book proved very successful and allowed Friedell to continue his work as an author and has been translated into seven languages. His approach to history was influenced by Oswald Spengler and Jacob Burckhardt. For instance, Friedell writes; "All the classifications man has ever devised are arbitrary, artificial, and false, but simple reflection also shows that such classifications are useful, indispensable, and above all unavoidable since they accord with an innate aspect of our thinking." Friedell summed up the Congress of Vienna as: "the Tsar of Russia falls in love for everyone; the King of Prussia thinks for everyone, the King of Denmark speaks for everyone; the King of Bavaria drinks for everyone; the King of Württemberg eats for everyone … and the Emperor of Austria pays for everyone." Cultural History of Antiquity Friedell's A Cultural History of Antiquity was planned in three volumes. Because his publisher in Germany Heinrich Beck was, since 1935, not allowed to publish any of his works, the first volume on Cultural History of Egypt's Land and of the Ancient Orient was published in 1936 by the Helikon-Verlag in Zurich. The second volume Cultural History of Ancient Greece was unfinished and published in Munich in 1950. Due to his death, he couldn't write the third volume on Cultural History of the Romans. Censorship and suicide In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, Friedell described the regime as: "the realm of the Antichrist. Every trace of nobility, piety, education, reason is persecuted in the most hateful and base manner by a bunch of debased menials". In 1937, Friedell's works were banned by the National Socialist regime as they did not conform to the theory of history promoted by the NSDAP, and all German and Austrian publishers refused to publish his works. On the occasion of the Anschluss of Austria, anti-semitism was rampant: Jewish men and women were being beaten in the streets and their businesses and synagogues ransacked or destroyed. Friedell, knowing that he could be arrested by the Gestapo, began to contemplate ending his own life. Friedell told his close friend, Ödön von Horváth, in a letter written on 11 March: "I am always ready to leave, in every sense." On 16 March 1938, at about 22:00, two SA men arrived at Friedell's house to arrest him. While they were still arguing with his housekeeper, Friedell, aged 60, committed suicide by jumping out