Marching into History:

From the Early Novels of Joseph Roth to Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft

Kati Tonkin B.A. (Hons), M.A. (Dist.)

This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia School of Humanities German and European Studies February 2005 Acknowledgements

I wish to express my gratitude to the Österreichischer Austauschdienst for an Österreich-Stipendium and to the University of Western Australia for a Fay Gale Fellowship. These two awards enabled me to spend the period September 2001 to February 2002 in Vienna conducting the initial research for this thesis.

Emeritus Professor Leslie Bodi gave me the benefit of his expertise in and culture in stimulating conversations over a period of several years. I am indebted to him also for providing me with many contacts in Vienna whose assistance in the early stages of my research was invaluable.

In Vienna I was fortunate to meet with a number of scholars who have written on the work of Joseph Roth. I would like to thank Professor Moritz Csáky of the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften; Professor Wendelin Schmidt- Dengler from the Universität Wien; and Dr. Heinz Lunzer, director of the Literaturhaus Wien for their interest in my project and their academic advice. Dr. Lutz Musner kindly enabled me to attend lectures at the Internationales Forschungszentrum Kulturwissenschaften of which he is the director.

My supervisor, colleague and friend Associate Professor Peter Morgan has been a wonderful mentor and an inspiration since I first attended his classes as an undergraduate. I have greatly appreciated, enjoyed and benefited from our supervision meetings over the years, and I cannot thank him enough for his unfailing support and encouragement while I have been combining work and study.

My family and friends have supported and encouraged me throughout and I am thankful for their confidence, their understanding and their patience. In particular, I would like to thank Barbara Tonkin for helpful comments on drafts and for her constant support, Annette Harres for proof reading the final draft, and Ian Gollagher, for everything. Abstract

This thesis takes as its starting point the consensus among scholars and interpreters of Joseph Roth’s work that his writing can be divided into two periods: an early “socialist” phase and a later “monarchist” phase. In opposition to this view, a reading of Roth’s novels is put forward in which his desire to make sense of post-Habsburg provides the underlying logic, thus reconciling his early novels with Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft. The first chapter addresses the common contention that the transformation in Roth’s work is the result of a deep identity crisis. An alternative reading of the relevance of Roth’s identity to his work is offered: namely, that Roth’s conviction that identity is multivalent explains his rejection of both nationalism and other “solutions” to the problems of post-war Europe, a sentiment that finds expression in his early novels. The interpretation of these novels, which represent Roth’s early attempts to give literary form to contemporary reality, is the focus of the second chapter of the thesis. In the third chapter Radetzkymarsch is analyzed as a historical novel in the terms first proposed by Georg Lukács, as a novel which facilitates the understanding of the present through the portrayal of the past. Paradoxically, it is the historical form that most effectively captures and illuminates the complex reality of Roth’s contemporary times. The fourth and final chapter demonstrates that Die Kapuzinergruft is not simply an inferior sequel to Radetzkymarsch, a nostalgic evocation of an idealized lost Habsburg world and condemnation of the 1930s present, but rather continues the dialogue between past and present begun in Radetzkymarsch. In this novel, written before and in the immediate aftermath of the Anschluß of Austria to Nazi Germany, it is not Roth but his narrator who takes flight from reality, behaviour that Roth condemns as leading to the repetition of mistakes from the past and the failure to prevent the ultimate political catastrophe. Contents

Introduction...... 1

Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology ...... 19 A Central European Experience ...... 19 Post-War Alienation ...... 24 Identity and the Nation ...... 32 Identity and Nationalism in Juden auf Wanderschaft ...... 34 “Die süße Freiheit, nichts mehr darzustellen als mich selbst” ...... 53

Chapter 2: The Early Novels...... 55 “Der rote Joseph”?...... 55 Socialism and the Early Novels...... 58 The Reactionary Mentality and its Origins: Das Spinnennetz...... 61 Inequality and the Socialist Revolution: ...... 93 History as Repetition: Die Rebellion...... 108 Coda: From the Early Novels to Radetzkymarsch...... 121

Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch as Historical Novel...... 124 Form and Truth...... 126 Truth and Fiction in the Historical Novel...... 130 “Er war Slowene”: Identity – Myth – Generational Patterns ...... 136 “Man lebte im Schatten des Großvaters!”: The Crisis of Carl Joseph ...... 145 The March: “Einmal in der Woche, am Sonntag, war Österreich” ...... 161 Behind the Supranational Myth: What is “Österreich”? ...... 174 The False Opposition between “dazumal” and “heutzutage”...... 192

Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft and the Confrontation with History ...... 196 “[Ich] sehe […] mich genötigt”: Monarchist out of Necessity...... 199 The Dialogue between Past and Present in Die Kapuzinergruft ...... 206

Conclusion...... 230

Bibliography ...... 237

Introduction

Critics have never been able to reconcile Roth's early writing with his most famous novel, Radetzkymarsch, and its sequel Die Kapuzinergruft.1 According to the widely accepted periodic-thematic divisions of Roth’s work, the early fiction is grouped under the rubric “socialist” and the later works are interpreted as manifestations of the idealizing nostalgia of an alcoholic monarchist with a decreasing grip on reality.2 This categorization can be traced back to Roth’s friend , who published the first collection of Roth’s works in 1956:

In den fünfzehn Jahren, da er Bücher veröffentlichte, ward Roth aus einem skeptischen, zuweilen pessimistischen Moralisten ein legitimistischer Katholik, aus einem Linksradikalen ein Rechtskonservativer, aus einem Mitarbeiter sozialdemokratischer Blätter ein Inspirator sozialdoktrinärer Zeitschriften, aus einem ‘Frontsoldaten’ ein ‘österreichischer Leutnant’, aus einem Neuerer ein Erbe, aus einem witzigen Spötter ein frommer Prediger.3

Kesten’s dualistic assessment of Roth’s writing was adopted and developed by Ingeborg Sültemeyer in the late 1960s in the first major study of Roth’s early work,4 before which very little critical attention was paid to the early novels.5 As a result Roth was viewed as a conservative writer.6 Since Sültemeyer’s ground-

1 All references to Roth’s fiction and journalism are to Joseph Roth, Werke, 6 vols, vols. 1-3, Das journalistische Werk, ed. Klaus Westermann; vols 4-6, Romane und Erzählungen, ed. Fritz Hackert (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1989-91). Roman numerals indicate the volume and Arabic numerals indicate the page number. 2 The terms “socialist” and “monarchist” are used in this study to refer to the conventional reading of Roth’s work as consisting of two antithetical phases. 3 Hermann Kesten, “Joseph Roth,” Wort in der Zeit 9 (1959): 6. 4 Ingeborg Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk Joseph Roths 1915-1926. Studien und Texte (Wien; Freiburg; Basel: Herder, 1976). This monograph is the book-version of Sültemeyer’s dissertation of 1969. 5 Sültemeyer outlines the few studies in which the early work had been discussed before the completion of her dissertation in 1969: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 16-17. 6 Wolf R. Marchand, Joseph Roth und völkisch-nationalistische Wertbegriffe. Untersuchungen zur politisch-weltanschaulichen Entwicklung Roths und ihrer Auswirkung auf sein Werk (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974) 1; Klaus Zelewitz, “Joseph Roth: Zweimal politische Illusion,” in Joseph Roth: Werk und Wirkung, ed. Bernd M. Kraske (Bonn: Bouvier, 1988), 101. Schmidt- Dengler notes that in the 1950s and 1960s Roth appears in literary histories largely as the author of one novel, Radetzkymarsch: Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, “Auf der Wanderschaft: Das Frühwerk Joseph Roths in den Literaturgeschichten,” in Co-existent Contradictions: Joseph Roth in Retrospect. Papers of the 1989 Joseph Roth Symposium at Leeds University to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death, ed. Helen Chambers (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1991), 18. Sültemeyer published a large number of articles omitted from the original three-volume Werkausgabe (1956) in Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk and Ingeborg Sültemeyer, ed., Joseph Roth: Der Neue Tag: Unbekannte politische Arbeiten 1919 bis 1927. Wien, , Moskau (Köln; Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1970).

1 Introduction breaking study, Roth’s early works of fiction and journalism have been the subject of greater scholarly interest, with a majority of critics concurring with Sültemeyer that the early work in general is characterised by a leftist political engagement which is strikingly absent from later texts.

There is less agreement, however, on what exactly constitutes Roth’s “early work” and where to locate the turning point. For Sültemeyer the salient characteristic of the early period is Roth’s commitment to socialism, which ended quite abruptly in 1926, his journey that year to the USSR having left him disillusioned with socialism as a solution to the problems of post-war Europe.7 This political commitment, she contends, had been the driving force not only of his early journalism, but also of his first three novels Das Spinnennetz (1923), Hotel Savoy (1924) and Die Rebellion (1924), which are remarkable more for their prescient and perceptive analysis of the contemporary political situation than for their literary quality. Once he had turned his back on socialism, Sültemeyer argues, a new period in his output began:

Die politisch-aufklärerischen Interessen des Journalisten, die bis zu diesem Zeitpunkt dominierten, treten von nun an zurück; für die folgende Schaffens- periode wird der künstlerische Ehrgeiz des Romanciers bestimmend.8

While subsequent studies have endorsed Sültemeyer’s classification of the early work as socialist, if with some qualifications,9 the Jewish novel Hiob: Roman eines einfachen Mannes (1930) is more commonly cited as marking the point at which Roth finally broke from his early political engagement, taking flight from the problems of the present into the nostalgically recreated lost worlds of the shtetl and the Habsburg Empire.10 According to this classification, the novels

7 Sültemeyer concedes that Roth’s enthusiasm for the socialist project had begun to wane somewhat earlier, but his experiences in Russia in 1926 turned what had been political resignation into complete rejection of socialist ideology: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 92. 8 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 13. 9 These will be discussed in Chapter 2 of the thesis. 10 See, for example, Ritchie Robertson, “Roth’s Hiob and the Traditions of Ghetto Fiction,” in Co-existent Contradictions: Joseph Roth in Retrospect. Papers of the 1989 Joseph Roth Symposium at Leeds University to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death, ed. Helen Chambers (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1991), 185; Claudio Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos in der österreichischen Literatur (: Otto Müller Verlag, 1966) 261; Werner Sieg, Zwischen Anarchismus und Fiktion. Eine Untersuchung zum Werk Joseph Roth (Bonn: Bouvier, 1974) 10; Bernd Hüppauf, “Josef Roth: Hiob. Der Mythos des Skeptikers,” in Joseph

2 Introduction published between 1927 and 1929 – Die Flucht ohne Ende (1927), Zipper und sein Vater (1928), Rechts und Links (1929) – are included in the early work, while the novels from Hiob to Die Kapuzinergruft11 comprise the late work.12 However, although a majority of critics agree that with the publication of Hiob and Radetzkymarsch “ein neuer Roth [trat] vor die Öffentlichkeit”,13 the change in the writer is acknowledged to have begun earlier:

Seine ‘Wandlung’ läßt sich zwar einige Jahre zurückverfolgen und ist oft mit seiner Reise in die Sowjetunion (1926) in Zusammenhang gebracht worden, gewinnt jedoch konkrete literarische und für die Öffentlichkeit sichtbare Form erst mit dem Erscheinen Hiobs.14

If critics who consider Hiob to mark “der Umschlagpunkt in der Wende vom ‘sozialistischen’ Autor der Neuen Sachlichkeit zum konservativen, teils reaktionären sensiblen Stilisten und Legenden- und Mythenschöpfer”15 nonetheless agree with Sültemeyer that this transformation began in 1926, what does this mean for the classification of novels published between Die Rebellion and Hiob? Scholars have suggested or implied that Roth’s work of the 1920s – the “early” work – must itself be divided into two phases. They variously nominate 192416 or 192717 as the turning point or locate it somewhere between these years.

Roth: Werk und Wirkung, ed. Bernd M. Kraske (Bonn: Bouvier, 1988), 25; and Ward Hughes Powell, “Joseph Roth, Ironic Primitivist,” Monatshefte 53, no. 3 (1961): 116. 11 Although Die Geschichte von der 1002. Nacht was not published until 1939, it was completed before Die Kapuzinergruft, which must therefore be regarded as Roth’s last novel. 12 Variations on the definition of the work from 1930 can be found in Ritchie Robertson, “1918: This year of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire marks a crucial historical and symbolic change for Joseph Roth,” in Yale Companion to Jewish Writing and Thought in German Culture 1096-1996, ed. Jack David Zipes and Sander L. Gilman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997); Ian Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity and Multinational Austria in the Works of Joseph Roth,” in Austria in Literature, ed. Donald G. Daviau, Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture and Thought (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2000); and Sidney Rosenfeld, Understanding Joseph Roth (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001). Robertson separates Hiob and Radetzkymarsch from “the fiction of Roth’s ‘Catholicizing’ phase”: Robertson, “1918,” 357. Reifowitz divides the work from 1927 into two phases, 1927- 32, in which “Roth presented an insightful and relatively balanced picture [of] Austria’s strengths and weaknesses”, and 1933-39, in which the “nuanced portrait of Austria transformed into an idealized version of a multinational paradise that barely resembled the reality of the past”: Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 120. Rosenfeld divides the period from 1930 to 1939 into three phases based on the themes of the novels: Rosenfeld, Understanding 39f. 13 Hüppauf, “Mythos des Skeptikers,” 25. 14 Hüppauf, “Mythos des Skeptikers,” 25. 15 Hüppauf, “Mythos des Skeptikers,” 25. 16 Sonnleitner’s article on Roth’s “frühe Romane” deals only with the novels published in 1923 and 1924. Schweikert and Bance nominate 1924 as the year when Roth’s political engagement suddenly ceased: Uwe Schweikert, “‘Der rote Joseph’: Politik und Feuilleton beim frühen

3 Introduction

In all cases this subdivision sees Sültemeyer’s grouping of the first three novels retained, while those of 1927-29 are treated separately,18 these later novels sometimes being referred to as a “späte[s] Frühwerk”.19 The very fact that Roth published no novels between Die Rebellion in 1924 and Die Flucht ohne Ende in 1927 indicates a break in his literary output, suggesting a natural division between the novels of the early and those of the late 1920s. The present study acknowledges this break and concludes the analysis of the early work with Roth’s third novel, Die Rebellion.

While the timing of the turning point in Roth’s work has been the subject of some disagreement, the existence of a fundamental thematic and ideological disjunction between the novels of the 1920s and those of the 1930s has rarely been challenged. Scholars who have attempted to establish parallels between the early and later work have for the most part contended or implied that Roth was always a conservative at heart. Roth’s biographer David Bronsen, for example, while largely endorsing the dualistic view of Roth’s development as a writer,20 asserts that “der legitimistische Roth [hätte] einen großen Teil der Feuilletons schreiben können, die er als ‘Sozialist’ für Linkszeitungen schrieb”.21 Similarly, C.E. Williams argues that “Roth’s socialism was largely emotional and to some extent opportunistic”22 and that his subsequent “espousal of monarchism did not involve

Joseph Roth (1919-1926),” in Joseph Roth. Text + Kritik Sonderband, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (München: edition text + kritik, 1974), 54; A.F. Bance, “In My End is My Beginning. Joseph Roth’s Die Rebellion and Die Legende vom heiligen Trinker,” in Studies in Modern Austrian Literature (Glasgow: Scottish Papers in Germanic Studies, 1981), 36. 17 Zelewitz proposes both 1924 and 1927 as turning points in Roth’s work: Zelewitz, “Zweimal politische Illusion,” 105-08. Reifowitz nominates 1927 as a turning point because it was in this year that “Roth first began to discuss the Dual Monarchy in his fictional works and essays”: Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 120. 18 See, for example, Helmut Famira-Parcsetich, Die Erzählsituation in den Romanen Joseph Roths (Bern; Frankfurt/M: Herbert Lang & Cie, 1971); and Rosenfeld, Understanding. 19 Scheible uses this phrase of Zipper und sein Vater: Hartmut Scheible, Joseph Roth. Mit einem Essay über Gustave Flaubert (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971) 13. 20 “Aus dem Revolutionär wurde ein Reaktionär”: David Bronsen, Joseph Roth. Eine Biographie (Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1974) 513. 21 Bronsen, Biographie 513. Bronsen goes on to point out that many of the topics of Roth’s journalism are constant from the 1920s to the late 1930s, for example militarism and National Socialism. 22 C.E. Williams, The Broken Eagle: The Politics of Austrian Literature from Empire to Anschluß (London: Paul Elek, 1974) 96.

4 Introduction any radical transformation of his social and cultural values.”23 At base, he implies, Roth’s values were always traditional and conservative, his early cultural and political criticism being “in the first place an attack on the dehumanising tendencies of urban industrial society, on capitalism, on the decadence of modern culture and on the moral bankruptcy of the age” – all “consistent with left-wing sympathies, but equally […] commonplaces of the right-wing ideologies of the period.”24 Wolf Marchand’s study rests on this same contention,25 and Claudio Magris has similarly argued “daß schon in den ersten polemisierenden Romanen die Elemente der traditionalistischen und antisäkularistischen Polemik vorkommen, auf der die spätere konservative Position gründet.”26

By contrast, Thorsten Jürgens maintains that the social criticism that is usually only considered characteristic of the early period is in fact evident throughout Roth’s work: “Roth [hat] bis zum Ende seines Lebens die gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen und Zustände der Zeit verfolgt und sie in seinen Werken als Thema verwendet oder auf sie reagiert.”27 Jürgens unequivocally rejects the suggestion that Hiob represents a turning point in Roth’s work, but at the same time he partially adopts the interpretation of the later novels as attempting “[eine] Wiederbelebung und Würdigung alter Werte der Habsburger Welt”.28 For him the novels from Radetzkymarsch onwards evidence a two-fold intention: “jetzt gehen humanistisch-sozialistische Gesellschaftskritik und Konservatismus, sich gegenseitig befruchtend, vereint den Weg in die Vergangenheit, da die Gegenwart blockiert zu sein scheint.”29 That none of these attempts to reconcile the seemingly antithetical early and late work of Joseph Roth by suggesting an

23 Williams, The Broken Eagle 100. 24 Williams, The Broken Eagle 100. 25 Marchand, Wertbegriffe . 26 Claudio Magris, Weit von wo. Verlorene Welt des Ostjudentums, trans. Jutta Prasse (Wien: Europa, 1974) 16. Magris also attempts a reconciliation of Roth’s work in his study of the Habsburg Myth, in which he claims that the early novels are “ein negativer, indirekter Weg um des Dichters Bindung an die habsburgische Welt zu bezeugen. Nihilismus und Pessimismus sind die Reaktion auf den Zusammenbruch”: Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 257. 27 Thorsten Jürgens, Gesellschaftskritische Aspekte in Joseph Roths Romanen (Leiden: Universitaire pers, 1977) 3. 28 Jürgens, Gesellschaftskritische Aspekte 4. 29 Jürgens, Gesellschaftskritische Aspekte 4-5.

5 Introduction underlying continuity in his political outlook has been considered convincing is evident in the continuing prevalence of the dualistic view of Roth’s work.

While most critics do not attempt to reconcile the two generally recognized phases of Roth’s work, many seek to account for the disparity between the two periods with reference to an identity crisis allegedly triggered by the collapse of the multi-national Habsburg Empire and exacerbated by the rise of National Socialism. Robbed of his German identity by the Nazis, so the argument runs, Roth searched in vain for a Heimat, “for rootedness in a national and cultural identity”.30 He was a Jew in search of a fatherland,31 a “doppelter Außenseiter”32 and “heimatloser Ostjude”33 who felt compelled to lose himself in a fictive and utopian world in which ethnic and national groups lived side by side in harmony with one another.34 Critics cite Roth’s alcoholism, his nomadic lifestyle35 and his tendency to fabricate aspects of his own history36 as evidence of an acute and ongoing identity crisis, which is read into his literature in order to explain his metamorphosis from revolutionary socialist to anti-modern monarchist.37 Yet this

30 Rosenfeld, Understanding 12. 31 David Bronsen, “Der Jude auf der Suche nach dem Vaterland. Joseph Roths Verhältnis zur habsburgischen Monarchie,” Wiener Tagebuch 8 (1979). See also David Bronsen, “Austrian versus Jew. The Torn Identity of Joseph Roth,” Leo-Baeck-Institute Year Book 18 (1973). 32 Katharina Ochse, Joseph Roths Auseinandersetzung mit dem Antisemitismus (Würzburg: Königshausen + Neumann, 1999) 100. Ochse’s description refers to Roth’s situation as an Eastern Jew in Germany, which meant that he was faced with the hostility of both anti- Semites and assimilated German . She also calls him an “Außenseiter unter Außenseitern”: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 40. 33 Marcel Reich-Ranicki, “Kakanien als Wille und Vorstellung,” Die Zeit, 7 December 1973. Elsewhere Reich-Ranicki has referred to Roth as “[e]in Ostjude auf der Suche nach einer Heimat”: Marcel Reich-Ranicki, Joseph Roth. Vortrag zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung “Joseph Roth 1894-1939” in der Deutschen Bibliothek 29. März 1979 (Frankfurt/M.: Buchhändler- Vereinigung GmbH, 1979) 11. 34 Rosenfeld’s pronouncement is typical: “[Radetzkymarsch] became an elegy for a lost paradise, which had never existed in the way his longing for a rooted life led him to describe it. In its pages, his own inner conflicts are resolved in the twilight glow of a humane vision, to which he gave the name Austria”: Rosenfeld, Understanding 55. 35 Bronsen calls Roth “der ewige Nomade und unstete Bohemien”: Bronsen, Biographie 516. 36 David Bronsen’s description of Roth as a “Mythomane” is often cited in support of the identity-crisis theory: Bronsen, Biographie 13. 37 Among the many critics who have written about Roth’s identity crisis and drawn connections between his work and his search for identity are Bronsen, “Austrian versus Jew,” and Bronsen, “Der Jude,” ; Martha Wörsching, “Misogyny and the Myth of Masculinity in Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch,” in Gender and Politics in Austrian Fiction, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1996); Moritz Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs mit seiner Geschichte. Die Lebenswelt von Joseph Roth,” Limes 13 (1990); Rosenfeld, Understanding; and Hüppauf, “Mythos des Skeptikers”. Herzog’s claim that

6 Introduction recourse to biographical hermeneutics masks as much as it elucidates. The present study seeks to demonstrate an underlying logic in the development from the early novels of 1923 and 1924 to the so-called “Österreich-Romane”38 Radetzkymarsch (1932) and Die Kapuzinergruft (1938). It will be argued that in all five of these novels Roth uses literature in comparable ways. He experiments with different forms as a means of understanding historical processes, specifically the problems created by the historical fact of the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in Central Europe. The “Österreich” novels do not represent a flight from the present; instead, Roth turns to history in a conscious attempt to understand the present.

In the first chapter of the thesis, the theory that Roth experienced an identity crisis which explains his change in focus from the post-war present to a mythical Habsburg past is addressed and refuted. In spite of the considerable challenges to his identity posed by German ethnic nationalism and anti-Semitism in 1920s Austria and Germany, Roth remains convinced that identity is multivalent, and this conviction informs the entire body of his work. An analysis of Roth’s essay Juden auf Wanderschaft in the second half of the chapter demonstrates that his rejection of both nationalism and Zionism as solutions to the disorder created by the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918 stems from his belief in the multifaceted nature of individual identity and the importance of individual self- determination. His appreciation of the complexity of identity and his rejection of both identity ascription and ideology in this essay, written during the transitional phase of his work, is one of the threads which links the early novels with Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft.

The second chapter analyses Roth’s novels of 1923 and 1924 as early attempts to make sense of a chaotic and radically changed Central Europe through literature.

Roth’s work can be explained “aus dem doppelten Verlust” of the Habsburg Monarchy and his Heimat in Galicia is similar: Andreas Herzog, “‘Der Segen des ewigen Juden.’ Zur ‘jüdischen’ Identität Joseph Roths,” in Habsburger Aporien? Geisteshaltungen und Lebenskonzepte in der multinationalen Literatur der Habsburger Monarchie, ed. Eva Reichmann, Bielefelder Schriften zu Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft 9 (Bielefeld: Aisthesis-Verlag, 1998), 113. 38 Howes writes that Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft “are frequently categorized as ‘Österreich-Romane’, works of nostalgia for the lost Empire that originate in Roth’s late, so- called classical, period”: Geoffrey C. Howes, “Joseph Roth's Kapuzinergruft as a Document of 1938,” in Austrian Writers and the Anschluß: Understanding the Past - Overcoming the Past, ed. Donald G. Daviau (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1991), 157.

7 Introduction

These novels reflect Roth’s preoccupation with the often bewildering and unsettling experience of everyday life in the early post-war years. Roth was already an accomplished journalist by this time but his first novels “wirken hastig, ungeduldig, kurzatmig”, as Ulrich Greiner has commented.39 The fragmentary impression created by these novels is almost certainly to some extent intended: in a review of Hans Natonek’s Geld regiert die Welt Roth expressed approval of what he called the “gesprengte[...] oder gebrochene[...] Form des Romans”,40 arguing that it was the only form which could represent the times accurately:

O tempora, o homines! Fragmente sind alle: die Gestalten und ihre Dar- stellungen, die Zeit und ihre Zeitbilder. […] Die fragmentarische Form des Berichts entspricht vollkommen der fragmentarischen Gestalt. (III, 268-69)

The disjointed structure and curiously incomplete or underdeveloped characterization in Roth’s early novels seem on one level an appropriate response to and reflection of a world in which there appeared suddenly to be “less ordering vision, less coherence and comprehension, less certainty”.41 Yet while it might be argued that with the fragmentary form Roth is attempting “der veränderten Realität auch formal gerecht zu werden”,42 these novels must also be seen as not entirely successful experiments with form. In his early fiction Roth is struggling to find a form which will give adequate expression to the problems he observes in German-speaking Central Europe, a form he finally finds with the historical novel Radetzkymarsch.

39 Ulrich Greiner, “Joseph Roth,” in Österreichische Porträts. Leben und Werk bedeutender Persönlichkeiten von Maria Theresia bis , ed. Jochen Jung (Salzburg; Wien: Rezidenz-Verlag, 1985), 360. Nürnberger writes of Das Spinnennetz in similar terms: “So deutlich wie die künstlerischen Schwächen des Romans […] ist der Scharfblick des Autors für seine Zeit. […] Die Ausführung ist sprunghaft, die Charakteristik wirkt erdacht und kraftlos”: Helmuth Nürnberger, Joseph Roth. Mit Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1999) 63. See also Peter Wilhelm Jansen, “Weltbezug und Erzählhaltung. Eine Untersuchung zum Erzählwerk und zur dichterischen Existenz Joseph Roths” (Ph.D, Freiburg, 1958) 45; and Bronsen, Biographie 239. 40 Joseph Roth, “Die gesprengte Romanform”, Die Literarische Welt, 12.12.1930 (III, 267). 41 Richard Tarnas, The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View (London: Pimlico, 1996) 388. 42 Johann Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität und Verwandlung. Joseph Roths frühe Romane,” in Co- existent Contradictions: Joseph Roth in Retrospect. Papers of the 1989 Joseph Roth Symposium at Leeds University to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death, ed. Helen Chambers (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1991), 171.

8 Introduction

In searching for form in the early novels, Roth examines various possible solutions to the chaos he observes – ethnic nationalism, socialism, American capitalism, individual withdrawal from political and social engagement – but finds none of them to be satisfactory. As an assimilated Jew who grew up in the multi- ethnic Habsburg province of Galicia, Roth was sceptical of both ethnic nationalism and Zionism, as the first chapter of the thesis will demonstrate. In the early novels he extends this scepticism to other modes of thought which aim at absolute or total solutions. His deep pessimism about the future is reflected in the apocalyptic imagery which features in each of these novels, yet in each case the apocalypse is not fully realized. Roth ultimately rejects apocalyptic endings because, as he well realized, such endings were a symptom of contemporary problems rather than a constructive response: as a Central European Jew he would ultimately look to history as the only answer to the questions of the times.

Roth’s rejection of the apocalyptic paradigm is indicative of his insistence on the importance of continuing to engage with political and social questions, despite his pessimism about the future development of Europe. His deep concern about the retreat from reason and aversion to politics he found among many intellectuals in the Weimar Republic43 is expressed in a 1924 review of ’s Die Diktatur der Vernunft.44 Roth writes of the imperative of political engagement for the German writer of the present day, citing Mann as an exemplar, and pens a harsh polemic against the unpolitical German writer. Comparing intellectuals of the Weimar Republic with those of bygone eras, he comments that since Goethe poets in Germany have considered it their duty not to be politically engaged but to undertake a “Reise nach Italien”, both literal and metaphoric:

Immer war es eine vorgetäuschte ‘innere Notwendigkeit’, die verwerflichen, unwürdigen Zustände des nationalen, politischen, sozialen Diesseits zu vergessen und von den heiteren Himmeln anderer Zonen das sogenannte ‘innere Gleichgewicht’ zu entlehnen. Ach, wie leicht erhielt man das innere Gleichgewicht! Es wurde wenigstens niemals hörbar erschüttert. (II, 59)

43 On the widespread rejection of politics and reason in the Weimar Republic, see Peter Gay, : The Outsider as Insider (London: Secker & Warburg, 1968) 70-96. 44 Joseph Roth, “Der tapfere Dichter”, Vorwärts 20.2.1924 (II, 59-61).

9 Introduction

Roth prophesies a time when the Weimar Republic will have fallen due to the failure of writers to defend it, and warns that then it will be far too late for these intellectuals to turn their attention to its fate:

In einigen Jahren, wenn die Republik eine Legende geworden, wird sie ihnen das gegebene ‘distanzierte’ Thema geworden sein. Denn ihr Blick ist so auf die Nachwelt gerichtet, daß sie an dem Untergang der Mitwelt schuldig werden. (II, 61)

Roth’s early novels, written in the same period as this review, are set in the present and are clearly socially and politically engaged. That he began to set his novels in the past should not, however, be understood as an expression of his own desire to undertake a “Reise nach Italian”, as Wörsching contends,45 but should be seen as representing only a change of emphasis. In the early novels Roth repeatedly suggests a historical continuity between past and present, despite the apparent radical break represented by the war, the revolution, and the dissolution of the Empire. In turning to the Habsburg Empire with Radetzkymarsch Roth is not seeking to create a utopian ideal, as has been generally argued, but is attempting to make sense of the present through an exploration of the past.

Chapter 3 therefore analyses Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel in the terms proposed by Georg Lukács, who argues that the portrayal of the past aids in achieving “a real understanding for the problems of contemporary society”.46 While Lukács subordinated his view of history to a Marxist scheme in which the final stage would be that of the classless society, his insight into the structure of the historical novel remains valid and valuable. The interpretation of Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel in Lukács’s sense aims at refuting the more common view that in this novel the present is relevant only as a catalyst to Roth’s “flight from reality”:47

45 Wörsching explicitly charges Roth with having described his own subsequent position in the 1924 article: Martha Wörsching, “Die rückwärts gewandte Utopie. Sozialpsychologische Anmerkungen zu Joseph Roths Roman Radetzkymarsch,” in Joseph Roth. Text + Kritik Sonderband, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (München: edition text + kritik, 1974), 90. 46 Georg Lukács, The Historical Novel, trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell (London: Merlin Press, 1962) 231. 47 Wagner takes a slightly different view of the relevance of the present, arguing that Roth holds his idealized image of the past “verklärend” up to his immediate present: Margarete Wagner, “Abgrenzungen und Entgrenzungen in Joseph Roths Radetzkymarsch,” Stimulus. Mitteilungen der Österreichischen Gesellschaft für Germanistik 1, no. 2 (2002): 187. However, while this

10 Introduction

[T]he political circumstances of the early 1930s, along with the calamities of his personal life, […] led Roth to take flight from the present and seek solace in a subjectively transfigured past.48

Hilde Spiel, Roth’s compatriot and herself a writer, declares that with Radetzkymarsch the reporter Roth finally became a poet (“Dichter”), but at the same time he was also already

auf dem Weg zu einem rührend gegenwartsfremden Monarchismus, [er] flüchtete […] in diese Anschauung vor der Oligarchie der Sowjetunion wie vor der faschistischen Drohung und trank sich allmählich in die rückwärts- gewandte Utopie hinein.49

While few have expressed it quite as poetically as Spiel, a majority of critics share her view of Radetzkymarsch as both a great work of literature and a nostalgic elegy to an idealized lost world.50 Scholars routinely employ the expression “rückwärts gewandte Utopie”,51 or a similar formulation52 to express the same

interpretation suggests that Roth is not completely turning his back on the present and fleeing into the (idealized) past, it still implies an absence of connection between the past and the present in Roth’s eyes. 48 Rosenfeld, Understanding 47. See also Hartmut Scheible, “Joseph Roths Flucht aus der Geschichte,” in Joseph Roth. Text + Kritik Sonderband, ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold (München: edition text + kritik, 1974), 57; John Pizer, “‘Last Austrians’ in ‘Turn of the Century’ Works by , Joseph Roth and Alfred Kolleritsch,” The German Quarterly 74 (2001): 8; Alan Menhennet, “Flight of a Broken Eagle. Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch,” New German Studies 11 (1983): 47; Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 258; Alfred Doppler, “Historische Ereignisse im österreichischen Roman. J. Roth Radetzkymarsch - H. v. Doderer Die Dämonen - G. Saiko Der Mann im Schilf,” in Geschichte in der österreichischen Literatur des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Wien: Hirt, 1970), 75; Wörsching, “Radetzkymarsch,” 99. 49 Hilde Spiel, “Eine Welt voller Enkel,” in Romane von gestern - heute gelesen, ed. Marcel Reich-Ranicki (Frankfurt/Main: S. Fischer, 1989), 357. Spiel seems to imply here that the process of withdrawal from reality was only beginning when Roth published Radetzkymarsch, yet she then claims that in the last eight or nine years of his life – i.e. from 1930 or 1931 – Roth was “nur noch Legitimist.” Subsequently she argues that he was well aware of the impossibility of a restoration of the monarchy, and knowingly took flight from reality: Spiel, “Eine Welt voller Enkel,” 358. 50 I refer here to criticism of Roth’s work since he was rediscovered in the 1950s. As Fritz Hackert notes, despite Roth’s own preface to the newspaper serialization of the novel, which is generally understood as a declaration of love to the Empire, contemporary critics did not read the novel as a nostalgic idealization: “Eine nostalgische Verklärung der k.u.k.-Monarchie in dem Roman zu erblicken konnte keinem Zeitgenossen gelingen”: Fritz Hackert, “Nachwort” (V, 892). 51 See, for example, Reich-Ranicki, “Kakanien”; Reich-Ranicki, Vortrag 17; Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 14; Zoran Konstantinovic, “Joseph Roth und die Südslawen: Blickpunkte und Rezeptionsmerkmale,” in Joseph Roth. Interpretation Rezeption Kritik, ed. Michael Kessler and Fritz Hackert (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1990), 181; Wörsching, “Radetzkymarsch,”; Dieter Kessler, “Überdauern im ewigen Untergang. Die gottgegebene, in Gott aufgehobene Auflösung der Habsburgermonarchie in Joseph Roths Utopie Radetzkymarsch. Ist Österreich eine Nothwendigkeit?,” Zeitschrift für Germanistik. N.F 3 (1995); Matthias Hansen, “Rechtspolitik und Linkskultur. Exilpositionen von Joseph Roth und Arnold Schönberg,” Sinn und Form 36, no. 1 (1984): 146.

11 Introduction idea: thus the Habsburg Empire portrayed in Radetzkymarsch has been called a “utopian construct”,53 “an imaginary world of [Roth’s] own making”,54 a “utopian vision of what might have been”,55 “a promised land”,56 a “lost paradise”,57 “Roth’s own nostalgic wish dream”.58 What exactly is meant by these variations on a utopian theme is, however, far from clear. On the face of it, the idea of a backward-turned utopia is a paradox: utopias imagine the future, not the past; they draw us onward, impelling us forward to a better tomorrow. Utopias typically depict a harmonious and just society which offers freedom from danger, injustice, physical and mental want, insecurity, and negative human passions such as anger, envy and hatred. A utopia that imagines not the future but the past in these terms connotes political and social conservatism, regressiveness, even reaction.

Yet few critics who employ the term utopia or one of its synonyms actually interpret Radetzkymarsch as an unmitigated idealization of the Habsburg Empire. Those who do, such as Martha Wörsching and Wolf Marchand, certainly view the novel as regressive in its ideology. Wörsching’s feminist reading of the novel explains “the gendered nature” of Roth’s text as “a particular type of masculinity as ideology”:59

Roth’s ‘backward-looking utopia’ […] turns out to be a place inhabited by men only, being ‘cleansed’ of women; in this patriarchal mythology, women are dismissed in the asides or dealt with as exasperations, as diversions from the straight path towards male individual autonomy.60

Wörsching explicitly rejects the possibility of interpreting Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel about the decline of the Empire, declaring that it is instead “a

52 Pazi refers to Roth’s “nach rückwärts gewandten Wunschvorstellungen”: Margarita Pazi, “Exil-Bewußtsein und Heimat-Illusionen bei Joseph Roth,” in Wider den Faschismus: als Geschichte, ed. Sigrid Bauschinger and Susan L. Cocalis (Tübingen; Basel: Francke, 1993), 188. 53 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 119. 54 David Bronsen, “The Jew in Search of a Fatherland: The Relationship of Joseph Roth to the Habsburg Monarchy,” The Germanic Review 54 (1979): 59. 55 Rosenfeld, Understanding 53. 56 Bronsen, “The Jew,” 59. 57 Rosenfeld, Understanding 55. 58 Curt Sanger, “The Figure of the Non-hero in the Austrian Novels of Joseph Roth,” Modern Austrian Literature 4, no. 2 (1969): 37. 59 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 118. 60 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 119.

12 Introduction utopian construct of ‘life praxis’ which, in [Roth’s] view, is the only avenue left for the artist (male) genius”.61 The world Roth idealizes in his reconstruction of the Habsburg past embraces “the legacy of archetypal patriarchs”,62 male individuation being achieved through the control and subordination of women.63 This interpretation relies heavily on a psychoanalytic reading of the author’s life in which Wörsching argues that Roth’s “mythology of masculinity” is an expression of a desperate desire to belong64 which stemmed from his problematic identity as a Jewish man65 and his struggle to free himself from dependence on his mother and mother-figures.66

Wolf Marchand goes even further than Wörsching, declaring that the past that is uncritically idealized by Roth is prior to the Habsburg Empire actually depicted:

Der Radetzkymarsch ist ganz und gar ein sehnsüchtiges Beschwören der verlorenen bäuerlichen Herkunft. Der Untergang der Trottas und des Reiches ist eine Folge der Entwurzelung, Entartung, des verlorenen Zusammenhangs mit elementaren, vorrationalen Urwerten. Aus dem beständigen Bewußtsein der Trottas und vor allem Carl Josephs, diesen Zusammenhang verloren zu haben, konstituiert sich der Roman.67

The patriarchal and arcadian utopias which Wörsching’s and Marchand’s interpretations respectively identify are politically and socially regressive and thus consistent with the connotations of the phrase backward-turned utopia. However, when other critics employ this term in the analysis of Radetzkymarsch, the necessary implication that the novel is informed by a regressive ideology is often undercut by the critics’ conclusion that the novel is not simply a nostalgic paean to an idealized lost world, but contains a measure of criticism of the world portrayed.68

61 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 119. 62 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 120. 63 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 130. 64 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 127. 65 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 120. 66 Wörsching, “Misogyny,” 119, 130. 67 Marchand, Wertbegriffe 199. 68 See, for example, Menhennet, “Flight of a Broken Eagle,”; Bruce Thompson, “‘Schlecht kommen wir beide dabei nicht weg!’ Joseph Roth’s satire on the Emperor Franz Joseph in his novel Radetzkymarsch,” Neophilologus 81 (1997); Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity”.

13 Introduction

A similar paradox is evident in the association of Roth with the Habsburg Myth, from which the concept of Radetzkymarsch as a backward-turned utopia probably derives.69 The term Habsburg Myth was coined by the Italian Habsburg scholar Claudio Magris, whose enormously influential doctoral thesis on the subject was published as Il Mito Absburgico nella letteratura austriaca moderna in 1963.70 Magris argues that when the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed in 1918, intellectuals and writers saw the foundations of their lives and their culture destroyed. They were unable to cope with the demands of a vastly changed political climate, and looking back remembered Habsburg Austria

[als] eine glückliche und harmonische Zeit, als geordnetes und märchenhaftes […], in dem die Zeit nicht so schnell verging und in dem man es nicht so eilig hatte, Dinge und Empfindungen zu vergessen. In ihrer Erinnerung wurde dieses Österreich zu einem ‘goldenen Zeitalter der Sicherheit’.71

While these writers were often aware of the shortcomings of this “world of yesterday”, it became in their memory an “ideal fatherland” which had preserved virtues absent from the new world: a sense of decency and correctness, respect and peace, and even a zest for life.72 Magris contends that of the Empire in the imagination and writings of such intellectuals characterizes a large part of Austrian literature written after 1918.73 The emotional remembering of is combined with a partly conscious, partly unconscious process of sublimation of a concrete society into a picturesque, secure and ordered fairytale world.74

69 Cf. Schmidt-Dengler: “Wenn ich recht sehe, schleicht sich bei Magris ein Terminus ein, mit dem Roth zuvor nicht so intensiv belegt worden war, nämlich der des Mythos”: Schmidt- Dengler, “Auf der Wanderschaft,” 23. 70 Claudio Magris, Il Mito Absburgico nella letteratura austriaca moderna (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1963). The German translation was published three years later: Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos. 71 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 7. The quotation is from ’s Die Welt von gestern, written in 1940-41 (Gütersloh, 1960) 14. 72 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 8. 73 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 8. The origins of the myth lie much further back, in the early years of the nineteenth century, “als die Monarchie noch eine große Macht war, sich aber schon dem Untergang näherte. Und mit herannahendem Ende treten [seine Motive] immer deutlicher hervor”: Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 21. 74 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 9. For a critique of Magris’s thesis, see Walter Weiss, “Österreichische Literatur – eine Gefangene des habsburgischen Mythos?” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literatur und Geistesgeschichte 43 (1969).

