The European cafe has been a hub for intellectuals and revolutionaries since the 17th century, with a strong historical tie between Jews and cafe culture highlighted through figures like Freud, Kafka, and Trotsky frequenting famous cafes in Vienna.

In the summer of 1936, Ostend became a gathering place for a mix of real and fake intellectuals, many of them Jewish and including writers like Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth.

Stefan Zweig, a highly-translated and polarizing author in the 1930s, was both envied and criticized by his peers for his success which some saw as a symbol of declining cultural values.