“The World of Yesterday: Memoirs of a European”

1. I finished reading “The World of Yesterday” by Stefan Zweig. This is the gripping autobiography of a Viennese writer who was born and grew up in the late 19th century, and then, together with millions of Europeans, lived through the darkest time in European and world history, two world wars, the Holocaust and the financial crisis in between.
2. Zweig was a Jew, the son of a wealthy manufacturer, a poet, playwright, prose writer, translator, Austrian citizen, but also a European and cosmopolitan. In the book, he talks about the fact that before World War I it was possible to travel around the world without visas or passports, and he used this very intensively.
3. Zweig was a top writer. I didn't know him before, but his books have been published around the world in many languages. Richard Strauss (the famous German composer) insisted on collaborating with Zweig on the opera “The Silent Women”, despite the fact that the Nazis banned a play created by Jews. Hitler himself had to approve the premiere, which he did because he was a big fan of Strauss.
4. Zweig's book is a nice collection of stories from old Europe. Zweig was popular and liked to surround himself with famous people, and it is also a beautiful catalog of artistic name-dropping. Zweig knew everyone: Salvador Dali, Freud, the aforementioned Strauss, James Joyce, and many others.
5. I especially liked the part of the book where Zweig describes hyperinflation in Austria. After losing World War I, Austria was punished similarly to Germany, the territory was divided, it had to pay reparations and return gold from the central bank. All this made the Austrian currency quickly worthless. Hyperinflation in Austria was so cosmic that cunning foreigners could buy entire streets of tenement houses in Vienna for pennies.
6. Zweig summarizes all the chaos caused by hyperinflation in a beautiful and hopeful way:

• The desire to continue life turned out to be stronger than the volatility of money. Despite the financial chaos, life went on as usual, almost unchanged.
• Only the social order has changed: the rich became poor as their money in banks and securities melted and the speculators became richer.
• But the Ferris wheel went on, unconcerned about the fate of individuals, always in the same rhythm, never stopping for a moment; the baker baked bread, the shoemaker made shoes, the writer wrote books, the farmer tilled the land, the trains ran on schedule, the newspaper lay outside the door at the usual time in the morning – and the bars, theaters, entertainment venues were overcrowded.
• Precisely because what once represented the greatest durability, i.e. money, was losing value every day, people began to value the true values of life – such as work, love, friendship, art, nature – and in the face of catastrophe, the whole nation lived much more intensively than usually.
• Boys and girls hiked the mountains and came back bronzed, music played late into the night at dance parties, and new factories and shops sprang up everywhere.
• It seems to me that I myself lived and worked more intensively than ever at that time. What had previously meant something to us became even more important. Art was never loved so much in Austria as in those years of chaos, because as a result of the devaluation of money, we felt that only the values in ourselves mattered.

(I have divided the paragraphs by myself.)

Did you enjoy the read? Follow my newsletter for more thoughts on technology.