14 Introduction

Magris declares that an ironic tone and intent do not necessarily preclude an author from falling prey to the transfiguring Habsburg Myth, citing ’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften as a case in point.75 He differentiates between merely ironic depictions, which still perpetuate the Habsburg Myth, and texts which attempt to demythologize the past and unmask some of the more celebrated values of the Habsburg tradition.76 Choosing Roth as one of six case studies of writers who maintain the Habsburg Myth after the First World War,77 Magris writes that Radetzkymarsch perpetuates the myth without becoming an empty glorification of a lost world. It is, he argues,

ganz einfach ein Roman, der jene Welt begriffen hat. Die Sympathien oder Antipathien des Menschen Roth zählen dabei nicht; wichtig ist, daß Roth die Auflösung des habsburgischen Mitteleuropa verstanden hat und ihm nun nicht – wie angenommen wurde – eine Elegie, sondern ein Epos widmete.78

Significantly, however, he implicitly contradicts his own conclusion earlier in the study when he writes that the spectre of intensified the yearning of writers for Habsburg times, increasing national tensions heightening the supranational element of the myth in particular:

In der Tat entstehen die schwärmerischesten, leidenschaftlichsten Beschreib- ungen dieser Welt zu einer Zeit, da der Nazismus an Boden gewinnt oder sich schon festgesetzt hat, und sind größtenteils jüdischen Schriftstellern, wie Werfel oder Roth, zu verdanken.79

Magris’s endnote cites both Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft as examples of these “effusive” portraits.80 This same contradiction – Magris’s interpretation of Radetzkymarsch as dispassionate epic on the one hand and effusive elegy on the other81 – characterizes much of the criticism of Radetzkymarsch as a

75 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 9-10, 278f. 76 Magris cites Ödon von Horváth’s Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald (1931) as a text which does not perpetuate the myth: Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 244. 77 Magris states that the myth is brought to its zenith after the collapse of the Empire, and that for modern generations the reality of the Habsburg Empire has been almost completely superseded by the myth, “so daß die Donaumonarchie nun mehr das Reich Werfels, Roths oder Musils, als jenes der Staatsmänner Berchtold und Tisza ist”: Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 239. 78 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 259. 79 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 243-44. 80 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 342, note 10. 81 In a subsequent monograph on Roth Magris contends that the author “[rückt] das Habsburgerreich in eine verklärte übergeschichtliche Dimension”: Magris, Weit von wo 15.

15 Introduction backward-turned utopia and accounts for some of the lack of clarity in the use and meaning of the term.

Whatever else it implies, the description of Roth’s novel as a utopia signifies the creation of a world both ideal and unreal, a world which by definition does not, and did not, exist. By contrast, the interpretation offered in the third chapter of this thesis argues that far from presenting an idealized version of the last half century of Habsburg rule Roth sets out to expose the Habsburg Myth, and in so doing reveals the very real connections between the structures and norms of this period and the rampant nationalism of his own time. In this sense Radetzkymarsch conforms entirely to Lukács’s model of the historical novel: it represents the disintegration of the Habsburg Empire not in terms of grand historical events, but rather in terms of the lives of everyday figures and, by revealing the past as “prehistory” of the present, contributes to an understanding of Roth’s own time.

A central element of my interpretation of Radetzkymarsch in these terms is the close analysis of what Sarah Fraiman has called Roth’s “schwankende Erzählhaltung”,82 a narrative stance which is also relevant to the other novels under consideration in this study. Roth’s first person narrators Gabriel Dan (Hotel Savoy) and Franz Ferdinand Trotta (Die Kapuzinergruft) are unreliable, and careful attention must be paid to contradictions within the narrative and between the narrator’s words and his actions. In the case of the third person narratives Das Spinnennetz, Die Rebellion and especially Radetzkymarsch, the reader has to contend with an omniscient narrator who makes comments which, upon closer inspection, cannot always or necessarily be taken at face value.83 The narrator is elusive, oscillating almost imperceptibly between a distanced point-of-view – often with ironic undertones – and the perspective of the characters, whereby the narrator sometimes identifies with this perspective and sometimes maintains ironic distance. Roth makes frequent use, particularly in Radetzkymarsch, of erlebte Rede,84 a technique which obscures the narrative perspective, making it

82 Sarah Fraiman, “Joseph Roth: Dichter des Offenen,” Bulletin des Leo Baeck Instituts 76 (1987): 41. 83 Cf. Fraiman, “Dichter des Offenen,” 35. 84 See Werner Hoffmeister, “‘Eine ganz bestimmte Art von Sympathie’: Erzählhaltung und Gedankenschilderung im Radetzkymarsch,” in Joseph Roth und die Tradition, ed. David

16 Introduction unclear whether a particular statement or thought should be attributed to the character or to the narrator.85 In grammatical terms there is no difference between erlebte Rede and the form of the omniscient narrator: third person and past tense characterize both.86 But erlebte Rede gives expression to the subjective thoughts of the character87 and allows for the creation of an ironic and critical distance between the narrator and the character, while the overall sympathetic narrative stance is seemingly retained.88 The interpretation of a given passage as erlebte Rede depends on context and on a wide variety of linguistic indicators, “die den objektiven Berichtton aufheben und dem Bericht eine subjektive, expressive oder emotionale Note geben.”89 Much of Roth’s criticism of the Habsburg Monarchy is revealed through passages of erlebte Rede, and thus it is unsurprising that readers who overlook this aspect of narrative technique come to a one-sided interpretation of the novel as a nostalgic evocation of an idealized past.90

While many of the critics who view Radetzkymarsch in these terms acknowledge that Roth expresses some criticism of the world portrayed in this novel, they are virtually unanimous in their assessment of its sequel, Die Kapuzinergruft, as presenting an idealized vision of the fallen Habsburg Monarchy which is entirely untempered by critical undertones. Roth’s final novel is generally interpreted in

Bronsen (Darmstadt: Agora, 1975). Hoffmeister defines the term erlebte Rede in Werner Hoffmeister, Studien zur erlebten Rede bei und Robert Musil (The Hague: Mouton, 1965) 11-44. The German terminology is retained here because there is no adequate English translation. Although erlebte Rede is often translated as interior monologue, it is a stylistic form which may be part of an interior monologue but is “eine ihrem Ursprung und Wesen nach eigenständige sprachliche Form der Rede- oder Gedankenwiedergabe”: Hoffmeister, Studien zur erlebten Rede 8. Hoffmeister distinguishes between three forms of rendering speech and thought in narrative: direct speech, indirect speech and erlebte Rede: Hoffmeister, Studien zur erlebten Rede 12. 85 Fraiman, “Dichter des Offenen,” 41. 86 Hoffmeister, Studien zur erlebten Rede 22. 87 Hoffmeister, Studien zur erlebten Rede 26. 88 Hoffmeister, Studien zur erlebten Rede 23. 89 Hoffmeister, Studien zur erlebten Rede 30. The construction of erlebte Rede is highly individual from case to case. Nevertheless Hoffmeister argues that there are certain similarities that can be discerned. He attempts a typology on pages 33-44, whereby he stresses: “Meistens wirken mehrere [sprachliche] Indizien zusammen, um den Eindruck des Gedachten oder Gesprochenen im Leser zu erwecken. Immer aber ist die Situation, der Erzählzusammenhang für die Beurteilung der erlebten Rede entscheidend”: Hoffmeister, Studien zur erlebten Rede 33. 90 Cf. Fraiman, who warns against assuming that the narrator shares the characters’ perspective and that “Interpretationen, die sich allein auf inhaltliche Momente stützen, können fehlgehen”: Fraiman, “Dichter des Offenen,” 41.

17 Introduction the light of his avowed monarchism at this time, with little or no attempt made to differentiate between the fictional text and Roth’s journalistic interventions on behalf of the heir to the Habsburg throne. Thus Dollenmayer, for example, asserts that in Die Kapuzinergruft “Roth has become an unabashed apologist for the Habsburgs”,91 and Williams goes so far as to label the novel propaganda.92 In contrast to these interpretations, I argue in the fourth and final chapter of this thesis that Roth does not idealize the past, instead continuing the dialogue between past and present begun in the historical novel Radetzkymarsch six years earlier. Once again using literature to make sense of historical processes, Roth reveals strong parallels between the failure of Austrians to prevent the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in the past and their failure in 1938 to prevent the political catastrophe of the Anschluß. Rather than sharing the naïve nostalgia of his protagonist and narrator Franz Ferdinand, Roth condemns the fictional character’s apathy and his refusal to engage with reality, thus echoing his 1924 condemnation of the political and moral negligence of German intellectuals.

While the early novels are set entirely in the post-war present and Die Kapuzinergruft bridges past and present, it is with the historical novel Radetzkymarsch that Roth finds the form with which he can best give literary expression to contemporary reality. Here he recognizes that the understanding of the present can be achieved only through insight into how we have become who we are. This thesis demonstrates that what links Roth’s early novels with Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft is the author’s ongoing concern with the state of post-war German-speaking Central Europe. Far from being an attempt to erase “die Spuren zur Gegenwart”,93 Roth’s “march into history” reveals the present in all its complexity.

91 David Dollenmayer, “History as Fiction: The Kaiser in Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch,” Modern Language Studies 16 (1986): 309. 92 Williams, The Broken Eagle 108 Menhennet cites and concurs with Williams’s assessment: Menhennet, “Flight of a Broken Eagle,” 61. 93 Wörsching, “Radetzkymarsch,” 95.

18

Chapter 1 “Hinter dem Zaun”94 Identity and Ideology

Ich bin ein Franzose aus dem Osten, ein Humanist, ein Rationalist mit Religion, ein Katholik mit jüdischem Gehirn, ein wirklicher Revolutionär.95

A Central European Experience

Since the rediscovery of Roth’s early work critics have identified two seemingly antithetical points of view in his novels and hence have had to grapple with the problem of how to explain the differences. The most common response has been to point to a deep sense of personal crisis which saw Roth take flight from an increasingly unbearable reality from the late 1920s. Most recently, John Heath has drawn a parallel between Radetzkymarsch, which he reads as “symptomatic of its author’s lamenting the loss of order in post-war confusion” and Roth’s life, which he calls “episodic, a nomadic journey from hotel to hotel across Europe”.96 Moritz Csáky supports the thesis of a radical change in Roth’s outlook triggered by an identity crisis, but where other critics simply locate the origins of this crisis in the historical events of the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the rise of National Socialism, Csáky presents a more differentiated analysis, arguing that Roth’s response to these events was determined by a specifically Central European historical consciousness.97 The particular character of Central Europe, with its dense patchwork of peoples, languages and cultures,98 had developed over centuries of cross-cultural contact and acculturation.99 Yet the very same

94 Joseph Roth, “Die weißen Städte” (II, 453). This series was not published during Roth’s lifetime, but Klaus Westermann, editor of Roth’s journalism in the Werkausgabe, concludes that it was written in 1925 after Roth’s return from France (II, 1005). 95 Letter to Benno Reifenberg, 1.10.1926, Joseph Roth: Briefe 1911-1939, ed. Hermann Kesten (Köln; Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1970) 98. 96 John Heath, “The Legacy of the Baroque in the Novels of Joseph Roth,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 40, no. 3 (2004): 337. 97 Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” passim. 98 For a comprehensive account of the nationalities of the Habsburg Monarchy in its last seventy years of existence see Valeria Heuberger, Unter dem Doppeladler: Die Nationalitäten der Habsburger Monarchie 1848-1918 (Wien; München: Verlag Christian Brandstätter, 1997). 99 Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 9.

19 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology conditions which gave this region its unity and its inhabitants a common overarching identity had also bred national chauvinism and xenophobia.100 The fall of the Habsburg Empire and the creation of nation-states was the end of a process of the privileging of one element of identity over another which was well underway by the first half of the nineteenth century.101 Nevertheless, the sudden change in borders and ethnic composition of what was left of Austria after 1919102 necessitated a denial or at least a partial suppression of a history of ethnic and cultural diversity and of an “Österreichbewußtsein”, the existence of which had been unquestionably accepted just a few years earlier.103 This “Zerfall mit der Geschichte”104 triggered “eine Identitätskrise, die sich sowohl im öffentlichen, politischen Leben, als auch in einer Orientierungslosigkeit von Einzelindividuen manifestierte.”105

Roth, then, was not alone in his identity crisis. On the contrary, in his multifaceted identity as an assimilated German-speaking Eastern Jew106 he was typical of what Csáky calls “eine durch einen Prozess von Akkulturation zustandegekommene Intelligenz”.107 This intelligentsia had a heightened consciousness of the ethnic,

100 Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 12. 101 Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 9. Csáky is referring here to the linguistic nationalism which swept through Central and Eastern Europe in the nineteenth century. 102 Clemenceau famously said: “L’Autriche, c’est ce qui reste” (“Austria is what is left over”): quoted in Edward Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’ after the Treaty of Saint-Germain,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 159. 103 Csáky quotes at length from Alfred Berger’s 1910 discussion of “österreichischer Patriotismus” in Buch der Heimat vol. 1 (Berlin 1910) 38-39: Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 10-11. 104 With this phrase, used several times in his article, Csáky evokes Broch’s “Zerfall der Werte”. 105 Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 11. 106 “During and after the era of Emancipation and Assimilation many Eastern European Jews championed the ideals of acculturation and assimilation and embraced the as their medium for realizing their aspirations of becoming citizens with equal rights and equal social status”: Dagmar C.G. Lorenz, “Separate Reality, Separate Nations? Austria in the Works of Jewish and Non-Jewish Authors,” in Austria in Literature, ed. Donald G. Daviau, Studies in Austrian Literature, Culture and Thought (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 2000), 132. Assimilation to this German linguistic culture was achieved through Bildung: Steven Beller, Vienna and the Jews, 1867-1938: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) 148. See also Steven Beller, “A Tale of Two Cities: Herzl's Vienna; Hitler's Vienna,” in Vienna: The World of Yesterday, 1889-1914, ed. Stephen Eric Bronner and F. Peter Wagner (New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1997), 260. On the concept of Bildung in German culture see Georg Bollenbeck, Bildung und Kultur: Glanz und Elend eines deutschen Deutungsmusters (Frankfurt/M.; Leipzig: Insel, 1994). 107 Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 11.

20 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology linguistic and cultural plurality of the region and consequently was affected intensely by the fall of the Empire and the creation of new nation-states:108

Österreich war für diese [Intelligenz] ein Überbegriff gewesen, in welchem all die verschiedenen Identitäten zusammengefaßt schienen, Österreich repräsentierte ein mitteleuropäisches Bewußtsein, das nun par force zerstört und in nationale Bewußtseinsinhalte aufgeteilt wurde. Hier in diesem politischen und soziokulturellen Kontext liegt wohl ein wesentlicher Zugang zu einer Deutung der Gedankenwelt von Joseph Roth.109

Csáky understands all of Roth’s work to be part of an ongoing search for identity, for a way out of his identity crisis, which was both individual and symptomatic of his time and place in Central European history. Yet if the crisis which Roth was experiencing was typical, then it may equally be argued that he was no more uncertain of his identity than any other person in the highly uncertain times in which he lived.110 Uncertainty about identity is one of the characteristics of the inter-war era from Thomas Mann to . The capacity of the identity crisis theory to explain Roth’s metamorphosis from socialist to monarchist is thereby undermined. Csáky demonstrates that Roth’s outlook was informed by a specifically Central European historical consciousness and his multifaceted identity as an Eastern European Jew assimilated to the German culture. However, on the basis of this argument it is possible to draw a different conclusion from that arrived at by Csáky: namely, the driving force behind Roth’s work is not an acute identity crisis triggered by nationalism and the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, but a deep distrust of nationalism and other ideologies based on a firmly held conviction, drawn from experience, that identity is plural and cannot be reduced to a single element. Sensitized as a Galician Jew to reject both nationalism and Zionism as solutions to the problems of post-war Central Europe,

108 Details from Bronsen’s biography indicate that Roth was certainly typical of the Habsburg intelligentsia described by Csáky: his formative years were spent in the plurality of cultures and languages characteristic of the eastern parts of the Habsburg realm. German, Ukrainian, Polish and Yiddish were all widely spoken in . As a young man Roth was fluent in German, competent in Yiddish and Polish, familiar with Ukrainian and could read Russian. He learned Hebrew in primary school and retained enough to be able to translate Hebrew prayers thirty-five years later: Bronsen, Biographie 120-22. 109 Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 11. 110 For Csáky, it was not even primarily a Jewish problem but a problem of the German-speaking Habsburg intelligentsia. On the predominance of Jews at this time in fields ranging from music through science to literature and philosophy see Beller, Vienna and the Jews.

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Roth also comes to reject socialism as a similarly absolute solution – already in his early, so-called “socialist” novels.111

From the late eighteenth century, modernizing Jews in the Habsburg Empire adopted German language and culture.112 Roth identified from an early age with the German cultural world of Goethe and Schiller,113 and as a Galician schoolboy assimilated eagerly into the German culture, eschewing the Orthodox ways of his maternal grandfather.114 But his German identity was cultural, not ethnic: for the majority of assimilated Jews in the Habsburg Empire in fact, cultural identification could not mean ethnic identification, and Galician or Bohemian Jews “might be German by culture, but they were not members of the German ‘Volk’.”115 This distinction can be confusing for readers from a Western European or Anglo-Saxon tradition because the terms ethnic, cultural and national have distinct connotations in relation to Central Europe which are absent from the Western European and Anglo-Saxon context. The Hungarian historian István Bibó provides perhaps the most penetrating analysis of the differences in his study of the problems inherent in the political order created in Central Europe in

111 Cf. Herzog, who writes that Roth’s Jewish identity consists “in einer multiplen Existenz […], die sich der Identifizierung mit einem Vaterland, einem ideologischen System, einer Konfession, aber auch einer Idee konsequent verweigert”: Herzog, “Der Segen,” 115. 112 From the late nineteenth century, rising Magyar, Czech and Polish nationalism created a situation in which the majority of Jews in Hungary and some in Bohemia and Galicia came to identify with the Magyar, Czech and Polish cultures respectively: Marsha L. Rozenblit, “The Dilemma of Identity: The Impact of the First World War on Habsburg Jewry,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 144. Roth’s family, however, had already assimilated to German culture in his mother’s generation. 113 This identification continued, despite the ascendancy of the Nazis. In a letter to Stefan Zweig dated 22 March 1933, Roth declared: “Unsere Ahnen sind Goethe Lessing Herder nicht minder als Abraham Isaac und Jacob”: Briefe 257. Cf. Bronsen, Biographie 81. 114 As a teenager Roth declared: “Ich bin Assimilant! […] kein polnischer Assimilant, sondern ein österreichischer”: Bronsen, Biographie 82. The use of the word “österreichisch” prior to signified “an Austrian of German culture”: Rosenfeld, Understanding 7. In the 1930s Roth became aware of German as a “pluricentric language” (Clyne), and began to emphasize differences between a German-German and an Austrian-German language and identity. He declared in 1937/38: “Die geistige Herkunft der österreichischen Sprache ist eine andere als ihre klangliche”: Joseph Roth, “Das alte Österreich”, in Berliner Saisonberichte: Unbekannte Reportages und journalistische Arbeiten 1920-1939, edited by Klaus Westermann (Köln, 1984): 427; cited in Csáky, “Der Zerfall Österreichs,” 12. 115 Rozenblit, “Dilemma of Identity,” 144. Bibó explains the crucial difference between the Western European idea of a people (French peuple), with its emphasis on democratic representation, and the German Volk, which in Central and Eastern Europe emphasized the people’s role as the bearer of national characteristics: István Bibó, Die Misere der osteuropäischen Kleinstaaterei, trans. Béla Rásky (Frankfurt/M.: Neue Kritik, 1992) 18.

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1919.116 Bibó explains that when modern democratic nationalism spread through Europe at the end of the eighteenth century, there was little doubt in Northern and Western Europe that the territory which was the basis of the democratic nationalist claim was the state which already existed, France and Britain being the model cases.117 In Central Europe, by contrast, nationalism as a political and ideological movement arose in a context in which there was no pre-existing political entity to which the people (the “nation”) could lay claim: Hungarians, Poles, Czechs and others experienced their national awakening under foreign – predominantly Habsburg – rule. These nations were defined by reference to language and to cultural aspirations and historical memories rather than to state boundaries, and thus a particular form of nationalism – Sprachnationalismus or linguistic nationalism – arose.118 The historical fact of the Habsburg Empire, that is, led to the specifically Central European development of the nation as “[die] Gesamtheit der eine bestimmte Sprache sprechenden Menschen”.119 Roth, then, felt a sense of belonging to a German nation which was defined by reference not to political or ethnic boundaries, but to language and culture. He did not reject the concept of the nation as a socio-cultural entity, but he emphatically rejected nationalism as a doctrine privileging one nation over others and attaching territory to national status because this was incompatible with the reality of ethnic plurality in Central Europe. The supranational structure of the Habsburg Monarchy had allowed Jews such as Roth to construct a political identity which was not national and which co-existed with cultural and ethnic identifications:

The very fact that Austria was not a nation-state meant that loyalty to the state was not coterminous with any particular national identity. Jews could claim Austrian political identity, German (or Czech or Polish) cultural

116 Bibó, Die Misere. The text was first published in Hungarian in 1946. While the German title refers to Eastern Europe, Bibó’s focus is the nations of Central Europe which were under Habsburg control until 1918. 117 Bibó, Die Misere 14. Nations in Western Europe did not come into being where people speaking the same language decided to create a state; rather, the modern idea of the nation is a political concept: “Ausgangspunkt ist ein staatlicher Rahmen, den das Volk kraft der demokratisierten nationalen Massenemotionen in seinen Besitz nehmen und in seinem Besitz wissen möchte”: Bibó, Die Misere 19. 118 Bibó, Die Misere 17. 119 Bibó, Die Misere 92. Further complicating the picture was the fact that where a nation could refer to a historical kingdom as conferring on it a right to national recognition (Bibó, Die Misere 18) – as could Bohemia, Hungary and Poland – the boundaries of the historical structure did not coincide with linguistic boundaries: See Bibó, Die Misere 24-37.

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identity and Jewish ethnic identity all at the same time.120

The progress of the German-speaking countries towards an exclusivist and chauvinist nationalism left Roth deeply agitated, not only because its primary target of exclusion was the German-speaking Jewish Bildungsbürgertum, but also because such an ideology did not allow for the multiplicity of identities in which he felt at home due to the formative influence of the Central European historical consciousness. If we shift the focus of analysis to Roth’s distrust of ideologies, based on his formative experiences in Habsburg Central Europe, we are forced to address the lack of unity in his work in a new way, rather than viewing it as the symptom of an identity crisis. The present study looks behind the contradictions to find an overarching unity in Roth’s ongoing search for answers to the problems he observes in the post-Habsburg order, problems which for him are a result of the foundation of this new order on the nationalist idea. Although Central European commentators have argued that it was the failure to apply the Wilsonian principle of national self-determination consistently in the division of the Habsburg Empire, rather than the principle itself, which led to instability and discontent after World War I,121 for Roth, the privileging of one element of identity – the national – over all others lay at the root of all post-war problems.

Post-War Alienation

From the moment he returned from the First World War Roth felt himself to be a stranger:

120 Rozenblit, “Dilemma of Identity,” 145. Rozenblit describes Jewish identity as ethnic rather than religious because although the Jews were not considered a separate nationality by the Habsburg authorities, “they functioned as a separate ethnic group, and many of them espoused a full-blown national identity”. Zionists argued that the Jews were a nation and should be counted as one of the nationalities of the Monarchy, ultra-Orthodox Jews saw the Jews as a nation in exile awaiting the advent of the Messiah who would return them to Israel, and “[e]ven liberal or integrationist Jews […] who officially defined the Jews as a religious confession and had adopted German, Czech or Magyar culture, acknowledged an ethnic dimension to Jewish identity”: Rozenblit, “Dilemma of Identity,” 144. 121 Bibó demonstrates that where linguistic and ethnic boundaries did not coincide with historical boundaries, the historical boundaries were given precedence, largely due to Western incomprehension of the peculiarities of the Central European situation: Bibó, Die Misere 94f., 104f. The assignment of areas of Bohemia with German-speaking majorities to Czechoslovakia by Treaty of Saint-Germain, is an example of the infringements of the Wilsonian principle which occurred during the division of the former Empire: Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 159.

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Dann kehrte ich heim und erkannte, daß ich inzwischen ein neues Heimatrecht erworben hatte: zu Hause war ich ‘draußen’, in dem großen Reich des Todes. Die Heimat war eng und arm, verworren und verwirrend – und das Glück, nicht gefallen zu sein, verwandelte sich mit einem Schlag in das Unglück, zu Hause fremd geworden zu sein.122

On one level these words give expression to the universal experience of the returned soldier, whose existential confrontation with death and the depths of the human soul renders a simple reintegration into society impossible. On another level, and more specifically, they evoke the situation of those returning not to the multi-national Habsburg Empire they had left, but to the new nation-states of Central Europe. For Roth, this change in political organization precipitated a loss of the breadth of identifications which were possible under the Habsburg structure. As Edward Timms explains,

[f]or formerly subject peoples, Czechs and Slovaks, Poles and Slovenes, the acquisition of a new nationality may have been a matter for rejoicing.123 But the proclamation of the successor states plunged the widely scattered German-speaking communities of the Habsburg crown into confusion. Were inhabitants of Lemberg or Czernowitz, who had traditionally owed allegiance to Vienna, now to be defined as Poles, Romanians or Ukrainians? Or could they reassert their identity as German-Austrians?124

This question was resolved in a formal sense at least by the 1919 Treaty of Saint- Germain. Article 80 of the Treaty “made it possible for members of German- speaking minorities living in remote areas of the former Habsburg Empire to obtain Austrian citizenship by ‘option’” provided they “‘[spoke] the same language and belong[ed] to the same race’ as the majority of the Austrian population.”125 Although the criterion of ‘race’ was designed to prevent a mass migration of Eastern Jews126 to the territorially reduced Austria, it was never

122 “Warum reise ich gerne” Beilage “Für die Frau” (7.6.1929) 4; cited in: Schulte, “”, Soma Morgenstern, Joseph Roths Flucht und Ende. Erinnerungen, ed. Ingolf Schulte (Lüneburg: zu Klampen, 1994) 322. 123 In fact, even for these “formerly subject peoples” the question of belonging was not always resolved in favour of the ethnic nation-state: in the Carinthian plebiscite held on 10 October 1920 almost half of the votes supporting the incorporation of “Zone A”(in southern Carinthia) in the new Austrian Republic were cast by Slovenes: Erwin Steinböck, Kärnten, in Erika Weinzierl and Kurt Skalnik, eds, Osterreich 1918-1938. Geschichte der Ersten Republik, vol. 2 (Graz; Wien; Köln: Styria, 1983): 808-811; cited in Klaus Zelewitz, “Beim Lesen von Roths Romanen Radetzkymarsch und Die Kapuzinergruft. Warum sind die Trottas Slowenen?,” Zagreber Germanistische Beiträge 2 (1993): 104. 124 Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 159-60. 125 Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 161. 126 The term Ostjude was not widely used until the First World War “when writers began to bemoan the Ostjudengefahr (threat) or Ostjudenfrage (problem)”: Jack Wertheimer,

25 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology clearly defined and was initially interpreted rather liberally, allowing assimilated German-speaking Jews from the eastern provinces to opt for Austrian citizenship.127

Having assimilated to the German rather than the Polish culture of his youth,128 Galician-born Roth opted for Austrian citizenship. This deceptively simple statement belies a substantially more complicated process. According to Soma Morgenstern, when Roth opted for Austrian citizenship in 1919, the Christian Socialists who governed the eighth district of Vienna where he resided refused to grant Jews from the former eastern provinces Austrian citizenship.129 Towards the end of 1921, while Roth was still attempting to obtain Austrian citizenship, Interior Minister Leopold Waber introduced what became known as the Wabersche Optionspraxis, a measure which made it impossible for any further Eastern Jews to opt for Austrian citizenship.130 This practice was based on a decision by the Verwaltungsgerichtshof (Austrian Administrative Court) on 9 June 1921, which had interpreted the phrase in Article 80 “speak the same language and belong to the same race” in terms that excluded German-speaking

Unwelcome Strangers: East European Jews in Imperial Germany (New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) 6. In this context the term implied not just the country of origin of the migrants but also a host of stereotypes, including cultural inferiority, poverty, lack of hygiene and religious orthodoxy: Monika S. Schmid, “Persecution and Identity Conflicts: The Case of German Jews,” in Us and Others: Social Identities Across Languages, Discourses and Cultures, ed. Anna Duszak (; Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2002), 343. This study follows Wertheimer in using the term “Eastern Jews” to refer to subjects of the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the Rumanian state. The term does not imply a uniform identity. 127 Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 161. 128 Although Eastern Jews most commonly assimilated to the German culture, in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Galicia Jews increasingly assimilated to the Polish culture. Until 1867 the language of instruction at all Galician Gymnasien was German, but by 1900 only four German language schools remained: Heuberger, Unter dem Doppeladler 58. By 1905 Roth’s K.K. Kronprinz Rudolf-Gymnasium in Brody was one of only two German Gymnasien in Galicia, and his year was the last for which the language of instruction was totally German: Bronsen, Biographie 80. 129 Morgenstern, Flucht und Ende 41-42. Morgenstern’s account conflicts in some respects with Timms’s, which is supported by documents held in the Leo Baeck Institute, New York. Morgenstern asserts that because of the Christian Socialists’ hardline stance, Roth was a Polish citizen from 1919 until 1928. However, Roth’s Austrian citizenship paper, dated 8 June 1921, is reproduced in Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 163. 130 He was supported by other großdeutsch members of the coalition government: Heinrich Benedikt, Geschichte der Republik Österreich (Vienna, 1954) 386; cited in Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 162.

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Jews.131 Timms notes that but for the more liberal interpretation of this article prior to the decision of the Verwaltungsgerichtshof, “that most Austrian of authors [Joseph Roth] would have been Polish”132 by citizenship, and asks: “can it be a coincidence that Roth’s declaration of citizenship is dated 8 June 1921 – or did some helpful official backdate the document in order to circumvent that Court decision?”133

Even though Roth and many other Eastern Jews in his position obtained Austrian citizenship by 1921, the ambiguous legal status afforded them by the option clause rendered them in effect second-class citizens. In a process known as der Schub (“getting the push”), citizens whose Heimatrecht (right of domicile) was not within the borders of the Austrian Republic could be deported to their original place of domicile if convicted of a criminal offence. Even the remote possibility of deportation made a significant minority of the population of inter-war Austria – many of whom were Jews – feel vulnerable.134 The insecurity of Eastern Jews in the First Republic was heightened by constant challenges to their right to Austrian citizenship by the anti-Semitic press,135 by politicians who promoted the cause of a united Greater Germany, and finally, after the Anschluß, by the Nazi administration which in 1939 declared citizenship obtained under Article 80 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain invalid, thus depriving large numbers of Austrian Jews of their citizenship and rights to protection under the constitution.136

In 1923 a new question appeared on the official Austrian census forms which further unsettled Austria’s Jewish citizens. Asking for the respondent’s Rassenzugehörigkeit, it represented a significant step in the direction of making citizenship dependent on race, although Article 63 of the Treaty of Saint-Germain

131 Jonny Moser, “Die Katastrophe der Juden in Österreich”, Studia Judaica Austriaca 5 (1977) 91-92; cited in Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 162. 132 Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 161-62. 133 Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 162. 134 Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 163-64. 135 Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 160. 136 Hans-Joachim Seeler, Die Staatsangehörigkeit Österreichs (Frankfurt, 1957) 48, 159; cited in Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 166.

27 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology limited the extent of discrimination against ethnic minorities.137 The idea of the Jews as a race, however, was not new. Although in the late Habsburg Empire nationality had been defined in terms of language, not race,138 and the Jews had been recognized officially not as a nationality but as a religion,139 anti-Semitism was rife. From the late 1870s “cultural” anti-Semitism was superseded by “racial” anti-Semitism,140 and by the early 1880s it was “no longer a petty bureaucratic annoyance or an endemic but harmless instinct, but something which was to destroy the whole fabric of assimilation.”141

The typical response of German-speaking Jews to the appearance of modern racial anti-Semitism, which unlike earlier cultural anti-Semitism denied the possiblity that the Jewish individual might “overcome ‘the Jew’ in himself” through assimilation and possibly conversion to Christianity,142 was to “take stock of their Jewishness” and to recognize the limits of assimilation.143 Faced with increasing antipathy and the seeming impossibility of complete assimilation in the anti-

137 Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 162. Under this article the Austrian government guaranteed “complete protection of life and liberty to all inhabitants of Austria without distinction of birth, nationality, race or religion”. 138 The concepts Volksstamm (ethnic group) and Volkszugehörigkeit (ethnic attribution or allegiance) were used during the late Habsburg Empire by constitutional reformers attempting to resolve conflicting national interests, but the terms were not yet associated with a discourse of inclusion and exclusion: Timms, “Citizenship and ‘Heimatrecht’,” 162. 139 According to Heuberger, Yiddish was not recognized as an official language (and therefore the Yiddish-speaking Jews not as a nationality) because the authorities viewed it as a “Lokalsprache”, a dialect of German which was only used in the East: Heuberger, Unter dem Doppeladler 57. 140 Beller explains the process by which “cultural” anti-Semitism developed into “racial” anti- Semitism from the late 1870s: Beller, Vienna and the Jews 190f. Schmid specifically locates the emergence of this “new type” of anti-Semitism, which was no longer based on purely religious foundations (the Jews as the “murderers of Christ”), in the economic crisis of the late 1870s. “At the same time, as theories of evolution, inheritance, and ‘race’ became the prominent object of the natural sciences, this economically motivated anti-Semitism also acquired a racist component”: Schmid, “Persecution,” 344. 141 Beller, Vienna and the Jews 190. Hatred of the Jews in Central European culture dates back to the Middle Ages. Even after they gained full rights in 1867, there was a virtual ban on professing Jews in the higher bureaucracy, the army and the diplomatic service in what Beller terms an “unofficial official religious antisemitism”: Beller, Vienna and the Jews 188-89. 142 In cultural anti-Semitism “Jewishness was a psychological quality, it was there to be overcome. If one really wanted to be German, there was no obvious barrier to this”: Beller, Vienna and the Jews 191. 143 Marsha L. Rozenblit, The Jews of Vienna, 1867-1914: Assimilation and Identity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983) 147.

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Semitic environment of pre-war Vienna,144 assimilated Jews rediscovered their Jewishness.145 Many Jews who had converted to Christianity returned to Judaism, either “because antisemitism made them realize the ineffectiveness of conversion or simply as a point of honor in the face of attack.”146 Rozenblit cites the famous example of composer Arnold Schönberg, “who slowly reaffirmed his Jewish identity in response to the hostility he perceived around him,” finally converting back to Judaism in 1933 when Hitler became German Chancellor.147

Roth first encountered anti-Semitism in pre-war Vienna, and the experience had a profound effect on him, as it did on so many of his contemporaries. Growing up in Galician Brody, Roth had had little reason to reflect on his Jewishness and had not experienced the sort of pressures which might have induced him to convert to Christianity.148 Brody was very much a Jewish town: at 72% it had the highest proportion of Jews of any Galician town (and perhaps the highest in the whole of the Habsburg Empire),149 most of the mayors were Jews, and a majority of streets were named after Jews.150 When Roth arrived in the Habsburg capital to study at the university in 1913, Jews comprised 6% of the Viennese population.151 Just sixty years earlier, however, very few Jews had resided in Vienna.152 Their former

144 Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 146. On Viennese anti-Semitism see also Brigitte Hamann, Hitlers Wien: Lehrjahre eines Diktators (München: Piper, 2000); and Peter G.J. Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (New York: John Wiley, 1964). 145 Hamann views the rediscovery and embracing of their Jewish roots by assimilated Jews such as and Theodor Herzl as one of two contrasting reactions to the appearance of racial anti-Semitism in Vienna; the other reaction was existential crisis and self-hate, typified by Otto Weiniger and Arthur Trebitsch: Hamann, Hitlers Wien 485-86. 146 Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 145. 147 Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 145. Johnston’s account differs slightly from Rozenblit’s: “Born in Vienna of middle-class Jewish parents and raised a Catholic, Schönberg converted to Protestantism in 1902, only to be received back into Judaism in 1935”: William M. Johnston, The Austrian Mind. An Intellectual and Social History 1848-1938 (Berkeley, Los Angeles; London: University of Califonia Press, 1983) 138. 148 If Roth ever converted to Christianity – a point of some contention – it was not until the 1930s. Bronsen describes in detail the arguments of Roth’s friends and associates before his funeral over whether Roth should be buried according to Catholic or Jewish rites: Bronsen, Biographie 600-01. See also Rosenfeld, Understanding 90. 149 This figure, from 1900, is cited in Bronsen, Biographie 53. 150 Bronsen, Biographie 72. 151 Census of 1910; cited in Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 17. At this time the Viennese Jewish community was the largest in Western or Central Europe, numbering almost 200,000: Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 5. 152 Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 16. The Viennese Jewish community experienced spectacular growth once residential restrictions were lifted after the 1848 revolution, with most Jewish

29 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology virtual absence made their sudden presence as a sizable minority all the more visible and added fuel to the anti-Semitic fire. At the , Roth discovered that the lectures of Jewish professors were routinely boycotted by German nationalist (völkisch) students, who also regularly prevented Jews from entering the university.153 These blatant acts of anti-Semitism, together with the fact that Jews from Galicia constituted the most recent wave of Jewish migrants154 and were thus despised more than all others, forced Roth to reflect for the first time on his Jewish identity, which “singled him out as undesirable.”155

Berlin: Alienation Compounded

If Roth had felt an outsider in pre-war Vienna, this experience was intensified in post-war Berlin, where he lived and worked as a journalist from 1920.156 Gustav Mahler once lamented “I am thrice homeless […]. As a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the whole world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.”157 As a German-speaking Galician Jew in Berlin, Roth too was an outsider three times; as a Jew from the East, his sense of exclusion was even more keenly felt.158 As he remarked to in 1937 after a final visit to Galicia,

Je westlicher der Herkunftsort des Juden, desto mehr Juden gibt es, auf die er herabschaut. Der Frankfurter Jude verachtet den Berliner Juden, der Berliner Jude verachtet den Wiener Juden; der Wiener Jude verachtet den Warschauer Juden. Dann kommen noch die Juden ganz dahinten aus Galizien, auf die sie

migrants arriving from the provinces of Galicia, Bohemia and Moravia and from Hungary: Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 5. 153 Bronsen, “The Jew,” 56. On anti-Semitism at the university see Pulzer, Political Anti- Semitism 251-57; Bronsen, Biographie 149-51. 154 Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 21. Rozenblit describes three waves of Jewish migration to Vienna: the Czech wave of the 1850s and 1860s, the Hungarian wave of the 1870s and 1880s, and the Galician wave, which occurred in the final decades before the First World War: Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 21. 155 Bronsen, “The Jew,” 56. 156 Roth spent most of the period 1920-1925 in Berlin, with several breaks: Bronsen, Biographie 209. Cf. Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 100. 157 Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters, trans. Basil Creighton, 3rd ed. (London: John Murray, 1973) 109. 158 Joseph Gottfarstein, an Eastern European Jew Roth met in Parisian exile in 1934, said of Roth’s feeling of displacement from his Eastern Jewish roots: “Roth war aus seinem Lebenselement herausgerissen. Da er seinem eigenen Volk nicht angehörte, war ihm das Leben ein zwei- und dreifaches Exil”: Joseph Gottfarstein, quoted in Bronsen, Biographie 550.

