Stefan Zweig: The Incarnation of Humanism

“The Incarnation of Humanism”

February 23: The bodies of expatriate Austrian writer Stefan Zweig and his wife were discovered on this day in 1942, the two having committing double suicide in Brazil. Zweig was popular during the pre-war decades for a broad range of work — over two-dozen novels and biographies, as well as plays, essays and criticism — and his death made international headlines. Many reports carried excerpts from his suicide note:

…But after one’s sixtieth year unusual powers are needed in order to make another wholly new beginning. Those that I possess have been exhausted by the long years of homeless wandering. So I hold it better to conclude in good time and with erect bearing a life for which intellectual labor was always the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on this earth. Continue reading Stefan Zweig: The Incarnation of Humanism