. Though Austrian by nationality and Jewish by heritage, he considered himself first and foremost an European, and no one was more delighted than he by the vigorous bounty of European culture at the turn of the last century. To be a talented aspiring writer, nineteen years old, in Vienna, in 1900 — what a joy! Modernity must have looked like a blossoming Eden. And then, of course, came the snakes. By 1942, Zweig was in Brazil, a refugee with no citizenship and no possessions, and he with his wife saw no future. They took an enormous amount of barbiturates and lay down to die. “I send greetings to all of my friends,” he wrote. “May they live to see the dawn after this long night. I, who am most impatient, go before them.”