100th birthday - Austria / II. Republic of Austria 1981 - 4 Shilling

Stefan Zweig was born on November 28, 1881 in Vienna, the son of a weaving owner. He was selected to take over his father's business. His inclinations were more spiritual values. After grammar school, he attended from 1899 at the University of Vienna lectures on psychology, ethics and literary history. The first selection of his own poems, the band "Silver Strings", appeared in 1901. In 1904 he graduated. The encounter with Dr. Theodor Herzl, the head of the editorial staff of the "Neue Freie Presse", in 1902, owed his first publication in this then most influential daily newspaper of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. He worked for this newspaper for three and a half decades. In the years leading up to the First World War, some of his masterpieces were created, such as "The House by the Sea" (1910), which was awarded the Bauernfeld Prize. After the war, he settled in Salzburg, where he spent the next 15 years of his life together with his wife. There he wrote those historical miniatures and biographies that made him world famous. The tragic turn in his life came with the seizure of power by the National Socialists. In 1940 he left Europe with his wife and from 1941 lived in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Discouraged and weakened by the events of recent years, on February 23, 1942, he and his wife committed suicide.