Franz Werfel, Arthur Schnitzler, Karl Kraus, Sigmund Freud, Theodor Herzl: The list of Jewish intellectuals who not only shaped the intellectual life of Vienna around 1900 can be extended almost indefinitely. The renowned Germanist Egon Schwarz, who himself had to flee Vienna for South America in 1938 as a child of Jewish parents, sheds light on the socio- and cultural-historical reasons for this phenomenon. No city embodies the tensions between Western monarchy and Eastern province, as well as the contrasts between patriotism and multinationalism, as much as Vienna at the turn of the century. Thus, it is not surprising that the capital of the Danube Monarchy, this melting pot of nations and cultures, could simultaneously provide the fertile ground for Herzl's Zionism and Hitler's anti-Semitism. Egon Schwarz takes the reader into the Fin de siècle and allows them to engage with the biographies.