The World of Yesterday

The World of Yesterday
The World of Yesterday (Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers) book cover, 1942
AuthorStefan Zweig
Original titleDie Welt von Gestern
LanguageGerman
Publication date
1942
Media typePrint

The World of Yesterday: Memoires of a European (German title Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers) is the memoir[1][2][3] of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig.[4] It has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire.[5] He started writing it in 1934 when, anticipating Anschluss and Nazi persecution, he uprooted himself from Austria to England and later to Brazil. He posted the manuscript, typed by his second wife Lotte Altmann, to the publisher the day before they both committed suicide in February 1942. The book was first published in the original German-language by an anti-Nazi Exilliteratur publishing firm based in Stockholm (1942), as Die Welt von Gestern.[6] It was first published in English in April 1943 by Viking Press.[4] In 2011, Plunkett Lake Press reissued it in eBook form.[7] In 2013, the University of Nebraska Press published a translation by the noted British translator Anthea Bell.[8]

The book describes life in Vienna at the start of the 20th century with detailed anecdotes.[4] It depicts the dying days of Austria-Hungary under Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and Karl I of Austria, including literature, the arts, the system of education, and the sexual ethics prevalent at the time, the same that provided the backdrop to the emergence of psychoanalysis. Zweig also describes the stability of Viennese society after centuries of Habsburg rule.

  1. ^ Jones, Lewis (11 January 2010), "The World of Yesterday", The Telegraph, retrieved 2 November 2015
  2. ^ Lezard, Nicholas (4 December 2009), "The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig", The Guardian, retrieved 2 November 2015
  3. ^ Brody, Richard (14 March 2014), "Stefan Zweig, Wes Anderson, and a Longing for the Past", The New Yorker, retrieved 2 November 2015
  4. ^ a b c The World of Yesterday, Viking Press.
  5. ^ Giorgio Manacorda (2010) Nota bibliografica in Joseph Roth, La Marcia di Radetzky, Newton Classici quotation:

    Stefan Zweig, l'autore del più famoso libro sull'Impero asburgico, Die Welt von Gestern
  6. ^ Darién J. Davis, Oliver Marshall (ed.), Stefan and Lotte Zweig's South American Letters: New York, Argentina and Brazil, 1940–42, Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010, p. 41.
  7. ^ "The World of Yesterday". Plunkett Lake Press.
  8. ^ "The World of Yesterday".