ABSTRACT
The rise of Nazism in Germany and annexation of Austria led to the flight of Jewish writers, among them Stephan Zweig and Joseph Roth from Austria and Irmgard Keun from Germany. Reconstructing the lives of German writers in Ostend in 1936, Volker Weidermann describes Keun as, 'a self-confident, beautiful young woman'. Among the writers in exile in Ostend Zweig was the most urbane, and the richest, with both a wealthy family and a successful writing career. He was also entirely urban, writing in cities about city lives for city readers, nostalgic after leaving Austria for Viennese cafe society. When a Freedom Pavilion was proposed for the 1939 New York World's Fair, which would include the work of Zweig, Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud in a replica of a Viennese cafe, furious German objections led to its abandonment. Zweig, in The World of Yesterday, describes the cafe as a location of cultural novelty where people sit for hours.
