The World of Yesterday

The beer war… what hyperinflation can do!

I wonder to what extent Stefan’s reports of opera feeling better than ever in the post-war period are romanticism… How long would that feeling last?

His attitude to moral/sexual revolutions seems largely colored by his view of those periods. He’s much more positive about the end of the Victorian Era than about the post-war revolutions. Consistent? Doesn’t have to be…

The “Out Into the World Again” chapter is heartwarming!

“If I have mastered any art, it is the art of leaving things out” — Paul Graham would be proud.

Gillette is older than I thought!

Hard to imagine the Russians, so somber in my image now, as positive and warm as he describes them being in the 1920s. — The letter he received then paints a different picture.

The idea of making a collection into a work of art is appealing and makes me see collecting in a more positive light. The curator is also an artist!

Surprised that he only noticed Hitler when the movement was already violent… Although I guess political violence, at least in organized fashion, was more common then.

Seems important that many military figures were involved in training the Brown Shirts.

Impressive how important figures like Strauss were to the Nazis. No parallel in cultural figures today, I think.

How quickly Austria fell after the 1st war… I guess wars will do that to empires.

Stefan Zweig did not vote!

What does he imply regarding the funding of fascists in Spain, Italy, and Germany? Or does he merely question?

How could the Austrians not see? Did they just not want to? Stefan Zweig saw it clearly and early…

Passports are now needed to be treated as a man… More or less dignified? I think less.

1914: From India to America without a passport… Indeed hard to believe.

Reading this memoir makes it feel strange that the occupation of Austria appears a non-event internationally. Why did we have to wait until Poland fell?

I am somewhat surprised at how positive Zweig is regarding Freud. Did not age well, is my impression.

Cannot help but feel shame at how Europeans treated humans during the war.

Powerlessness describes the feeling instilled by the last part of the book well.

I understood, but don’t, his decision not to flee Britain.