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alle herabschauen, und dorther bin ich, der letzte aller Juden.159

Assimilated Jews in Germany viewed themselves as Germans by nationality and Jewish by religion: they were not first and foremost Jews but “German citizens of the Mosaic Persuasion”.160 The leading spokesman of the Centralverein deutscher Staasbürger jüdischen Glaubens, Eugen Fuchs, wrote in 1919:

We are Germans of Jewish faith and ethnicity for whom Deutschtum is nation and people, Judaism faith and ethnicity, divided from the Germans by means of faith and ethnicity but not by Volk. We are German nationals, not Jewish, only a Jewish religious community and not a Jewish Volk, at least in Germany.161

German Jews believed they had earned their emancipation and status through self- betterment or Bildung; their hostility towards Eastern Jews was motivated by the fear that the immigrants would “revive an image of the Jew that natives had worked so hard to obliterate.”162 Roth was an assimilated Jew and not the target of

159 Joseph Roth, quoted in an interview by David Bronsen with Irmgard Keun, writer and companion to Joseph Roth: Bronsen, Biographie 43. The prejudice of German Jews against Galician Jews in particular was already well established by the mid-nineteenth century: Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800-1923 (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982) 16. Wertheimer characterizes the response of German Jews in Imperial Germany to Eastern Jewish immigrants as one of hostility: Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers 143-51. Aschheim argues that the response of German Jews to their Eastern co-religionists was more ambivalent, both in Imperial and in Weimar Germany: Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers. 160 Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers 160. It is in part because of this self-understanding that many German Jews failed to recognize the rising threat of German nationalism for all Jews: “The majority of German Jews were inclined toward a liberal, assimilationist interpretation of the Jewish question. The modern ‘Jewish Question’ existed only insofar as the Ostjuden had penetrated into Western Europe, impeded local Jewish assimilation, kept alive the memory of ‘the Jew’, and made accusations of ineradicable differences between the Jews and their host nations credible”: Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers 78. Even in the face of a spate of anti- Jewish outbreaks in 1923, only the Zionists recognized that anti-Semitism in the Weimar Republic was directed not only at Eastern Jewish immigrants but also at assimilated German Jewry: Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers 244-45. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, German Jewish opinion “was torn between the pessimists, who expected to lose their citizenship while remaining otherwise unmolested, and the optimists, who anticipated little or no change in their status due to the moderating influence of the non-Nazi right”: Donald L. Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge; London: Louisiana State University Press, 1980) 82, paraphrasing Heinemann Stern, Warum hassen sie uns eigentlich? Jüdisches Leben zwischen den Kriegen (Düsseldorf, 1970) 179-80. Niewyk notes that this analysis may be applied to the entire period of Hitler’s rise to power. 161 Eugen Fuchs, “Was nun?” NJM 3, no. 7-8 (10-25 January 1919); quoted in translation in Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers 218. 162 Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers 160. See also Schmid, “Persecution,” 343. Hamann describes the same reaction of established, assimilated Jews in Vienna to Orthodox Eastern Jews: “[Die Wiener Juden] hatten alles getan, um nicht als Juden aufzufallen, um sich anzupassen und ganz dazuzugehören. […] Nun, da sie im Zeichen des Rassenantisemitismus plötzlich auf eine Stufe gestellt wurden mit den zerlumpten Glaubensbrüdern aus dem Osten, sahen sie sich in ihrer schwer erkämpften Existenz bedroht”: Hamann, Hitlers Wien 482-83.

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German-Jewish disdain, yet he was also not a Westjude, and his words to Irmgard Keun reveal the extent to which he identified and sympathized with the plight of unassimilated Galician Jews in post-war Germany and Austria.

Identity and the Nation

Roth’s sense of being an outsider in stems not from his Eastern Jewishness per se, but from the challenge to his identity posed by German nationalism and anti-Semitism.163 Having spent his formative years in the plurality of cultures characteristic of the eastern parts of the Habsburg realm, Roth’s experience of individual identity contrasted starkly with an ideology which insisted that German and Jewish identity were mutually exclusive.164 A unique, centuries-long process of cross-cultural encounters and acculturation in the Habsburg Empire had led to a blurring of boundaries between different nationalities, and the predominance of multiple identities, or a multipolarity of individual and collective identities.165 Pressure to fix collective identity on the basis of a loyalty to one language and culture – a construct, contradicted by the reality of multiple loyalties166 – did not, of course, arise suddenly with the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the foundation of nation-states, but had been growing since the failed 1848 revolutions. The persistence of the Monarchy, however, had allowed at least the fiction of the supranational state to be maintained until 1918. This fiction was replaced by another with the creation of

163 On anti-Semitic stereotypes in the Weimar Republic and their impact on Roth see Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 16-29. 164 The particular experience of Jews was summed up by Erich Stern, a German Jew in French exile in the 1930s: “der Jude sei dadurch gekennzeichnet, daß er mehr und immer noch anderes sei als nur Jude, daß sein Leben gleichsam aus zwei Quellen gespeist werde, der jüdischen und einer anderen; seine gesamte Existenz sei von einem Dualismus durchtränkt, von dem er nicht los komme, sofern er unter anderen Völkern lebe”: Erich Stern, Die Emigration als psychologiches Problem (, 1937) 94; cited in Bronsen, Biographie 494. 165 Csáky writes that this multiplicity of identities was reflected on a practical level in the high proportion of the population which spoke two or more languages with (near) equal competency – the mother tongue of an individual was often not one language but several: Moritz Csáky, “Ambivalenz des kulturellen Erbes: Zentraleuropa,” in Ambivalenz des kulturellen Erbes. Vielfachcodierung des historischen Gedächtnisses, ed. Moritz Csáky and Klaus Zeyringer (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag, 2000), 40. Csáky does not suggest that the acculturation processes he describes precluded stereotyping and other forms of boundary setting between people who felt themselves to belong to a particular ethnic group or “national culture”. 166 Csáky, “Ambivalenz,” 41.

32 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology nation-states out of the ruins of the Empire: the fiction of the ethnic nation- state.167

Roth’s antipathy toward the fixing of collective and individual identity finds its first clear expression in “Die weißen Städte”, a series of journalistic impressions inspired by his travels through the south of France in 1925. Here, Roth realized he had been living “hinter dem Zaun […]. Denn uns umgibt ein Zaun, uns Menschen, die wir zur deutschen Welt sprechen.” (II, 453) The stakes of this metaphoric fence are Begriff and Nomenklatur (terminology and nomenclature), which for the Germans are sacred and immutable (II, 453). In France, Roth discovers another world, in which people are not concerned to fix things according to clear categories, once and for all, and for him this brings liberation:

Ich kenne die süße Freiheit, nichts mehr darzustellen als mich selbst. Ich repräsentiere nicht, ich übertreibe nicht, ich verleugne nicht. Ich falle trotzdem nicht auf. Es ist in Deutschland fast unmöglich, nicht aufzufallen, wenn ich nichts spiele, wenn ich nichts verleugne und nichts übertreibe. Zwischen diesen zwei Arten zu erscheinen, habe ich die traurige Wahl. Denn ich muß auch, wenn ich keinen Typus, keine Gattung, kein Geschlecht, keine Nation, keinen Stamm, keine Rasse repräsentiere, dennoch etwas zu repräsentieren suchen. Wir sind gezwungen, ‘Farbe zu bekennen’, und nicht etwa eine beliebige, sondern eine aus der offiziellen Farbenskala: sonst sind wir ‘ohne Gesinnung’. (II, 453-54)

In Germany Roth feels pressured not only to declare his political convictions, but also either to deny his Jewishness or to exaggerate his German identity, and both of these options leave him feeling robbed of his individuality. France gives him the freedom to determine his own identity,168 while Germany169 is suspicious of all that is not strictly definable or able to be categorized:

Es ist das Kennzeichen der engen Welt, daß sie das Undefinierbare verdächtigt. Es ist das Kennzeichen der weiten, daß sie mich gewähren läßt. Auch sie hat für mich noch keine Bezeichnung gefunden. Aber nennt sie mich so oder anders, so ist immer noch ein freier Raum zwischen der Bezeichnung und dem Begriff, den sie deckt, denn die Welt nimmt nicht alles wörtlich. Wir aber nehmen sie beim Wort und nicht ‘bei der Sache’, weil wir

167 For Bibó this outcome was a result of the failure of the victors of World War I to apply the principle of ethnic self-determination when the linguistic and ethnic boundaries of some nations were different from their historical boundaries (notably in the case of the Czechs, the Hungarians and the Poles): Bibó, Die Misere 92-94. 168 While Roth’s view of France is undoubtedly idealized, his subjective contrast of France and Germany reveals much about his rejection of identity ascription. 169 With the phrase “uns Menschen, die wir zur deutschen Welt sprechen” (II, 453) Roth implies not only Germany but also Germans in Austria, Czechoslovakia and so on.

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die Namen mit den Dingen verwechseln. (II, 454)

Significantly, Roth does not become himself for the first time “hinter dem Zaun” in France; rather he finds he can once again be himself: “Hinter dem Zaun gewann ich mich selbst wieder.” (II, 453) The place where he last had this freedom was the place of his childhood – Brody:

Ich habe die weißen Städte so wiedergefunden, wie ich sie in den Träumen gesehn hatte. Wenn man nur die Träume seiner Kindheit findet, ist man wieder ein Kind. Das zu hoffen, hatte ich nicht gewagt. Denn unwiederbringlich weit lag die Kindheit hinter mir, durch einen Weltbrand getrennt, durch eine brennende Welt. Sie war selbst nicht mehr als ein Traum. Sie war ausgelöscht aus dem Leben; verstorbene und begrabene, nicht entschwundene Jahre. (II, 454)

As a child in Brody, before the “Weltbrand” of the First World War, Roth had not been forced to question the different facets of his identity. The questioning began in pre-war Vienna, when he was confronted by the harsh reality of an increasingly racial anti-Semitism. In post-war Central Europe, where nationalism is rife, Roth perceives himself to be threatened with the loss of the freedom to be himself, where being himself means professing (or rather living) a multiplicity of identities, or simply not being compelled to profess a single identity “aus der offiziellen Farbenskala”.170

Identity and Nationalism in Juden auf Wanderschaft

The link between Roth’s multifaceted identity as an assimilated German Jew from Habsburg Galicia and his rejection of nationalism emerges strongly in Juden auf Wanderschaft (1927), a long essay written during the transitional phase between the early Zeitromane and later Habsburg novels. In comparison with the general body of Roth’s work, the bitter polemic of this text is striking.171 It is also marked by ambivalence and contradictions, and a schematic opposition between West and

170 Roth’s response to this threat in both his writing and his interactions with friends, colleagues and strangers was steadfastly to refuse to be ascribed a single and unchangeable identity. Cf. Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 45. The most obvious manifestation of this refusal was his proclivity – well documented in Bronsen’s biography – for spreading contradictory accounts of every imaginable aspect of his life. 171 Cf. Mark H. Gelber, “Juden auf Wanderschaft und die Rhetorik der Ost-West-Debatte im Werk Joseph Roths,” in Joseph Roth. Interpretation Rezeption Kritik, ed. Michael Kessler and Fritz Hackert (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1990), 127.

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East which lacks nuance and subtlety.172 Despite these shortcomings, however, the essay is important because it reveals the links between Roth’s deep distrust of nationalism as an ideology of exclusion and a conviction based on personal experience that identity is fundamentally multivalent and individual. These issues and their interconnections are central to both the early fiction and the Habsburg novels, Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft.

The text operates at several different levels. Most obviously it is an accolade to the Eastern Jews, whom Roth seeks to defend against the anti-Semitism of both Western Europeans and Westjuden – assimilated Jews in the cities of Western Europe. Roth announces his solidarity with both Eastern Jews and Slavs in the opening sentences of the Vorwort, in which he aggressively states that the text is not written for those Western Europeans, “die aus der Tatsache, daß sie bei Luft und Wasserklosett aufgewachsen sind, das Recht ableiten, über rumänische Läuse, galizische Wanzen, russische Flöhe schlechte Witze vorzubringen” (II, 827). Nor is it intended for Western Jews, “die ihre eigenen, durch einen Zufall der Baracke entronnenen Väter oder Urväter verleugnen.” (II, 827) From the outset, then, the writer’s sympathies are unambiguous. Yet Roth’s aim in this foreword is not so much to limit the readership of the essay as to make the implicit explicit and thus proclaim the polemical intent of the text.173 The narrator openly rejects objectivity,174 because objectivity is an illusion and an ideological weapon used by particular social groups to maintain their dominant positions: the Eastern Jew thinks differently and quickly becomes a victim of the paradigm of Western rationality.175

Assimilation and Loss of Identity

The essay is, however, much more than an attempt to counter the negative stereotypes of Eastern Jews gaining currency in Western and Central Europe in the 1920s. It is an exploration by the author of his roots in Eastern Judaism and of the question of assimilation and identity maintenance. This second aspect of the

172 Robertson, “1918,” 357. 173 Cf. Gelber, “Ost-West-Debatte,” 127. 174 “Dieses Buch verzichtet auf die ‘objektiven’ Leser […]” (II, 827). 175 Cf. Gelber, “Ost-West-Debatte,” 128.

35 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology text is obscured by the deliberately elusive narrative voice.176 Bronsen maintains that Juden auf Wanderschaft reads “als sei sie von einem Westeuropäer geschrieben, der jedoch die menschlicheren Eigenschaften bei den Juden des Ostens findet und sich auch ihrer Sache annimmt”.177 Indeed, the narrator often includes himself in statements about Western Europeans, commenting, for example: “Die Emigranten assimilieren sich – leider! – nicht zu langsam, wie man ihnen vorwirft, sondern viel zu rasch an unseren traurigen Lebensbedingungen” (II, 832, emphasis added). Yet at other points in the text, the narrator’s identification – or at least his desire to identify – with the Eastern Jews he is describing may be discerned, for instance in his expression of regret that as an outsider he is excluded from a celebration (II, 851). The narrator also occasionally reveals that he knows more about the Eastern Jews than the “Fremder”, to whom, for example, all prayer houses appear the same (II, 841). This comment suggests that the narrator is not the Western European he at other times appears to be.178

Gelber argues persuasively that this elusive narrative voice is part of Roth’s rhetorical strategy, whereby the author divides the narrator into a Western and an Eastern part: the “westliche[r] Teil des Ichs” functions to validate the harsh criticism which is expressed of Western ways by including the Western reader in the narrator’s point of view; the function of the “ostjüdische[s] Ich[…]” is to convey the authentic experience of the East and express an emotional and sympathetic identification with the Eastern Jews.179 Over and above this function as a rhetorical device, the narrator’s ability to speak from both points of view is an implicit rejection by Roth of the stereotypical dichotomy of Eastern and Western Jewry, the idea that Eastern Jews and German Jews were “radically antithetical”.180 Roth’s rejection of this stereotype, which had been in place since

176 Cf. Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 118. 177 Bronsen, Biographie 158. Bronsen comments further: “Roth […] steht der Mentalität der Ostjuden sympathisierend gegenüber, wenn er auch nicht mit ihnen identifiziert werden möchte”: Bronsen, Biographie 79. This interpretation is not supported by the text. 178 Ochse describes the narrator as “jemand, der im Osten wie im Westen fremd und heimisch zugleich ist”: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 118. 179 Gelber, “Ost-West-Debatte,” 129. 180 On this stereotype see Steven E. Aschheim, “The East European Jew and German Jewish Identity,” Studies in Contemporary Jewry 1 (1984): 4. This was a relatively new idea which arose in the context of the Enlightenment: “local and regional differences between Jews had always existed but in the pre-emancipation era they were of little structural difference when

36 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology the late nineteenth century,181 stems from his own sense of doubleness and ambivalence as an Eastern Jew “of a very specific kind”.182 His enquiry into Eastern Jewish identity “in der Heimat und in der Fremde” (II, 839) in Juden auf Wanderschaft must be read in this context as an exploration also of his own identity and belonging. It is an attempt to articulate his sense of the problems inherent in any artificial separation of the complexly intertwined components of individual identity.

A substantial part of the essay focuses on Eastern Jewish immigrants in Vienna, Berlin and Paris, comparing their struggles with assimilation and loss of identity. In Vienna, the assimilation of the Eastern Jews begins with a forced simplification, falsification and reduction of their identity, symbolized by their names and the pressure to change them:

Christen haben verständliche, europäische Namen. Juden haben unverständliche und jüdische. Nicht genug daran: sie haben zwei und drei durch ein false oder ein recte verbundene Familiennamen. Man weiß niemals, wie sie heißen. Ihre Eltern sind nur vom Rabbiner getraut worden. Diese Ehe hat keine gesetzliche Gültigkeit. Hieß der Mann Weinstock und die Frau Abramofsky, so heißen die Kinder dieser Ehe: Weinstock recte Abramofsky oder auch Abramofsky false Weinstock. Der Sohn wurde auf den jüdischen Vornamen Leib Nachman getauft. Weil dieser Name aber schwierig ist und einen aufreizenden Klang haben könnte, nennt sich der Sohn Leo. Er heißt also: Leib Nachman genannt Leo Abramofsky false Weinstock. Solche Namen bereiten der Polizei Schwierigkeiten. Die Polizei liebt keine Schwierigkeiten. (II, 859)

The complexity of the Eastern Jew’s name symbolizes the multifaceted nature of identity which is embraced by Jewish customs and traditions but frowned upon by

compared with the overall similarities: Jews everywhere were bound by a common socio- political condition and linked by a shared system of beliefs and attachments. […] From about the 1780’s on, Jewish historical development was characterized by a profound fragmentation. On the one hand, Enlightenment and emancipation in the West; on the other, the continuation of political disenfranchisement and traditional in Eastern Europe.” 181 “With the appearance in 1876 of [Karl Emil Franzos’s] Aus Halbasien, all the contours of the stereotype were clearly defined. A thoroughly acculturated German Jewry had created the stereotype of the Eastern Jew as its mirror opposite. Both the ‘German’ Jew and the ‘Ostjude’ were products of a ‘modernized’ perspective: their polarity formed part of the same dialectic”: Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers 31. 182 Aschheim uses this phrase in relation to Karl Emil Franzos who, like Roth, was born in Eastern Galicia but was raised in a Germanophile household: “This was hardly a typical shtetl upbringing, and Franzos was always an outsider in relation to the ghetto”: Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers 27. Roth’s maternal grandfather was an Orthodox Jew and cloth trader, but his mother’s generation was assimilated to speak German and no longer spoke Yiddish: Rosenfeld, Understanding 6.

37 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology the Austrian police. Because he is not accepted with his complex identity and lack of papers, the Eastern Jew is forced to invent a new identity:

Man schickt ihn also zurück, einmal, zweimal, dreimal. Bis der Jude gemerkt hat, daß ihm nichts anderes übrigbleibt, als falsche Daten anzugeben, damit sie wie ehrliche aussehen. Bei einem Namen zu bleiben, der vielleicht nicht sein eigener, aber doch ein zweifelloser, glaubwürdiger Namen (sic) ist. Die Polizei hat den Ostjuden auf die gute Idee gebracht, seine echten, wahren, aber verworrenen Verhältnisse durch erlogene, aber ordentliche zu kaschieren. (II, 859)

While the name itself is unimportant to the Eastern Jew, as Roth subsequently reveals (II, 883), this pressure to invent a ‘simple’, one-dimensional name to replace a complicated, ‘fremd’ and multifaceted – but real and true – name symbolizes the beginning of a loss of identity through assimilation to a western civic Ordnung.

The loss of identity which occurs through assimilation is reflected for Roth in the absence of soldarity shown by assimilated Viennese Jews with new arrivals. Eastern Jews who have already successfully assimilated want nothing to do with their compatriots:

Niemand nimmt sich ihrer an. Ihre Vettern und Glaubensgenossen, die im ersten Bezirk in den Redaktionen sitzen, sind ‘schon’ Wiener, und wollen nicht mit Ostjuden verwandt sein oder gar verwechselt werden. (II, 858)

Roth’s polemic appears to be at odds with the findings of Brigitte Hamann, who claims that the Viennese Jewish community did everything possible to help new arrivals to acculturate, giving them clothing and establishing soup kitchens and hostels.183 Yet the difference is one of interpretation, not fact. Roth’s central point is that the assimilated Jews do not want to be reminded of their origins, or for the visibility of the “Kaftanjuden” to remind the Viennese Christians that the assimilated Jews are also Jews, and potentially inflame the increasingly racial anti-Semitism. Hamann puts a more positive interpretation on the conduct and motivation of the Jewish community, but acknowledges that the aim was to

183 Hamann, Hitlers Wien 483.

38 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology encourage the immigrants to assimilate as quickly as possible so that they would not be so conspicuous:184

Vor allem sorgten sich die Wiener Juden um die ostjüdischen Hausierer, die in Luegers Stadt besonderes Ärgernis erregten. Konferenzen über das ‘Übel’ des ‘Wanderbettels’ und die ‘Handelehs’ wurden abgehalten und Strategien beraten, um die Assimilierung zu fördern. Aber je großzügiger die Wiener Juden waren, desto mehr Bedürftige kamen. Und je mehr Ostjuden ankamen, desto größer wurde die Angst vor einem weiteren Anwachsen des Antisemitismus.185

In Roth’s less favourable interpretation, the Viennese Jews do not want the Eastern Jews merely to assimilate but to erase all visible traces of their Jewish identity.

Whatever the motivation of Viennese Jews, Hamann writes that many of the Eastern Jews chose not to assimilate, seeing themselves as Jews in exile, the keepers of true Judaism, and persisting in their customs and rituals, their language and their traditional clothing.186 She simplifies into a dichotomy of assimilation or non-assimilation a dialectical process which Roth explores in its complexities. For even if the immigrants themselves do not assimilate, he observes, instead settling in Leopoldstadt187 and becoming hawkers, they see to it that the next generation does assimilate:188

Er wird seine Kinder in die Mittelschule schicken, wenn sie begabt sind, und Gott will, daß sie begabt sind. Der Sohn wird einmal ein berühmter Rechtsanwalt sein, aber der Vater, der so lange hausieren mußte, wird weiter hausieren wollen. Manchmal fügt es sich, daß die Urenkel des Hausierers christlich-soziale Antisemiten sind. Es hat sich schon oft so gefügt. (II, 861)

The intentionally polemical implication is that the logical endpoint of assimilation is anti-Semitism, a negation of Jewish identity indeed.

184 The same was true of (non-Zionist) Jewish communities in both Imperial and Weimar Germany: see Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers 155; and Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers 220. 185 Hamann, Hitlers Wien 483, citing Klaus Hödl, Als Bettler in die Leopoldstadt (Wien, 1994): 39. Dr. Karl Lueger, leader of the openly anti-Semitic and German nationalist Christlichsoziale Partei, was the Mayor of Vienna from 1897 until 1910. 186 Hamann, Hitlers Wien 483. 187 Leopoldstadt, the second district (Bezirk) of Vienna, was the site of the seventeenth-century Jewish ghetto; in late Habsburg times it was home to the largest concentration of Jews of any single district: Rozenblit, Jews of Vienna, 76. 188 Wertheimer describes the same gradual process of assimilation by generations in Germany: Wertheimer, Unwelcome Strangers 156-57.

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Roth’s criticism of Berlin and thus of German society is more clear-cut and harsher than his criticism of Vienna. In the German capital, assimilation and consequently loss of identity occurs even faster than in Vienna: “Berlin gleicht die Verschiedenheiten aus und ertötet Eigenheiten” (II, 867). Whatever efforts the Eastern Jews make to maintain something of their distinctiveness in Berlin they are doomed to failure. So, for example, the attempt to create a Jewish ghetto:

Der Versuch, diese Berliner langweilige, so gut wie möglich saubergehaltene Straße in ein Getto umzuwandeln, ist immer wieder stark. Immer wieder ist Berlin stärker. Die Einwohner kämpfen einen vergeblichen Kampf. Sie wollen sich breitmachen? Berlin drückt sie zusammen. (II, 867)

Nationalism and Loss of Identity

If the consequence of assimilation to German and Austrian culture is a loss of Jewish identity, then what is the solution for Jews facing anti-Semitism and discrimination? In the final section of the original 1927 text189 Roth rejects the Zionist solution, arguing that nationalism in any form suppresses individuality. In this section, which focuses on the situation of the Jews in Soviet Russia, Roth observes that the Soviet Union is “das einzige Land in Europa, in dem der Anti- Semitismus verpönt ist, wenn er auch nicht aufgehört hat” (II, 887), and that the Jews have gained a great deal in terms of freedom from persecution. But the Revolution has been unable to find an answer to the Jewish question because it has failed to ask the most important question, namely whether the Jews are a nation like any other, or whether they are

eine Religionsgemeinschaft, eine Stammesgemeinschaft oder nur eine geistige Einheit […]; ob es möglich ist, ein Volk, das sich durch die Jahrtausende nur durch seine Religion und die Ausnahmestellung in Europa erhalten hat, unabhängig von seiner Religion als ‘Volk’ zu betrachten; ob in diesem besonderen Fall eine Trennung von Kirche und Nationalität möglich ist; ob es möglich ist, aus Menschen mit ererbten geistigen Interessen Bauern zu machen; aus stark geprägten Individualitäten Individuen mit Massenpsychologie. (II, 889)

Roth’s implicit answer is that the spiritual and intellectual unity of the Jews which has existed for thousands of years has far greater value and authenticity than the nation. The nation is for Roth both an artificial construct190 and a corruptor of

189 The “Nachwort” is dated June 1937 (II, 892). 190 “[…] weil schon der Wille von einigen Millionen Menschen genügt, eine ‘Nation’ zu bilden, selbst, wenn sie früher nicht bestanden haben sollte” (II, 830).

40 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology individuality. The unity of the nation differs from the spiritual and intellectual unity which existed for thousands of years in that its particular brand of oneness destroys individuality which previously had been able to thrive within the bonds of community. Becoming a nation or a national minority in a conscious sense changes the essence of the Jews’ culture, their identity, no less than does assimilation to the culture of the Wirtsvölker.191

Roth’s conviction that nationalism suppresses individuality must be seen in the light of his personal experience of the late Habsburg Empire to be properly understood. From 1870, government attempts to address the discontent of the nationalities led to the splitting of institutions along ethnic lines and the mandatory ethnic attribution of persons.192 While these processes may have been well-intentioned – “pacification through separation was the guiding idea”193 – Gerald Stourzh argues that the consequences were deplorable:

The individual person increasingly became absorbed by the group – the ‘Volksstamm’, the nationality or nation. The notion of ‘citizen’ paled, while the notion of ‘member’ of an ethnic group grew stronger. The ‘Staatsbürger’ was about to give way to the ‘Volksbürger’.194

As long as equality of the various nationalities and ethnic groups was constitutionally guaranteed this situation was regrettable, but not sinister. But when ethnic attribution began to be decided not by personal declaration but by public authorities on the basis of “objective” factors such as surname, place of

191 This term, which was common usage in the inter-war period, can be rendered only inadequately in English by the word “landlords”. The connotations of the term in the context of the time are explained by Ochse: “Das herrschende Machtbewußtsein drückt sich in der metaphorischen Selbstbeschreibung als ‘Wirtsvolk’ und der Charakterisierung jüdischer Autoren als ‘Gäste’ aus. Als Wirt ist man der Herr im Haus, d.h. im Land. Gäste halten sich nur für eine beschränkte Zeit in diesem Land auf und haben sich den Vorschriften des Wirts zu unterwerfen”: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 15-16. 192 Gerald Stourzh, “Ethnic Attribution in Late Imperial Austria: Good Intentions, Evil Consequences,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 81. Ethnic attribution is defined at the beginning of the article: “individual citizens by legislative enactment were supposed to be attributed, in certain cases or for certain functions, to one or another of the nationalities living within a province, and […] when in doubt, one had to devise a method of finding out who was to be attributed to one nationality or another, and according to which criteria”: Stourzh, “Ethnic Attribution,” 68. 193 Stourzh, “Ethnic Attribution,” 81. 194 Stourzh, “Ethnic Attribution,” 81.

41 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology birth, and language spoken by parents,195 the potential for these authorities to make decisions against the will and to the subjective disadvantage of the individual was given.196 The path from here to National Socialism was a relatively short one:

The growing tendency to stress the sense of belonging to the ethnic group at the expense of the sense of citizenship turned even more sinister when ethnic attribution was taken away from the will and choice of individual persons and transferred to the decision of public authorities on the basis of so-called ‘objective evidence’. Thus ethnic attribution could become a trap for many […]. For the Jews of Central Europe, once the National Socialists took over, this trap was to become deadly.197

National Socialism, as “die Ideologie vom Vorrang des Kollektivsubjekts auf Kosten von jeglichem Individuellen”,198 did not suddenly appear out of nowhere but developed from the historical context of the relatively late flowering of nationalism in Central Europe. This was a form of nationalism that privileged the collective over the individual. It is this experience of nationalism that leads Roth to reject all forms of it, including Jewish nationalism, as denying the free agency of the individual.

Heimat and Nation

According to Roth, nationalist (“nationale”) Jews, like assimilated Jews, are heimatlos (II, 831), because Heimat cannot be found in a place, and still less in a so-called community of blood. Indeed Roth implies that it is only when they have lost any real connection to their culture that people feel the need to declare themselves part of a nation bound by blood:

Sogar Menschen, die weder mit der Sprache noch mit der Kultur, noch mit der Religion ihrer Väter viel gemein haben, bekennen sich, kraft ihres Blutes

195 Stourzh, “Ethnic Attribution,” 75. 196 Stourzh cites the case of a German-speaking Moravian grocer who wanted to send his daughter to a German school. Upon being questioned by the authorities as to his national/ ethnic attribution he said that he felt himself to be German and even belonged to a German association. He admitted having inscribed himself in the Czech voting register in the past, but explained that his motives had been economic, not national: he had been afraid of a potential boycott by Czech customers. The case went all the way to the Administrative Court in Vienna, the highest court of appeal, which upheld the local authority’s decision that Mr Lehar was Czech and must send his daughter to a Czech school against his will: Stourzh, “Ethnic Attribution,” 77-78. 197 Stourzh, “Ethnic Attribution,” 81. 198 Theodor W. Adorno, “Auf die Frage: Was ist deutsch,” in Gesammelte Schriften, Band 10.2, ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1977), 691.

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und ihres Willens, zur ‘jüdischen Nation’. (II, 830)199

In thus opposing Heimat and Nation, effectively declaring them mutually exclusive, Roth launches a somewhat oblique but nevertheless pointed attack on radical German nationalism and racial anti-Semitism, which used the term Heimat synonymously with Nation and Vaterland, tying it to a particular territory to which the nation bound by blood has exclusive rights, rather than recognizing “daß die Erde allen gehört, die ihre Pflicht ihr gegenüber erfüllen” (II, 830).200 The concept Heimat first became value-laden in nineteenth century popular literature, which responded to the uncertainty created by rapidly changing social conditions201 by presenting Heimat as a symbol for “heile Welt”, a place in which the old values and order were still valid.202 “Heimatliebe und Heimattreue, Heimaterde und Erdverbundenheit” represented positive values, “Heimatlossein oder überhaupt Fremdsein”, negative values.203 German nationalist propaganda in the First World War drew on this opposition of Heimat and Fremde to promote defence of Volk and Vaterland.204 Heimatliteratur was ideologized in the

199 Since, according to Roth, the “national idea” is Western European in origin (II, 834), it follows that this statement applies not only to the “Jewish nation” but Western nations as well: the nation is a construct, or in Benedict Anderson’s words, an “imagined community”: see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991). 200 The reader recalls this belief, which is attributed to the Eastern Jews and judged correct by the narrator (“mit Recht”), several pages later and recognizes the irony when the narrator suggests that the nationalism of the various Austrian nationalities was a result of the incompetence of the Austrian Parliament: “Jede österreichische Nation berief sich auf die ‘Erde’, die ihr gehörte.” (II, 835) 201 Karlheinz Rossbacher, Heimatkunstbewegung und Heimatroman. Zu einer Literatursoziologie der Jahrhundertwende (Stuttgart: Klett, 1975) 65. 202 Jürgen Hein, “Heimat in der Literatur und Heimatliteratur,” in Identität und Entfremdung. Beiträge zum Literaturunterricht, ed. Josef Billen (Bochum: Kamp, 1979), 122-24. See also: Michael Wegener, “Die Heimat und die Dichtkunst. Zum Heimatroman,” in Trivialliteratur. Aufsätze, ed. Gerhard Schmidt-Henkel et al. (Berlin: Literarisches Colloquium, 1964), 63. Before it acquired these connotations, Heimat in literature presented a critical reflection of the real world in the form of a locus amoenus, an idealized counter-world. It was an important motif in the work of writers from throughout the German-speaking areas of central Europe such as Hölderlin, Eichendorff, Heine and Keller: see Renate Böschenstein-Schäfer, Idylle, Realienbücher für Germanisten (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967). 203 Wegener, “Zum Heimatroman,” 53. According to Wegener, this presentation of Heimat as an absolute value is the primary defining characteristic of Heimatliteratur: Wegener, “Zum Heimatroman,” 53. 204 Kramer writes that a systematically produced identification with and emotional attachment to Heimat was used in German nationalist propaganda during the First World War “um den imperialistischen Charakter des Krieges durch die Behauptung zu verschleiern, es gehe darum, die Heimat zu verteidigen”: Dieter Kramer, “Die politische und ökonomische Funktionalisierung von ‘Heimat’ im deutschen Imperialismus und Faschismus,” Diskurs 3, no. 3/4 (1973): 16.

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Heimatkunstbewegung of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and became increasingly associated with ‘fundamentalist’ Blut-und-Boden attitudes towards ‘homelands’ claimed by Germans, gaining strong racist and ultimately Nazi overtones.205 Juden auf Wanderschaft was written at a time when Blut-und- Boden ideologists were drawing upon the Heimat–Fremde opposition to incite anti-Semitism:

Die völkische Formel ‘Blut und Boden’, die bereits August Winnig 1926 als Verbindung des Symbolwertes ‘Blut’ für Rasse und ‘Boden’ für Bauerntum verwendet hatte, wurde […] zu einem integralen Bestandteil der NS- Ideologie. Indem sie einen quasi-biologischen Zusammenhang zwischen der Bevölkerung und dem Territorium herstellte, lieferte sie mit der Rassentheorie und dem Antisemitismus gleichzeitig eine Möglichkeit der Selbstwertsteigerung und des Abreagierens an einem imaginären Feind.206

Roth challenges the equation of Heimat and Nation and the validity of both concepts. This challenge is not explicitly expressed, but instead emerges gradually, and by implication. Roth draws a contrast between the nations and nationalities of the former Habsburg Empire on the one hand, which each claimed their own “Scholle”,207 and the Jews on the other, who were unable to lay claim to a particular territory:

Nur die Juden konnten sich auf keinen eigenen Boden (‘Scholle’ sagt man in diesem Fall) berufen. Sie waren in Galizien in ihrer Mehrheit weder Polen noch Ruthenen. Der Anti-Semitismus aber lebte sowohl bei Deutschen als auch bei Tschechen, sowohl bei den Polen als auch bei den Ruthenen, sowohl bei den Magyaren als auch bei den Rumänen in Siebenbürgen. Die Juden widerlegten das Sprichwort, das da sagt, der dritte gewänne, wenn zwei sich stritten. Die Juden waren der dritte, der immer verlor. (II, 835)

By using the word “Scholle” in this context, Roth encourages the reader to associate the nationalism of the Habsburg peoples with the rhetoric of right-wing nationalists in the post-war context, who claim an almost biological connection

205 The highly political Blut-und-Boden literature “stellte die letzte Stufe dar im Niedergang der deutschen Heimatliteratur, sie lag jedoch nur in der Konsequenz ihrer Entwicklung”: Wegener, “Zum Heimatroman,” 62. 206 Kramer, “Funktionalisierung von ‘Heimat’,” 18. 207 Roth blames this development on mismanagement by the Austrian parliament (II, 834). He also holds the government responsible for the emergence of modern Zionism, which he views as an almost inevitable response to the nationalism of the other peoples (II, 856).

44 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology with the soil (the Heimat) and deny the right of those not part of the biologically- defined nation – in particular the Jews – to co-exist in that space.208

In their insistence on being nations and vying for their own “Scholle”, the nationalities of the former Habsburg Empire are also implicitly contrasted with the people of the Orient who are described earlier in the same paragraph:

Nur im Orient leben noch Menschen, die sich um ihre ‘Nationalität’, das heißt Zugehörigkeit zu einer ‘Nation’ nach westeuropäischen Begriffen, nicht kümmern. Sie sprechen mehrere Sprachen und sind ein Produkt mehrerer Rassenmischungen, und ihr Vaterland ist dort, wo man sie zwangsweise in eine militärische Formation einreiht. Die kaukasischen Armenier waren lange Zeit weder Russen noch Armenier, sie waren eben Mohammedaner und Kaukasier, und sie lieferten den russischen Zaren die treuesten Leibgarden. Der nationale Gedanke ist ein westlicher. (II, 834)

The concept of the “Scholle” and the xenophobia with which it is associated is conspicuously absent from this description; in its place are images that evoke connotations of co-existence. People who do not see themselves as part of a nation are depicted as speaking many languages and having a multipolar identity – both religious (Mohammedaner) and cultural or regional (Kaukasier).209

For Roth it is a virtue not to be a nation, and he argues that the focus of some Jews on “nationale Rechte” obscures much more important questions, such as whether the Jews are in fact more than a “nation” in the sense understood in Europe, “und ob sie nicht einen Anspruch auf viel Wichtigeres aufgeben, wenn sie den auf ‘nationale Rechte’ erheben” (II, 835):

208 In another piece of journalism Roth exposes the misuse of the term “Scholle” by politicians and cultural and literary historians in a biting satire: “Sie verwenden die Scholle gerne zu Propagandazwecken, sie ist ihnen ein bequemes symbolisch-polemisches Mittel, die schwierigen Definitionen der Begriffe: Natur- und Erdnähe zu umgehen”: Joseph Roth, “Die Scholle”, Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, 29.1.1930 (III, 167). 209 Roth’s reasoning in this section is somewhat contradictory: on the one hand he insists that the nation is a modern Western concept (II, 834) and an artificial construct (he repeats this charge in “Der Segen des Ewigen Juden”, Die Wahrheit (Prag), 30.8.1934 (III, 531); in keeping with this claim, the peoples he idealizes because they are not concerned to declare themselves nations are pre-modern ethnic enclaves in the Imperial setting – the Slav-Russian Empire. Despite occasional outbreaks of violence, communities seemed to be able to co-exist in the pre-modern situation; with the advent of the modern nation-state, which demanded absolute ethnic identification, this co-existence was no longer possible. On the other hand, Roth claims that the Jews have “[d]ie Epoche der ‘Nationalgeschichte’ und ‘Vaterlandskunde’ […] schon hinter sich” (II, 835), and asks why they should want back what they had three thousand years ago: “Wollen sie es noch einmal? Beneiden sie die europäischen Staaten?” (II, 835-36) The nation is thus criticized as both a modern concept and an archaic one.

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[E]s ist gewiß nicht der Sinn der Welt, aus ‘Nationen’ zu bestehen und aus Vaterländern, die, selbst wenn sie wirklich nur ihre kulturelle Eigenart bewahren wollten, noch immer nicht das Recht hätten, auch nur ein einziges Menschenleben zu opfern. […] Und in dem ganzen tausendjährigen Jammer, in dem die Juden leben, hatten sie nur den einen Trost: nämlich den, ein solches Vaterland nicht zu besitzen. Wenn es jemals eine gerechte Geschichte geben wird, so wird sie es den Juden hoch anrechnen, daß sie die Vernunft bewahren durften, weil sie kein ‘Vaterland’ besaßen in einer Zeit, in der sie ganze Welt sich dem patriotischen Wahnsinn hingab. (II, 837)

Not claiming to be a nation, the lack of a fatherland or a Heimat – all of these are positives for Roth. Nations and fatherlands fight wars, demand “Opfer für materielle Interessen” (II, 837). They do not enable a people to maintain its culture or its identity. What does, is a sense of history – an intangible but very real connection with the past: “Die Ostjuden haben nirgends eine Heimat, aber Gräber auf jedem Friedhof.” (II, 831) Through the graves of their dead their connection to the history of their culture remains alive.210

Roth’s Solution: “Auf Wanderschaft”

Having rejected Heimat as a category of identification and a value due to its connection with the nationalism he condemns in such absolute terms, Roth finds that the only alternative is to embrace the condition of being permanently “auf Wanderschaft”. With the title of this essay Roth consciously draws on the Christian legend of the Wandering Jew,211 condemned perpetually to wander the earth because of his repudiation of Christ, and in the course of the essay he gives the deeply anti-Semitic legend a positive construction.212 First, however, he recalls the Exodus of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt:

In dieser Gegend wird alles improvisiert: der Tempel durch die Zusammenkunft, der Handel durch das Stehenbleiben in der Straßenmitte. Es ist immer noch der Auszug aus Ägypten, der schon Jahrtausende anhält. Man muß immer auf dem Sprung sein, alles mit sich führen, das Brot und eine

210 Cf. Roth, “Die Scholle” (III, 167-69). In this article Roth satirizes the idea that people belong to a particular “Scholle”, as if they were trees rather than people. He writes: “Die heimatlosen Völker, die durch den Willen der Geschichte ihr eigenes Land verloren haben, fühlen sich in allen Ländern heimisch, in denen ihre Ahnen begraben sind.” (III, 168-69) The Jews have realized that it is not the earth or place itself that is important, it is the connection with one’s history and culture. 211 The German term is “der Ewige Jude”, but there can be little doubt that Roth meant the title Juden auf Wanderschaft to evoke associations with the anti-Semitic legend. The forced “Wandern” of the Jews is evoked many times in the text, and the author’s less ambiguously titled essay of 1934 “Der Segen des Ewigen Juden” ends with the words: “Das Wandern ist kein Fluch, sondern ein Segen.” (III, 532) 212 Cf. Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 121.

