Wechsberg was basically a connoisseur in the old European sense of the word, a man who valued perfection for its own sake, and who saw its quest as both worthy and attainable. His vision was pervaded and shaped by an acute sense of history, especially European history, and a relentless curiosity. Born in 1906 into a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family, he was raised in Austria, but saw his comfortable life threatened, and then extinguished, by Hitler's annexation of his native Czechoslovakia. He came to America with only a basic command of English but an impressive command of what was happening in Europe. His most powerful essays, describing the tragic fragmentation of Europe at the end of World War II, are never strident or bitter and only slightly ironic. His decision to spend his last years in his beloved Vienna was brave, astonishing, and entirely in character.