Joseph Roth
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This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. Josef Roth, 1894-1939, was one of the great writers on the dying of the old order in Central Europe after the First World War, the loss of homeland, and the horror of what was to come. Most English speakers, incidentally, refer to him as Joseph Roth. In his journalism, and in works such as Radetzky March, Job, Rebellion, and Flight Without End, Roth explored the impact of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's collapse on the world around him.
And as a German-speaking Jew from the northeastern edge of that empire, whose books the Nazis burned, Roth was to spend his life drifting westwards, without ever finding a settled home. With me to discuss Josef Roth are Helen Chambers, Emeritus Professor of German at the University of St. Andrews, Deborah Holmes, Associate Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Salzburg, and John Hughes, Reader in German and Cultural Studies at Royal Holloway University of London. John, it's to you. I want to come first. Can you tell us a bit about Roth's childhood in Brody, then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of course, but it's now on the very edge of Ukraine?
Yes, indeed. Many listeners, if they know Roth at all, they will probably think of him as an Austrian author, but his origins were far from Austria as we know it today. As you said, born in Brody, which at the time of his birth was in Galicia, which was the largest the northernmost province in Austria-Hungary, the Habsburg Empire. Galicia, as you mentioned, occupies a fairly large area which falls now within southeast Poland and the west of Ukraine. And if you look up Brody on the map today, you'll see it's there in the west of Ukraine, maybe 100 kilometres or so east of Lviv or Lemberg, as it was known in Roth's time in German. But in the year of Roth's birth, 1894, Brody was very much a border town.
It was right on the edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, close to the border with Russia. And because of that, it had flourished as a sort of trading centre for the previous century or so. And, you know, perhaps as a consequence of that, it was quite a mixed community, multi-ethnic, multilingual, multicultural. Roth himself was born to a German-speaking Jewish family and so grew up speaking one of the languages of Empire High, High German. But he would have been very familiar with the sound of Polish, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian also during his childhood. And I think he also had a working knowledge of all of those languages. languages. Despite that, I think Roth had felt that Brodie was quite a provincial place.
He spent his childhood often wishing he could get away, even though later in life it became so important to him and in his work. He was brought up by a single mother, who by all accounts was quite protective, overprotective even. He never knew his father, who had abandoned the family when Roth was quite young. In later life, Roth tended to fabricate fantastical stories about this absent father. He often sort of claimed, for example, that the father had been some sort of high-ranking military officer. But in truth, he was a Jewish businessman, a failed businessman really, who later became mentally ill and was institutionalized.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:30
2
Who was Joseph Roth and why is he remembered for writing about the end of the Austro‑Hungarian Empire?
6:30–13:33
3
How did Roth’s childhood in Brody and multilingual Galicia shape his outlook and themes?
13:33–30:23
4
How did Roth transition from student to journalist in Vienna after World War I?
30:23–49:24
5
What was the feuilleton and how did Roth use it to build his literary career?
49:24–57:03
6
How do Rebellion and Radetzky March reflect Roth’s critique of war and the Habsburg decline?
57:03–57:36