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Zwiebel in der Tasche, in der anderen die Gebetriemen. Wer weiß, ob man in der nächsten Stunde nicht schon wieder wandern muß. (II, 869)

The context is the description of the situation of the Eastern Jews in Berlin – the capital of Prussia and the former German Reich and thus a symbol of aggressive German nationalism; the state of permanent exile evoked here in the reference to the Exodus has the expected negative connotations of tangible threat, forced flight and fear. Yet at the same time the collective memory of the Exodus is a memory of “the deliverance from Egyptian bondage and the acquisition of liberty in the wilderness.”213 These positive associations of perpetual wandering are foregrounded in the context of Paris in Roth’s essay. In this section of the text, which is evidently influenced by the liberation Roth experienced when he travelled to France two years earlier, the author implies that it is far better to be continually “auf Wanderschaft” than to have one’s individuality restricted by an ascribed and narrowly-defined identity. In Roth’s depiction, Jews in Paris have the freedom to be themselves. Anti-Semitism does exist in Paris – it is ubiquitous – but the Eastern Jew, who is used to a much harsher form, can live with the French variety. Jews have religious, cultural and national freedoms in France, and this encourages assimilation. Significantly, while Roth condemns Jewish assimilation to Western culture in general (II, 832), in the specific case of Paris his judgement is much less severe, more differentiated:214

Die Folge dieses Entgegenkommens ist, daß sie Französisch lernen, daß ihre Kinder kein Jiddisch mehr sprechen. Sie verstehen es gerade noch. Es hat mich belustigt, in den Straßen des Pariser Judenviertels die Eltern Jiddisch, die Kinder französisch sprechen zu hören. Auf jiddische Fragen erfolgen französische Antworten. Diese Kinder sind begabt. Sie werden es in Frankreich zu etwas bringen, wenn Gott will. Und Gott will es, wie mir scheint. (II, 873)

Where in the Viennese context Roth associated assimilation with loss of identity, symbolized in the exchange of the Jew’s real name with a false one (II, 859), in the Parisian context even the inability of the second and third generation to speak

213 Anthony D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003) 61. 214 Riemen overlooks the nuances in Roth’s depiction when he writes: “Den emanzipierten und assimilierten Westjuden, wie sie in Berlin, Frankfurt, Paris leben, gilt seine Verachtung”: Alfred Riemen, “Judentum – Kirche – Habsburg. Joseph Roths antinationalistische Vorstellungen der dreißiger Jahre,” in “In Spuren gehen…” Festschrift für Helmut Koopmann, ed. Andrea Bartl (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1998), 380.

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Yiddish is not portrayed negatively. A visit to a Yiddish theatre in Paris reveals that this loss of native tongue does not entail a loss of identity. The play portrays a Jewish family which wishes to emigrate to America from its Russian village. The third act sees them in America, “reich geworden und protzig, und im Begriff, ihre alte Heimat zu vergessen und die alten Freunde aus der Heimat, die nach Amerika kommen” (II, 875). During the Russian-Yiddish songs and dances not only the actors but also the audience cry, and the narrator comments:

Hätten nur jene [die Darsteller] geweint, es wäre kitschig gewesen. Aber als diese [die Zuschauer] weinten, wurde es schmerzlich. Juden sind leicht gerührt – das wußte ich. Aber ich wußte nicht, daß ein Heimweh sie rühren könnte. (II, 875)

The emotional outpouring implies a deep connection of the Jews to their culture, despite assimilation and their loss of their mother tongue Yiddish.215 The community continues to exist and has apparently lost nothing of its ability to communicate:

Es war eine so innige, beinahe private Beziehung von der Bühne zum Zuschauer. […] Der Regisseur trat vor und kündigte die nächsten Programm- wechsel an. Nicht durch Zeitung, nicht durch Plakate. Mündlich. Von Mensch zu Mensch. […] Er sprach unmittelbar und witzig. Seinen Witz verstand man. Ahnte beinahe voraus. Erwitterte die Pointe. (II, 875)

Just why the maintenance of Jewish identity is possible despite assimilation in Paris is explored by Roth through the tale of the Jewish clown from Radziwillow, a town on the former Russian-Austrian border. The clown came from a family of musicians and was the only one of the family who was able to leave the shtetl and study music in the west, in Vienna. He assimilated, becoming a successful musican, but realized that he was not true to himself when he was playing Beethoven in a concert hall in the west: “Ich bin immer ein Clown in dieser Welt, auch wenn man ernste Referate über mich bringt und Herren von den Zeitungen mit Brillen in den ersten Reihen sitzen.” (II, 875) Yet he could not now return to Radziwillow and play at Jewish weddings as his family had always done, presumably because the years spent in the west and experience accumulated had added another dimension to his identity. So he became a musical clown in a Paris- based circus, and in so doing he realized was not denying the tradition of his

215 At the beginning of this story Roth indicates that assimilated Jews are in the audience: “Die jungen jüdischen Frauen sprachen nur Französisch. Sie waren pariserisch elegant.” (II, 874)

48 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology forefathers, but being “was sie hätten sein sollen” (II, 876) – free. The Jewish clown from Radziwillow is free to be simply who he is, without having to explain or justify himself to others: “‘Ich spiele Zieh- und Mundharmonika und Saxophon, und es freut mich, daß die Leute gar nicht wissen, daß ich Beethoven spielen kann. Ich bin ein Jud aus Radziwillow.’” (II, 876) What he chooses to reveal publicly of his identity does not negate other aspects.

The clown’s decision is not, as Ochse contends, simply a rejection of the Orthodox way of life and “ein deutliches Bekenntnis zur Assimilation”.216 Whenever he is playing in a new city the clown seeks out Jews from Radziwillow and he always finds two or three: “‘Wir reden miteinander. In Paris leben auch einige. Sind sie nicht aus Radziwillow, so sind sie aus Dubno. Und sind sie nicht aus Dubno, so sind sie aus Kischinew.’” (II, 876) His decision to become a musical clown in Paris must be read as an affirmation of a sense of belonging to the culture of the Jews while still being part of a wider society: “‘In Paris leben die Juden frei. Ich bin ein Patriot, ich hab’ ein jüdisches Herz.’” (II, 876) For Gelber the significance of the clown’s statement lies in its role in underlining the sympathetic link between the narrator and the Eastern Jews: “die im westlichen Sinne illogische Reihenfolge der Sätze […], die angeblich für Ostjuden so charakteristisch sei”, is mirrored (or rather anticipated) by the narrator’s own use of this pattern elsewhere,217 creating “eine komplementäre ostjüdische Rhetorik in der Sprache des Verfassers”.218 While Gelber’s argument is compelling, his interpretation fails to recognize the significance of the statement’s content: the lack of contradiction in the clown’s dual loyalty. His Jewish identity – his “jüdisches Herz” – is not submerged in the French nation, his loyalty to the society in which he lives being expressed in patriotism, rather than cultural identification.

216 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 129. Ochse does not account for the clown’s continued declaration that he is “ein Jud aus Radziwillow”. 217 “In Berlin freut man sich nicht. Aber in Paris herrscht die Freude. Paris ist demokratisch. Der Deutsche ist menschlich.” (II, 872) 218 Gelber, “Ost-West-Debatte,” 129.

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The clown’s freedom of movement is a metaphor for self-determination, the freedom to define his own identity, for himself and nobody else.219 That this freedom should be not the exception but the rule, and that it is ethnic German nationalism that prevents this from being the case, is implied in the contrast between the clown’s experience and the experience of Eastern Jews in Vienna and Berlin. Roth’s aversion to the levelling of identity that he observed in Berlin (II, 867) recalls John Stuart Mill’s warning in his famous essay “On Liberty” (1859) about the threat posed to individual liberty by the increasing powers of government and society over the individual. In the context of growing nationalism, industrialism and militarism throughout Europe Mill “stressed the importance, to man and society, of promoting spontaneity and a large variety of types of character, and of giving to human nature full freedom to expand itself in innumerable and conflicting directions.”220 With his portrait of the clown from Radziwillow Roth implies the continuing primacy of individual liberty in the self- definition of the French nation, while in German-speaking Central Europe the individual has become subsumed by the nation.221

The parallel Roth draws between freedom of movement and self-determination is expressed more directly in two articles published in 1930 and 1934,222 in which he argues that it is unnatural for human beings to bind themselves to one place. The desire to be buried in one’s own homeland appears ridiculous in Roth’s tale of the traveller who takes “ein bißchen heimatliche Erde in einem Säckchen” along on his travels in case he should meet his death away from home, so that his “lebloser Schädel auf dem gleichen Acker gebettet werde, dem er einmal entsprossen ist” (III, 168). Roth exposes the folly of this behaviour through a potent metaphor: “Es

219 Roth’s rejection of the “American solution” to the Jewish problem of discrimination, which saw large numbers of Eastern Jews emigrate to the United States, is expressed in terms of a loss of freedom. Roth describes how Eastern Jews are quarantined on arrival: “Durch die Gitter seines Kerkers sieht er die Freiheitsstatue, und er weiß nicht, ob er oder die Freiheit eingesperrt ist.” (II, 885) In the land of freedom there is no freedom: the fate of Jews in America is to assimilate and become Americans, thus surrendering their own identity. 220 Hans Kohn, Prophets and Peoples: Studies in Nineteenth Century Nationalism (New York: MacMillan, 1946) 24. 221 Herzog’s claim that Roth accuses the Jews who have emigrated to the “westlichen Gettos” of Vienna, Berlin and Paris of having fallen prey to the “Versprechen einer falschen Freiheit” is too undifferentiated, since it fails to note the contrast between the Jewish experience in France on the one hand and Germany and Austria on the other: Herzog, “Der Segen,” 117. 222 Roth, “Die Scholle” (III, 167-69); and “Der Segen des Ewigen Juden” (III, 527-32).

50 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology ist also manchmal, als wären die Menschen, obwohl sie Füße zum Wandern haben, dennoch den Bäumen ähnlich, in einem bestimmten Teil der Erde unsichtbar, unerklärbar verwurzelt.” (III, 168)

The same metaphor appears in the later, lengthier article, a discussion piece entitled “Der Segen des Ewigen Juden.”223 In this article Roth once again voices his criticism of Jewish nationalism and Zionism, declaring that the Jewish people have existed for longer than the concept of the nation, a fact which they seem to have forgotten since they left the ghetto. He excuses the Zionists up to a point, because Zionism is an understandable, even necessary response to the chauvinism of modern nations (III, 531); but the response is not adequate, he argues, because in becoming a nation themselves, they are denying the essence of their identity as a people:

Sie waren über die Welt verstreut worden, um Gottes Namen zu verbreiten. Sie haben indessen Gott selbst vergessen und müssen sich nun wieder in eine geographisch beschränkte Nationalität zurückziehen. (III, 531)

For Roth, this return or “Heimkehr” of the Jews to a geographically-limited nationality in Zionism is more tragic than their original Dispersion, since there is greater honour to be had in simply being a human being than in having a fatherland:224

Und vielleicht liegt darin auch einer der Gründe des Antisemitismus: Es ist der Neid der Gefangenen, denen die Freien ein Greuel sind. Die Häftlinge machen aus der Not eine Tugend und erklären, ihre Zelle sei das Paradies. Der Mensch ist kein Baum. Es ist eine törichte Art der Deutschen, ihre Heroen zu degradieren, indem sie diese mit den bekannten Eichenbäumen vergleichen. Ein Mensch ist eben keine Eiche. Die Eiche ist gefangen, und der Mensch ist frei. Ja, ein Mensch, der sich bei Gewitter unter eine Eiche stellt, gerät in Gefahr, vom Blitz erschlagen zu werden. Beine und Füße hat Gott dem Menschen gegeben, damit er wandere über die Erde, die sein ist. Das Wandern ist kein Fluch, sondern ein Segen. (III, 532)

223 The piece, in which among other things Roth criticized German Jews for what he called their pathological behaviour in continuing to insist on their belonging to the German nation and differentiating between Germans and Nazis (III, 528), provoked many indignant responses; those published by Die Wahrheit are reproduced in (III, 533-47). Even the editors of Die Wahrheit found it necessary to distance themselves from Roth’s opinions in this regard: “Wir glauben […], daß hier der gleiche Fehler gegenüber den Deutschen begangen wird, den die Deutschen des Dritten Reiches gegenüber den Juden begehen.” (III, 547) 224 “Weshalb schämt sich jedermann, wenn man ihm vorwirft, daß er eigentlich kein Vaterland habe? Ist es denn nicht ehrenvoller, ein Mensch (oder ein Christ) zu sein als ein Deutscher, ein Franzose, ein Engländer?” (III, 532)

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It is better to be condemned to perpetual migration but free rather than to belong to a nation and have a fatherland, and thereby lose the freedom which is the essence of being human. Similarly, in Juden auf Wanderschaft Roth implies that in reacting to the chauvinism of other nations by declaring themselves a nation, Jews have lost something of their humanity: “Sie waren immer Menschen im Exil gewesen. Jetzt wurden sie eine Nation im Exil.” (II, 835)

In the middle of “Der Segen des Ewigen Juden” Roth describes the Jews as “das Volk der Bücher” and claims that they have made the mistake of judging the Germans by their books:

Sie sahen in den Deutschen die Nation Lessings, Herders, Goethes. Ist es nun im allgemeinen eine höchst strittige Frage, ob die Nationen ein Recht haben, auf ‘ihre’ Genies stolz zu sein, so ist es doch in Deutschland sehr deutlich zu sehen, erschreckend deutlich, daß seine Genies und Talente wie arme Verirrte oder Verbannte aussehn, vom Vaterland mißachtet und das Vaterland geringschätzend. Das deutsche Genie fühlt sich keineswegs in Deutschland zu Hause. (III, 529)

When he then insists on the freedom that not belonging to a nation entails, the freedom of being a human being that is negated by being locked in the cell of the nation, Roth is echoing a long-standing suspicion of the nation in the German tradition, a suspicion expressed in the celebrated distich of Goethe and Schiller in which politics and humanity are incompatible for the Germans:

Zur Nation euch zu bilden, ihr hoffet es, Deutsche, vergebens; Bildet, ihr könnt es, dafür freier zu Menschen euch aus!225

No matter how bitterly he opposed and condemned Germany, Roth always made a distinction between Nazi Germany and the German culture represented by Goethe and Schiller. In 1935, he wrote to Stefan Zweig: “Ich leide auch jetzt nicht darunter, daß ich deutsch denke und schreibe, sondern darunter, daß 40 Millionen mitten in Europa Barbaren sind.”226 Clearly distinguishing between the heritage of Goethe and Schiller and the national chauvinism of Germans in the Weimar Republic, he claimed in Juden auf Wanderschaft that the Eastern Jew, not the German nationalist, was the true keeper of this heritage: “Dem Ostjuden ist Deutschland […] immer noch das Land Goethes und Schillers, der deutschen

225 Goethes Werke (Weimar: Böhlau, 1887-1919) (Weimarer Ausgabe) I, 5, 218. 226 Letter to Stefan Zweig, 24.7.1935, Briefe 418.

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Dichter, die jeder lernbegierige jüdische Jüngling besser kennt als unser hakenkreuzlerischer Gymnasiast” (II, 828). The legacy of Goethe and Schiller was for Roth above all the freedom of the individual and openness to the world expressed in Goethe and Schiller’s exhortation to the German people, as Stefan Zweig recalled at Roth’s funeral:

Auch Joseph Roths innerstes Verlangen war von Kindheit an, der deutschen Sprache zu dienen und in ihr den großen Ideen, die vordem Deutschlands Ehre waren, dem Weltbürgertum und der Freiheit des Geistes.227

“Die süße Freiheit, nichts mehr darzustellen als mich selbst”228

Roth rejects nationalism as a solution to the problems of post-war Central Europe because it inhibits the free expression of individual identity. Growing up in the ethnic and linguistic pluralism of turn-of-the-century Central Europe, Roth inevitably experienced identity as multifaceted, his Jewishness and Germanness existing side by side with the Slavic influence characteristic of the eastern provinces of the Habsburg Empire. Drawn from personal experience, his conception of identity as something both individual and multivalent was anathema in the post-war climate of chauvinist German nationalism. This experience of being at odds with the prevailing ideology led to a preoccupation with questions of nationalism and identity ascription which finds expression in much of Roth’s work, from the early novels to Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft.

Roth’s rejection of ethnic nationalism is characteristic: he consistently resists the appeal of any ideology or solution which purports to provide a total answer. The next chapter of this study demonstrates that Roth’s early novels do not support the assertion that he believed a solution to the problems of post-war Europe to lie in “eine sozialistische Veränderung der Verhältnisse”.229 Focussing on Central Europe in the early post-war period, Roth’s first three novels are representations of “einer Krisenzeit und einer Zeit des Umbruchs”, in which the characters “in ihrer Desorientierung […] der Zeit, in der sie leben, gleichen.”230 Roth’s refusal to

227 Stefan Zweig, Europäisches Erbe (Frankfurt/M.: S. Fischer, 1960) 253-54. 228 Roth, “Die weißen Städte” (II, 453). 229 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 133. 230 Klaus Amann, “Die verlorene Generation in Joseph Roths frühen Romanen,” Literatur und Kritik 247/248 (1990): 333.

53 Chapter 1: Identity and Ideology succumb in these novels to a simplistic solution in order to achieve some form of literary resolution is an early indication that he would continue to seek the appropriate literary form with which to understand his time in its diversity. In Das Spinnennetz, as in the essay Juden auf Wanderschaft, the ethnic nationalist solution is the target of Roth’s criticism. In Hotel Savoy, the socialist revolution is implicitly rejected as a solution, while political apathy and fatalism also come under fire. In the last of the early novels, Die Rebellion, Roth turns his attention to the question of individual responsibility for the perpetuation of social injustice. Once again he rejects absolutist forms of thinking, this time through a figure who, despite his forced realization of the social injustice which characterizes his society, is unable to overcome his authoritarian socialization and fails to rebel against this injustice.

54

Chapter 2 “Die Welt ist irrsinnig”231 The Early Novels: Das Spinnennetz, Hotel Savoy, Die Rebellion

… eine unübersichtlich endlose Furcht, wie man sie vor Katastrophen empfindet, die nicht eintreffen wollen, und deren Ausbruch eine Erlösung wäre.232

“Der rote Joseph”?

When Roth returned to Vienna after the war in December 1918, it was to a place in which everything seemed radically altered. Vienna had suffered little physical damage in the war, but in both material and spiritual terms it was a vastly different place from the pre-war Imperial capital: “auch ihre Seele schien verworren und krank nach den langen Kriegsjahren und dem chirurgischen Eingriff, der ihr die territorialen Glieder abgeschnitten hatte.”233 Newspaper headlines sounded an almost constant alarm with reports of strikes, rapid inflation and coal and food shortages.234 At this time Roth was just embarking on what would become a brilliant career as a journalist.235 Employed by Der Neue Tag from April 1919 until the newspaper’s collapse a year later,236 he responded to the chaos of early post-war Vienna in a series of feuilletons under the rubric “Wiener Symptome”. He favoured the detail of everyday life over the big issues of state politics,237 penning minutely observed reflections on the hardship and misery of ordinary people in post-war Vienna, the black market, food shortages, and the fate of invalided returned servicemen, the unemployed and the homeless.238 After

231 Joseph Roth, “Das Haus der 100 Vernünftigen”, Frankfurter Zeitung, 17.2.1923 (I, 931). 232 Roth, Die Rebellion (IV, 251). 233 Bronsen, Biographie 193. 234 Bronsen, Biographie 193. On the economic and social situation in the first Austrian Republic see also Ernst Bruckmüller, Sozialgeschichte Österreichs (Wien: Verlag für Geschichte und Politik, 2001) 372-74, 402-17. 235 Roth became the most highly-paid journalist in the Weimar Republic, earning a guaranteed monthly salary of 1000 Marks at the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1927 (an issue of the paper at that time cost 10 or 20 Pfennig): Klaus Westermann, “Nachwort” (II, 1028). 236 Bronsen, Biographie 192. 237 Klaus Westermann, “Nachwort” (I, 1111). 238 Schweikert judges these early articles to be largely unpolitical, although Roth’s perspective, with its focus on the concerns and problems of the little people, is “stark aufs Sozialkritische hin ausgerichtet”: Schweikert, “‘Der rote Joseph’,” 43.

55 Chapter 2: The Early Novels moving to Berlin in June 1920, Roth continued to focus the bulk of his journalism on the fate of the little people he observed around him.239 Together these early articles capture “das Antlitz der Zeit”,240 giving the modern reader an insight into the uncertainties and the privation of post-war life in Germany and Austria.241

Published in 1923 and 1924, Roth’s early novels are similarly focussed on the social problems besetting contemporary Central Europe. These novels were characterized by Ingeborg Sültemeyer as “socialist”,242 a label which has for the most part been accepted by subsequent critics, although its appropriateness has not gone unchallenged. Already two years before the book publication of Sültemeyer’s doctoral dissertation Uwe Schweikert argued that the young Roth was not a political writer, that throughout the period 1919 to 1924 he maintained a predilection for “[d]ie bürgerlich subjektivistische Form des Feuilletons”,243 and that a certain “latent conservatism” was manifest in even his early journalism.244 More recently, Katharina Ochse has observed that Roth published a number of quite conservative articles during this supposedly socialist period.245 Indeed, while many of the newspapers in which Roth published between 1919 and 1926 displayed left-wing sympathies, they were by no means exclusively left-leaning. From 1920 until 1922, for example, Roth was employed by the conservative Berliner Börsen-Courier. When he resigned, he explained in a letter to his

239 Westermann, “Nachwort” 1112. 240 “Das Antlitz der Zeit” is the title of Roth’s programmatic article from 1920, in which he outlines the duty of a journalist to represent the times as they are, in all their ugliness, rather than to present “das geschminkte, frisierte, stilisierte Antlitz der Zeit”: Joseph Roth, “Das Antlitz der Zeit”, Der Neue Tag, 1.1.1920 (I, 214). 241 Klaus Westermann, editor of Roth’s journalism in the six-volume Werkausgabe, describes it in glowing terms: “[…] so brilliant und wortgewaltig, so betroffen und engagiert, so weitsichtig und klug”: Westermann, “Nachwort” 1109. 242 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk passim. In the preface to an edited volume of Roth’s early political journalism Sültemeyer writes: “Roths politischer Standpunkt zu dieser Zeit kann in der Nähe des linken Flügels der ‘Sozialistischen Partei Österreichs’ vermutet werden”: Sültemeyer, ed., Der Neue Tag 13. 243 Bance similarly notes that Roth “kept up a steady stream of conventional Feuilleton-style articles for […] bourgeois newspapers right through his ‘activist’ years”: Bance, “In My End is My Beginning,” 36. 244 Schweikert, “‘Der rote Joseph’,” 54. Although he concedes that Roth sympathized with the socialist movement to a certain extent, Schweikert refutes Sültemeyer’s central thesis: “Von 1919 bis 1924 stand der rote Joseph […] der sozialistischen Bewegung zumindest nahe. […] Ein politischer Publizist freilich war er nicht”: Schweikert, “‘Der rote Joseph’,” 53-54.

56 Chapter 2: The Early Novels colleague Herbert Ihering that it was a matter of principle: “Ich kann wahrhaftig nicht mehr die Rücksichten auf ein bürgerliches Publikum teilen und dessen Sonntagsplauderer bleiben, wenn ich nicht täglich meinen Sozialismus verleugnen will.”246 Sültemeyer quotes this statement as evidence of a strong commitment to socialism;247 yet in the same letter Roth admits that he would perhaps have stayed at the Börsen-Courier had it not been for a salary he believed to be incommensurate with his talent and a failure by the newspaper to accord his work proper recognition.248

Despite the lack of solid evidence of Roth’s socialism and the concomitant existence of numerous indications to the contrary, most scholars since the 1970s have embraced Sültemeyer’s interpretation of the early work as “socialist”,249 albeit increasingly with the qualification that Roth’s socialism was less ideological than emotional,250 “more a matter of human sympathy with the disadvantaged and exploited than one of practical engagement”.251 The utility and

245 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 46. Sültemeyer claims that the mainly apolitical articles published in the Frankfurter Zeitung are not representative of Roth’s political interests at this time: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 15. 246 Letter to Herbert Ihering, 17.9.1922, Briefe 40. 247 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 65. 248 Briefe 40. While acknowledging that these other considerations played a role in Roth’s decision to resign, Sültemeyer insists on the significance of his statement of principle: “Festzuhalten bleibt aber, daß er als ‘die Ursache meiner Kündigung’ sein Bekenntnis zum Sozialismus nennt”: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 65. It is difficult to believe, however, that this statement was not just another example of the “Selbststilisierung” which Schweikert demonstrates to be characteristic of Roth’s letters: Schweikert, “‘Der rote Joseph’,” 40, 42. 249 Scheible surmises that the political atmosphere of the 1960s and 1970s was largely responsible for the fact that Roth’s “socialism” was not questioned, “obwohl dafür eigentlich nicht viel mehr sprach als vereinzelte vage Äußerungen des Autors und die Unterschrift ‘Der Rote Joseph’ unter einigen Artikeln”: Hartmut Scheible, “Joseph Roths Reise durch Geschichte und Revolution. Das Europa der Nachkriegszeit: Deutschland, Frankreich, Sowjetunion,” in Joseph Roth. Interpretation Rezeption Kritik, ed. Michael Kessler and Fritz Hackert (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1990), 308. 250 Hansen refers to Roth’s “Gefühlssozialismus”: Hansen, “Rechtspolitik und Linkskultur,” 144. Schweikert had already hinted at this interpretation when he declared the lack of “[…] eine einzige Bezugnahme auf einen der Theoretiker des Sozialismus” to be indicative of Roth’s aversion to theory of any description, pointing out that in all likelihood Roth had not even read any of the theory: Schweikert, “‘Der rote Joseph’,” 45. In the same year, Bronson wrote in his Roth biography: “der Sozialismus [war] bei ihm eine humanitäre Angelegenheit, ohne die Absicherung eines Dogmas”: Bronsen, Biographie 513. See also Williams, The Broken Eagle 96. 251 Rosenfeld, Understanding 11. See also: Klaus Westermann, Joseph Roth. Journalist: Eine Karriere, 1915-1939 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1987) 108; Robertson, “1918,” 356; Hans-Albert Walter, “Joseph Roths Widersprüche. Zu seinen Briefen 1911-1939,” Merkur 25, no. 8

57 Chapter 2: The Early Novels aptness of the label “socialist” are, however, questionable. Roth himself abhorred labels and delighted in making it difficult for his readers to categorize him.252 Even his use of the pseudonym der rote Joseph for a number of the articles he published in Vorwärts – cited by Sültemeyer and others as further proof of his socialism253 – was surely ironic: given the paper’s status as the mouthpiece of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands it was hardly necessary for Roth to specify his credentials.254 Had he nonetheless believed it to be necessary, would he not have appended this signature to all of his Vorwärts articles, instead of alternating it with his full name, his initials J.R., and Josephus, the pseudonym he had already used frequently at Der Neue Tag?255 Moreover, if his intention was to make an open declaration of his political sympathies, why did he use the pseudonym only in Vorwärts and in none of the other newspapers in which he published at this time? It appears likely that der rote Joseph was just one more of the myriad myths of the “Mythomane” who oriented himself according to what seemed most likely to appear plausible or welcome to his listener or audience.256

Socialism and the Early Novels

If socialism is a questionable model of interpretation for Roth’s early journalism, it is even more more problematic to use it in relation to the novels of this period. Indeed, as Klaus Amann has commented, it is misleading:

Es hat durchaus den Anschein, als ob die rezeptionsgeschichtlich bedeutsame Entdeckung des journalistischen Frühwerks und die damit zusammen- hängende Punzierung Roths als ‘Sozialist’ zu einer Situation geführt hat, in

(1971): 799; Hüppauf, “Mythos des Skeptikers,” 25-26. Sieg, on the other hand, writes of “die eindeutigen revolutionären Aussagen der frühen Werke”: Sieg, Anarchismus und Fiktion 10. 252 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 46. 253 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 65; Marchand, Wertbegriffe 65; Robert Cohen, “Männerwelt, Gewalt, Weimarer Republik. Rechstextremisten im Frühwerk Joseph Roths und in Ernst Ottwalts Ruhe und Ordnung,” Modern Austrian Literature 30 (1997): 48. All of these commentators take Roth’s use of the pseudonym at face value. 254 Sültemeyer herself acknowledges this fact, but maintains her assertion than the pseudonym is proof of Roth’s commitment to socialism: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 65. 255 Ochse cites the use of the pseudonym Josephus as one of the strategies Roth employed to avoid being pigeonholed. For Christian readers, the latinized form of Roth’s first name hints at “Kirche, Bibel und Wissenschaft des Mittelalters”: Klaus Westermann, Joseph Roth, Journalist. Eine Karriere 1915-1939 (Bonn, 1987) 25; cited in Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 45. At the same time, Ochse argues, Jewish readers would be reminded of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 45. 256 Cf. Scheible, “Reise,” 308; Dietmar Goltschnigg, “Zeit-, Ideologie- und Sprachkritik in Joseph Roths Essayistik,” Literatur und Kritik, no. 243/244 (1990): 133.

58 Chapter 2: The Early Novels

der das schriftstellerische Werk Roths permanent unter politischen Beweiszwang gerät.257

Critics do Roth an injustice, Amann argues, if they admonish him for failing in his early fictional texts in one way or another to realize socialist aims,258 because Roth explicitly and vehemently rejected the legitimacy of literature as a vehicle for “Lösungsvorschläge und Realpolitik”.259 Certainly, the reflection of the contemporary social and political climate in Roth’s early Zeitromane is not in itself sufficient to create a socialist text. Extra-textual evidence offered by Sültemeyer in support of her thesis, such as the initial publication of Das Spinnennetz in the socialist Viennese Arbeiterzeitung,260 provides at best tenuous evidence of the writer’s political views:261 Roth was often short of money and for a time262 agreed for a handsome fee263 to write for the Münchener Neueste Nachrichten, a newspaper whose quality and politics he had only a few years previously fiercely decried.264

The novels themselves provide little evidence of Roth’s alleged socialist commitment, and none of the texts proffers a socialist solution to the contemporary problems portrayed. Indeed, Roth at times appears to be at pains to refute socialist ideology: thus in Das Spinnennetz, for example, he exposes the

257 Amann, “Die verlorene Generation,” 330. Sonnleitner likewise notes that the secondary literature has been guilty of imposing a political interpretation on the early novels by identifying characters which supposedly express Roth’s political views: Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 169-70. 258 The various such criticisms that have been made by scholars are summarized at the beginning of Amann’s article: Amann, “Die verlorene Generation,” 325. 259 Amann, “Die verlorene Generation,” 326. 260 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 105. Williams similarly interprets Roth’s decision to publish his first novel in this newspaper as “a political gesture”: Williams, The Broken Eagle 95. 261 Bronsen reports that it was the first time Roth had published anything in this newspaper and cites the announcement of the novel in the newspaper, which introduced Roth as a German writer, as evidence that Roth was not well known to the editors: Bronsen, Biographie 236. 262 1929-30. Approximately 30 feuilletons by Roth appeared in the nationalist Munich newspaper in this period: Bronsen, Biographie 379. 263 He reportedly received a monthly fee of 2000 Marks, for which he was required to write only two articles per month: Bronsen, Biographie 279. 264 In 1925 Roth had devoted an entire article to a critique of this newspaper and the Hamburger Fremdenblatt, asserting: “In einem Lande, in dem Zeitungen von der Qualität und Gesinnung der Münchener Neuesten Nachrichten erscheinen, kann es Schriftstellern von Qualität und Gesinnung nicht gut ergehn”: “100 000 Mark für einen Roman”, Der Drache 6.1.1925 (II, 320-23).

59 Chapter 2: The Early Novels violent potential of the left with the planned attack on the Siegessäule.265 Subsequently, when the clash between the striking workers and right-wing forces leads to a pogrom on the Jews, Roth suggests that the proletariat might not be on the side of the Jews: “Da offen bleibt, wer mit der Attacke auf die Juden beginnt bzw. daran beteiligt ist, kommen rechte wie linke Demonstrationsteilnehmer als Initiatoren des Pogroms in Frage.”266 Marchand’s claim that Roth views society in the early novels “wenig differenziert in zwei Blöcke gespalten, die sich feindlich gegenüberstehen und denen Gut und Böse, Schwarz und Weiß streng zugeordnet wird”267 must therefore be refuted. While Roth’s most bitter and explicit criticism is reserved for the extreme right-wing nationalists, he is not uncritical of the left. His interest in and sympathy with the socially and economically disadvantaged characters is often plain, but the common thread linking these diverse novels is not socialist engagement but a rejection of any ideology or doctrine as a solution to contemporary problems. As Sonnleitner has argued, the political quality of Roth’s novels does not consist in the making of ideological statements:

Politisch ist Roth in seiner Prosa nicht dort, wo sich scheinbar ‘Aussagen’ aus dem Text herauspräparieren lassen, sondern in der exakten analytischen Erfassung und Beschreibung der Psychosen der in der Monarchie sozialisierten Heimkehrergeneration.268

To the extent that Roth is engaging with and drawing attention to the problems of post-war Europe his early novels may be termed political. But the later novels Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft are equally political in this sense, in that Roth’s underlying motivation is a desire to understand and reveal the sources of contemporary social and political problems.269

265 For Ochse this is one of many examples of Roth’s strategy in this novel of blurring the boundaries between two apparently diametrically opposed camps, whether nationalists and socialists or Jews and anti-Semites: see Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 61, 77-78. 266 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 75. That Roth was realistic in his suspicion of the potential for anti-Semitic violence among the left is reflected in the fact that on 5 November 1923, one day after the final instalment of Roth’s novel, there was an outbreak of violence due to a sudden increase in the price of bread: “‘Besonders schwere Ausschreitungen ereigneten sich um die Mittagszeit im Scheunenviertel, wo jugendliche Erwerblose […] systematisch die […] jüdischen Geschäfte zu plündern begannen. Jüdische Straßenpassanten wurden von der Menge angegriffen und ausgeraubt’”: “Plünderungen in Berlin”, Arbeiter-Zeitung (Wien), 6.11.1923; quoted in Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 76. 267 Marchand, Wertbegriffe 61. 268 Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 184. 269 Sieg’s interpretation of the early novels as political and the novels from Hiob (1930) as apolitical is more typical: Sieg, Anarchismus und Fiktion 10.

60 Chapter 2: The Early Novels

The Reactionary Mentality and its Origins: Das Spinnennetz

A little more than a year before the publication of Das Spinnennetz, the anti- Semitic murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau prompted Roth to consider whether the currency of radical right sentiments in the young Weimar Republic could be attributed to particular methods of upbringing and socialization.270 Examining the faces on the wanted posters around Berlin, Roth expresses surprise at the “spießbürgerliche[...] Harmlosigkeit dieser Antlitze” (I, 838). Expecting to find a “Physiognomie”,271 some features that would reflect the murderers’ criminality, Roth finds instead “einen Typus” (I, 838), and his description of this type corresponds closely to the subsequent portrayal of Theodor Lohse, the protagonist of Das Spinnennetz. The “cultivation” of this type in cadet schools and sports clubs, writes Roth in “Prosa der Verschwörung”, has made him compliant and submissive,272 and has bred a particular kind of determination and single-mindedness:

Im Auge liest man die Entschlossenheit, an der Bildung des Kinns zweifellos Energie. Aber es ist die Entschlossenheit des zum Gehorchen Bereiten, nicht des initiativ Greifenden. Es ist die Energie des Befohlenen, nicht des Befehlshabers. (I, 838)

The danger posed by this personality type lies in the fact that in Weimar Germany he is not the exception but the rule: he is “der Durchschnittsmensch” (I, 839). Lacking individuality and the capacity to think for himself,273 this type of person willingly subordinates himself to a narrow ideology: “Die Individualität macht

270 Joseph Roth, “Prosa der Verschwörung: Eine unpolitische Betrachtung”, Berliner Börsen- Courier, 16.7.1922 (I, 838-40). See also “Die Dreizehn”, Neue Berliner Zeitung – 12-Uhr- Blatt 4.10.1922 (I, 872-74); “Nationalismus im Abort”, Vorwärts 9.12.1922 (I, 900-01). 271 With the use of the word “Physiognomie” Roth was very probably also satirizing the prevalent belief in a “Jewish physiognomy”. The satire is more elaborate in an article published in 1919, in which after the annexation of Deutschösterreich to the United States headless anti-Semites are found and the Ostjuden are able to get their revenge “indem sie jedem Antisemiten einen prononciert jüdischen Kopf verkauften, so daß man schließlich Arier von Semiten äußerlich nicht mehr unterscheiden konnte”: “Deutschösterreich 1930”, Der Neue Tag 5.10.1919 (I, 150-51). 272 “Er ist der Typus des Menschen, der in Kadettanstalten und Sportvereinen gezüchtet wird: brauchbar, lenksam, und wenn man ihm eine begrenzte Selbständigkeit zugesteht, verantwortungsvoll auf beschränkte Dauer, zuverlässig, wenn seinem einfachen Gehirn die Knappheit des Auftrages entgegenkommt, umsichtig für einen Augenblick der Tat.” (I, 838- 39). 273 “Er ist also von seiner Idee überzeugt und kennt nicht ihre Dimensionen. Er weiß nicht, ob sie groß oder klein ist – sie kann nicht klein genug sein, um seinen Gesichtskreis nicht auszufüllen. Er kennt den Befehl und dessen Ziel. Die Zusammenhänge erkennt er nicht.” (I, 838).

61 Chapter 2: The Early Novels sich eine Idee zunutze oder verbündet sich mit ihr – der Durchschnittsmensch ordnet sich sogar der Phrase unter und geht in ihr auf.” (I, 839) The implications of the prevalence of this “Typus” in German society are explored in more detail in Das Spinnennetz, in which Roth extrapolates from the reality he observes in 1923 into the near future, positing a possible trajectory for a person drawn to the radical right and exposing the dangers inherent in the ethnic nationalist solution to the problems of post-war Germany. Just as in “Prosa der Verschwörung” Roth finds a strong link between the militarism of pre-Weimar institutions and attitudes of extreme nationalism, anti-Semitism and violence in the Weimar Republic, the origins of Theodor Lohse’s reactionary mentality are demonstrated to lie in his socialization in Wilhelmine Germany.

Lohse is an unexceptional individual: he hails from the Kleinbürgertum,274 served as a lieutenant during the war, and is now a student of law and private tutor for the son of a wealthy Jewish jeweller. But like Diederich Heßling in Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan (1918), who provided the model for Roth’s protagonist,275 Theodor is remarkable not as an individual but as a representative figure: he exemplifies a whole generation, an entire caste of people whose dangerous potential stems from the culture of obedience and order in which they were raised.276 Roth’s interest in Theodor Lohse, then, is clearly circumscribed: what is the psychology of the individual who has been socialized in the Kleinbürgertum of pre-war Germany and is faced with the sudden loss of all known structures? How will such an individual react in the current climate? What are the potential outcomes for society? The inexorable descent of this individual into reaction, anti-Semitism and violence is the focus of Roth’s investigation.

274 The significance of Lohse’s membership of this class is implied by its signalling in the first sentence of the novel, which informs the reader that Lohse’s father was a customs auditor with the railways and former sergeant (IV, 65). 275 Cf. Frank Trommler, “Joseph Roth und die Neue Sachlichkeit,” in Joseph Roth und die Tradition, ed. David Bronsen (Darmstadt: Agora, 1975), 281-82. 276 In his “Berliner Bilderbuch” Roth explains the evolution of the völkisch mentality as the result of a simple multiplication: “deutsche Politik mal deutscher Volkserziehung mal kleinbürgerlicher Weltanschauung”: Der Drache 29.4.1924 (II, 107). Sebastian Haffner, in his posthumously published memoirs, draws similar conclusions about the roots of Nazism in the pre-WWI social environment: Sebastian Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen. Die Erinnerungen 1914-1933 (Stuttgart; München: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2000).

62 Chapter 2: The Early Novels

Theodor Lohse: The Authoritarian Personality

The narration of Theodor’s story begins at the point where the loss of established structures has just taken place: “Ein Jahr später war Theodor nicht mehr Leutnant, sondern Hörer der Rechte und Hauslehrer beim Juwelier Efrussi.” (IV, 65) The novel is set entirely in the chaotic confusion of the early post-war present, yet the importance of the past in the events depicted is signalled in the first sentence: “Theodor wuchs im Hause seines Vaters heran, des Bahnzollrevisors und gewesenen Wachtmeisters Wilhelm Lohse.” (IV, 65) That Theodor is “his father’s son” – in the sense that he is a product of his upbringing and education – is implied in this first sentence and underscored in the remainder of the first chapter, in which the outlines of his personality are sketched.

Roth’s typed portrayal of Theodor Lohse anticipates the findings of research conducted two decades later – in the wake of Hitler’s rise to power and the Second World War – into the “authoritarian personality”.277 A number of traits were identified by the researchers as being typical of the “potentially fascistic individual”, including conventionality, authoritarian submissiveness and aggressiveness, superstition, destructiveness, a preoccupation with power relations and toughness, and projectivity.278 Within this overall personality type279

277 Theodor W. Adorno et al., The Authoritarian Personality, ed. Max Horkheimer and Samuel H. Flowerman, Abridged ed., Studies in Prejudice (New York; London: Norton, 1982). This collaborative US-based study was begun in 1943, its scope broadened with the addition of Adorno to the team in 1944, and its findings first published in 1950. The major hypothesis of the research was “that the political, economic and social convictions of an individual often form a broad and coherent pattern, as if bound together by a ‘mentality’ or ‘spirit’, and that this pattern is an expression of deep-lying trends in his personality. The major concern was with the potentially fascistic individual, one whose structure is such as to render him particularly susceptible to anti-democratic propaganda”: Adorno et al., Authoritarian Personality 1. 278 The theory and methodology behind the construction of the “Fascism (F) scale”, designed to measure “antidemocratic potential”, is described in Chapter V of the study: R. Nevitt Sanford, T.W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, and Daniel J. Levinson, “The Measurement of Implicit Antidemocratic Trends”, in Adorno et al., Authoritarian Personality 151-208. The traits or “variables” cited above are briefly defined on page 157. 279 Adorno directly addresses the criticisms directed at the psychological practice of constructing typologies. While accepting that some such criticisms express a “humane impulse, directed against that kind of subsumption of individuals under pre-established classes which has been consummated in Nazi Germany, where the labeling of live human beings, independently of their specific qualities, resulted in decisions about their life and death”, he argues that it is potentially dangerous to deny that societies produce different “types” of persons: “Only by identifying stereotypical traits in modern humans, and not by denying their existence, can the pernicious tendency towards all-pervasive classification and subsumption be challenged”: T.W. Adorno, “Types and Syndromes”, in Adorno et al., Authoritarian Personality 347-49.

