Moses Joseph Roth (Austrian German: [roːt]; September 2, 1894 – May 27, 1939) was a journalist and novelist from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He is most famous for his book Radetzky March (1932), which tells the story of the Austro-Hungarian Empire’s decline. He also wrote Job (1930), a novel about Jewish life, and an important essay titled Juden auf Wanderschaft (1927), which describes Jewish people moving from eastern to western Europe after World War I and the Russian Revolution. In the 21st century, English versions of Radetzky March and collections of his writings from Berlin and Paris sparked new interest in Roth’s work.

Biography

Joseph Roth was born into a Jewish family and grew up in Brody, a small town in what is now Ukraine, near Lemberg (now Lviv, Ukraine) in East Galicia, which was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the time. Jewish culture was important in Brody, which had a large Jewish population. Roth lived with his mother and her relatives; his father disappeared before Roth was born, and he never met him.

After finishing high school, Roth moved to Lemberg in 1913 to study at university. In 1914, he transferred to the University of Vienna to study philosophy and German literature. In 1916, Roth left university and joined the Austro-Hungarian Army on the Eastern Front, possibly as a journalist or censor. This experience deeply influenced his life. The collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 also affected him, creating a strong sense of "homelessness" that appeared often in his writing. He wrote, "My strongest experience was the War and the destruction of my fatherland, the only one I ever had, the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary."

In 1922, Roth married Friederike (Friedl) Reichler. In the late 1920s, Friedl became schizophrenic, causing Roth great emotional and financial hardship. She lived in a sanatorium for many years and was later killed in the Nazis’ Aktion T4 program.

In 1929, Roth met Andrea Manga Bell, a woman from Hamburg who was unhappily married to a prince from Cameroon. Her husband had returned to Cameroon, while she and their children stayed in Europe. At the time, Andrea was an editor for the magazine Gebrauchsgraphik. When Adolf Hitler became Reich Chancellor in 1933, Roth left Germany because he was a Jewish journalist and a liberal thinker. Andrea and their children joined him. Roth spent most of the next six years in Paris, a city he loved. His essays written in France showed his admiration for Paris and its culture.

In February 1933, shortly after Hitler’s rise to power, Roth wrote a letter to his friend Stefan Zweig, saying: "You will have realized by now that we are drifting towards great catastrophes… I won’t bet a penny on our lives. They have succeeded in establishing a reign of barbarity. Do not fool yourself. Hell reigns."

Roth’s relationship with Andrea ended due to financial problems and jealousy. From 1936 to 1938, Roth had a romantic relationship with Irmgard Keun. They traveled together to Paris, Wilna, Lemberg, Warsaw, Vienna, Salzburg, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

Although Roth did not deny his Jewish heritage, he considered his connection to Catholicism important. In his final years, he may have converted to Catholicism. Michael Hofmann wrote in the preface to The White Cities that Roth "was said to have had two funerals, one Jewish, one Catholic."

In his last years, Roth moved frequently between hotels, drank heavily, and worried about money and the future. Despite his chronic alcoholism, he continued to write until his death in Paris in 1939. His novella The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1939) tells the story of an alcoholic man trying to regain his dignity and honor a debt.

Roth’s final collapse may have been caused by learning that the playwright Ernst Toller had committed suicide in New York on May 22. Roth died on May 27 from double pneumonia, worsened by sudden alcohol withdrawal, which caused delirium tremens. He was buried on May 30 at the Cimetière de Thiais in Paris.

Journalism and literary career

In 1918, Roth returned to Vienna and started writing for newspapers that supported left-wing ideas. He wrote articles for Vorwärts under the name "Der rote Joseph" (The Red Joseph), a name that plays on his last name, which sounds like the German word rot, meaning "red." "Red" is also the color used by communist groups in Europe. In 1920, he moved to Berlin, where he worked as a journalist for Neue Berliner Zeitung and later for Berliner Börsen-Courier. In 1923, he began working for the liberal newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung, traveling across Europe to report from places like southern France, the USSR, Albania, Poland, Italy, and Germany. His main English translator, Michael Hofmann, said Roth was one of the most respected and well-paid journalists of that time, earning one Deutschmark for every line he wrote. In 1925, Roth worked in France and later lived elsewhere, never returning to Berlin permanently. Roth is often called one of the novelists who helped shape what is now known as the Habsburg myth.

In 1923, Roth’s first novel, The Spider’s Web, was published in parts in an Austrian newspaper. He later wrote books about life in Europe after World War I, gaining some success. However, he only became widely known for his novels, rather than his journalism, after publishing Job and Radetzky March.

Starting in 1930, Roth’s stories focused less on modern society, which he no longer believed in, and more on a sad longing for life in the old European empire before 1914. He often wrote about people without homes, especially Jews and former citizens of the old Austria-Hungary, who had lost their only true home after the empire fell. In his later works, Roth seemed to wish the monarchy could return. His desire for a more peaceful past may have been a reaction to the extreme politics of the time, which in Germany led to the rise of National Socialism. The novel Radetzky March (1932) and the story “The Bust of the Emperor” (1935) are examples of this later style. In another novel, The Emperor’s Tomb (1938), Roth describes the life of a character related to the hero of Radetzky March up until Germany’s takeover of Austria in 1938.