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Roth, Joseph (1894-1939)
Copyright: IMAGNO/Ullstein
Joseph Roth was born on 2 September 1894 in Brody, a small, mostly Jewish town in Galicia near Lemberg which back then was part of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy (today: Ukraine). Roth left home at the age of nineteen to study philosophy and German philology, at the University of Vienna. His education came to an end with the First World War in which he served first as soldier, then as officer. After the war, Roth went to work as a journalist, first in Vienna, then in Berlin, where he wrote feuilletons for a number of newspapers including the renowned Frankfurter Zeitung.
During this time Roth also wrote his first novels and essays dealing with NS ideology, e.g. "Spinnennetz" (1923, The Spider’s Web). In the novel "Der stumme Prophet" (1929, The Silent Prophet) Roth pilloried Stalinism. In 1928 his wife Friederike turned schizophrenic and Roth was thrown into a deep crisis both emotionally and financially. Her illness broke something in him and it was while Friederike was going mad that Roth became a great writer.
"Hiob" (1930; tr. Job 1931) and "Der Leviathan" (1940, published posthumously) both tell the stories of homeless and de-rooted Jews.
In his most famous novels "Radetzkymarsch" (1932; Radetzky March), "Das falsche Gewicht" (1937) and "Die Kapuzinergruft" (1938) Roth criticizes the double standards and hypocrisy of the declining Austro-Hungarian Monarch, while at the same time glorifying its heterogeneity and displaying a nostalgic yearning for the Hapsburg dominion. Roth’s dreams of a restoration of the monarchy where shattered with Hitler's invasion in Austria in 1938.
In 1933 Roth was forced into exile by the Third Reich. In the years that followed, he lived mainly in Paris, where, while he went on writing, he also quickly drank himself to death. He died on 27 May 1939 in Paris.
During this time Roth also wrote his first novels and essays dealing with NS ideology, e.g. "Spinnennetz" (1923, The Spider’s Web). In the novel "Der stumme Prophet" (1929, The Silent Prophet) Roth pilloried Stalinism. In 1928 his wife Friederike turned schizophrenic and Roth was thrown into a deep crisis both emotionally and financially. Her illness broke something in him and it was while Friederike was going mad that Roth became a great writer.
"Hiob" (1930; tr. Job 1931) and "Der Leviathan" (1940, published posthumously) both tell the stories of homeless and de-rooted Jews.
In his most famous novels "Radetzkymarsch" (1932; Radetzky March), "Das falsche Gewicht" (1937) and "Die Kapuzinergruft" (1938) Roth criticizes the double standards and hypocrisy of the declining Austro-Hungarian Monarch, while at the same time glorifying its heterogeneity and displaying a nostalgic yearning for the Hapsburg dominion. Roth’s dreams of a restoration of the monarchy where shattered with Hitler's invasion in Austria in 1938.
In 1933 Roth was forced into exile by the Third Reich. In the years that followed, he lived mainly in Paris, where, while he went on writing, he also quickly drank himself to death. He died on 27 May 1939 in Paris.
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