63 Chapter 2: The Early Novels several “subsyndromes” were distinguished in which one trait was noticeably more prominent than others.280 The “authoritarian” subsyndrome, which Adorno identified as most typical of the potentially fascist personality,281 is characterized by an emphasis on authoritarian aggression and concomitant submissiveness and is driven by the fear of being weak.282 It is this syndrome which most closely resembles Roth’s portrayal of Theodor Lohse, whose compulsive submission to authority competes with a desperate drive to attain power, who projects his own desire for omnipotence onto those he holds responsible for the destruction of his world, the Jews,283 and whose self-perception oscillates between a self-pitying, bitter impotence and a narcissistic self-importance which often bears little relation to external reality and is easily shaken.

Adorno explains the development of the “authoritarian” syndrome within a psychoanalytic paradigm as the complex result of a sado-masochistic resolution of the Oedipus complex.284 By contrast, Roth’s primary interest in Das Spinnennetz is not in the psychological origins of the behaviour he depicts but is directed at what Adorno terms “the objective element of prejudice”: the culture in which the individual has been socialized. Economic and social conditions form part of this “objective element”, but it also includes

opinions, ideas, attitudes, and behavior which appear to be the individual’s but which have originated neither in his autonomous thinking nor in his self- sufficient psychological development but are due to his belonging to our culture.285

According to Adorno it is the interaction between this “objective” element and the “subjective” element (the psychological responses) that produces the potentially

280 Adorno, “Types and Syndromes,” 353. In this twelfth chapter of the study, Adorno identifies syndromes and subsyndromes on the basis of results of both high and low scorers on the “F scale”: Adorno, “Types and Syndromes,” 346-85. 281 The potentially fascist individual in this study was an individual who scored highly on what the researchers called the “F scale” (Fascism scale) – a questionnaire designed to identify anti- democratic modes of thinking. 282 Adorno, “Types and Syndromes,” 355. 283 Ochse provides a detailed analysis of Lohse’s anti-Semitism as projection in this sense: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 63-74. 284 Adorno, “Types and Syndromes,” 361-64. 285 Adorno, “Types and Syndromes,” 354.

64 Chapter 2: The Early Novels fascist character.286 Adorno stresses that while the focus of his team’s research is on psychological determinants of the fascist mentality, this mentality is “largely fomented by the objective spirit of our society”.287 Thus Adorno’s findings may be seen as complementary to Roth’s novel: while Adorno’s typology explains the subjective or psychological elements of the authoritarian personality, Roth’s depiction of Theodor Lohse within the context of his society reveals the cultural and social factors which have given rise to this type of personality in the specific context of 1920s Germany.288 His portrayal of Lohse’s rise to power shows remarkable prescience and insight into the potential threat to the fledgling Republic represented by seemingly inconsequential figures such as Lohse – or Hitler:289

Der Romanverlauf offenbart die politische Sprengkraft im politisch scheinbar bedeutungslosen Kleinbürgertum und warnt auf eindrückliche Weise, die Gefahren zu unterschätzen, die von ‘Kleinen’ wie Lohse einer ist, der Republik drohen.290

That Theodor is a product of his upbringing and education is indicated through repeated references to his schooling. From the outset, the narrator connects Theodor’s inability to adapt to his new situation after the war with an educational philosophy which trained conformity rather than independent thought and initiative. Theodor was second in his class not because of any actual ability but

286 Adorno, “Types and Syndromes,” 354. 287 Adorno, “Types and Syndromes,” 352. Adorno continues: “Whereas different individuals react differently, according to their psychological make-up, to the ubiquitous cultural stimuli of prejudice, the objective element of prejudice cannot be neglected if we want to understand the attitudes of individuals or psychological groups.” 288 In the conclusion to the study, the authors state that their findings are “strictly limited to the psychological aspects of the more general problem of prejudice. Historical factors or [social and] economic forces operating in our society to promote or to diminish ethnic prejudice are clearly beyond the scope of our investigation”: Adorno et al., Authoritarian Personality 476. It is the historical and social processes and forces within German culture that are the focus of Roth’s investigation. 289 Hitler is expressly named in the novel as “eine Gefahr”. (IV, 103) Theodor is envious of Hitler’s power and influence, and his envy drives him forward. (IV, 103-04) In his journalism, too, Roth repeatedly pointed to Hitler as a danger – as early as 1924: “Geträumter Wochenbericht”, Vorwärts, 2.3.1924 (II, 70-72); “Berliner Bilderbuch” (II, 92-129). 290 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 60. Roth suggests that it is precisely his feeling of insignificance that drives Lohse. The first chapter ends with a significant passage of erlebte Rede expressing his sense of impotence in civilian life and his determination to overcome it: “Niemals erreichte er [Frau Efrussi], wie wollte er es? Glühend war sein Wunsch. Aber erloschen der Glaube an seine Kraft zu erobern, da er nicht mehr Leutnant war. […] Oh, glaubten sie, er wäre harmlos und ungefährlich? Sie sollten sehen. Alle sollten es sehen! Bald wird er aus seinem ruhmlosen Winkel treten, ein Sieger, nicht mehr gefangen in der Zeit, nicht mehr unter das Joch seiner Tage gedrückt. Es schmetterten helle Fanfaren irgendwo am Horizont.” (IV, 69-70)

65 Chapter 2: The Early Novels due to a combination of fear, persistence and zeal, which caused him to learn stories by rote until he could see the pages of the book in his head as if it were open before his eyes (IV, 66). This type of schooling breeds people who cannot think for themselves:291 “Nur das auswendig Gelernte, dessen Klang schon fertig und ein dutzendmal lautlos geformt in seinen Ohren, seiner Kehle lag, konnte [Theodor] sprechen.”292 (IV, 66) Confronted with a situation in which the rules seem suddenly to have changed, a person like Theodor is unable to adapt and feels threatened and insecure:

In der Armee nur war er glücklich. Was man ihm sagte, mußte er glauben, und die andern mußten es, wenn er selbst sprach.293 Theodor wäre gern sein Leben lang bei der Armee geblieben. Anders war das Leben in Zivil, grausam, voller Tücke in unbekannten Winkeln. Gab man sich Mühe, sie hatte keine Richtung, Kräfte verschwendete man an Ungewisses, es war ein unaufhörliches Aufbauen von Kartenhäusern, die ein geheimnisvoller Windzug umblies. (IV, 66-67)

In the army Lohse had felt secure: structures and rules were clear and unambiguous, independent thought and decision making were not required, and Lohse and his fellow lieutenants were relieved of any responsibility for their actions by their superior in the military hierarchy.294 Discharged from the army, and with the collapse of the old order, Theodor has lost his raison d’être – so great was the dependence of his identity on his role in the army.295 He feels

291 Karl Mannheim judged that the authoritarian educational philosophy in Germany destroyed the capacity for experimental and creative thought which is crucial in a rapidly changing world: Diagnose unserer Zeit. Gedanken eines Soziologen (Zürich: Europaverlag, 1951) 65; cited in Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 174. 292 The same image appears in the feuilleton “Die Dreizehn” in the description of one of Rathenau’s assassins: “Ein völkischer Knappe, halbgebildet, mit auswendig gelerntem Lebenslauf, ihn wie in der Offiziersschule leiernd” (I, 873). 293 Adorno and his colleagues demonstrate that this seemingly contradictory desire to both have and submit to authority is typical of the “power complex” exhibited by potentially fascist individuals, “for the reason that the actual role of the individual seems to be less important than his concern that leader-follower relations shall obtain. One solution which such an individual often achieves is that of alignment with power figures, an arrangement by which he is able to gratify both his need for power and his need to submit. He hopes that by submitting to power he can participate in it. […] The same pattern of gratification can be obtained by acting in the role of ‘the lieutenant’ or by functioning in a middle position in some clearly structured hierarchy where there is always somebody above and somebody below”: Sanford et al., “The Measurement,” 166-167. 294 Cf. Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 173. 295 Cf. Hughes, who writes of Lohse and subsequent Roth characters who found contentment in army life: “The function of the army for these socially incompetent men is clear: it provided a sense of wholeness and belonging they lack in civilian life”: Jon Hughes, “Violence, Masculinity and Self: Killing in Joseph Roth's 1920s Fiction,” German Life and Letters 53, no. 2 (2000): 218.

66 Chapter 2: The Early Novels superfluous, “wie ein Zeiger ohne Zifferblatt; wie ein Magnet, der weit und breit keine Eisensplitter findet; wie ein Magnetnadel, die ihren Kurs vergessen”.296

In depicting Theodor’s education and the character traits it encouraged, Roth may have drawn on his own experience of the Habsburg education system, which he described in an article for Der Neue Tag in similar terms:

Von acht bis neun Rechnen, von neun bis zehn Deutsch, von zehn bis elf – – wie wurde unsere Kindheit in die Fachschublade eines Stundenplanes gezwängt, unser Leben abgeteilt, unsere unschuldige Freude auf zehn Minuten Pause zwischen zwei Folterstunden rationiert! […] So wurde die Schule zum Marterort, jeder (sic) Freiheitsregung zum Vergehen, Lüge und Heuchelei mit Einsern in ‘Sitten’ belohnt, Tartüfferie und Scheinheiligkeit großgezogen. Aus jenen Schulen ging ein Geschlecht von Verbitterten und Verkümmerten, Minderwertigen und Blindgehorsamen, Unselbständigen und Willkürmenschen, Pfeifendeckeln und Husarenleutnants hervor. Und selten, sehr selten waren die Freien. Die Schule war eine Art Kaserne. Der Unterricht alten Stils bestand aus geistigen Gelenksübungen. Und ‘Kopfnicken’ war die wichtigste.297

When he published this article in 1920, Roth had some faith in the possibility of real reform and a different kind of future. He expressed confidence that the educational reforms then being trialled in so-called “Versuchsklassen” in Austria would produce entirely different individuals from the blindly obedient authoritarian or “Willkürmenschen” created by the Imperial system,

ein Geschlecht […], das fern von hirnverbrannter Ideologie und hohlem Kitsch, haßwütigem Nationalismus und sklavischer Götzenverehrung, mitten im Tag stehend, Grenzen überbrückend und weltvereinigend, die Emporentwicklung der Menschheit sichern wird.298

Just three years later this almost effusive optimism and faith in the possibility of the positive progress of humanity had vanished. Faced in Berlin with what Peter

296 This description of the feelings of superfluity experienced by returned soldiers comes from Roth’s feuilleton “Der Herr Offizier”, Vorwärts 15.7.1922 (I, 836). The former officer feels at home only in the former officers’ club, in which time seems to have stood still, everything is as it always was, and the walls “bewahren jeden Besucher vor den Schallwellen der Gegenwart.” The final sentence of this feuilleton suggests the connection between the reactionary mentality of the former officer and chauvinist nationalism which is further developed in Das Spinnennetz: “Und sein Monokel vermittelt beharrlich schwarzweißroten Sehstoff der Vergangenheit dem zufriedenen Auge”: (I, 837). This colour symbolism also plays an important role in Radetzkymarsch, discussed in Chapter 3. 297 Joseph Roth, “‘Versuchsklassen’”, Der Neue Tag 21.3.1920, (I, 261-62). The article assesses in positive terms the educational reform program introduced by Otto Glöckel, a leading figure of the Austrian Social Democratic Party’s left-wing. 298 Joseph Roth, “‘Versuchsklassen’”, Der Neue Tag 21.3.1920 (I, 263-64).

67 Chapter 2: The Early Novels

Gay has called a widespread “love affair with unreason and death”299 and “hunger for wholeness”,300 encompassing the desire for belonging in an “organic” Gemeinschaft and the rejection of the fledgling democracy of the Weimar Republic, Roth realized that the increasing appeal of a rapidly growing anti- Semitic radical right was attributable not so much to the contemporary social conditions of a chaotic Weimar Germany – though these certainly played a role – as to the culture of pre-war Wilhelmine Germany.

Roth makes quite clear that the source of Theodor’s problems and his attraction to violence is not the much-maligned Republic.301 The detailed descriptions of Theodor’s childhood environment stand in marked contrast to the relatively sketchy details of the difficulties he faces in the present. The plight of an anonymous mass of workers punctuates the novel, but Theodor has little contact with them,302 and of his personal situation the reader learns only that the money he earns as private tutor to the young Efrussi is the basis of his material existence, “[d]enn bei der Technischen Nothilfe, zu deren Mitgliedern er zählte, gab es selten Arbeit, und die seltene war hart und mäßig bezahlt.” (I, 65)303 That the narrator does not dwell on his economic difficulties suggests that the current state

299 Gay, Weimar Culture 82. 300 This is the title of the fourth chapter of Gay’s book on the Weimar Republic: Gay, Weimar Culture 82. It refers to a widespread desire for the “organic” Gemeinschaft and rejection of the fragmented and seemingly chaotic existence of the Weimar Republic. Gay notes that Ferdinand Tönnies’s classic work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, which was first published in 1887, “made its fortune in the Weimar Republic, with its invidious contrast between the authentic, organic harmony of community and the materialistic fragmentation of business society”: Gay, Weimar Culture 80. 301 Attacks on both the Weimar Republic and the Austrian Republic came particularly from the reactionary right. parodied the simplistic arguments of such groups in his magazine Die Fackel: “Denn sie, die in Sehnsucht nach den Zeiten lebt, die sie dumm gemacht haben, vermag den kürzesten Gedankengang nicht mehr zurückzulegen. Etwa so: Die Monarchie hat uns den Krieg gebracht, der Krieg den Ruin, der Ruin die Republik. Nein, sie gewahrt nur die Gleichzeitigkeit von Republik und Ruin: die Republik hat uns den Ruin gebracht”: Karl Kraus, “Gespenster”, Die Fackel (514-518, July 1919) 23; quoted in Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 167. 302 In Chapter XVII Theodor comes face to face with these workers when he attends their meetings for a week. A long description of the wretched men, women and children through Theodor’s eyes is followed by neutral commentary from the narrator, which is given an ironic undertone by Benjamin Lenz’s derisive comment: “Er liebte sie nicht. Er fürchtete sich vor ihnen, Theodor Lohse. Seine eigene Furcht haßte er. ‘Herr Leutnant Lohse’, sagte Benjamin Lenz, ‘das ist das deutsche Volk, für das Sie zu arbeiten glauben. Die Offiziere in den Kasinos sind nicht das Volk.’” (IV, 115)

68 Chapter 2: The Early Novels of affairs is only a catalyst for Theodor’s descent into violence, intrigue and destruction;304 the revolution which Theodor curses is, like the Jews and the Socialists, merely a scapegoat305 for feelings of inadequacy which do not in fact spring from his sudden loss of social and economic standing, but originate further back in childhood.306

Time and again the narrator draws parallels between Theodor’s actions in the present and his behaviour as a child, implying that the seeds of the present lie deep in the past. The foolish act of writing to General Ludendorff is linked with Theodor’s efforts at school to be entrusted with various tasks by the Principal (IV, 78). Later, when Theodor begins to speculate on the stockmarket, the narrator relates his first successful business venture as a schoolboy, when he made a profit on a wreath for a classmate who had recently died (IV, 105). These are the acts of an individual, but by repeatedly juxtaposing Lohse’s actions in the present with incidents which occurred while he was at school Roth reminds the reader that Theodor is a product of his schooling and thus representative of at least his own generation in his responses:

Er hatte nicht geahnt, wie schwer es ihm kommen würde. Niemand half ihm. Er sollte anfangen. Es war, als weidete man sich an seiner Qual. Und es ist genauso wie einmal – lang war es her – in der Schule, wenn er anderes sagen soll als auswendig Gelerntes. (IV, 112)

The switch to the present tense indicates – as often in this novel – the salience of the school experience in Theodor’s consciousness,307 and thus the underlying cause of Theodor’s descent into violence is revealed to be a personality structure

303 That food is scarce may be inferred from the remark that Theodor receives legumes once a week from the reserve officers’ economic association, which he then shares with his mother and sisters. 304 Marchand’s claim that the protagonist is “das Bild eines gegen seine soziale Deklassierung, seine wirtschaftliche Abhängigkeit aufgrund geistiger Unzulänglichkeit und politischer Verblendung revoltierenden rechtsradikalen Reaktionärs” does not address the underlying reasons for Theodor’s reaction: see Marchand, Wertbegriffe 44. 305 On this scapegoat function of anti-Semitism and its dependence on the anti-Semite’s own pyschological needs rather than on the nature of the object (“the Jews”) see T.W. Adorno, “Prejudice in the Interview Material”, in Adorno et al., Authoritarian Personality 297-345. 306 Jon Hughes seems to underestimate the importance Roth accords the role of childhood socialization in creating men like Lohse when he argues that the violent personality structure is the result of “a dangerous cocktail of military training, front-line combat experence, and social and political instability”: Hughes, “Violence,” 229.

69 Chapter 2: The Early Novels which has its roots in Theodor’s upbringing in Wilhelmine German culture and society.

Having been thus socialized, and after the loss of the security he found in the army, Theodor is incapable of functioning as an individual: “Das Gruppendenken ist ihm […] die einzige Möglichkeit, relativ unproblematisch zu existieren.”308 As Jon Hughes has observed, in this regard Lohse is

entirely typical of the men of the early fascist movement in Germany, many of whom continued the army lifestyle as members of ‘Freikorps’ units, mercenary groupings, and paramilitary organizations such as the nascent SA.309

This “Gruppendenken” is characteristic of the authoritarian personality as delineated by Adorno and his colleagues. Subjects who scored highly on the Fascism (F) scale also tended to score highly on the Ethnocentrism (E) scale,310 where ethnocentrism entails “a pervasive and rigid ingroup–outgroup distinction” and involves

stereotyped negative imagery and hostile attitudes regarding outgroups, stereotyped positive imagery and submissive attitudes regarding ingroups, and a hierarchical, authoritarian view of group interaction in which ingroups are rightly dominant, outgroups subordinate.311

Lohse is drawn to the right-wing secret organization because of his attachment to the old order represented by the Prince in whose regiment he served,312 and by his hatred of “Sozialisten und Juden” (IV, 66). His ethnocentrism is thus linked to the past and shown to be a result of the “cultural climate of prejudice” (Adorno) in

307 The use of the present tense to underscore the immediacy, potency or significance of a particular experience for an individual character is a hallmark of Roth’s writing. 308 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 109. 309 Hughes, “Violence,” 220. Roth’s depiction of Lohse’s feelings of loss and his response to this experience appears both representative and prescient: accustomed to violence by a war which gave them “a sense of community for which they afterward yearned”, this generation of men provided the leading figures of both the conservative revolution and National Socialism: Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism. Technology, Culture, and Politics in Weimar and the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984) 23. 310 Sanford et al., “The Measurement,” 208. 311 Daniel J. Levinson, “The Study of Ethnocentric Ideology”, in Adorno et al., Authoritarian Personality 150. 312 Here Roth recognizes the potential for right-wing sympathies among veterans of the First World War who saw the values they had fought for being destroyed by the revolution. The road from the Freikorps, who fought against the revolution, to the Nazi Stormtroopers was not a long one, as Sebastian Haffner notes: Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen 37.

70 Chapter 2: The Early Novels which he has been raised. His anti-Semitism originates from the influence of his father well prior to the revolution:313

Oft hatte der Vater Lohse seine Töchter vor dem Verkehr mit jungen Juden in der Tanzstunde gewarnt. Beispiele gibt es, Beispiele! Ihm selbst, dem Bahnzollrevisor Lohse, passierte es mindestens zweimal im Monat, daß ihn Juden aus Posen, welche die schlimmsten sind, zu bestechen versuchten. (IV, 67).314

Now suffering from a tremendous loss of economic and social status after the war, Theodor reaches back to this learned prejudice in order to rationalize his current woes and find a cause outside of himself and his ingroup. Anti-Semitism functions as a device for orientation in a world from which Theodor feels suddenly alienated:315

Alle hatten es leicht, am leichtesten die Glasers und Efrussis: Der wurde Primus und der Juwelier und jener Sohn des reichen Juweliers. Nur in der Armee waren sie nichts geworden, selten Sergeanten. Dort siegte Gerechtigkeit über Schwindel. Denn alles war Schwindel, Glasers Wissen unredlich erworben wie das Geld des Juweliers. Es ging nicht mit rechten Dingen zu, wenn der Soldat Grünbaum einen Urlaub erhielt und wenn Efrussi ein Geschäft machte. Erschwindelt war die Revolution, der Kaiser betrogen, der General genarrt, die Republik ein jüdisches Geschäft. (IV, 67)316

In holding the Jews responsible for a conspiracy which has resulted in the collapse of his world, Theodor aligns himself with power figures from the old regime – the Emperor, General Ludendorff – thus bolstering his weakened sense of self through narcissistic association and avoiding the need for rational self-criticism and an examination of the real reasons for his current situation and his lack of success. As Adorno explains, for the highly prejudiced or ethnocentric, the Jew is

313 For an account of late nineteenth century anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria-Hungary, including a discussion of what distinguished it from earlier forms of anti-Semitism, see H.H. Ben-Sasson, ed., A History of the Jewish People (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1976) 870-78, especially 875f. Ben-Sasson details the systematic discrimination against Jews which occurred under Bismarck, particularly after Wilhelm II ascended the throne. Anti-Semitism became an essential part of the ruling ideology, with publications such as Chamberlain’s scientifically unfounded Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1878) exercising a profound influence on the German intelligentsia: Ben-Sasson, ed., A History 877. 314 The reference to “Juden aus Posen, welche die schlimmsten sind” suggests the hierarchy of anti-Semitism which Roth addresses in detail in Juden auf Wanderschaft, according to which the further east the Jew’s origins, the more virulent is the prejudice against him. 315 Cf. Adorno, “Prejudice,” 300. 316 Lohse’s thinking here, and in particular his denigration of the Republic as “ein jüdisches Geschäft”, is typical of anti-Semitic clichés popular in Weimar Germany. Cf. Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 66.

71 Chapter 2: The Early Novels extremely stereotyped, his “otherness” seemingly providing a simple formula for explaining the alienation of society: “Charging the Jews with all existing evils seems to penetrate the darkness of reality like a searchlight and to allow for quick and all-comprising orientation.”317 The less such anti-Semitic imagery is related to actual experience or exposed to reality, the more effectively it functions as an imagined panacea.318 Thus Theodor’s certainty increases the more his actual and conscious experience of Jews retreats into the realms of unpleasant memory. Reading pamphlets “in denen Zusammenhänge zwischen Sozialismus, Juden, Franzosen und Russen aufgedeckt wurden” fuels his imagination:

Er glaubte nicht nur, was er gelesen hatte, er kombinierte aus dem gelesenen Material neue Tatsachen und entwickelte sie im Nationalen Beobachter. Seitdem er gedruckt wurde, steigerte sich seine Sicherheit, und wenn er die Feder in die Hand nahm, zweifelte er nicht mehr an der Richtigkeit dessen, was er vorsichtig anzudeuten sich vorgenommen hatte. Las er noch einmal das Manuskript, war er sicher und strich schwächende Worte, jedes ‘vielleicht’ und jedes ‘wahrscheinlich’. Er schrieb die Aufsätze eines Mannes, der hinter die Kulissen geblickt hat. (IV, 85)

Meanwhile, he rewrites the history of his personal interaction with Jews in order to make it comply with his newfound certainty. The memory of his impotent fantasies about the beautiful Frau Efrussi (IV, 68-69) is transformed, with Theodor now thinking of her “wie ein ganz großer Mann einer kleinen Frau aus anderen Kreisen gedenkt, die ein kleines Abenteuer abgegeben hätte” (IV, 86). Similarly, his former employer Efrussi, whose gentle generosity had been the basis of Theodor’s material existence (IV, 65), becomes an object of hatred:

Er beneidete den Juden Efrussi nicht, aber er haßte ihn und seine Sippe, seinen Stolz und die Art, wie er ihn, den Hauslehrer zuletzt behandelt hatte. Jetzt erinnerte sich Theodor, daß er im Efrussischen Hause eine schüchterne Haltung eingenommen hatte, eine dumme Angst hatte ihn damals noch beherrscht, und die Schuld daran schob er den Juden zu. Wie überhaupt die Juden seine langjährige Erfolglosigkeit verursacht hatten und ihn an der schnellen Eroberung der Welt hinderten. In der Schule war es der Vorzugsschüler Glaser, andere Juden – er wußte sie nicht zu nennen – kamen später. Sie waren, wie alle Welt wußte, furchtbar, weil sie Macht besaßen. Aber auch häßlich und abscheulich, überall, wo sie auftauchten, in der Bahn, auf der Straße, im Theater. (IV, 86)

The reader knows that during Theodor’s final meeting with his former employer Efrussi offered his son’s tutor a raise, and then, accepting Theodor’s resignation,

317 Adorno, “Prejudice,” 311. 318 Adorno, “Prejudice,” 311.

72 Chapter 2: The Early Novels insisted that he accept full pay for the month although they were only in the third week. He did not even react in kind when confronted with Theodor’s anti-Semitic taunt (IV, 76). The reality of this meeting, however, is suppressed by a reconstructed memory that sits more comfortably with Theodor’s prejudice, which prejudice is then extended to all other Jews who are all the more easily stereotyped since they are nameless and faceless.319

Theodor’s anti-Semitism, then, arises from the complex interplay of his feelings of disorientation after the sudden loss of all structures within which he had known and been proud of his place, his inability to adapt to the changed situation due the authoritarian nature of his upbringing and schooling, and the widespread acceptance of anti-Semitism not only in the Kleinbürgertum from which Theodor hails, but also in academic circles320 and the military.321 Its prevalence even in the upper echelons of society is suggested in Efrussi’s admission that he not only reads the nationalist newspapers but advertises his business in the Deutsche Zeitung. (IV, 76)

319 Ochse demonstrates that Theodor’s anti-Semitism in fact has little to do with “the Jews”: “Lohse setzt den Krieg fort und macht jeden zum Juden, wenn es seiner Karriere dient”. Thus when Günther is killed because of his supposed betrayal of the secret organization, the members sing a song in which the words “Verräter” and “Judenbrut” are used synonymously (IV, 89). Subsequently the striking Polish (non-Jewish) workers are denounced in the same song (IV, 99): Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 70-71. 320 This is indicated in an ironic passage of erlebte Rede (signalled by the words “[k]luge Köpfe”: this type of language is characteristic of Theodor’s authoritarian thinking): “Theodor sah das alles selbst, und die Meinung der anderen verstärkte seine Eindrücke. Kluge Köpfe, wie Wilhelm Tiedemann, Professor Koethe, der Dozent Bastelmann, der Physiker Loranz, der Rassenforscher Mannheim, behaupteten und bewiesen die Schädlichkeit der jüdischen Rasse an den Vortragsabenden des Vereins deutscher Rechtshörer und in ihren Büchern, die in der Lesehalle der ‘Germania’ ausgestellt waren.” (IV, 67) See Herf, Reactionary Modernism 24- 25, on the importance of such clubs for the playing out of the conservative revolution, which although it distanced itself from both National Socialism and Hitler, “did much to pave his road to power”: Gordon Craig, Germany: 1866-1945 (New York, 1980) 486-87; cited in Herf, Reactionary Modernism 21. 321 “Nun hatten sie [die Juden] die Armee vernichtet, nun beherrschten sie den Staat, sie erfanden den Sozialismus, die Vaterlandslosigkeit, die Liebe für den Feind. Es stand in den Weisen von Zion – das Buch bekamen alle Mitglieder des Reserveoffiziersverbandes zu den Hülsenfrüchten am Freitag –, daß sie die Weltherrschaft erstrebten.” (IV, 67) In a feuilleton published a year after Das Spinnennetz Roth speculated with bitter prescience about the influence of this propaganda on the highest eschelons of society: “Es ist wahrscheinlich die Privatlektüre vieler Richter. Es beeinflußt jedenfalls die öffentliche Gerechtigkeit in Deutschland. Seine Grundsätze werden vielleicht die Abfassung des neuen bürgerlichen Gesetzbuches unterstützen. Hitler hat es angekündigt”: Roth, “Berliner Bilderbuch” (II, 95- 96).

73 Chapter 2: The Early Novels

Combatting Anti-Semitism

The pervasiveness of anti-Semitism in Roth’s depiction of Weimar German society raises the question of whether the author sees any hope that it might be overcome. Ochse has demonstrated that Roth’s portrayal of Jewish figures in the novel, and in particular their various strategies of dealing with anti-Semitism, reveals his pessimism about the possibilty of either escaping or combatting the increasingly virulent prejudice through assimilation.322 While the Christian convert Goldscheider aids Lohse’s ascent to power only indirectly and without knowledge of his true identity, Efrussi, Trebitsch and Pisk all give him their support in full knowledge of his chauvinist anti-Semitism, each for his own reasons.323 These characters represent different strategies for dealing with anti- Semitism. Goldscheider “steht für den zum Christentum konvertierten, links engagierten, intellektuellen und wirklichkeitsfernen Juden”.324 Efrussi is the successful, assimilated Jew who attempts to protect himself from anti-Semitism through money and political conformity.325 Dr. Trebitsch hides his Jewishness and engages in anti-Semitic activity himself as the author of political pamphlets for the secret organization: he represents the phenomenon of Jewish self-hate epitomized by his namesake, Arthur Trebitsch, and more famously by Otto Weininger.326 The unequivocally negative portrayal of Dr. Trebitsch is indicative of Roth’s condemnation of this response to anti-Semitism.327 Similarly critical is Roth’s portrayal of the Jewish journalist Pisk, who has internalized anti-Jewish stereotypes,328 attempts to conceal his Eastern Jewish heritage329 by wearing a

322 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 85. 323 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 82. 324 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 81. 325 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 82. 326 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 82-83. The term Jewish self-hate was coined by the Zionist philosopher Theodor Lessing and describes the desire to kill “the Jew within” as a reaction to anti-Semitism: Niewyk, Jews in Weimar Germany 127. On the phenomenon of “Jewish self- hate” see Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers 74-75 and 224-25 On the contributions of Weininger and Trebitsch to theories of race see Hamann, Hitlers Wien 325-33. 327 Trebitsch’s flight to America with the organization’s funds seems to confirm the stereotype of the Jew as traitor. As Ochse argues, however, this confirmation is neutralized by the simultaneous discrediting of anti-Semitic Jews: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 84. 328 He attempts to hide his “abstehendes Ohr” (IV, 122) – a stereotypical Jewish feature – by always wearing a hat: see Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 85. This character is reminiscent of Dr. Jadassohn in Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan. 329 The name Pisk is Yiddish and means “dog’s snout”: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 84.

74 Chapter 2: The Early Novels monocle – the symbol of conservative-nationalist sentiment – and ensures that Lohse’s name appears in anti-revolutionary Jewish newspapers. Like Trebitsch, he is guilty of betraying other Jews for his own gain.

If Roth is pessimistic about the possibility of Jews overcoming anti-Semitism through assimilation and conformity – and indeed condemns the conduct of Jews like Trebitsch and Pisk – what is his view of organized attempts to combat the extreme nationalism of Lohse’s organization, of which anti-Semitism is just one expression? The infiltration and betrayal of the Communists by Lohse on Trebitsch’s orders suggests not only that the radical left is just as prepared to resort to violence as the radical right, but also that the Communists are hopelessly incompetent, unable to recognize an imposter in Lohse, despite his ignorance of the difference between the Socialist Party and the Communists (IV, 81). But it is the episode at the Lukscha estate which most clearly reveals Roth’s pessimistic assessment of the ability of the left to rally the masses in the face of competition from the nationalist right. Sent to Pomerania with fifty men from the Technische Nothilfe to support the notoriously brutal landowner, Freiherr von Köckwitz, in his annual stand-off with striking workers, Theodor finds common cause with the old baron, in whom he sees “das Bild eines der letzten deutschen Adeligen, denen in der neuen Zeit der Untergang drohte.” (IV, 101) At first Theodor and his “Roßbach-Leute” are treated just like the baron’s ordinary workers: they sleep in the barn, take up the work abandoned by the striking workers and receive only barley broth and black bread twice daily to eat (IV, 98). They are hungry and aggrieved, and the reader might expect a community of interest to develop between the striking workers and Theodor’s men. Here Roth exposes the fallacy of the socialist belief in the solidarity of the working classes, demonstrating how easily such a potential unity can be undermined by the appeal to nationalism. The wealthy baron’s ill-treatment of his workers fuses capitalist exploitation with a chauvinist German nationalism that appeals to Theodor:

[Der Freiherr] sprach mit Theodor. Schimpfte auf die Arbeiter. Sie waren Polacken. Kein Tropfen deutschen Blutes, Juden verführten sie. In dieser Gegend lebten überhaupt Juden, Polacken, rotes Gesindel. Es war zum Niederknallen. (IV, 99)

75 Chapter 2: The Early Novels

The baron’s words demarcate zones of inclusion and exclusion along the lines of a Volksgemeinschaft that excludes Jews, Slavs and the Left. Theodor’s implied inclusion in the baron’s community restores the self-assurance he gained upon being admitted to the secret organization, significantly referred to as a “Gemeinschaft” (IV, 74). Belonging to the community of the powerful – the potentially powerful German nation represented by the baron – is a far more attractive option to Theodor than belonging to the community of the weak and oppressed – the socialist collective which would transcend the boundaries of race and ethnicity. Angry that he has been sent to Pomerania, and seeing in it a conspiracy to have his name forgotten, Theodor ensures this does not happen by inciting a confrontation with the Polish workers whom he orders to be shot down, aiding the baron in the process and being celebrated as a hero in the nationalist press. Roth’s sympathy with the workers in this conflict is evident in his portrayal of the two sides, in which Theodor’s men have been supplied with an arsenal of firearms by the notoriously brutal baron while the workers have only stones and sticks.330 Yet what emerges more strongly than Roth’s concern for the workers – which might otherwise be understood as evidence of his socialist convictions – is his pessimism at the future of the socialist project and his early identification of the greater potential appeal of extreme nationalists in the climate of crisis of the early 1920s. This potential is the continuation of a pre-war pattern of the encouragement of nationalism among the socially and economically disadvantaged by the ruling classes to whose hegemony socialism posed a threat. As Otto Bauer wryly noted in 1907:

What greater chance of success could the ruling classes in the German Empire have in diverting the eyes of the masses away from social questions than by calling on them to liberate their German brothers in Austria, to realize the idea, cherished by every German, of German unity?331

Roth’s pessimism already at this time – at the alleged height of his socialist conviction – about the Left’s ability to generate support against anti-Republican, anti-Jewish radical nationalist forces was shared by Sebastian Haffner, for whom

330 The repeated juxtapostion of Theodor’s men with the workers underlines their opposition and Roth’s sympathy with the latter: “[Die Roßbach-Leute] arbeiteten weniger. Sie exerzierten. Sie rückten mit Gewehren aus. Die Arbeiter hungerten. Ihre Kinder bekamen dünne Hälse und große Köpfe.” (IV, 99-100)

76 Chapter 2: The Early Novels the end of the Rathenau era in 1922 proved “daß nichts, was die Linke tut, klappt”.332 Instead of mobilizing the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets at the time of Rathenau’s funeral against the reactionary, right-wing forces responsible for his murder, the Socialist government entreated people to maintain order and discipline, a serious failure which Haffner claims led to their fall from power and the institution of a right-wing government just a few months later.333

Roth goes further than Haffner in suggesting that the state is motivated by the same chauvinist nationalism as Theodor and the baron. The representatives of the state collude in the maintentance of the baron’s power at the expense of his Polish workers: the police arrive too late to prevent the bloodshed and then drink beer among the bodies of the dead workers (IV, 100); the swastika worn by the young examining magistrate signals his political sympathies (IV, 100); and a case brought against one of the surviving workers is dealt with within half an hour with predictable results: “Der Landarbeiter bekam acht Monate Zuchthaus. Der Staatsanwalt saß am Abend mit Theodor Lohse und dem Freiherrn im ‘Kaiserhof’ bei einer Flasche Wein.” (IV, 102) Thus Roth suggests state collusion in the exploitation of the poor and the “other” – “Juden, Polacken, rotes Gesindl” (IV, 99) – by the rich and German,334 and sympathy at the highest levels with the racist nationalism of right-wing movements such as the nascent NSDAP, which in its first party programme of 1920 envisioned the renewal of the German nation through the unity of a racially pure Volksgemeinschaft.335 The National Socialists’ programme contained “a mixture of nationalistic, pan-German, racist, anti- Semitic, anti-Marxist and anti-liberal ideas” which appealed not only to the

331 Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy, trans. Joseph O'Donnell (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000) 399. 332 Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen 52. 333 Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen 52. 334 Similarly, it is hinted earlier in the novel that members of security forces are involved in anti- Semitic agitation when Efrussi calls Major Pauli from the commandant’s headquarters after Theodor resigns his position. Efrussi complains: “‘Ihre Agitation geht zu weit!’”, whereupon the major apologizes (IV, 76). The apology is an odd response, unless “Ihre/ihre,” ambiguous in this context, is understood to mean not “their” (the nationalist organizations’, the anti- Semites’) but your (Major Pauli’s) agitation. 335 The criterion of racial purity was categorically stated in the 1920 programme: John Hiden, Republican and Fascist Germany. Themes and Variations in the History of Weimar and the Third Reich 1918-1945 (London; New York: Longman, 1996) 185.

77 Chapter 2: The Early Novels völkisch right, but also to sections of the conservative parliamentary parties.336 Roth’s depiction of the incident at the Lukscha estate is prescient: in the post-war climate of insecurity in the Weimar Republic, class proved a much less potent source of identification than race and nation.337

The Ecstatic Loss of Individuality

The loss of individuality implied in German nationalism is indicated first in Theodor’s inability to function as an individual and his pathological need to identify with a powerful organization or Gemeinschaft. It is given symbolic expression in the lynching of Günther and Theodor’s subsequent murder of Klitsche. Theodor is transported by the sight of Günther’s blood back to the battlefields:

Unendliches rauschendes Rot umgab Theodor. Im Felde hatte er dieses Rot gesehen und gehört, es schrie, es brüllte wie aus tausend Kehlen, es flackerte, flammte wie tausend Feuersbrünste, rot waren die Bäume, rot war der gelbe Sand, rot die braunen Nadeln auf dem Boden, rot der scharfgezackte Himmel zwischen den Tannen, in grellgelbem Rot spielte der Sonnenschein zwischen den Stämmen. (IV, 91)

The image is one of sudden and ecstatic surrender to a primitive bloodlust. As everything around Theodor seems to turn red and purple, the “Rot” itself becomes animate and takes control:

Aus Theodors Innerem kam das rauschende Rot, es erfüllte ihn, schlug aus ihm, aber es machte ihn leicht, und sein Kopf schien zu schweben, als wäre er mit Luft gefüllt. Es war wie ein leichter, roter Jubel, ein Triumph, der ihn hob, ein beschwingtes Rauschen, Tod der schweren Gedanken, Befreiung der verborgenen, begraben gewesenen Seele. (IV, 91, emphasis added)

Theodor’s ecstasy is reminiscent of Freud’s “oceanic feeling”, in which the surrender of individuality and agency is experienced as a oneness with the universe. The “Rot” and the “roter Jubel” are the subjects of the verbs erfüllen, schlagen, machen, heben and they act upon Theodor as well as through him,

336 “Although rooted in the pre-war period, these values exercised a more potent attraction after the experience of war and defeat. Regeneration of Germandom, the rejection of the Versailles Treaty and the union of all Germans in a ‘Greater Germany’ figured prominently in the party programme”: Hiden, Republican and Fascist Germany 69. 337 The National Socialists very early sought to neutralize the class issue, declaring that “class divisions, as exacerbated by Marxism, would be not so much eliminated as overcome by the stronger ties of blood and race”: Hiden, Republican and Fascist Germany 185.

78 Chapter 2: The Early Novels seemingly absolving him from responsibility for his actions338 just as he was released from any responsibility in war by the simple fact that he was following orders. Yet he is not altogether absolved since the overpowering irrational force emanates from within Theodor himself. The sight of blood triggers a primitive, aggressive instinct in Lohse which “frees” his soul from heavy thoughts; it is the sudden and terrifying liberation of an innate barbarism from the constraints of civilization. The veneer of civilization, Roth suggests, is thin, and in the following description of the consequence of instinct set free, inanimate objects gain agency and Lohse becomes a passive instrument of the irrational:

Klitsche glitt aus, fiel nieder, stöhnte einmal. Die Beilpicke stand noch eine Weile in der Luft mit aufwärtsragendem Stiel, als wäre sie lebendig, und wankte seitwärts. Theodor griff sie auf. Er ahmte Klitsche nach, erhob die Beilpicke und ließ sie niedersausen. Klitsches Schädel krachte ein wenig. Weißgrauer und blutiger Brei quoll aus seiner Stirn. Irgendwo hackte wieder der unermüdliche Specht, zwitscherte der schüchterne Vogel, stieg der schwere Dunst aus dem Waldboden. Mit leichten Schritten ging Theodor durch den Wald, mürbe Zweige krachten unter seinen Füßen, leicht war er wie eine der hundert tänzelnden Mücken. (IV, 91)

The paradoxically passive nature of this most aggressive of acts reflects the twofold pleasure in submission and aggression that is characteristic of the authoritarian personality.339 It recalls Roth’s judgement that the products of the authoritarian model of education characteristic of both the German and the Habsburg Empires, in which the most important of the “geistige[...] Gelenksübungen” was an acquiescent nodding, were equally capable of both blind obedience and the arbitrary use of force (Willkür) (I, 262). Significantly, in a passage which features a tirelessly hammering woodpecker and a shy twittering bird, Theodor is compared not with one of these individual creatures but with “eine der hundert tänzelnden Mücken”. This metaphoric regression of humanity to the level of insects is the converse of the fervent and optimistic belief Roth

338 The “tendency to shift responsibility from within the individual onto outside forces beyong one’s control”, referred to as “superstitiousness”, is identified with the authoritarian personality: Sanford et al., “The Measurement,” 165. 339 The compulsive, irrational destructiveness of Lohse’s behaviour at this point brings him closer to the sub-syndrome of the “Tough Guy”, whose superego, according to Adorno, has been “completely crippled through the outcome of the Oedipus conflict, by means of a retrogression to the omnipotence fantasy of very early infancy. These individuals […] have not been moulded at all by civilization.” Adorno associates with this type “those who do the ‘dirty work’ of a fascist movement”: Adorno, “Types and Syndromes,” 365.

