France occupied

The Fall of France in 1940 marks a decisive shift in Stefan Zweig’s late-life exile: after leaving Austria for Britain amid the rise of Nazism, he departed Britain for New York as France fell, and later settled in Brazil. The biographical account places the event within a sequence of forced departures that shaped the circumstances in which he wrote The Royal Game in 1941.

Historical Context

Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881 into a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. After becoming known first as a poet and translator and later as a biographer, he built an international readership through works including Letter from an Unknown Woman, Amok, and Fear. In 1934, as Nazism rose, he moved to London and later to Bath; after the outbreak of the Second World War, he took British citizenship.

Departure from Britain

The Fall of France in 1940 prompted Zweig to leave Britain for New York. The account presents this move as part of a continuing displacement rather than an isolated journey: after leaving Austria, he had made a life in Britain, but the changing wartime situation led him onward. He later settled in Brazil, another stage in the succession of places in which he lived during exile.

Connection to The Royal Game

Zweig wrote The Royal Game in Brazil in 1941, after the departure from Britain and his subsequent relocation there. The chronology links the historical event to the conditions of the book’s composition without claiming that the fall of France alone determined its subject or form. The event therefore stands both as a concrete point in Zweig’s wartime movements and as part of the biographical context immediately preceding the work.