From a purely ideological point of view, Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) and Otto Neurath (1882–1945) do not have much in common. Zweig, who became the most successful German-speaking author in the first half of the twentieth century, was shaped by his bourgeois upbringing and remained rather conservative throughout his life despite also being known as a bridge builder. Neurath, on the other hand, who belonged to the inner sphere of the Vienna Circle, was a Marxist intellectual who worked toward social reform. Digging deeper, however, Zweig and Neurath share similar experiences, including their Jewish heritage, a cosmopolitan mindset, and exile during the Nazi years. With that in mind, Arturo Larcati, director of the Stefan Zweig Centre at the University of Salzburg, and Friedrich Stadler, a permanent fellow of the Institut Wiener Kreis at the University of Vienna, co-organized a conference in 2019 to discuss Neurath's reception of Zweig.

Even though both lived in Vienna and London at the same time, there is no historical record that Zweig and Neurath ever met in person. The main focus of this edited volume lies on Neurath's reading of Zweig's autobiographical account, Die Welt von Gestern (1942). In their essays, Friedrich Stadler and Alfred Pfoser take a closer look at Neurath's marginalia in his copy of the English translation of Die Welt von Gestern. Unlike Zweig, Neurath had little difficulty adjusting to life in England and adopting the English language, despite his 9-month-long internment on the Isle of Man. Unsurprisingly, he commented on Zweig's memoirs in English. A major strength of Larcati and Stadler's volume is the rich documentation of Neurath's engagement with Zweig. About a third of the book are illustrations, most of which are facsimiles of Zweig's Die Welt von Gestern and Castellio gegen Calvin (1936) with Neurath's marginalia. As becomes quickly apparent, Neurath took issue with Zweig's nostalgia of Vienna before World War I and the fact that “Zweig usually speaks of writers, etc, etc no knowledge of social correlations; no reading of sociology.” It is not surprising that as a Marxist, Neurath criticized Zweig's lack of awareness of social classes and his focus on the intelligentsia rather than on marginalized and underprivileged groups. For him, Zweig was “[a] human and kind pacifist, who, as a well-to-do, has no contacts with the masses.” Why would Neurath carefully read and reflect on Zweig's autobiography if he did not agree with the author at all? Larcati speculates that Neurath had previously read Zweig's biographical work, Castellio gegen Calvin, in English translation. As Neurath's marginalia demonstrate, he agreed with Zweig's critique of Calvin and Castellio's stance for tolerance and humanism. Unlike Zweig, Neurath was more selective with his friends. While Zweig enjoyed the company of writers and intellectuals with different ideological convictions and often tried to bridge their differences, Neurath preferred to stay among fellow Marxists. Zweig generally mistrusted ideological orthodoxies of all stripes, Neurath, on the other hand, was a lifelong leftist and much more selective regarding his worldview.

While the emphasis of this edited collection lies on Neurath's ambivalent engagement with Zweig, Herwig Gottwald's essay on “Der Wiener Kreis und die Literatur” provides an overview of the impact the Vienna Circle has had on Austrian writers. Members of the Vienna Circle wanted to follow in the footsteps of Ernst Mach whose lectures and essays had a tremendous influence on writers such as Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arthur Schnitzler, Robert Musil, Hermann Bahr, and others we associate with Fin de Siècle Vienna. In her autobiography, Die hellen und die finsteren Zeiten, Hilde Spiel writes about her intellectual indebtedness to the Vienna Circle in general and Moritz Schlick in particular. As Gottwald's essay shows, Jean Améry (Hans Mayer) and Ingeborg Bachmann emerged as the premier writers after World War II whose oeuvres were anchored in the philosophical concepts of the Vienna Circle.

What makes this highly interesting essay collection unusual are the long appendices which document Neurath's and Zweig's respective engagement with H.G. Wells's work as well as Neurath's previously unpublished notebooks on “Tolerance and Persecution.” The appendices provide brief introductions as well as over 100 pages of facsimiles. Clearly, much more could and should be written about the similarities and differences between Zweig and Neurath. Larcati and Stadler's book provides fascinating primary sources as well as astute interpretations of Neurath's marginalia that could be fertile ground for an even more thorough comparative analysis in the form of a dissertation or monograph.