79 Chapter 2: The Early Novels expressed in his article of three years earlier that a differently educated generation would ensure “die Emporentwicklung der Menschheit” (I, 264), and is evidence of the author’s increasing pessimism about the state of German society. Theodor is the unthinking man who, as the leader he seems destined to become, will lead a regression rather than progression of humanity.

“Seine Idee hieß: Benjamin Lenz”:340 Individuality versus Ideology

In the fifteenth chapter of the novel a character appears for the first time who appears to be the antithesis of Theodor Lohse: the Eastern Jew Benjamin Lenz. Yet although the reader wants to see in Lenz a positive counterpart to Lohse, he is an ambiguous figure and has been a source of difficulties for critics.341 From the moment he is introduced as one of the “unzuverlässige[...] und verdächtige[...] Spitzeln, die Theodor abgeschafft hatte” (IV, 110), his double dealing and trickery are emphasized, rendering a positive reading of his character difficult. Very few critics have addressed the problematic aspects of Lenz’s characterization;342 those who have tend to dismiss his portrayal as a weakness of the novel.343 This tendency in the secondary literature is reflected in the film version of the novel directed by , in which Lenz is reduced to a purely positive foil to Lohse.344

340 Roth, Das Spinnennetz (IV, 110). 341 Lenz thus forms a stark contrast to the other Jewish figures, discussed above, who are all easily recognizable as “types” and have a clearly representative function. 342 Sültemeyer barely touches on Lenz, noting only that he acts in his own interests and becomes the main figure in Lohse’s life and a second protagonist alongside Lohse from Chapter XXVII: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 111; Magris does not address the problematic aspects of this character: Magris, Weit von wo. 343 See, for example, Jansen, “Weltbezug und Erzählhaltung” 45. Wolf Marchand interprets the figure of Lenz as a parody of right-wing propaganda concerning “Die Weisen von Zion”, but a parody Marchand feels ultimately fails: Marchand, Wertbegriffe 45-47, 64-65. He also contends that in his embodiment of the absolute opposite of Theodor Lohse, Lenz is “nichts anderes als ein verführerisches Vehikel der poetischen Realitätsflucht”: Marchand, Wertbegriffe 65. By contrast, Sonnleitner argues that Lenz, like the other characters and the novel as a whole, was intended by Roth to appear fragmentary: Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 171. Sonnleitner’s interpretation has merit, but does not go far enough towards a full interpretation of Lenz. 344 Wolfgang Kirchner, “Lenz und Lohse oder der Januskopf,” in Schauplatz Spinnennetz. Texte, Bilder und Dokumente zum Film Das Spinnennetz von Bernhard Wicki (Ed. Jürgen Haase) (Berlin: 1989) 20; cited in Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 87.

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Katharina Ochse is one of the few critics to address the question of Lenz’s perplexing characterization. She maintains that the ambiguity in Lenz’s character is intended as part of Roth’s strategy of denying the validity of any categorization of capabilities or characteristics as specifically ‘Jewish’ or specifically ‘German’.345 Ochse argues that in the portrayal of both Lenz and Lohse Roth blurs the boundaries between prevailing stereotypical representations of Jews and Germans, thereby exposing as a false construct the antithesis which anti-Semites claim exists between Jews and Germans.346 This interpretation certainly squares with Roth’s resistance to the pressure to subscribe to a single identity or ideology, to be German or Jew, and Ochse’s argument is compelling in respect to Lohse, whom she sees as acquiring precisely the characteristics he hates and fears in Jews. Certain descriptions of Theodor are typical of clichés about Jews which were popular at the time Das Spinnennetz was written. We are told, for instance, that Lohse loved money even as a child (IV, 105), and we see him engage in behaviours which according to anti-Semitic propaganda are typically Jewish: he pretends to be somebody he is not when he takes on the persona of Friedrich Trattner, and he reproduces others’ work as his own.347

Schließlich wird er, der nichts mehr fürchtet, als des Verrats bezichtigt zu werden, zum ‘Judas’, einmal an Efrussi, der ihn immer korrekt behandelt hat, dann deutlicher noch an dem zu einer Jesusfigur stilisierten Goldscheider, an Günther, seinem Kriegskameraden, und schließlich auch noch an der Geheimorganisation, deren Aufmarschpläne er an den Gegner verrät.348

Even Lohse’s desire for absolute power turns back on anti-Semites one of the central tenets of anti-Semitic propaganda since the publication of Die Protokolle der Weisen von Zion at the turn of the nineteenth century – that of a Jewish conspiracy of world domination.349 By having Lohse unconsciously mimic

345 “Die vielfältigen Grenzverwischungen sind zu verstehen als Reaktion auf die Festschreibung bestimmter Eigenschaften und Fähigkeiten als spezifisch ‘jüdisch’ bzw. spezifisch ‘deutsch’”: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 95. 346 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 78. 347 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 77-78. 348 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 78. Ochse is playing on the similarity between the German word for Jew (Jude) and the name Judas, noting that while five men named Judas appear in the bible, in Christian cultures the name is only associated with Judas Ischariot, and is synonymous with betrayal. 349 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 78. On the often projective nature of this particular stereotype see Adorno, “Prejudice,” 304-07.

81 Chapter 2: The Early Novels supposedly Jewish characteristics, Roth inverts the accusation commonly made against Jews that they try to imitate Germans.350

However, while it may be argued that Lohse ‘becomes’ a Jew (“d.h. so, wie sich Anti-Semiten einen Juden vorstellen”351), Ochse’s assertion that Lenz becomes an anti-Semite and comes to represent everything he hates about Europe is less convincing. It hinges on a particular interpretation of the central but ambiguous statement: “Seine Idee hieß: Benjamin Lenz.” (IV, 110) Ochse understands this line to mean that Benjamin Lenz is egocentric and therefore no different from Theodor Lohse and the Europe he despises: “Ist er nicht selber schon, wider Willen und paradoxerweise aus Gegenwehr, europäisiert in Egozentrik, kühlem Kalkulieren, sorgfältigen Kultivieren seiner Aversionen?”352 Seen in this light, the role of Benjamin Lenz in the novel is to mirror Theodor Lohse – not as a positive contrast to the thoroughly unlikeable Lohse, but as part of Roth’s strategy to oppose the thinking in rigid and absolute categories.

What is missing in Ochse’s interpretation is a consideration of Lenz’s “Idee” in the socio-historical context of Germany in the 1920s. In his seminal study of Weimar culture Peter Gay reveals the paradoxical intellectual propinquity of such ideologically diverse writers and thinkers as Martin Heidegger and , Oswald Spengler and Walther Rathenau.353 Each of these men gave expression to what Friedrich Meinecke identified as a “deep yearning for the inner unity and harmony of all laws of life and events in life [which] remains a powerful force in the German spirit”.354 Spengler’s political pamphlet Preußentum und Sozialismus (1919), a diatribe against the Weimar Republic and a call to “liberate German socialism from Marx”, is just one expression of this idea:

Power belongs to the whole. The individual serves it. The whole is sovereign. The king is only the first servant of his state. Everyone is given his place.

350 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 78. 351 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 77. 352 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 92. 353 Gay, Weimar Culture 80f. 354 Friedrich Meinecke, Die Idee der Staatsräson in der neueren Geschichte (1924) 490; cited in Gay, Weimar Culture 81.

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There are commands and obedience. This, since the eighteenth century, has been authoritarian – autoritativer – socialism, in essence illiberal and anti- democratic – that is, if we think of English liberalism and French democracy. […] Together, Prussianism and socialism stand against the England within us, against the world view which has penetrated the whole existence of our people, paralyzed it, and robbed it of its soul.355

In Spengler’s thought there is no room for the Western European ideal of individual liberty: the individual is valuable only as part of an organic national whole. Gay identifies certain parallels between Spengler’s unambiguously reactionary pamphlet and an abstract and elusive essay by the Austrian writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal which point to a certain unity of thought in Weimar intellectual circles at this time which transcended categories of Left and Right. In “Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation”, an address delivered at the University of Munich in 1927, Hofmannsthal argued that the source of Germany’s troubles lay in its failure to be “a cultural organism in which spirit and life, literature and politics, the educated and the uneducated, might join in common possession of cultural goods, in a living tradition that all could enjoy.”356 Yet he found hope in the seekers and prophets who “seek, not freedom, but connection” and have realized that “life becomes livable only through valid connections”, and that “scattered worthless individuals” must become “the core of the nation”.357 There is little to separate Hofmannsthal’s idealization of the community and deprecation of the individual from Spengler’s authoritarian socialism other than the former’s more poetic, less military language. Gay comments that Hofmannsthal was fortunate that he died in 1929 – before he could see “the consequences to which fatigue with freedom and the denigration of individuality would lead.”358

Germans in the 1920s were “highly susceptible to the myth of national sacrifice as a sacrifice of individuality”.359 Theodor Lohse is the type of person who needs to

355 Oswald Spengler, Preußentum und Sozialismus (1919); quoted in Gay, Weimar Culture 86. 356 Gay, Weimar Culture 84. 357 Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Das Schrifttum als geistiger Raum der Nation” (1927); quoted in Gay, Weimar Culture 85. 358 Gay, Weimar Culture 85. 359 Bernd Weisbrod, “Violence and Sacrifice: Imagining the Nation in Weimar Germany,” in The Third Reich Betwen Vision and Reality. New Perspectives on German History 1918-1945, ed. Hans Mommsen (Oxford; New York: Berg, 2001), 16.

83 Chapter 2: The Early Novels be part of a hierarchically structured group in order to function and defines himself in terms of his role within this group rather than as an individual: “Ich, Theodor Lohse, bin Mitglied einer geheimen Organisation” (IV, 77); “ich, Theodor Lohse, ein Gefährdeter, aber ein Gefährlicher, mehr als ein Leutnant, mehr als ein Sieger auf trabendem Roß, zwischen grüßenden Spalieren, Retter des Vaterlandes vielleicht” (IV, 75). His ambitions have titles: “Er wollte Führer sein, Abgeordneter, Minister, Diktator” (IV, 93). Titles and roles mark the stations of his career: he is “der Leutnant Theodor Lohse” (IV, 65); “ein Hauslehrer mit gescheiterten Hoffnungen” (IV, 68); “der Genosse Trattner” (IV, 80); “ein Student, Leutnant der Reserve” (IV, 100); “ein Held in Uniform, ein Berühmter” (IV, 129); “Chef des Sicherheitswesens” (IV, 137); “Einer der führenden Männer […]. Warum nicht: der führende Mann?” (IV, 144).

In stark contrast to Lohse, Lenz opposes the mentality of the group – any group – and his identity and values are elusive:

Seine Idee hieß: Benjamin Lenz. Er haßte Europa, Christentum, Juden, Monarchen, Republiken, Philosophie, Parteien, Ideale, Nationen. Er diente den Gewalten, um ihre Schwäche, ihre Bosheit, ihre Tücke, ihre Verwundbarkeit zu studieren. Er betrog sie mehr, als er ihnen nützte. Er haßte die europäische Dummheit. Seine Klugheit haßte. Er war klüger als Politiker, Journalisten und alles, was Gewalt hatte und Mittel zur Macht. Er probte seine Kraft an ihnen. Er verriet die Organisationen an die politischen Gegner; den französischen Gesandtschaften verriet er Gelogenes, Wahres durcheinander; er freute sich an dem gläubigen Gesicht des Betrogenen, der aus den falschen Tatsachen Kraft zu neuer Grausamkeit schöpfte; über das dumme Erstaunen eingebildeter Diplomaten, kindischer, zahnloser Geheimräte, bestialischer Hakenkreuzler; freute sich, daß sie ihn nicht erkannten. Er irrte sich selten. (IV, 110-11)

Europe, Christianity, Jews, monarchists, republics, parties and nations: these are all groups which by their very nature exclude some in order to include others, and which demand the acknowledgement of certain truths and values to the exclusion of others. Lenz’s hatred of groups and ideologies makes sense only if read against the backdrop of the “hunger for wholeness” that Gay describes as pervasive in Weimar Germany. Seen in this context, the statement “Seine Idee hieß: Benjamin Lenz” is a positive assertion of individuality in a claustrophobic climate of self- sacrifice where individuality is increasingly devalued. That Lenz does not discriminate between ideologies of the left and right, religious and secular, appears reasonable in the light of Lohse’s sometimes wavering commitment to the

84 Chapter 2: The Early Novels ideology of the right, despite its absolute character. Theodor needs the goal provided by an ideology to direct his life and thoughts, but is willing to change his allegiance as soon as he suspects a greater benefit to himself elsewhere. Thus, while supposedly committed to the right-wing secret organisation, he thinks: “Nationalsozialismus war ein Wort wie andere. Es bedingt nicht Gesinnung.” (IV, 102) And not much later: “Was war Sozialismus? Ein Wort. Man muß nicht daran glauben. Woran glaubte er heute? Drüben war er wertvoll. Die anderen breiteten die Arme aus. Er kannte die Kulissen.” (IV, 109) The marked irony in this exposure of the interchangeable nature of ideological content underscores Roth’s unequivocal rejection not just of conservative and right-wing ideologies, but of ideology in any form.

Bartsch has identified Ideologieskepsis as one of the central characteristics of Habsburg Austrian literature in the nineteenth century, characteristics which he contends continued to define Austrian literature in the changed circumstances of the twentieth century.360 This scepticism was born of the political situation of the late Habsburg Monarchy, in which any change, every alternative ideology, had the potential to destroy the terminally ailing state. German-speaking writers and intellectuals had suddenly recognized this potential in 1848, when revolution had threatened to destroy more than its liberal supporters had bargained for;361 the resulting fear of change as threatening the very fabric of life in the monarchy led to the state of inertia and stagnation in the political sphere implied in the term Fortwursteln:362

Jede Reform, jede kleinste Änderung im politischen und sozialen Bereich drohte das labile Staatsgefüge zu zerstören. Die Folge war jene politische Statik, ein scheinbar apolitisches Verhalten, das vielfach als typisch

360 K. Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich = ‘Österreichische’ Literatur? Zum Problem ihrer eigenständigen Identität,” in Studies in Modern Austrian Literature, ed. B. Murdoch and M. Ward (Glasgow: Scottish Papers in Germanic Studies, 1981), 8. The other characteristic named by Bartsch is “die rückwärtsgewandte Utopie einer universalistischen Ordnung”, whether this order is defended or criticized by the writer: Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 7. 361 Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 4. 362 This term, which translates roughly as “muddling along” was coined by Eduard Taafe, Prime Minister (Kaiserminister) from 1879-93, and refers to his system of governance: Johnston, The Austrian Mind 50. On the inertia of the bureaucracy under Franz Joseph see Johnston, The Austrian Mind 45-75. On Taafe’s system of Fortwursteln and its implications for the state see also A.J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 1809-1918: A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary (London: Penguin, 1990) 169-82, especially 169-72.

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österreichisch und auch als Merkmal der österreichischen Literatur angesehen wird. Österreich wurde, so könnte man überspitzt formulieren, im 19. Jahrhundert nicht regiert, sondern bloß verwaltet.363

Bartsch cites Ödön von Horváth as a prime example of a post-Habsburg author who carries on the tradition of Ideologieskepsis in the inter-war period. In his depiction of the contemporary socio-historical situation in plays such as Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald, Horváth “entlarvt das falsche, in den Faschismus führende Bewußtsein des Kleinbürgertums”.364 Exacly what Bartsch means by the “ideologieskeptische Position” taken by Horváth becomes clear in his comparison of the Austrian with German playwright . Both writers believed reality to be historically and culturally determined and man-made rather than naturally given, but Horváth lacked what Bartsch calls Brecht’s “‘aufklärerische[r]’ Optimismus”:

Brecht demonstriert die Misere bestehender Verhältnisse und versucht sein Publikum zu überzeugen, daß eine Verbesserung der Lebensumstände möglich sei, wenn die Gesellschaftsordnung grundlegend umgewälzt würde.365

Brecht offers a Marxist solution to the problems bedevilling contemporary society. Horváth explores similar contemporary problems, but his focus is on “verkitschtes und realitätsfremdes Denken” in the individual, and he offers no concrete solution, aiming instead at the viewer’s insight into self and society.366

Bartsch names Roth as typical of the literature of the Habsburg myth, which for him stands in contradistinction to the Ideologieskepsis of Horváth.367 Since Roth’s early novels are all set in the post-Habsburg present, it may be assumed that Bartsch is referring to Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft, the texts most frequently cited as exemplars of the Habsburg myth.368 He does not, however,

363 Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 4. 364 Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 10. 365 Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 10. 366 Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 10. 367 Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 10. 368 Bartsch implies, presumably unintentionally, that the whole of Roth’s fiction is under the spell of the Habsburg myth when he cites him as one of several authors who are “bezogen auf die habsburgische Vergangenheit Österreichs und mehr oder weniger kritisch geleitet von der alten Vorstellung einer ewigen Ordnung”: Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 9. The extent to which the later novels exemplify the Habsburg myth will be addressed in the third and fourth chapters of this study.

86 Chapter 2: The Early Novels distinguish between these and Roth’s early novels, which exhibit the same scepticism about ideology that Bartsch identifies in Horváth, a scepticism which, as Hüppauf has demonstrated, also has its roots “im frühbürgerlichen französischen Humanismus, in dessen Zentrum Freiheit und Selbstbestimmung des einzelnen stehen.”369 Roth does not believe that any ideology can provide a solution to the problems of the chaotic post-war world in part because ideologies inhibit the freedom of the individual, as his rejection of Begriff and Nomenklatur in “Die weißen Städte” attests. Like Horváth in his Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald, Roth shows in Das Spinnennetz “daß die Verführung des in seinem Bewußtseinshorizont sehr beschränkten Kleinbürgers durch radikale Ideologien in die politische Katastrophe münden [muss].”370

Roth’s scepticism about ideologies is embodied in Benjamin Lenz’s rejection of all grand ideas and groups bound by a belief system.371 Yet Roth does not present Lenz as a simple positive foil to Lohse, the type of person who retains his individuality and free will in juxtaposition with the type who is attracted to ideology and willingly surrenders his individuality. Instead, he creates in Lenz a complex individual who not only betrays everyone to anyone, but who in his anarchism is ultimately quite sinister, and himself actively hastens the catastrophe. As Ochse comments,

gleich, wie man Benjamin Lenz deutet, sein Verhalten angesichts des Antisemitismus ist nicht übertragbar. Letztlich verneint der Roman die Möglichkeit, als Jude ungefährdet und gleichbereichtig (sic) in Deutschland zu leben.372

The end of the novel, which sees Lenz send his brother Lazar to Paris and say that he perhaps will follow (IV, 145-46), does indicate that it will not be safe for them in Germany. However, the ultimate reason for the danger is left unclear. While

369 Hüppauf, “Mythos des Skeptikers,” 36. Hüppauf’s reading differs from mine in that he argues that it is not until Hiob that Roth gives literary expression to this scepticism: Hüppauf, “Mythos des Skeptikers,” 30f. 370 Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 11. 371 Cf. Sonnleitner on Lenz’s hatred of Europe, Christendom, etc.: “Abgrundtiefe Skepsis gegen Ideologien und Heilslehren, gegen abstrakte Begriffe, die Angst vor dem Umschlagen von Aufklärung in Mythologie, das zwanzig Jahre später Horkheimer und Adorno analysierten, sind in diesem vorerst befremdenen Programm enthalten”: Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 177. 372 Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 93.

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Benjamin’s life appears to be in immediate peril because his spying has been discovered by Theodor, Benjamin himself has been directly involved in the plot for the second of November, and his brother, a chemist, has been developing a new explosive:

‘Woran arbeitest du?’ ‘An einem Gas.’ ‘Sprengstoff?’ ‘Ja!’ sagte Lazar. ‘Für Europa’, sagte Benjamin. Und Lazar lachte. Alles verstand Lazar. Was war Benjamin dagegen? Ein kleiner Intrigant. Aber dieser junge Bruder mit den sanften, golden schimmernden Augen ließ den ganzen Weltteil in die Luft fliegen. (IV, 145)

This conclusion to the novel, which implicates Lenz in an imminent apocalypse, leads Marchand to assert that what began as a “klarsichtiges, anklagendes und aufdeckendes Buch” with a socialist message became lost at the halfway point with the introduction of Lenz, who is responsible “für den Untergang, den zu verhindern oder wenigstens einen Beitrag zu einem Versuch dazu zu liefern, Roth als seine moralische und politische Aufgabe empfand”.373 Yet to make this claim is to impose on the author an intention to write a novel with a socialist “message”, to provide a “solution” which might prevent the disaster he saw coming,374 when his actual intention was to explore and understand the society in which he was living and to draw attention to what was happening. This was the role of the writer as Roth saw it, as he explained in “Schweigen im Dichterwald”, a polemic directed at German writers which was published in the same year as Das Spinnennetz.375 Marchand criticizes Roth for opposing the irrationalism of Theodor Lohse not with rationalism but with “ein ins Mythische übersteigerter

373 Marchand, Wertbegriffe 65. Marchand further cites Roth’s desire to include “die linke Position der Arbeiter und [seine] Parteinahme für die Unterdrückten und Notleidenden” as adding to the confusion caused by the second half of the novel: Marchand, Wertbegriffe 44, 59. 374 Marchand asserts that he does not mean to demand from Roth “ein Rezept oder eine Kampfanleitung”, yet this is exactly what he implies: see Marchand, Wertbegriffe 65-66. In his critique of Hotel Savoy he similarly chastizes Roth for not providing a socialist solution, instead simply implying that “man müsse nur die Armen reich, die Hungernden satt machen – und schon seien alle Probleme gelöst”: Marchand, Wertbegriffe 80. 375 In this piece Roth criticizes German writers for their silence “über alle Dinge, die Deutschlands Wohl und Wehe [betreffen], die Arbeit, das Brot und den Tod seines Volkes, […] über die barbarischen Formen des öffentlichen Lebens”: Joseph Roth, “Schweigen im Dichterwald”, Prager Tageblatt, 16.11.1923 (I, 1068). He does not suggest that they should advocate solutions, just that they have a duty to break their silence.

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Irrationalismus”.376 Marchand’s criticism would be valid if Roth were advocating Lenz’s strategy for combatting the irrational, but he does not. The portrayal of Lenz’s “radikale[r] und asoziale[r] Vernichtsungswille[...]”377 serves a quite different purpose and must be seen in the context of the ubiquity of apocalyptic thought in post-World War I Germany.

Apocalypse but no Redemption

The decades between the outbreak of the First World War and the aftermath of the Second have been described as “an Age of Catastrophe”.378 In Weimar Germany, which was suffering under the multiple burdens of reparations, hyperinflation, political instability, and the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty, the sense of crisis was acute. Sebastian Haffner, in his personal account of the period 1914- 1933, characterizes the atmosphere in Germany towards the end of 1923 – the year in which Das Spinnennetz was written – as apocalyptic:379

Kein Volk der Welt hat etwas erlebt, was dem deutschen ‘1923’-Erlebnis entspricht. Den Weltkrieg haben alle erlebt, die meisten auch Revolutionen, soziale Krisen, Streiks, Vermögensumschichtungen, Geldentwertungen. Aber keins die phantastische, groteske Übersteigerung von alledem auf einmal, die 1923 in Deutschland stattfand. Keins diesen gigantischen karnevalistischen Totentanz, dieses nicht endende blutig-groteske Saturnalienfest, in dem nicht nur das Geld, in dem alle Werte entwertet wurden.380

This devaluation of values, the questioning of morality and an “epochal consciousness of the end”381 was strongly reflected in the literature and philosophy of the early 1920s, manifest in images of apocalypse and redemption. Thomas Mann recalled that “just after the First World War the Germans, unlike the French, had little better to do than to dream of apocalypses,”382 a recollection which highlights the uniqueness of the German post-war experience. Klaus

376 Marchand, Wertbegriffe 66. For a similar interpretation of Lenz see Magris, Weit von wo 228. 377 Marchand, Wertbegriffe 66. 378 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914-1991 (New York: Pantheon, 1994) 6. 379 Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen 64. 380 Haffner, Geschichte eines Deutschen 53. 381 David Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending. Apocalyptic Perspectives in the 20th-century German Novel,” Orbis Litterarum 32 (1977): 147. Roberts refers to the period 1914-1945 as “the apocalyptic epoch”: Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending,” 157. 382 Thomas Mann, Die Entstehung des Doktor Faustus (Amsterdam, 1949); cited in Anson Rabinbach, In the Shadow of Catastrophe. German Intellectuals between Apocalypse and Enlightenment (Berkeley; Los Angeles; London: University of California Press, 1997) 10.

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Vondung, in his comprehensive study of apocalyptic literature in Germany, likewise argues that while the First World War was experienced in almost all participating countries as an apocalyptic event, in Germany the artistic expression of this experience was much more extensive.383 Vondung demonstrates that this was not just a post-war phenomenon but had a long tradition in Germany, stretching back to the birth of German nationalism in the Napoleonic Wars. Indeed, Vondung uncovers “eine grundsätzliche Neigung zu apokalyptischer Weltsicht” in the political movements and ideologies which have determined the course of Germany history over the past two centuries, including not only National Socialism but also movements and ideologies which can be described as “socialist” in direction.384 German art and literature have long shown a fascination with the apocalypse, drawing on the biblical paradigm with its dualistic vision of the old world which is corrupt and evil and the new which is pure and good:385

Die Literatur ist voll von apokalyptischen Visionen; sie entfalteten sich in den Liedern der Befreiungskriege gegen Napoleon wie in den Gedichten des Ersten Weltkriegs, in Wagners Götterdämmerung wie in den Dramen des Expressionismus, in Romanen des Fin de siècle wie in denen der zwanziger Jahre.386

The dominant characteristic of both the archetypal apocalypse and modern apocalyptic texts is the stark dualism between the old and new worlds: “Stets kam es der Apokalypse letztlich auf diese neue Welt an; die Apokalypse war eine Erlösungsvision.”387 The dualism in apocalyptic texts is qualitative: the old world is deficient, full of misery, pain and death, and the new world is “vollkommen, eine Welt des Glücks, der Freude und des Lebens.”388 Further,

[d]er Dualismus bestimmt das Gefüge der Handlung und wirkt sich zeitlich aus: Er konstituiert ein ‘Vorher’ und ‘Nachher’, zwischen dem es keine Vermittlung, sondern nur den radikalen Umschlag der ‘Wandlung’ gibt, die

383 Klaus Vondung, Die Apokalypse in Deutschland (München: DTV, 1988) 13-14. See also Weisbrod, who remarks that in the 1920s “[t]he German mind was obsessed with the Great War”: Weisbrod, “Violence and Sacrifice,” 5. 384 Vondung, Apokalypse 10-11. 385 Vondung, Apokalypse 22. 386 Vondung, Apokalypse 11. 387 Vondung, Apokalypse 11. See also Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending,” 141. 388 Vondung, Apokalypse 22. See also Gerschom Scholem, “Towards an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism,” in The Messianic Idea in Judaism. And Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1971), 6.

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umfassende Erneuerung durch Vernichtung des Alten.389

This dualism, which is present in the texts analyzed by Vondung and which according to him only disappears in the nuclear age when the apocalypse becomes total and final, signifying the “Untergang der Menschheit, das Ende der Welt”,390 is absent from Roth’s novel, indeed from all three of the early novels, which are linked by their apocalyptic imagery. What does the absence of an “Erlösungsvision” in these texts signify?

As seen through Benjamin’s eyes, “das junge Europa” (IV, 117) is ripe for the apocalypse:

Rings um Benjamin verkümmerten die Wachsenden und wurden nicht reif; haßten die Gereiften einander; verdorrten die Guten und die Güte; vertrockneten die Säuglinge; Greise wurden in den Straßen zertreten; Frauen verkauften ihre kranken Leiber; Bettler protzten mit ihrem Gebrest, Reiche mit ihren Banknoten; geschminkte Jünglinge verdienten auf der Straße; Arbeiter schlichen mit krankem Schattenschritt zur Arbeit wie längst Gestorbene, die den Fluch ihres irdischen Tagewerkes weiterschleppen müssen, andere betranken sich, heulten wahnsinnigen Jubel in den Straßen, letzte Jauchzer vor dem Untergang […] (IV, 116)

There is no “Erlösungsvision” in the text to counter this portrayal of utter moral decay. Vondung argues that where a belief in the possibility of a better world to replace the corrupt world of the present is lacking, both history and present suffering (which only derives meaning from the prospect of redemption) are rendered meaningless: “Eine große Leere entsteht, und es droht der Sturz in die Verzweiflung.”391 In Das Spinnennetz, Lenz himself shows no signs of despair, working actively to accelerate the approaching apocalypse,392 and his paradoxical simultaneous feelings of love and hatred are indicative of his exultation:

Oh, wie liebte sie393 Benjamin Lenz! Wie durfte er sie hassen und ihren Haß nähren und großzüchten! Er sah den grausamen Lebendigen und roch den Moder voraus. Benjamin wartet, sie werden ihm anheimfallen. Sie werden einander zerfleischen, er wird es erleben. (IV, 117)

389 Vondung, Apokalypse 22. 390 Vondung, Apokalypse 11. 391 Vondung, Apokalypse 489. 392 “An ‘seinem Tag’ mußte in ganz Europa der schlummernde Wahnsinn zum Ausbruch gekommen sein. Also vergrößerte er Verwirrung, steigerte Freude am Blut, Lust am Töten, verriet einen an den anderen, beide dem dritten und diesen auch. […] Er arbeitete für seinen Tag.” (IV, 111) 393 “sie” here refers to both “die Zeit” and “die Menschen”.

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However, while Lenz appears untouched by any sense of desolation, the text itself ends with a devastating lack of hope. The only hint in the novel of the new world which will dawn to replace the old after its destruction is in Benjamin’s surname, a poetic word for spring.394 In a feuilleton published in the same year as Das Spinnennetz, Roth uses the word “Lenz” and draws the attention to the life-giving associations of this season: “Der Frühling, auch ‘Lenz’ genannt, ist die schönste Jahreszeit, die Saison der Kuckuckskonzerte und des Lerchengesanges, der grünen Welt- und Wiesenkostüme und der göttlichen Blütenfabrikation.”395 Roth refers in this text to “die bekannte Auferstehung der Natur”, but only to ironically juxtapose this poetic image with the reality of widespread poverty and the injustice of the gulf between rich and poor:

Die Sonne, ein radikal sozialistischer Leuchtkörper, eines der wenigen Objekte dieser Welt, deren private Ausbeutung deshalb noch nicht gelungen ist, weil es keine Groß-Himmels-Grundbesitzer gibt, diese Sonne nimmt sich die Freiheit, allen Menschen gleich zu leuchten und die dürre Haut des Hungernden ebenso zu wärmen wie den fetten Bauch des Satten. […] Auch am Kurfürstendamm offenbart sich der Anbruch des Frühlings: Die Bettler enthüllen ihre Gebrechen und vornehmen Spaziergänger ihre Frühlingstoiletten. (I, 961-62)

Spring is thus “die schönste Jahreszeit” only for the wealthy, and Roth implicitly criticizes German writers for not concerning themselves with these inequities when he refers to the fact that they make a living from singing hymns to the beauty of nature.396

Just as he begins this piece evoking the traditional connotations of spring as new life only to negate them by exposing the reality which lies beneath the surface, in Das Spinnennetz Roth uses Benjamin Lenz’s name in conjunction with the apocalyptic imagery in the text not to suggest that a new and better world will indeed replace the corrupt one he has portrayed, but to negate this possibility:

Ja, es kam der Frühling. Man fühlte ihn schon auf den Straßen, in der Mitte schmolz der Schnee, und an den Rändern bedeckte ihn eine graue Kruste.

394 Cf. Ochse, who also explains the biblical connotations of the name Benjamin and concludes: “Die Kombination der Namen ‘Benjamin’ und ‘Lenz’ betont die Bedeutung ihres Trägers als Figur der Zukunft, als Hoffnungsträger”: Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 89. 395 Joseph Roth, “Der Frühling, die schönste Jahreszeit. Eine Hausarbeit”, Vorwärts, 24.3.1923 (I, 961). 396 “Es ereignet sich, von Lyrikern in Reimen begrüßt, die bekannte Auferstehung der Natur […]. die ‘linden Lüfte’, von denen die deutschen Dichter leben.” (I, 961).

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Aber die Hungrigen, die Entwichenen, die geflüchteten Häftlinge und die Arbeiter, die noch vor der Verhaftung die Flucht aus ihrer Heimat ergriffen hatten und in der großen Stadt unerkannt zu verschwinden hofften, die Frauen, deren Männer getötet waren, die jüdischen Emigranten aus dem Osten, die jede Eisenbahn meiden mußten – sie fühlten den Frühling wie ein dreifaches Weh. Mit dem singenden Frost des Winters hatten sie sich befreundet, mit dem knisternden Schnee, seinen zärtlichen Flocken, aber den scharfen Wind, der in sich die kommenden Regen des Aprils trug, der die Kleider zerbiß und in die Poren der Haut drang, ertrugen sie nicht. Nieder fielen sie in den Straßen, und das Fieber schüttelte sie, mit klappernden Kiefern erwarteten sie die letzte Stunde, und dann lagen sie starr auf den Straßen, und mitleidige Flüchtlinge, die später kamen, begruben die Leichen in den Feldern, des Nachts, wenn die Bauern es nicht sahen. Wie ein lächelnder Mörder ging der Frühling durch Deutschland. […] (IV, 142-43)

With any hope of a new world to replace the old thus negated, Lenz represents Roth’s recognition of the ambivalence of the apocalypticism which was so prevalent in post-war Germany: it protests against injustice, oppression and human suffering and yet its consequences can be deadly. Despite his condemnation of the contemporary state of Germany, Roth cannot commit himself to the apocalyptic vision due to this central paradox. His rejection of the paradigm accounts for both the ambiguity of Lenz as a foil to Lohse and the open end to the novel. The only glimmer of hope is expressed in the final line: “Viele Lokomotiven pfiffen irgendwo auf Geleisen.” (IV, 146) This image suggests that while all might be lost in Germany, perhaps elsewhere – in the France Roth was soon to venerate in “Die weißen Städte” – refuge might be sought from the barbarism of Germany. That this is a faint hope is reflected in the fact that Benjamin has referred to his brother’s explosives as being intended “[f]ür Europa” (IV, 145).

Inequality and the Socialist Revolution: Hotel Savoy

Roth’s concern with the apocalypticism which is so prevalent in 1920s Germany is also evident in his second novel, Hotel Savoy, but this time he turns his attention to the apocalyptic impulse inherent in the idea of socialist revolution. More than any other text, this novel shows Roth’s scepticism about socialism as a solution to the problems of social and economic inequality facing Central Europe, problems which are given symbolic expression in the hotel of the novel’s title:

Wie die Welt war dieses Hotel Savoy, mächtigen Glanz strahlte es nach außen, Pracht sprühte aus sieben Stockwerken, aber Armut wohnte drin in

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Gottesnähe, was oben stand, lag unten, begraben in luftigen Gräbern, und die Gräber schichteten sich auf den behaglichen Zimmern der Satten, die unten saßen, in Ruhe und Wohligkeit, unbeschwert von den leichtgezimmerten Särgen. (IV, 168)

In what seems to be a “Bild eines umgekehrten Sozialgefälles”,397 the inhabitants are housed hierarchically on the hotel’s seven floors: the affluent live on the three lower floors and the poorer on the higher levels, with the poorest on the top floor next to the laundry where the air is so bad that the inhabitants die at a young age. This paradoxical arrangement is consistent with the numerous other contradictions and incongruities of the novel, from Ignatz “der Liftboy, ein älterer Mann” (IV, 150) to Gabriel Dan, a Heimkehrer who is unable to leave the Hotel Savoy, to the hotel itself which is “ein reicher Palast und ein Gefängnis” (IV, 236).398 It is, however, only a “scheinhafte[...] Umkehr der Verhältnisse”:399 the rich are still rich, the poor still poor. But the very fact that the unexpected vertical arrangement of the hotel does not reflect a real reversal of class relations is significant in itself: it suggests that although the war and its chaotic aftermath seem quite literally to have turned everything upside down, appearances are deceptive and the chaos simply masks a continuity in social and economic inequity from pre-war times.400 The mistaken belief that the present represents something quite different from the past is reflected in the narrator Gabriel’s sense that as he floats up in the lift towards his room he has left the misery and privation of the past behind: “Ich […] werfe Bitterkeit, Armut, Wanderung, Heimatlosigkeit, Hunger, Vergangenheit des Bettlers hinunter – tief, woher es mich, den Emporschwebenden, nimmermehr erreichen kann.” (IV, 150) His impression is false, as he subsequently discovers: he has not left poverty and hunger in the past at all – it accompanies him to his sixth floor room and is even worse on the seventh where Stasia is about to forfeit her third suitcase to Ignatz (IV, 168) and the Santschin family lives in abject poverty next to the laundry. In this novel, then, as in Das Spinnennetz, Roth challenges the view that the war marks a break dividing the present from a very

397 Gotthart Wunberg, “Joseph Roths Roman Hotel Savoy (1924) im Kontext der Zwanziger Jahre,” in Joseph Roth. Interpretation Rezeption Kritik, ed. Michael Kessler and Fritz Hackert (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1990), 454. 398 Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 454, 459. 399 Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 454. 400 The clocks which show different times on each floor of the hotel are a metaphor for times which seem so different, but in reality are not. (IV, 152)

94 Chapter 2: The Early Novels different past.401 As he put it in a feuilleton written towards the end of 1919, although the first year after the war was referred to as “das Jahr der Erneuerung”, it is at most a case of “Neuerungen”, without any real change:

Erneuerung! Erneuerung! Wo, frage ich, seht Ihr Erneuerung? Ist das Erneuerung, wenn die Burgmusik um die Mittagsstunde statt zur Burg zum Staatsamt für Heerwesen zieht? Wenn ein Minister Staatssekretär heißt? Wenn der Briefträger nicht ‘Diener’ mehr, sondern ‘Unterbeamter’ ist? Reißt ihm doch die Knechtseligkeit aus seiner armen, gemarterten Brust, und er mag heißen, wie er will, er wird kein Diener sein! Gebt dem armseligen Hirn des Staatssekretärs Weitsichtigkeit und Vernunft und laßt ihn nur Minister heißen!402

The fact that inequality and poverty are not new but are a manifestation of the continuity between past and present is reflected in Gabriel’s memory of his father’s resentment towards his rich uncle Phöbus who is, as Abel Glanz remarks, “ein reicher Mann mit einem kleinen Herzen” (IV, 171):

Den Namen Phöbus hatte jedes Famlienmitglied mit Respekt genannt, es war, als hätte man wirklich vom Sonnengott gesprochen; nur mein Vater sprach immer von ‘Phöbus, dem Lump’ – weil er angeblich mit der Mitgift der Mutter Geschäfte gemacht hatte. (IV, 154)

Gabriel’s visits to his uncle to request money for his journey home mirror in reverse his uncle’s visits to Gabriel’s family before the war. In both cases the visitor lives in a hotel and comes to drink tea with the family, and in both cases the wealthy uncle distinguishes himself by his lack of generosity, crying poor and giving as little as possible – then a few coins (IV, 155), now an old suit which his wife, not he, offers to Gabriel and which Phöbus does not even remember possessing, so many suits does he own (IV, 159). Gabriel’s financial difficulties have been exacerbated by the war but his family was already suffering, as the reference to his father having died “im Siechenhaus” indicates (IV, 158). The lines of continuity between past and present are given metaphoric expression in Gabriel’s words to Henry Bloomfield, who has been visiting his father’s grave:

401 By contrast, Jürgens argues that Roth only begins to understand that despite the war and the revolution there has been no “Zäsur” with Die Rebellion; both Das Spinnennetz and Hotel Savoy, he contends, are concerned solely with the present: Jürgens, Gesellschaftskritische Aspekte 23-24. 402 Joseph Roth, “Das Jahr der Erneuerung”, Der Neue Tag, 12.11.1919 (I, 172). Such changes in appearance and name rather than substance are encapsulated in the novel in the mysterious and invisible hotel owner Kaleguropulos, who in reality is the ostensible lift-boy Ignatz. The new Republic of Austria, Roth is saying, is a Republic in name only. Nothing has really changed; gross inequity persists.

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“‘Das Leben hängt so sichtbar mit dem Tod zusammen und der Lebendige mit seinen Toten. Es ist kein Ende da, kein Abbruch – immer Fortsetzung und Anknüpfung.’” (IV, 227) It is an idea to which Roth will return in Radetzkymarsch as he tries to understand how the present developed from the past, and which in Hotel Savoy is even reflected in Gabriel’s apparently arbitrary switching between the present and past tenses in his narration.

