Stefan Zweig is one of the best-known writers that Austria has ever produced. The film traces his life as the son of Jewish parents in Vienna under the Habsburg monarchy and describes his work in the war archives during the First World War. He experienced the era of his most successful work in Salzburg. After the National Socialists seized power, his books were burned and could no longer be published by the German Insel Verlag. Zweig emigrated to London and later took British citizenship. Fearing internment, he eventually moved to the United States, and shortly thereafter to Brazil. In February 1942, at the height of National Socialist power in Europe, any political change seemed impossible. Branch, severely depressed, committed suicide. In a farewell letter, he asserted that the destruction of the "spiritual homeland of Europe" had exhausted his strength "through years of homeless wandering".