In his own day, the Austrian Jewish writer Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was one of Europe’s most popular authors, famous for his historical biographies and short stories—which often revolved around the cosmopolitan and urbane world of pre-World War I Vienna. In 1901, the young Zweig met Theodor Herzl—then at the height of his career as a Zionist leader—who hired him to write feuilletons (long-form columns) for the Die Neue Freie Presse, a prestigious Viennese newspaper where Herzl worked as an editor. Neil Rogachevsky comments on Zweig’s description of Herzl in his memoir, The World of Yesterday:
More about: Austrian Jewry, History of Zionism, Stefan Zweig, Theodor Herzl