“Man wartete also auf Bloomfield”:403 Waiting and Inaction

For Gabriel the first glimpse of the Hotel Savoy promises

Wasser, Seife, englisches Klosett, Lift, Stubenmädchen in weißen Hauben, freundlichblinkende Nachtgeschirre wie köstliche Überraschungen in braungetäfelten Kästchen; elektrische Lampen, aus rosa und grünen Schirmen erblühend wie aus Kelchen; schrillende Klingeln, die einem Daumendruck gehorchen; und Betten, daunengepolsterte, schwellend und freudig bereit, den Körper aufzunehmen. (IV, 149)

Having discovered that his initial impression was only partly true and that this hotel, which had seemed to him “[e]uropäischer als alle anderen Gasthöfe des Ostens” (IV, 149), does not extend the same level of comfort to all its inhabitants, Gabriel encounters real and widespread poverty on the streets outside:

Glanz führte mich durch unbekannte Gäßchen, an Höfen vorbei, verwahrlosten Gehöften, freien Plätzen, auf denen Schutt und Mist lagerte, Schweine grunzten, mit kotigen Mäulern Atzung suchend. Grüne Fliegenschwärme summten um Haufen dunkelbraunen Menschenkotes. Die Stadt hatte keine Kanäle, es stank aus allen Häusern, und Glanz prophezeite plötzlich Regen aus allerlei Gerüchen. (IV, 171)

Roth’s intention to call attention to the miserable circumstances in which the poor live is unmistakable in this and other similar passages of the novel. Yet he wants to do more than simply highlight social suffering. His main concern is to address the reaction of various types of people to the situation with which they are faced. While Wunberg considers resignation to be “die Grundstimmung von Roths Roman”,404 in fact Roth differentiates between three types of response to the problems of poverty and suffering – and finds all wanting: resignation and inaction coupled with a messianic belief in fate (the townspeople); apolitical apathy (Gabriel); and revolutionary socialism (Zwonimir Pansin).

403 Roth, Hotel Savoy (IV, 207). 404 Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 455.

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Some people, like Taddeus Montag, are simply resigned to their suffering:

Nun bin ich schon ein paar Wochen hier, und neben mir hungerte Taddeus Montag, und niemals schrie er. Die Menschen sind stumm, stummer als die Fische, früher einmal riefen sie noch, wenn ihnen etwas weh tat, aber im Laufe der Zeit gewöhnten sie sich das Rufen ab. (IV, 221)

Yet although they seem resigned, many are also waiting for salvation. Indeed, the overwhelming impression the reader of Hotel Savoy forms is that everybody in the town is waiting: “[sie] warten darauf, daß es weitergeht, besser wird, oder Bloomfield kommt, der die Situation mit einem Schlag verändert.” 405 Gabriel first hears of the impending visit of Henry Bloomfield from Hirsch Fisch, the lottery dreamer:406 “‘Haben Sie das Neueste gehört: Bloomfield kommt!’ […] Bloomfield ist ein Kind dieser Stadt, Milliardär in Amerika. Die ganze Stadt ruft: Bloomfield kommt!’” (IV, 165) While the wealthy industrialists and business men hope that they will be able to do business with Bloomfield and thus increase their own wealth, the rest of the town’s population is hoping for an easing of their misery. Bloomfield’s coming promises salvation: “Wenn er kam, bewilligte er alle Forderungen, die Erde bekam ein neues Gesicht.” (IV, 207-08) Before his arrival, then, Bloomfield, the Eastern Jewish emigrant turned American capitalist, has all the attributes of a messiah, an almost supernatural saviour or redeemer.407

So high are people’s expectations that a blanket of inertia and inaction descends on the town:

Man erwartet Bloomfield überall: Im Waisenhaus ist ein Schornstein eingestürzt, man richtet ihn nicht, weil Bloomfield jedes Jahr etwas für das Waisenhaus gibt. Kranke Juden gehn nicht zum Arzt, weil Bloomfield die Rechnung bezahlen soll. Am Friedhof hat man eine Erdsenkung bemerkt, zwei Kaufleute sind abgebrannt, die Kaufleute stehen in der Gasse mit ihren Warenballen, es fällt ihnen nicht ein, die Läden zu reparieren – womit sollten

405 Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 456. Wunberg shows how Roth’s novel in this respect is typical of the literature of the 1920s and 1930s, citing ’s trilogy Der Wartesaal and Erich Käster’s Fabian, in which the hero describes his situation before the First World War with the sentence “Ich saß im großen Wartesaal, und der hieß Europa”: quoted in Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 457. 406 The lottery motif itself is evidence of the widespread belief in fate and chance. 407 Vondung details the origins of messianism in Judaism after the political defeat of Israel: “Wen man sich unter diesem Messias vorstellte, ist nicht immer ganz klar; ursprünglich dachte man wohl an einen politischen Führer oder König, der das davidische Königtum erneuern würde, doch im Laufe der Zeit nahm der Messias mehr und mehr die Züge eines übernatürlichen Erlösers an”: Vondung, Apokalypse 39. On the prevalence of messianism among Jewish thinkers before and in the wake of the First World War see Rabinbach, Shadow of Catastrophe 30-34.

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sie zu Bloomfield gehen? Die ganze Welt wartet auf Bloomfield. (IV, 208)

Here Roth’s criticism is unmistakable: in putting their faith in a messianic figure, people are failing to take responsibility for themselves in the present, potentially exacerbating their problems. Roth’s criticism of messianism in this novel runs parallel to his condemnation of apocalypticism in Das Spinnennetz, a fact reflected in names which promise more than they deliver – indeed deliver the opposite of what they appear to promise: just as Benjamin Lenz was linked with a murderous spring, Henry Bloomfield, whose name (Blumenfeld) bears connotations of hope and new life, has not come to bring new life but to visit his father’s grave (IV, 227). Bloomfield receives countless requests for help while in the town but gives money to none of them (IV, 223),408 and at the first signs of danger he disappears as suddenly as he arrived (IV, 238). The repair work that people have postponed in anticipation of Bloomfield’s coming is a metaphor for the concrete problems of the present which require urgent attention and should not be deferred in the hope that some Erlöser-figure will take responsibility and put things right. That Bloomfield turns out to be a false messiah409 suggests that any such hope is illusory, and messianism amounts to deferring indefinitely the necessary confrontation with the problems of the present. As Rabinbach explains, “[t]he messianic idea implie[s] the radical rejection of any sort of quotidian politics combined with a characteristically apocalyptic attitude, which often incorporate[s] an antipolitics in extremis.”410

The Political Consequences of the Apolitical Gabriel Dan

Gabriel Dan is the first-person narrator of Hotel Savoy: it is through his eyes that the reader experiences the poverty of the town outside the hotel and the disparity between rich and poor inside it. For Sonnleitner Gabriel is a positive figure,

408 The cinema and the “Juxgegenstände” factory are founded without money from Bloomfield (IV, 219-20, 223). As Gabriel points out, neither of these new businesses will help the poor workers: “Die Juxgegenstände waren für die Herrschaften, und ein Spielzeug taugte keinem Arbeiter. Bei den Knallerbsen und brennenden Fröschen und im Kino könnten sie den Neuner vergessen, aber den Hunger nicht.” (IV, 236) 409 Cf. Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 453. 410 Rabinbach, Shadow of Catastrophe 29.

98 Chapter 2: The Early Novels whose flexibility in casting off and assuming identities411 renders him the diametric opposite of the fascist Theodor Lohse from Das Spinnennetz or the authoritarian Andreas Pum in Die Rebellion, with his “Bedürfnis nach Unterordnung”:412 “[Gabriels] Überlebenskunst besteht darin, seine sozialen Identitäten wegzuwerfen, um sich zu bewahren.”413 This assessment accords with Gabriel’s self-portrait:

So vieles kann man in sich saugen und dennoch unverändert an Körper, Gang und Gehaben bleiben. Aus Millionen Gefäßen schlürfen, niemals satt sein, wie ein Regenbogen in allen Farben schillern, dennoch immer ein Regenbogen sein, von der gleichen Farbenskala. Im Hotel Savoy konnte ich mit einem Hemd anlangen und es verlassen als der Gebieter von zwanzig Koffern – und immer noch der Gabriel Dan sein. (IV, 150)

However, the reader must be wary of accepting Gabriel’s narration at face value since it is marred by contradictions. Gabriel does appear to be capable of adapting to the changing circumstances – certainly an advantage in the chaos of post-war Europe – but he also demonstrates a weakness of character and a susceptibility to superstition and fatalism to match that of the town’s inhabitants. He admits as much when Stasia advises him to buy a lottery ticket from Hirsch Fisch, the man who claims to dream the lottery numbers before they are drawn: “Ich lache, weil ich mich schäme, den Wunderglauben zuzugeben, dem ich leicht verfalle. Aber ich bin entschlossen, ein Los zu kaufen, wenn Fisch mir etwas anbieten würde.” (IV, 164) It is through the contradictions between Gabriel’s words and his actions that Roth’s criticism of his narrator emerges, as a man whose passivity and reliance on chance undermines his basic humanity.

Gabriel registers the social injustice around him but does nothing.414 The fact that insight does not lead to action for Gabriel is demonstrated in his chance meeting

411 Sonnleitner quotes from the first page of the novel: “Ich freue mich, wieder ein altes Leben abzustreifen wie so oft in diesen Jahren. Ich sehe den Soldaten, den Mörder, den fast Gemordeten, den Auferstandenen, den Gefesselten, den Wanderer.” (IV, 149) 412 Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 184. 413 Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 183. 414 Cf. Sültemeyer: “Bei ihm handelt es sich um einen Menschen, der soziale Mißstände bewußt registriert, politisch jedoch völlig desinteressiert und passiv bleibt”: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 119.

99 Chapter 2: The Early Novels with Bloomfield at the cemetery, which reveals to him the real reason for the Jewish emigrant’s visit:

Henry Bloomfield kam seinen toten Vater Jechiel Blumenfeld besuchen. Er kam, um ihm zu danken für die Milliarden, für die Begabung, für das Leben, für alles, was er geerbt hatte. Henry Bloomfield kam nicht, um ein Kino zu gründen oder eine Fabrik für Juxgegenstände. Alle Menschen glauben, er käme des Geldes oder der Fabriken wegen. (IV, 227)

Despite his realization that Bloomfield has not come for the reasons people believe, Gabriel continues to work as Bloomfield’s secretary, interviewing people from the upper levels of the hotel (IV, 228-29).

Gabriel consistently fails to act on his insight, whether on a personal or political level. Despite his attraction to Stasia and affinity for Santschin (a Russian Jew like Gabriel’s parents), Gabriel does nothing to help, although he claims a sense of community with them: “Gewiß, ich lebe in einer Gemeinschaft, ihr Leid ist mein Leid, ihre Armut ist meine Armut.” (IV, 194)415 His reaction to the discovery that Stasia has had to pawn three suitcases to Ignatz because she cannot pay her hotel bill is indicative of the limits of his empathy:

Auf ihrem Nachtkästchen lag eine Rechnung. Sie war ansehnlich; wenn ich sie bezahlen wollte, hätte sie mehr als die Hälfte meiner Barschaft verschlungen. […] Stasia begnügt sich mit zwei Kleidern. Drei Koffer hat sie verpfändet. Ich beschließe, einen Koffer zu kaufen, und ich denke, daß es gut wäre, das Hotel Savoy zu verlassen. (IV, 168)

It is possible that Gabriel intends to buy another suitcase for Stasia in order that she might retrieve one of her own from Ignatz. It is equally possible, however, that he is only thinking of his own potential financial difficulties, especially considering the use of the subjunctive in the first part of the quotation, which indicates that he does not in fact have the slightest intention of paying Stasia’s bill. The end of the chapter, in which Gabriel decides that he no longer likes the hotel, confirms that he has been thinking only of himself:

Ich gehöre zu den hoch Begrabenen. Wohne ich nicht im sechsten Stockwerke nur? Nicht acht, nicht zehn, nicht zwanzig? Wie hoch kann man noch fallen? In den Himmel, in endliche Seligkeit? ‘Sie sind so weit von hier’, sagt Stasia.

415 As Sültemeyer has observed, this “Geständnis kommt unvermittelt und sehr eilig” after Zwonimir’s criticism of Gabriel’s apathy and is thus suspect: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 118.

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‘Verzeihen Sie’, bitte ich, ihre Stimme hat mich gerührt. (IV, 168)

His assertion that Stasia’s voice has moved him conflicts with the obvious self- centredness of his reflection.

This passage also provides an example of Gabriel’s ostensible decisiveness which is rarely acted upon: he decides to buy a suitcase and thinks that it would be good to leave the hotel, but he does neither. This inconsistency is typical of Gabriel, who repeatedly uses phrases such as “Ich war entschlossen” (IV, 149) and “Ich beschloß” (IV, 152, 155, 157) but fails to put his decisions into action, and asserts that he is going to leave the Hotel Savoy and the town but fails to do so (IV, 162, 183, 187, 195, 216, 217, 218). Finally, Gabriel excuses himself for his failure to form a relationship with Stasia, although it was clear that each of them was interested:

Ich bin kein Eroberer und kein Anbeter. Wenn sich mir etwas gibt, nehme ich es und bin dankbar dafür. Aber Stasia bot sich mir nicht. Sie wollte belagert werden. […] Ich kümmerte mich zuviel um das Hotel Savoy und um die Menschen, um fremde Schicksale und zuwenig um mein eigenes. Hier stand eine schöne Frau und wartete auf ein gutes Wort, und ich sagte es nicht, wie ein verstockter Schulknabe. (IV, 231)

Even this admission of fault contains inconsistencies and contradictions: Gabriel is indeed interested in the people around him, but in the sense that he is inquisitive, not because he is particularly concerned. Sültemeyer’s conclusion in this regard is apt: “Er interessiert sich für vieles, aber er engagiert sich für nichts.”416 Furthermore, immediately after expressing a sense of regret and responsibility towards Stasia he blames her for his obstinacy and retracts his regret:

Ich war verstockt. Mir war, als ob Stasia schuld wäre an meiner langen Einsamkeit, und sie konnte es ja gar nicht wissen. Ich warf ihr vor, daß sie keine Seherin war. (IV, 231)

A pattern emerges: despite his insight into Bloomfield’s real motivation for visiting the town, Gabriel continues to perform a which is superfluous and will not help any of Bloomfield’s supplicants; despite his insight into Stasia’s

416 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 119.

101 Chapter 2: The Early Novels reticence, he fails to act and blames her for his own intransigence and inertia. Similarly, despite registering the poverty and social injustice which surrounds him, he fails to do anything about it, thus indirectly supporting “die unsoziale Willkür und den politischen Einfluß der Fabrikbesitzer.”417 What Sonnleitner interprets as flexibility – the ability to cast off social identities and adapt – can also be interpreted as indolence: the attitude that it is easier to just accept things as they are and go with the flow than to make decisions and act on them. He is like the other Heimkehrer, whom he describes as being “herangespült wie bestimmte Fische zu bestimmten Jahreszeiten.” (IV, 202) Gabriel might be “auf der Flucht vor [seiner] Instrumentalisierung durch die Macht”,418 but his apolitical passivity has real political consequences.419

“Ich will hier eine Revolution machen”:420 Zwonimir’s Revolution

Sültemeyer contends that Roth’s criticism of Gabriel’s political indifference stems from the revolutionary situation of the immediate post-war period, in which “politische Aktivität [wird] mit einem Kampf gegen die bestehende unmenschliche Ordnung gleichgesetzt. Daher verhält sich der ‘Unpolitische’ letztlich reaktionär.”421 In recognizing Roth’s condemnation of Gabriel’s inaction, however, she implies that the author condones the revolutionary activities of Zwonimir Pansin, “der im Gegensatz zu Gabriel willensstark und tatkräftig ist.”422 Yet Roth is just as critical of Zwonimir’s revolution as he is of Gabriel’s apathy: it achieves nothing but death and destruction:423 at the end of the novel the hotel has burned down and Neuner’s house has been destroyed, but Neuner has escaped with his family (IV, 240) and Zwonimir appears to have died in the fire. 424

417 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 120. 418 Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 184. Sonnleitner includes Benjamin Lenz in this assessment. 419 Cf. Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 120. 420 Roth, Hotel Savoy (IV, 193). 421 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 120. 422 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 117. Wunberg similarly points to Zwonimir as “das Gegenstück zu Gabriel”: “Er läßt sich nicht treiben, er nimmt die ungerechten sozialen Zustände nicht hin, er handelt”: Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 451. 423 Cf. Koester: “Es ist eine sinnlos anarchistische Aktion, die keine Lösung in Aussicht stellt”: Rudolf Koester, Joseph Roth (Berlin: Colloquium, 1982) 35. 424 Cf. Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 451.

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In Das Spinnennetz Roth had already drawn a parallel between the violent potential of the radical right and that of revolutionaries and had been critical of both. In Hotel Savoy, he critically examines the motives behind left-wing revolutionary violence through Zwonimir, “ein Revolutionär von Geburt” (IV, 191). Readers who accept Gabriel’s portrayal of his friend must form a positive impression of this man of action. Gabriel expresses approval of and even admiration for Zwonimir, declaring “Ich bewundere Zwonimirs Fähigkeiten.” (IV, 195)425 However, Roth subtly indicates that the reader should be wary of placing too much confidence in Gabriel’s depiction through passages in which Zwonimir appears as a larger-than-life character:

Er hat eine gesunde Konstitution, geht spät schlafen und erwacht mit dem Morgenwind. Bauernblut rollt in seinem Körper, er besitzt keine Uhr und weiß immer die Stunde genau, fühlt Regen und Sonne voraus, riecht entfernte Brände und hat Ahnungen und Träume. (IV, 194-95)

Here, Gabriel’s admiration of a man who is very much his opposite leads him to embellish his description of his friend’s virtues. The description calls to mind the educated middle-class’s romanticization of the peasantry. Gabriel’s veneration of his friend’s “Ahnungen und Träume”, which implies that the dreams have an almost supernatural or mystical quality, is satirized through the account of the content of Zwonimir’s dreams: he dreams that his father has been buried and of a cow dying. Zwonimir’s response to these dreams is to cry – when he has time at the end of the day. That he himself does not believe the dreams is reflected in his rejection of Gabriel’s suggestion that they leave so that he can see his father and no longer have bad dreams. The dreams themselves are nothing unusual; they only become so in Gabriel’s eyes.

Roth’s critique of Zwonimir emerges as Gabriel’s narration reveals Zwonimir’s motivation for inciting revolutionary violence. From the moment he declares his intention to “make” a revolution in the town, it appears that he is more interested in the revolution than in its outcome and views the strike as a useful catalyst:

Zwonimir wollte nicht weitergehn. Er wollte hierbleiben; Ihm gefiel der Streik. ‘Ich will hier eine Revolution machen’, sagte Zwonimir, so einfach, als sagte er: Ich will hier einen Brief schreiben.

425 Subsequently Gabriel admits even to envying Zwonimir: “Er ist ein gesunder Mensch. Ich beneide ihn.” (IV, 199)

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Ich erfahre, daß Zwonimir Agitator ist, aus Liebe zur Unruhe. Er ist ein Wirrkopf, aber ehrlich, und er glaubt an seine Revolution. (IV, 193)

Sültemeyer argues that by portraying Zwonimir’s revolutionary zeal as a private whim, Gabriel relieves himself of the need to take any action or even a position in relation to political questions: “Die Revolution ist ‘seine Revolution’, die Laune eines ‘Wirrkopfs’.”426 However, while Sültemeyer’s exposure of Gabriel’s motives is apt, her implication that Zwonimir’s motives are noble is problematic. It is necessary to her interpretation of the early novels as “socialist”, but it is not supported by the text. Zwonimir claims a sense of solidarity with the workers, but his behaviour is full of contradictions and, at the end, it really does appear that he has incited the revolution “aus Liebe zur Unruhe”.

The inconsistency between Zwonimir’s declared political sympathies and his actual beliefs is revealed in his response to Gabriel’s story of the Santschins:

Ich zeige ihm den siebenten Stock und den Dunst der Waschküche und erzähle ihm von Santschin und dem Esel am Grab. Diese Geschichte gefällt ihm am besten, Santschin tut ihm gar nicht leid, über den Esel lacht er, des Nachts, während er sich auskleidet. (IV, 196)

Zwonimir does not care about Santschin’s death from the bad air of the laundry, but he later uses it to incite the wrath of the workers and Heimkehrer:

Mein Freund Zwonimir geht in die Baracken, denn er liebt Aufregung und Unruhe und vergrößert sie. Er erzählt den Hungernden von den Reichen, schimpft auf den Fabrikanten Neuner und erzählt von den nackten Mädchen in der Bar des Hotels Savoy. Du übertreibst ja’, sage ich zu Zwonimir. ‘Das muß man tun, sonst glauben sie einem nichts’, sagt er. Er erzählt vom Tod Santschins so, als wäre er dabeigewesen. Er hat eine Kraft zu schildern, der Atem des wahrhaftigen Lebens geht von seinen Reden aus. (IV, 204)

Once more, Gabriel has only admiration for his friend, but Zwonimir’s moving tale of Santschin’s terrible death rings hollow given his earlier lack of concern. In truth he is guilty of instrumentalizing the misery of others for his own ends, even his own amusement. His proposal to kill Bloomfield is not motivated by any misplaced belief that it will somehow ease the plight of the poor but is a whim, as

426 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 117.

104 Chapter 2: The Early Novels he explains to Gabriel: “‘So zum Spaß, das ist ja keine geschäftliche Idee, und sie hat auch keinen Zweck.’” (IV, 225)

Zwonimir acts contrary to socialist principles when he enters into a foreign currency deal with Kanner. The fact that he dresses in “eine[...] russische[...] Militärbluse” (IV, 196) for the occasion further highlights the contradiction between Zwonimir’s principles and his actions. The lack of respect he shows for Kanner, Alexander and the regular bar guests (IV, 197) is amusing but has no real effect, since he is seen to do business with Kanner. He declares the Savoy to be “‘[e]in herrliches Hotel’” (IV, 199) and does not protest against the treatment of the naked women, instead enjoying the spectacle and giving them cake crumbs, like a latter-day Marie-Antoinette:

Der Fabrikant Neuner fand keine Lust an Tonka, die nackten Mädchen kamen zutraulich an unsern Tisch und pickten Zwonimir aus der Hand. Er fütterte sie mit Gebäck, zerbröckeltem Kuchen und ließ sie an verschiedenen Schnapsgläsern nippen. (IV, 197)

According to Gabriel’s depiction, the revolution comes from the East like a natural and unstoppable force: “Sie kommt aus dem Osten – und keine Zeitung und kein Militär kann sie aufhalten.” (IV, 236) Perhaps nothing and nobody can stop it, but Zwonimir does his best to inflame it, goading the Heimkehrer into action:

‘Das Hotel Savoy […] ist ein reicher Palast und ein Gefängnis. Unten wohnen in schönen, weiten Zimmern die Reichen, die Freunde Neuners, des Fabirkanten, und oben die armen Hunde, die ihre Zimmer nicht bezahlen können und Ignatz die Koffer verpfänden. […] Wir haben alle schon lange Jahre nicht in so schönen, weichen Betten gelegen wie die Herrschaften im Parterre des Hotels Savoy. Wir haben alle schon lange nicht so schöne, nackte Mädchen gesehn wie die Herren unten in der Bar des Hotels Savoy. Diese Stadt ist ein Grab der armen Leute. Die Arbeiter des Fabrikanten Neuner schlucken den Staub der Borsten, und alle sterben im fünfzigsten Jahr ihres Lebens.’ ‘Pfui!’ schreien die Heimkehrer. (IV, 236)

All of this is true – except that Zwonimir himself is staying at this hotel and has certainly seen the beautiful naked girls every evening in the bar where he has socialized with the wealthy industrialists. With his portrayal of Zwonimir Roth is criticizing the leaders of socialist revolutionary movements who themselves do

105 Chapter 2: The Early Novels not live the life of workers and can have little understanding of their real suffering.

The socialist utopia is also a form of apocalypse, justifying violent revolution with a vision of post-revolutionary socialist perfection – redemption. As Vondung explains,

[d]er Erste Weltkrieg verschärfte die Erfahrungen der Gewalt, der Not und des Hungers; der ‘Geist der [sozialistischen] Utopie’ gewann dadurch zusätzlich apokalyptische Dynamik, die nach dem Ende des Krieges voll zum Ausbruch kam.427

The fixation on the revolution and the “Zustand der Vollkommenheit” which would follow it often impeded socialists from accurately gauging political realities and acting appropriately.428 This shortcoming is revealed in the text through the juxtaposition of Zwonimir’s incitement of the Heimkehrer to violence with the typhoid outbreak which causes the closure of the soup kitchen: “Also bekamen die Hungrigen keine Suppe mehr.” (IV, 237) The implication is that instead of instigating the revolution, people like Zwonimir should concentrate on concrete efforts to help the poor. Furthermore, it seems that Zwonimir’s motivation for inciting the Heimkehrer to attack the hotel is that he will then not have to pay his bill: “Wir wissen, daß wir das Hotel Savoy nicht mehr wiedersehn. Zwonimir lächelt schlau: ‘Unser Zimmer ist nicht bezahlt!’” (IV, 240)

The violence of the revolution achieves nothing but the death of innocent people. That Zwonimir has at no time had any clear idea of what should follow is indicated in his abstract utopia of America, itself another contradiction of his supposedly socialist principles:429

Er liebte Amerika. Wenn eine Menage gut war, sagte er: Amerika! Wenn eine Stellung schön ausgebaut war, sagte er: Amerika! Von einem ‘feinen’ Oberleutnant sagte er: Amerika. Und weil ich gut schoß, nannte er meine Treffer: Amerika. (IV, 192)

427 Vondung, Apokalypse 246. 428 Vondung, Apokalypse 257. 429 By contrast, Wunberg argues that Zwonimir “als einziger durchschaut alles.” But he agrees that Zwonimir’s revolution has no positive effect: “Aber selbst Zwonimir wird nicht mehr erreichen, als daß ein Hotel brennt, ein Aufstand einen ungewissen Augang nimmt und daß er selbst dabei auf der Strecke bleibt.”: Wunberg, “Hotel Savoy,” 451.

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After the hotel has burned to the ground the abstract utopia has become the Rumanian Jew Abel Glanz’s concrete goal of emigration, implying that Europe is no longer safe, or at least that there is no good reason to stay: “Abel Glanz beginnt: ‘Wenn ich zu meinem Onkel nach New York komme – –’ Amerika, denke ich, hätte Zwonimir gesagt, nur: Amerika.” (IV, 242)

These words give the novel its inconclusive conclusion. Roth’s scepticism about the redemptive possibilities of the socialist revolution is reflected in the fact that Zwonimir’s revolution achieves nothing: Neuner has escaped, this signifying that no damage has been inflicted on capitalist society,430 and Zwonimir has disappeared – presumably he has either died in the fire, as Gabriel believes, or fled the town.431 Like Benjamin Lenz in Das Spinnennetz, Zwonimir is thus guilty of apocalypticism for its own sake. Once again there is no sense at the end of the novel that anything better will follow, a fact underscored by Gabriel’s decision to resume his homeward journey, since he has been unable to force himself to do so while he has seen a reason (or found an excuse) to remain in the town. His question to Abel Glanz, “‘Wissen Sie, daß Ignatz eigentlich Kaleguropulos war?’” (IV, 242) indicates that what was keeping him there was simply his curiosity, in particular about the mysterious and invisible owner of the hotel.432 The fact that Gabriel is now moving again could be taken as a positive sign, since a lack of movement – the suitcases locked up by Ignatz – has been associated with a lack of freedom and the power of self-determination. However, Gabriel still lacks any direction or decision: rather than waiting for a train which will take him to Vienna, his original goal, he is travelling “in einem langsamen Zug mit südslawischen Heimkehrern.” (IV, 242)

430 Cf. Williams, The Broken Eagle 96. 431 Although the last memory Gabriel has of Zwonimir has him shouting “‘Vorwärts!’” (IV, 240), the episode at the train station has shown that it is typical of Zwonimir to command but not actively take part. His self-preservation instinct seems too well developed for him to have died in the fire. 432 Cf. Sültemeyer, who points out that when the hotel is in flames, Gabriel is distracted by a voice calling Kaleguropulos’s name: “Seine Aufmerksamkeit gilt wiederum nicht den revolutionären Vorgängen. Er muß seine persönliche Neugier stillen”: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 119.

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History as Repetition: Die Rebellion

The apocalyptic motif appears once again in Roth’s third novel, Die Rebellion, a bitter and pessimistic protest at the social injustice which characterizes post-war Austria. The relevance of the apocalypse to Roth’s investigation of Viennese society in the immediate aftermath of the war is signalled in the second chapter, when invalids at the military hospital experience “eine unübersichtlich endlose Furcht, wie man sie vor Katastrophen empfindet, die nicht eintreffen wollen und deren Ausbruch eine Erlösung wäre.” (IV, 251) This fear is triggered by the sight of the trembling Bossi, who “hielt alle in der Erwartung seines bald erfolgenden Zusammenbruchs und brach dennoch nicht nieder.” (IV, 250-51) The apocalyptic associations here evoked are transferred to the protagonist Andreas Pum when he too begins to tremble (IV, 252), and are realized at the end of the novel in an ironic conflation of the story of Job and the Day of Judgement, as Andreas, powerless to rebel against the unjust structures of his society, rebels against God in death.

Judgement Day is integral to the apocalypse: it precedes the ushering in of the new ideal world, and “implies the destruction of the present world or of the powers that dominate it.”433 Standing between the old, corrupt world and the new, ideal world, Judgement Day implies progress. In Die Rebellion, however, the apocalyptic vision competes with images of history as endless repetition. David Roberts identifies this “mutual interference of telos and repetition” as central to a number of novels published between 1914 and 1945 and argues that it “reflects an ongoing question mark behind the need to give meaning to contemporary history.”434 Roberts does not discuss Die Rebellion,435 but the observations he makes are relevant to Roth’s novel, in which the futility of one man’s rebellion is mirrored by the impotence implied in the cyclical view of history.

433 Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending,” 141. This quotation is part of a definition provided by Roberts of eschatology, or the doctrine of last things; apocalypticism is one form of eschatology, the others being messianism and millenarianism. Roberts does not provide the source of the definition he quotes. 434 Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending,” 143. 435 The novels Roberts analyzes are: Heinrich Mann, Der Untertan and Die Jugend und Vollendung des Henri Quatre; Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg and Doktor Faustus; Hermann Broch, Die Schlafwandler and , Die Blendung.

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Ordnung versus Freedom

The necessity of the rebellion of the individual against the senseless dictates of an unjust society is implied towards the end of Hotel Savoy:

Es ging ihnen schlecht, den Menschen. Das Schicksal bereiteten sie sich selbst und glaubten, es käme von Gott. Sie waren gefangen in Überlieferungen, ihr Herz hing an tausend Fäden, und ihre Hände spannen sich selbst die Fäden. Auf allen Wegen ihres Lebens standen die Verbotstafeln ihres Gottes, ihrer Polizei, ihrer Könige, ihres Standes. Hier durften sie nicht weitergehn und dort nicht bleiben. Und nachdem sie so ein paar Jahrzehnte gezappelt, geirrt hatten und ratlos gewesen, starben sie im Bett und hinterließen ihre Elend ihren Nachkommen. (IV, 220)

The meaning of this passage hinges on the opposition of Ordnung and freedom or self-determination. Roth does not deny that the lives of the poor are wretched, but here he urges them to recognize the extent to which they are in control of their own destiny, in the sense that in conforming to the dictates of an unjust societal order, they are partly responsible for reproducing that order. Their lack of freedom is thus to some extent self-incurred. Waiting for salvation is not a solution to their problems and neither is the socialist revolution which will bring only chaos and destruction.

This opposition of Ordnung and freedom and the role of the individual in perpetuating his own disadvantage are the central focus of Die Rebellion. The lack of freedom and self-determination of war invalids such as Andreas is signalled in the opening paragraph:

Die Baracken des Kriegsspitals Numero XXIV lagen am Rande der Stadt. Von der Endstation der Straßenbahn bis zum Krankenhaus hätte ein Gesunder eine halbe Stunde rüstig wandern müssen. Die Straßenbahn führte in die Welt, in die große Stadt, in das Leben. Aber die Insassen des Kriegsspitals Numero XXIV konnten die Endstation der Straßenbahn nicht erreichen. (IV, 245)

The inability of the invalids to reach the terminus of the tram that would take them into the city is a metaphor for their exclusion from the benefits of society. For Andreas Pum, the lack of freedom symbolized by his amputated leg is linked with his acceptance of the prevailing Ordnung. He is an authoritarian character like Theodor Lohse but, rather than desiring power, he is content to be “ihr

109 Chapter 2: The Early Novels gehorsamer Untertan […] und dadurch mit ihr in Beziehung zu stehen.”436 He has a naïve faith in the benevolence and the infallibility of the government, and “[ist] mit dem Lauf der Dinge zufrieden,” (IV, 245) satisfied with the special place in society to which he erroneously believes his medal entitles him: “Ein Invalider durfte auf die Achtung der Welt rechnen. Ein ausgezeichneter Invalider auf die der Regierung.” (IV, 245)

That Andreas is mistaken in his understanding of society and his place in it is suggested by his simplistic and muddled conflation of God and the government:

Er glaubte an einen gerechten Gott. Dieser verteilte Rückenmarkschüsse, Amputationen, aber auch Auszeichnungen nach Verdienst. […] Die Regierung ist etwas, das über den Menschen liegt wie der Himmel über der Erde. Was von ihr kommt, kann gut oder böse sein, aber immer ist es groß und übermächtig, unerforscht und unerforschbar, wenn auch manchmal für gewöhnliche Menschen verständlich. (IV, 245)

For Sültemeyer this passage indicates “daß Pums Verhältnis zur Wirklichkeit, zur Regierung ein gläubiges ist, aber das zu Gott ein kalkulierendes”,437 and she argues that religious questions are as important as social criticism in this novel, an early indication of Roth’s interest in religious issues, which intensified in the last twelve years of his life.438 Andreas is conceived by Roth not only as a victim of society, she contends, but as “ein Mensch, in dem sich eine neue Einstellung zu Gott entwickelt.”439 However, as Sültemeyer concedes, nowhere else in his early work does Roth grapple with religious questions. This of itself suggests that the religious motif in Die Rebellion should not be interpreted as a self-contained theme of the novel, as Sonnleitner has convincingly argued.440 The fusion and confusion of God and government in Andreas’s mind reflects Roth’s “Einsicht in die herrschaftssichernde und -stabilisierende Funktion der Kirche und der Klerus.”441 Church and State are for Andreas simply “die Konkretisierungen der

436 Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 179. 437 Ingeborg Sültemeyer, “Eine stille Entwicklung. Gedanken zum Roman Die Rebellion,” in Joseph Roth und die Tradition, ed. David Bronsen (Darmstadt: Agora, 1975), 261. 438 Sültemeyer, “Die Rebellion,” 258-59. 439 Sültemeyer, “Die Rebellion,” 271. 440 Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 180. 441 Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 180.

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Macht, die seine ‘inner standards’ bestimmt.”442 That the language Andreas uses to articulate his understanding of God and the government is inverted is indicative of his inability to view and assess rationally his society and his place within it.

In part this inability is deliberate: Andreas wants his world to be simple and uncomplicated, and he creates a dualistic picture of it in order to relieve himself of the need to think:

Andreas Pum war sehr froh, daß ihm die ‘Heiden’ eingefallen waren. Das Wort genügte ihm, es befriedigte seine kreisenden Fragen und gab Antwort auf viele Rätsel. Es enthob ihn der Verpflichtung, weiter nachdenken und sich mit der Erforschung der anderen abquälen zu müssen. (IV, 246)

The heathens are those who criticize the government: “Sie hatten keinen Gott, keinen Kaiser, kein Vaterland. Sie waren wohl Heiden. ‘Heiden’ ist der beste Ausdruck für Leute, die sich gegen alles wehren, was von der Regierung kommt.” (IV, 246) In the rigidity of his idea of the world, Andreas is one of Roth’s “Menschen im Spinnennetz, die vollkommen in einer bestimmten Denkweise, einer Ideologie, aufgehen, ohne ihre Fixierung überhaupt zu merken”.443 His dualistic conception of society is so strong that not even the disappointment of his expectations or the coming of the revolution can shake it more than temporarily:

Die Prothese kam nicht. Statt ihrer kam die Unordnung, der Untergang, die Revolution. Andreas Pum beruhigte sich erst zwei Wochen später, nachdem er aus den Zeitungen, den Vorgängen, den Reden der Menschen entnommen hatte, daß auch in Republiken Regierungen über die Schicksale des Landes walteten. (IV, 250)

Within the Ordnung of the capitalist society of the fledgling Austrian Republic Andreas’s misconception of his freedom of action is reflected in his delusion that he is an artist, free to play whatever melody he wishes whenever and wherever he chooses:

Es kam so, daß er sein Instrument nicht wie ein mechanisches und sein Spiel als ein Virtuosentum betrachtete. Denn die Sehnsucht, die Bangigkeit, die Trauer seiner Seele legte er in die Hand, welche die Kurbel drehte, und er glaubte, nach Wunsch und Stimmung, stärker und leiser, gefühlvoller oder kriegerischer spielen zu können. […] Andreas Pum war ein echter Musikant.

442 Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 180. 443 Sieg argues that in Roth’s work there are only a few types of people, and that they may be categorized according to the strength of their attachment to particular ideologies. At the two extremes are “die Menschen im Spinnennetz” and “die Anarchisten”: Sieg, Anarchismus und Fiktion 11 and passim.

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(IV, 254-55)

In fact his barrel-organ can play only eight tunes which were selected by the manufacturers (IV, 253),444 and his licence to play the instrument, which for him signifies his comparable standing with the authorities and his freedom granted by these authorities to play when and where he chooses,445 is in effect a licence to beg, which relieves the authorities of the need to provide for him. Thus what for the simple-minded Andreas is a mark of his social standing is for the reader a symbol of social injustice.

The Ordnung of the class society to which Andreas is almost pathologically devoted is also subscribed to by other characters in the novel, from the business man Herr Arnold who has inherited “einen ausgeprägten Sinn für Ordnung” from his forebears (IV, 273), to the director of the prison,446 and even the petty criminal Willi, whose motto is “Ordnung muß sein” (IV, 256, 260, 321) and who is cunning enough to have found a way to turn society’s love of order to his advantage by taking over the organization of “sämtlicher Garderoben, Herren- und Damentoiletten”, as he tells the “Kaffeehausverwaltungen” (IV, 320). The arbitrary character of this Ordnung, which is so willingly accepted as part of the natural order by Andreas, one of its victims, is revealed in the satirical depiction of Andreas’s living arrangement with the Ordnung-loving Willi:

[Willi] blieb den ganzen Tag zu Hause und ließ Andreas nicht vor dem Anbruch der Nacht ins Zimmer. Das begründete er immer mit dem Wort: ‘Ordnung muß sein!’ […] Andreas Pum hatte eine Schlafstelle, aber keine Wohnung. Es ist so in der Welt eingerichtet, daß jeder nur das genießen darf, was er bezahlen kann. Auch Andreas war mit dieser Ordnung zufrieden und kam pünktlich nach Anbruch der Dämmerung. […] Willi lieferte manchmal die Wurst. Denn es ereignete sich nicht selten, daß Willi […] sich vor das Delikatessenhaus begab, an dessen Tür die prallen Würste wie Gehenkte an einem Nagel hingen. Mehr aus Übermut als aus Lust am Diebstahl schnitt Willi dann zwei oder drei Würste ab. Ihn lockten Gefahren und Freude an der eigenen Geschicklichkeit. Man hätte es außerdem als Sünde bezeichnen können,

444 Cf. Bance, “In My End is My Beginning,” 37. 445 “Wir sind sozusagen der Behörde gleichgestellt, dank unserer Lizenz. Wir sind von der Regierung ermächtigt zu spielen, wo und wann es uns gefällt.” (IV, 253) 446 “In diesem Augenblick entdeckte der Herr Direktor, daß der Kübel, in dem Andreas seine Bedürfnisse zu verrichten hatte, nicht neben dem Fenster, sondern in der Nähe der Bank stand, und weil der Herr Direktor die Ordnung fast genauso liebte wie die Menschlichkeit, sagte er streng: ‘Ihre Pflichten aber dürfen Sie nicht vernachlässigen!’ Und genauso wie Willi fügte er hinzu: ‘Ordnung muß sein!’” (IV, 315)

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wenn er das Angebot des Schicksals ausgeschlagen hätte. Andreas ahnte etwas von der Herkunft dieser Würste. Einmal fragte er, woher sie stammten. ‘Iß und schweig’, sagte Willi, ‘Ordnung muß sein.’ Es verstieß glücklicherweise nicht gegen die Ordnung, wenn sich Andreas, während er sein Abendessen verdaute, der Betrachtung der Malereien am Leierkasten hingab. (IV, 256)

Willi’s Ordnung is no more natural than that depicted on Andreas’s barrel-organ, which shows “eine Verzauberung menschlicher Wesen durch ein böses Weib” (IV, 255) and which has become natural for Andreas through repeated exposure:

Andreas hatte niemals an die Möglichkeit solcher Ereignisse in der wirklichen Welt gedacht. Weil er aber das Bildnis häufig betrachten mußte, wurde es ihm vertraut und glaubhaft wie irgendein anderer täglich genossener Anblick. Es war fast nichts mehr Märchenhaftes an solche einer Verzauberung. (IV, 255)

The order of this society, in which each person can access only what he can pay for and to which Andreas so willingly and without the slightest reservation submits, is arbitrary and dictated by those with power and influence. It only seems natural to Andreas because he knows no other order.

