Stefan Zweig wrote this poignant autobiography, which extends until the outbreak of World War II, between 1939 and 1942. The text goes far beyond the author's personal memories and becomes a panorama of the culture of old Europe before 1914. At the center of this era, which Zweig himself referred to as the "world of security," is his hometown of Vienna and the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, whose civilizational influence he believes continued to resonate even after the war, until the rise of National Socialism ultimately destroyed his bourgeois-liberal worldview.