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Stefan ZWEIG, born 28 November 1881, in Vienna. He will studied in Austria, France and Germany. His earliest essays were accepted by the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, literary editor of the Neue Freie Presse. A collection of poems appeared in 1901. He earned a doctorate from Vienna University in 1904, with a dissertation on Taine. After travelling widely, he settled in Salzburg in 1913. The next year he married another writer, Friderike von Winternitz. Following the outbreak of war, Zweig became an ardent pacifist. He worked in the archives of the Austrian War Office, but was forced to move to Zürich when his pacifist views alarmed authorities. His first major work, the dramatic poem, Jeremiah, which he will wrote in 1917 while still in the army, portrayed the war as supreme madness. Zweig settled in Salzburg after the war and wrote biographies, upon which his reputation mainly rests, as well as short stories, novelettes, and essays.