The Fallacy of Fate

The acceptance of the order of society as given and natural as well as “unerforscht und unerforschbar” (IV, 245) entails a fatalistic view of life to which Andreas subscribes and which the narrator appears to support but subsequently undermines. Andreas interprets the coincidence that on the day on which he meets the widow Katharina Blumich he also receives far more money than on a usual day’s busking as a sign: “Es war kein Zweifel mehr: Das Glück war zugleich mit der Witwe Blumich in sein Leben getreten.” (IV, 263) It is not luck that leads to Andreas’s marriage, however, but calculation on the part of the widow who accepts the preventable death of her husband the brush factory worker from lung cancer447 as fated and God’s will,448 but who also leaves as little as possible in life to chance and deliberately chooses Andreas over the police inspector Vinzenz

447 Gustav Blumich’s death was preventable insofar as the fact that he developed lung cancer implies that the factory owner had not taken adequate safety measures. What is only implied in Die Rebellion is made explicit by Roth elsewhere, namely in Radetzkymarsch, as well as in Roth’s journalism. 448 “Daß er später lungenkrank wurde, weil er Borstenarbeiter war, war Gottes Wille. Gegen das Schicksal kann man nichts unternehmen […].” (IV, 265)

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Topp: “die Vernunft gebot einen Vogel mit bereits gestutztem Gefieder, der leicht zu halten war und keiner aufregenden Disziplin mehr bedurfte.” (IV, 265)

Andreas believes Katharina’s choice of him is due to his good fortune, but also that this good fortune is well deserved:

Was war er doch für ein Glückspilz! Dergleichen Dinge geschahen nicht alle Tage, es waren keine gewöhnlichen Dinge, es waren Wunder. […]. Aber Andreas war rein an Körper und Seele, wie geimpft gegen Sünden und Leiden durch das Leben gegangen, ein gehorsamer Sohn seines Vaters und später ein gern gehorchender Untergebener seiner Vorgesetzten. Er schielte nicht nach den Gütern der Reichen. […] Dafür belohnte ihn das Schicksal mit einem musterhaften Weibe. Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied. Er verdiente das Gute. Nichts fällt einem so in den Schoß. Rebellen denken so. Sie täuschen sich. Sie fallen immer herein. (IV, 267-68)

At the end of this sixth chapter of the novel, the narrator, still seemingly identifying with Andreas’s point of view and interpretation of events, indicates that Andreas could have lived “in dieser vollendeten Harmonie mit den irdischen und göttlichen Gesetzen” for as many years as he was fated to live,449 had it not been for a chance meeting with a stranger, who came into his life in order to destroy it,

nicht mit dem Willen zum Bösesein, sondern von der Blindheit des Zufalls dazu gezwungen, ein unwissendes Mittel in der Hand des Teufels, der manchmal die göttliche Regierung unterbricht, ohne daß wir es ahnen; so daß wir noch in der tröstlichen Gewißheit, daß ein Gott über uns wacht, unsere stummen Gebete zu ihm hinaufsenden – und uns wundern, wenn sie nicht erhört werden. (IV, 272)

The use of the third person plural wir implies a harmony between the narrator’s and Andreas’s point of view, but the final line of the passage betrays a whisker of doubt on the part of the narrator, suggesting that all is not as it seems to Andreas. Nevertheless, it seems as if the narrator is still identifying with Andreas’s fatalistic point of view at the end of the following chapter, after the reasons for Herr Arnold’s petulance on this day have been portrayed:

Hätte der Herr Arnold, wozu er wohl in der Lage gewesen wäre, ein Auto genommen, um heimzukommen, er wäre der letzten Aufregung dieses furchtbaren Tages entronnen und sein Weg hätte sich nicht unheilvoll mit jenem des Leierkastenmannes Andreas Pum gekreuzt. So aber richtet es ein tückisches Geschick ein: daß wir zugrunde gehen nicht durch unsere Schuld

449 “Mit dieser Verachtung im Herzen hätte Andreas Pum alle die langen oder kurzen Jahre leben können, die ihm vom Schicksal zugedacht waren […].” (IV, 272, emphasis added)

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und ohne daß wir einen Zusammenhang ahnen; durch das blinde Wüten eines fremden Mannes, dessen Vorleben wir nicht kennen, an dessen Unglück wir unschuldig sind und dessen Weltanschauung wir sogar teilen. Er gerade ist nun das Instrument in der vernichtenden Hand des Schicksals. (IV, 280)

However, although the narrator appears to be endorsing a belief in fate, the remark that Herr Arnold would have been in a position to take a car rather than the tram hints that this very belief is about to be tested and exposed as a fallacy, and that Andreas’s “fate” has little to do with chance and everything to do with the structure of the society in which he lives.450 It is due to chance that Andreas and Herr Arnold each take the unusal step of travelling by tram on this day, and it is due to chance that on this very day Herr Arnold has had the unpleasant experience of having “die milde Ordnung seines Lebens” (IV, 273) upset,451 but it is not due to chance or fate that this accidental meeting and the altercation which follows results in Andreas’s imprisonment, as Andreas himself comes to recognize.

Due to his rigidly dualistic worldview, Andreas is forced to consider himself a heathen once he is imprisoned: “Ein Heide ist jetzt Andreas selbst. Er ist verhaftet worden. Man hat ihm die Lizenz genommen. Er ist, ohne Schuld, ein Heide geworden. Würde er sonst im Arrest sitzen?” (IV, 300) A fellow prisoner reveals that Andreas has done everything wrong as a result of his lack of knowledge about the way the world works,452 and as Andreas thinks to himself that he wants to be imprisoned for life, the narrator’s commentary reveals that everything that has happened to Andreas after his chance altercation with Herr Arnold has happened as a result of his place within the structures of society:

Man ist auch so ein Gefangener, Andreas Pum! Wie Fangeisen liegen die Gesetze auf den Wegen, die wir Armen gehen. Und wenn wir auch eine Lizenz haben, so lauern doch die Polizisten in den Winkeln. Wir sind immer gefangen und in der Gewalt des Staates, der Zweibeinigen, der Polizei, der Herren auf den Plattformen der Straßenbahn, der Frauen und der Eselskäufer. (IV, 302)

450 Cf. Bance, “In My End is My Beginning,” 38. 451 Although Arnold’s unpleasant experience with Luigi Bernotat, the fiancé of his secretary, is a result of his own imprudence, Arnold believes it is “eine Schuld dieser Zeit; dieser entsetzlichen Gegenwart, deren Tendenzen dahin gingen, diverse Ordnungen zu zerstören. In welchem Zeitalter der Weltgeschichte wäre es sonst möglich gewesen, daß ein kleines Büromädchen ihren Verlobten zu ihrem Brotgeber schickte?” (IV, 278-79) 452 “‘Du bist sehr dumm’, sagte der Heisere. ‘Du hast alles ganz falsch gemacht. Ich hätte den Herrn verklagt. Man muß sich nur auskennen.’” (IV, 302)

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As a result of his sudden and utterly unexpected transformation into one of the heathens, Andreas is forced to question a worldview he has until this point never doubted, and thus the world seems new to him: “Als Andreas die Straße betrat, glaubte er, die Welt wäre neu angestrichen und renoviert, und er fühlte sich nicht mehr in ihr zu Hause”. (IV, 302) In his own, simple-minded way he begins to recognize that his “fate” is related to the structure of capitalist society when he sees a postal car with an advertisement for cigarettes on its sides:453

Es war der Wagen des Wahnsinns. Der saß im Innern zwischen vier knallgelben und rotbemalten Wänden, und sein Atem wehte verderblich aus dem kleinen Gitterfenster. Wie merkwürdig, daß ich jetzt erst die Zusammenhänge sehe, denkt Andreas. (IV, 303)

Once in his prison cell, Andreas learns to think for himself for the first time. He recognizes that he has lived for forty-five years “in Blindheit […], ohne sich selbst und die Welt zu kennen” and is described as “neugeboren[...]” (IV, 307). He realizes that his belief “[a]n Gott, an die Gerechtigkeit, an die Regierung” (IV, 307) has been misplaced:

[D]ie Welt erwies sich eines Tages nicht so einfach, wie er sie in seiner frommen Einfalt gesehen hatte. Die Regierung war nicht gerecht. […] Offenbar geschah es, daß sie sogar einen Raubmörder auszeichnete, da sie doch Andreas, den Frommen, ins Gefängnis schloß, obwohl er sie verehrte. So ähnlich handelte Gott: er irrte sich. War Gott noch Gott, wenn er sich irrte? (IV, 308)

In his newfound state of curiosity about the operations of the world Andreas finds a piece of newspaper in the yard of the prison, and this scrap of paper, which details the engagements, births and deaths of upper class society, reveals to him “das Geheimnis der Welt” (IV, 309):

Er glaubte zu wissen, daß er in der Zelle saß, weil er keinen von diesen Verlobten, Geborenen und Verstorbenen kannte. Weshalb stand es nicht gedruckt, daß Herr Andreas Pum, Lizenzinhaber, nach ungerechter Behandlung und ohne gehört zu werden, zu sechs Wochen verurteilt war? (IV, 310)

Despite the simplistic nature of Andreas’s conclusions, there is undeniable truth in the connections he now sees between his place in society and the fact that he has been imprisoned. It is due to his misconception of his social standing that Andreas

453 It is not surprising that this part of the novel has (mis)led commentators to label it socialist. However, as in the earlier novels, Roth does not proffer a socialist solution, and the exposure

116 Chapter 2: The Early Novels first expects Herr Arnold to make way for him,454 then fails to show the conductor his licence,455 and finally alienates the police officer, whom he imagines to be a kindred spirit “kraft seiner Lizenz, seiner Weltanschauung und seines Ordens” (IV, 284):

‘Holen Sie erst den da runter!’ – und [Andreas] zeigte auf den Herrn Arnold. Dadurch hatte Andreas jede Sympathie der Polizei von vornherein verwirkt. Denn der Mann, der sich der größten Autorität der Straßenmenge erfreut, liebt es nicht, untergeordneten Menschen – und untergeordnet sind alle Menschen – zu gehorchen, auch wenn sie tausendmal recht haben sollten. (IV, 284)

The working-class conductor sympathizes with Herr Arnold because he has read in the bourgeois press of malingerers456 and supposes Andreas to be one, and because Herr Arnold’s face reminds him of a council official and of a colleague who lost his job after being rude to such an official. The other passengers in the tram support Herr Arnold because his cry “Bolschewik!” reminds them of what they have lost through the revolution: “Es war ihnen, als hätte vorn ein Mitglied ihrer Familie um Hilfe gerufen, als es den Schrei: Bolschewik! ausstieß.” (IV, 283)457 Thus Andreas finds himself in prison not because of fate but because the society in which he lives is full of injustice and inequity.

“als wäre seine […] Freiheit noch ein Kerker”:458 Freedom and Unfreedom

Paradoxically, it is within the confines of his cell that Andreas first experiences a measure of freedom – the freedom that comes of beginning to think for himself.

of social injustice serves a different purpose, as will be shown. 454 “Seine Krücke, sein militärischer Anzug, den er an Wochentagen trug, und sein blankes Kreuz sprachen zu dem Gewissen der Leute […]. In der Straßenbahn begegnete Andreas Pum immer zuvorkommenden Gesichtern.” (IV, 281) 455 “Erstens war ein Schafner kein Polizeiorgan, zweitens dünkte er sich selbst mehr als ein Schaffner, und drittens hätte man den Herrn Arnold zuerst um eine Legitimation fragen müssen.” (IV, 283-84) 456 “Der Schaffner […] überlegte einen Augenblick, wer von den beiden wohl recht haben mochte, und er entsann sich eines Zeitungsartikels, aus dem zu erfahren war, daß die Simulaten geriebene Kerle seien und daß man durch Bettelei unter Umständen viele tausende im Tag verdiene.” (IV, 283) 457 Sieg points out that the Kleinbürger display a knee-jerk reaction to a perceived threat to their Ordnung: “die kleinen Leute in der Straßenbahn [sehen] beim Wort Bolschewik einen Gegner ihrer Welt, ihres Besitzes, ja ihres Lebens (Bolschewik = Raubmörder) vor sich. Inwiefern Andreas mit dem Bild, das sie sich von ihm machen, übereinstimmt, wird nicht mehr kontrolliert. Das Reizwort ‘Bolschewik’ genügt. Denn der Bolschewik steht außerhalb der eigenen Ordnung, da verzichtet man auch auf eine genaue Untersuchung der erhobenen Vorwürfe”: Sieg, Anarchismus und Fiktion 22.

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Andreas experiences a belated individuation, signified in the change of his thinking from wir to ich. Immediately after the incident on the tram, Andreas’s maladroit reflections on the reasons for his ill fortune, related by the narrator in erlebte Rede, are expressed in the first person plural, signifying an inability to conceive of himself as an individual:459

Weshalb straft [Gott] uns mit plötzlicher Ungnade? Wir haben nichts verbrochen und nicht einmal in Gedanken gesündigt. Im Gegenteil: Wir waren immer fromm und ihm ergeben, den wir gar nicht kannten, und priesen ihn unsere Lippen auch nicht alle Tage, so lebten wir doch zufrieden und ohne frevelhafte Empörung in der Brust als bescheidene Glieder der Weltordnung, die er geschaffen. (IV, 290)

In prison, Andreas realizes that in his naïve and simple-minded submissiveness he has allowed himself to be deceived by his parents, his teachers, his superiors in the military and the newspapers, and now, separating himself from those whom he has obeyed since childhood, he experiences himself for the first time as an individual, as his mute dialogue with the birds that come to his cell window reveals:

Ich beugte mich den Gesetzen meines Landes, weil ich glaubte, eine größere Vernunft als die meinige hätte sie ersonnen, und eine große Gerechtigkeit führte sie aus im Namen des Herrn, der die Welt erschaffen. Ach! daß ich länger als vier Jahrzehnte leben mußte, um einzusehen, daß ich blind gewesen war im Lichte der Freiheit, und daß ich erst sehen lernte in der Dunkelheit des Kerkers! (IV, 316)

His recognition of the absurdity of the prison Ordnung which forbids him to feed the birds at the windows because no prisoner has ever asked to do so before, represents a wider recognition of the absurd Ordnung of his society. That the individual cannot be free within what is an inhumane society is expressed in Andreas’s equation of Ordnung with prison: “Seht! ich möchte euch von meinem Brot geben, aber die Ordnung verbietet es. So nennen die Menschen den Kerker. Wißt ihr, was Ordnung ist, kleine Vögel?” (IV, 316)

However, despite his insight, Andreas’s desire to clear his name in another court hearing (IV, 311) suggests that ultimately he will be unable to break free from the

458 Roth, Die Rebellion (IV, 317). 459 Sieg interprets the same manner of speaking in Herr Arnold as signifying his inability to conceive of an Ordnung other than his own: “Die eigene Meinung wird zur Meinung einer Allgemeinheit”: Sieg, Anarchismus und Fiktion 17.

118 Chapter 2: The Early Novels constraints of the ideology to which he has subscribed his whole life. Once he is released from prison, he shows himself to be no more free from society’s dictates than before, although he sees himself as rebelling “gegen die ungeschriebenen und dennoch heiligen Gesetze der irdischen und der Bahnordnung” (IV, 317) when he buys a second class ticket and fixes the well-dressed passengers with his “trotziger Blick” (IV, 317). The shock of discovering that his worldview was so utterly false has made him prematurely old, and he is “unfähig, ein neues Leben zu beginnen” (IV, 318). Despite his decision to remain “am Leben, um zu rebellieren: gegen die Welt, die Behörden, gegen die Regierung und gegen Gott” (IV, 318), Andreas reconciles himself with society’s Ordnung once again,460 allowing himself to be exploited by Willi as a toilet attendant, indeed becoming all the more submissive because of the aristocratic name Willi has appropriated:

Erschüttert von der neuen Herrlichkeit, begann er, fast zu glauben, daß Willi ein wirklicher Herr von Klinckowström war. So nannte er ihn bei diesem Namen, von dessen Glanz auch etwas auf denjenigen fiel, der ihn aussprach. (IV, 322)

Far from rebelling against the dictates of the class society, Andreas automatically reverts to his meek demeanour in the face of someone who is ostensibly of a higher class. Any rebellion remains private, restricted to taking silent pleasure in the parrot Ignatz’s apparent abhorrence of the national anthem and military marches (IV, 324). The futility of a rebellion that remains mute and inward-turned is reflected in Andreas’s words to the pacifist parrot:

Ja, ja, Ignatz, wir sind Rebellen, wir beide. Leider kann es uns nichts nützen. Denn ich bin ein alter Krüppel, und du bist ein ohnmächtiger Vogel, und wir können die Welt nicht ändern. (IV, 324)

Incapable of truly rebelling in this life, he begins to think about the possibility of reincarnation, deciding he will return as a revolutionary, “der kühne Reden führt und mit Mord und Brand das Land überzieht, um die verletzte Gerechtigkeit zu sühnen.” (IV, 326) The naïvité of Andreas’s idea of a revolutionary underscores his impotence in the face of an uncaring and unjust society. Furthermore, the

460 Cf. Rudolf: “Den entscheidenden Schritt vom Wollen zur Tat vollzieht er nicht”: Helmut Rudolf, “Joseph Roths humanistisches Wollen. Bemerkungen zu dem Roman Die Rebellion,” NFT (Német Filológiai Tanulmányok. Arbeiten zur deutschen Philologie) 5 (1970): 114.

119 Chapter 2: The Early Novels image recalls Zwonimir’s apocalyptic revolution from Hotel Savoy, which Roth indicated was no solution.

The Day of Judgement and the Repetition of History

The final chapter of Die Rebellion depicts the last day of Andreas’s life as the Day of Judgement. At the end of the previous chapter Andreas receives a judicial summons and rehearses his speech: “‘Hoher Gerichtshof’, wollte er sagen. ‘Ich bin ein Opfer dieser Verhältnisse, die Sie selbst geschaffen haben. Verurteilen Sie mich. Ich gestehe, daß ich ein Rebell bin.’” (IV, 327) Yet, in the next chapter, his rebellion is not directed at the representatives of society but at God. In an ironic inversion of the Day of Judgement, it is not God who pronounces judgement upon humanity but Andreas Pum who pronounces judgement on and rejects God, blaming Him for the injustice of society. Sültemeyer reads this final chapter of the novel as proof that “[d]er geheime, letzte ungelöste Konflikt ist ein religiöser,”461 but her interpretation is not convincing.462 Andreas’s delirious confounding of the temporal and spiritual realms at the point of death is entirely consistent with his earlier confusion of the two spheres (IV, 245), signifying that despite his experiences, he has failed truly to comprehend that it is societies and individuals who create and maintain injustice and inequity. To direct his rebellion at God is to affirm a fatalistic belief in the powerlessness of individuals.

Directed as it is at the wrong authority, Andreas’s rebellion cannot be other than ineffectual. The futility of his personal rebellion is heightened in Roth’s evocation of the Day of Judgement. This is the apocalyptic moment of Die Rebellion, but, just as in Hotel Savoy and Das Spinnennetz there is no indication that a better world will follow the destruction of the corrupt world, in this novel there is no suggestion that the Day of Judgement will pave the way to an ideal world. Throughout the novel there are references to the idea of history as repetition, from Katharina’s taking of husbands (Gustav, Andreas, Vinzenz Topp) to Arnold’s life returning to normal after his altercation with Andreas (IV, 289) to the rhythmic change of seasons: the novel begins and ends in April (IV, 246, 327) and the

461 Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 122. 462 Cf. Sonnleitner, “Macht, Identität,” 180.

120 Chapter 2: The Early Novels changing of the seasons from spring to summer (IV, 257), summer to autumn (IV, 265), autumn to winter (IV, 289) and winter back to spring (IV, 311, 319) suggests a cyclical pattern of history which serves to undermine the teleological view implied in the evocation of the Day of Judgement. The final image of the novel further underscores Roth’s pessmism about the possibility of change: Andreas’s one-legged body has been delivered to the Anatomical Institute of the University where, ironically, it will serve medical science:

Ehe man die Leiche in den Seziersaal trug, kam Willi, um Abschied zu nehmen. Er wollte gerade anfangen zu weinen. Da fiel ihm schnell das Lied ein, das er immer zu pfeifen pflegte. Und pfeifend ging er, einen Greis für die Toilette suchen. (IV, 332)

The positive progress of history implied in the endeavours of medical science is undercut by the recognition that in this society devoid of humane values Andreas is entirely replaceable.

Coda: From the Early Novels to Radetzkymarsch

Roth’s motivation in the early novels is the desire to understand and reveal the sources of contemporary social and political problems, not to provide solutions. Indeed, in evoking an apocalypse without redemption in all three novels he betrays a distinct lack of optimism that a solution will be found, since the “sense of an ending” which is the apocalypse usually “implies its complement, the hope of a new world which will emerge from the catastrophe”.463 That Roth stops short of an apocalyptic ending indicates his scepticism regarding ideologies and doctrines which purport to provide a total solution: a lesser novelist would have succumbed to the temptation of a literary resolution. And yet all three novels “[haben] etwas Unfertiges, Unausgeführtes”, as Greiner points out.464 This is indicative of Roth’s struggle at this stage in his career as a novelist to find a form which would give adequate expression to an exploration of the problems of contemporary Central Europe. The fact that after publishing his first three novels

463 Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending,” 141. 464 Greiner, “Joseph Roth,” 360.

121 Chapter 2: The Early Novels within less than a year465 Roth did not publish another novel for three years466 is further evidence that he had reached an impasse.

The three novels of the transitional period between the early work and Hiob – Die Flucht ohne Ende (1927), Zipper und sein Vater (1928) and Rechts und Links (1929) – are more fully formed than the earlier novels but they still lack the mastery of Radetzkymarsch. Zipper und sein Vater in particular can be seen as a step towards the historical form Roth would find with Radetzkymarsch. In Zipper Roth broadens his view from the present onto the past, seeking, as he writes in the signed “Brief des Autors an Arnold Zipper” with which the novel concludes, “an zwei Menschen die Verschiedenheiten und die Ähnlichkeiten zweier Generationen so darzustellen, daß diese Darstellung nicht mehr als der private Bericht über zwei private Leben gelten kann.” (IV, 606) Before this letter, the final chapter of the novel centres on a conversation between Roth467 and Eduard P., a mysterious figure who frequents the same coffee house as Roth and his friend Arnold Zipper. The conversation “develops into a discussion on the art of the novel and in particular the narrative possibilities of a novel on Arnold Zipper.”468 P. remembers Roth having once said “‘[e]s sei Aufgabe des Autors abzuschreiben, was er sehe.’” (IV, 601) This conception of the novelist implies a concentration on the world immediately perceived – the contemporary world – and concords to a great extent with Roth’s method in the early novels.469 But in the intervening years it seems that Roth has had a change of heart. After P. has

465 Das Spinnennetz was first published in serial form in the Viennese Arbeiter-Zeitung in October and November 1923; Hotel Savoy in the Frankfurter Zeitung in February and March 1924; Die Rebellion in Vorwärts in July and August 1924: Sültemeyer, Das Frühwerk 155. 466 Between Die Rebellion (1924) and Die Flucht ohne Ende (1927) Roth published only two short Erzählungen: “April: Die Geschichte einer Liebe” and “Der blinde Spiegel” (both 1925). His journalistic output during this time was prolific. 467 In this novel, as in Die Flucht ohne Ende, Roth names himself as the first person narrator. The novel begins with the word “Ich” and ends with Roth’s signature. 468 Rosenfeld, Understanding 30. I disagree with Rosenfeld’s assessment, however, that this discussion “can be read as a demonstration of the aesthetic tenets of [die Neue Sachlichkeit].” Rather, it reveals Roth’s view of the limits of this literary movement, which will be discussed in detail at the beginning of the next chapter. 469 P.’s words can also be read as expressing Roth’s criticism of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement, but I do not agree with Scheible that Roth’s previous novel, Die Flucht ohne Ende, “war ganz im Stil der Neuen Sachlichkeit konzipiert gewesen”, and that therefore the words of Eduard P. are an ironic reference to Roth’s own “frühere Ästhetik”: Scheible, Joseph Roth 16.

122 Chapter 2: The Early Novels told the story of Arnold’s life since his wife left him in Monte Carlo, concluding with the exclamation “‘Das ist der Roman!’” (IV, 602), Roth replies:

‘Ich sehe […] nichts Romanhaftes darin. Selbst wenn ich das Leben Arnolds schreiben würde, wäre es kein Roman in diesem Sinn. […] Ich würde ihn auch nicht gesondert von seinem Vater behandeln können.’ (IV, 602-03)

Roth has realized that it is not possible to make sense of the present without writing about the past, and it is for this reason, not in order to take flight from reality, that he turns to the portrayal of the Habsburg Empire in Radetzkymarsch.

123

Chapter 3 “… in Wahrheit … umgewandelte Realität”470 Radetzkymarsch as Historical Novel

Ich kenne, glaube ich, die Welt nur, wenn ich schreibe, und, wenn ich die Feder weglege, bin ich verloren.471

1930 is generally held to mark Roth’s final break from a critical engagement with the problems of the present and his turn to an escapist recreation of the lost worlds of the Habsburg Empire and the shtetl. In the same year as he published Hiob and began work on Radetzkymarsch,472 Roth penned a lengthy critical essay on the relationship between form and content in narrative: “Schluß mit der ‘Neuen Sachlichkeit’!” This essay is a diatribe against the literary movement Neue Sachlichkeit, which Roth considers responsible for the poverty of writing in contemporary German. Roth “rejects the then widely accepted claim of the writer- reporter to objectivity, and with it the tenet of Neue Sachlichkeit that genuine literature must be documentary.”473 The formless, artless texts pretending to be literature claim to be eye-witness accounts and therefore to represent “reality”, yet they are far removed from being able to represent “life as it is”:

[Die] ‘dokumentarische[...]’ Mitteilung […], die ‘das Leben’ selbst zu bezeugen scheint, ist weit entfernt, nicht nur von der ‘inneren’ oder höheren Wahrheit’, sondern auch von der Kraft der Wirklichkeit. Und erst das ‘Kunstwerk’ ist ‘echt wie das Leben’. (III, 156)

Both writers and readers are labouring under the delusion that facts and details suffice to produce a true account of a given event, when these are merely the raw material. It is artistic language which gives form to the raw material, enabling the event to be authentically conveyed: “Die Zeugenaussage, also die Mitteilung, ist eine Auskunft über das Ereignis. Der Bericht gibt das Ereignis selbst wieder. Ja, er ist selbst das Ereignis.” (III, 155)

470 Joseph Roth, “Schluß mit der ‘Neuen Sachlichkeit’!”, Die Literarische Welt 17. and 24.1.1930 (III, 157). 471 Letter to Stefan Zweig, 17.2.1936, Briefe 452. 472 Bronsen, Biographie 392 Bronsen reports that none of his books took Roth as long to write as Radetzkymarsch, on which he worked for two years: Bronsen, Biographie 395. 473 Rosenfeld, Understanding 35.

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In an earlier essay entitled “Selbstverriß”, a response to criticism of his most recent novel Rechts und Links, Roth argued that readers had learned from the nineteenth-century realist epic to measure the quality of a literary text by the raw material which had provided the author with his model:

Beschreibt ein Autor also zum Beispiel die Zeit der Inflation, so will der Leser, der die Inflation so genau kennt, diese auch im Buch wiederfinden. In meinem Roman aber findet er eine oder gar keine. Das Rohmaterial sinkt also in meinen Büchern zur Bedeutungslosigkeit einer Illustration. Einzig bedeutend ist die Welt, die ich aus meinem sprachlichen Material gestalte (ebenso wie ein Maler mit Farben malt).474

These two essays, both written just months before Roth began working on Radetzkymarsch, give the reader an insight into the writer’s thinking at this time about the purpose of his fictional creations, and how best to achieve this purpose through the form of the text.475 Despite a plethora of studies emphasizing the documentary character of Radetzkymarsch,476 the author’s extensive preparatory research on Habsburg court ceremonial, the ranks and uniforms of the Imperial Army and the “Kanzleideutsch” of the bureaucrats477 was not an end in itself but part of the “raw material”, which was “less important than the patterning and structuring of the narrative”,478 since it is through these that the writer achieves his goal: the creation of poetic truth.479 It is imperative the writer have a detailed knowledge of everyday life,

nicht damit er sie detailtreu benütze, sondern damit er sie beliebig und schöpferisch verändere. […] Der Erzähler ist ein Beobachter und ein Sachverständiger. Sein Werk ist niemals von der Realität gelöst, sondern in Wahrheit (durch das Mittel der Sprache) umgewandelte Realität. (III, 157)

474 Joseph Roth, “Selbstverriss”, Die Literarische Welt, 22.11.1929 (III, 131). 475 By contrast, Rosenfeld interprets the essays as a sign of “the artistic crisis in which Roth found himself” during the late 1920s: Rosenfeld, Understanding 35. 476 See, for example, Fritz Hackert, Kulturpessimismus und Erzählform. Studien zu Joseph Roths Leben und Werk (Bern: Peter Lang, 1967) 85-88; Kessler, “Überdauern im ewigen Untergang”. 477 Bronsen, Biographie 394. Bronsen reports that Radetzkymarsch was the only novel for which Roth conducted any preparatory research. 478 Ian Foster, “Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch as a Historical Novel,” in Travellers in Time and Space – Reisende durch Zeit und Raum: The German Historical Novel – Der deutsch- sprachige historische Roman, ed. Osman Durrani and Julian Preece, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik (Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2001), 362. 479 In “Schluß mit der ‘Neuen’ Sachlichkeit’!” Roth writes that truth is “das Kennzeichen und das Ziel des künstlerischen Berichts” (III, 156).

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Form and Truth

The discrepancy between truth and reality is raised as a theme in the opening pages of Radetzkymarsch and becomes a leitmotif, even before the narrator bestows upon the Hero of Solferino the ironic title “Ritter der Wahrheit”.480 The novel begins with a description of the Battle of Solferino at which the young Lieutenant Joseph Trotta saves the life of the Emperor Franz Joseph. The description of the emotions behind the reflex response which saves the Emperor reveals a tangled web of conflicting experiences of reality, belief and truth:

Trotta fühlte sein Herz im Halse. Die Angst vor der unausdenkbaren, der grenzenlosen Katastrophe, die ihn selbst, das Regiment, die Armee, den Staat, die ganze Welt vernichten würde, jagte glühende Fröste durch seinen Körper. Seine Knie zitterten. Und der ewige Groll des subalternen Frontoffiziers gegen die hohen Herren des Generalstabs, die keine Ahnung von der bitteren Praxis hatten, diktierte dem Leutnant jene Handlung, die seinen Namen unauslöschlich in die Geschichte seines Regiments einprägte. (V, 140)

Lieutenant Trotta’s fear reflects his identification with the order represented by the Emperor. However, the enumeration of all that would be destroyed by the killing of the Emperor, beginning with himself and culminating in the whole world, also betrays a discrepancy between his belief system – an absolute truth to him but in fact an impossible ideal – and the reality of interrelations it masks. The Lieutenant is motivated to act by the resentment he feels towards superior officers whose authority is not underpinned by any experience of the reality of frontline military service.481 Although Trotta’s world-view would not allow him to admit it, the Emperor himself is implied in this resentment: the “Allerhöchste[…] Kriegsherr[…]”, as he is referred to on the same page, knows so little about the reality of the battlefront that he would make himself a target by raising a field glass to his eyes. The passage thus reveals that what is real is not founded on any truth, and what is perceived as true has no basis in reality.482

480 Foster has also noted the irony in this title which expresses “the gulf between [Trotta’s] actions on the battlefield and their representation as a heroic feat in the pages of a ‘Lesebuch’ for public consumption”: Foster, “Radetzkymarsch,” 364. 481 At the time of the historical Battle of Solferino the higher staff positions were still held by archdukes, a practice which excluded abler professional officers and produced inferior commanders-in-chief. Reform was introduced after the defeat of Königgrätz in 1867: Johnston, The Austrian Mind 51. 482 Reidel-Schrewe comes to a similar conclusion: “Wirklichkeit beruht nicht auf Wahrheit, sondern ist lediglich die angenommene und autonom gewordene Vorstellung von Wahrheit. In

126 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch

These contradictions acquire further significance as they are mirrored in the form of the opening pages. The style of the narration is initially matter-of-fact: the sentences are with few exceptions short and have a staccato quality:

In der Schlacht bei Solferino befehligte er als Leutnant der Infanterie einen Zug. Seit einer halben Stunde war das Gefecht im Gange. Drei Schritte vor sich sah er die weißen Rücken seiner Soldaten. Die erste Reihe seines Zuges kniete, die zweite stand. Heiter waren alle und sicher des Sieges. (V, 139)

The narrator relates the events as if he were reading from a succinct military report of the battle and the incident. The reader is distanced from the protagonist, Lieutenant Joseph Trotta, gaining no insight into his thoughts or feelings, except immediately before he saves the life of his Emperor. At this point the narration suddenly departs from the detached style. Two significantly longer and more evocative sentences convey the Lieutenant’s fear and resentment and give the impression that time has momentarily slowed down for him.483 The striking difference between these two sentences and the remainder of the report – heightened by the juxtaposition with the clipped reference to Trotta’s physical reaction (“Seine Knie zitterten”) – indicates to the reader that we have for a brief moment entered the consciousness of the character.

The prior succinct, dispassionate style returns for the description of the Lieutenant’s heroic actions, and the report concludes in the same matter-of-fact manner with the decoration of the Lieutenant and his elevation to the nobility:

Trotta wurde nach vier Wochen gesund. Als er in seine südungarische Garnison zurückkehrte, besaß er den Rang eines Hauptmanns, die höchste aller Auszeichnungen: den Maria-Theresien-Orden und den Adel. Er hieß von nun ab: Hauptmann Joseph Trotta von Sipolje. (V, 141)

While the military style appears quite appropriate to the material, the brevity of these last lines in particular belies the import of the changes for the young Slovene returning to his garrison in southern Hungary. The mention of the Maria- Theresa-Order, a decoration established by the Empress to reward deeds of valour

dieser Diskrepanz zwischen der unrealistischen Wahrheitsvorstellung der Höhergestellten […] und Trottas am Ideal orientierter Auffassung vom Ordnungszusammenhang der Welt liegt der Keim für die Angst und den Groll, die Trotta zum Handeln zwingen”: Ursula Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland zwischen Indikativ und Konjunktiv. Joseph Roths Radetzkymarsch,” Modern Austrian Literature 24 (1991): 67.

127 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch performed on a soldier’s own initiative,484 is ironically juxtaposed with the pronouncement of Trotta’s new name in the manner of an imperial edict, implying an absence of any choice on the part of the individual. Trotta’s lack of agency in the events which follow his reflex act of heroism is at once underscored in the detailed description of his difficulty coming to terms with the new rank and title assigned to him, a description which contrasts in style with what has preceded it:

Als hätte man ihm sein eigenes Leben gegen ein fremdes, neues, in einer Werkstatt angefertigtes vertauscht, wiederholte er sich jede Nacht vor dem Einschlafen und jeden Morgen nach dem Erwachen seinen neuen Rang und seinen neuen Stand, trat vor den Spiegel und bestätigte sich, daß sein Angesicht das alte war. Zwischen der linkischen Vertraulichkeit, mit der seine Kameraden den Abstand zu überwinden versuchten, den das unbegreifliche Schicksal plötzlich zwischen ihn und sie gelegt hatte, und seinen eigenen vergeblichen Bemühungen, aller Welt mit der gewohnten Unbefangenheit entgegenzutreten, schien der geadelte Hauptmann Trotta das Gleichgewicht zu verlieren, und ihm war, als wäre er von nun ab sein Leben lang verurteilt, in fremden Stiefeln auf einem glatten Boden zu wandeln, von unheimlichen Reden verfolgt und von scheuen Blicken erwartet. (V, 141)

This description of the young man’s bewilderment and his struggle to come to terms with this unexpected transformation is vivid and appears much more real and immediate to the reader than the preceding factual account of the actual events at Solferino, which is almost alienating in its clinical detachment and certainly does not bring the events to life. The contrast in style and effect is precisely that explicated by Roth in his denunciation of Neue Sachlichkeit in literature – it mirrors the opposition between “Dokument” and “Kunstwerk” in that essay. Yet this is no mere repetition of ideas, the addition of a postscript to his essay by an author reiterating his rejection of Neue Sachlichkeit. Rather, Roth signals here his intention to strive for truth (“Wahrheit”) in his depiction of the last decades of the Habsburg Empire rather than factual detail.

A factual account does not always convey truth, and conversely there may be much truth in fiction, a point Roth is anxious his readers should appreciate. In this first chapter the reader is told not once but several times that there is no record of the story of the Trotta family, this repetition underscoring the fact that the family

483 The passage is quoted in full on the previous page of this study. The two sentences in question begin “Die Angst […]” and “Und der ewige Groll […]”. 484 Johnston, The Austrian Mind 52.

128 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch is invented.485 We are informed in the first paragraph that Joseph Trotta saw to it “daß ihn die späteren Zeiten aus dem Gedächtnis verloren” (V, 139); later in the chapter we learn that his insistence on truth is the reason that he lived the rest of his life as “der unbekannte Träger früh verschollenen Ruhms” (V, 149); and we are reminded of this fact several times in the remainder of the narrative. On one such occasion we also learn that when Joseph Trotta’s son, the Bezirkshauptmann,486 manages to break “das eiserne und das goldene Gesetz des Zeremoniells” and be granted an audience with the Emperor, his name is not recorded – a highly unusual occurrence:

So wie der Name des Helden von Solferino in den Geschichtsbüchern oder in den Lesebüchern für österreichische Volks- und Bürgerschulen nicht mehr gefunden werden konnte, ebenso fehlt der Name des Sohnes des Helden von Solferino in den Protokollen Montenuovos. Außer Montenuovo selbst und dem jüngst verstorbenen Diener Franz Josephs weiß kein Mensch in der Welt mehr, daß der Bezirkshauptmann Franz Freiherr von Trotta eines Morgens vom Kaiser empfangen worden ist, und zwar knapp vor der Abfahrt nach Ischl. (V, 402)487

In Ian Foster’s apposite words, “[t]he narratorial game in these redundant explanations is a little like that of the storyteller who begins the tale with the words ‘I’m going to tell you a true story which never happened.’”488 Roth is keen for the reader to remember that the Trotta family is a fictional construct because Radetzkymarsch is not about historical fact, but about truth in history, a point playfully underscored when the elderly, forgetful Emperor asks his servant why the name Trotta should be familiar to him:

‘Sagen Sie mal: Kennen Sie den Namen Trotta?’ Der Kasier hatte eigentlich du zu seinem Diener sagen wollen, wie er es oft tat, aber es handelte sich diesmal um die Weltgeschichte, und er hatte sogar Respekt vor jenen, die er um historische Ereignisse fragte. (V, 341-42)

485 Cf. Foster, “Radetzkymarsch,” 367. 486 The German term Bezirkshauptmann is retained in this study for two reasons: firstly, it has no exact equivalent in English, and secondly (and more importantly), the title is an integral part of the characterization of this figure, its use (in preference to the character’s name) signifying his complete identification with his “Amt”, his inability to differentiate between his public and private selves. After Maria Theresa succeeded to the throne in 1740 and created the bureaucratic system which enabled the Empire to continue as a Great Power, the Bezirkshauptmann “was the corner-stone of the Empire”: Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 18. 487 Just as we are repeatedly reminded of the Hero of Solferino’s absence from the history books, there is a subsequent reference to “[die] in den Protokollen niemals verzeichnete Audienz Herrn von Trottas beim Kaiser” a few pages later (V, 405). 488 Foster, “Radetzkymarsch,” 367.

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The Trottas are not a real family, Roth is saying, and the events described are not part of world history, yet in his depiction of this family’s fate the reader will find much truth – truth about the last decades of the Habsburg Empire.489 In this sense Radetzkymarsch can be described as a historical novel.

Truth and Fiction in the Historical Novel

Hartmut Scheible cites the passage depicting the Bezirkshauptmann’s audience with the Emperor as evidence that Radetzkymarsch is “kein historischer Roman”.490 He argues that Roth is careful not to allow the reader any possibility of verifying the historical accuracy of the events described – the meeting of the Bezirkshauptmann with the Kaiser, or the heroic act of his father:

[E]s ist, als öffnete hier, wo das Zusammentreffen von Romanwirklichkeit und historischer Wirklichkeit unumgänglich ist, sich für einen Augenblick lang eine Spalte in der historischen Zeit, um sich nach Beendigung der Audienz spurlos wieder zu schließen.491

Scheible adds that the narrator’s comment that Franz Joseph’s servant – the only person who would have been able to verify the meeting – has recently died is a warning to the reader not even to attempt such a positivistic reading.492 For Scheible the narrator’s actions demonstrate that Roth intended his analysis of the last decades of the Monarchy to be independent of any real historical events,

die gerade dadurch, daß sie scheinbar unumstößlich ‘wahr’ sind, historisch belegbar, ihre eigene Kontingenz verdecken und dadurch unwahrer werden als fingierte, aber der inneren Wahrheit des Werkes und der Historie entsprechende Geschehnisse.493

Yet the fact that Roth was at pains to avoid the portrayal of actual historical events does not necessitate the conclusion Scheible draws: that Radetzkymarsch is not a historical novel.494 Not even Roth’s own remark two years after the

489 By contrast, within Roth’s fictional world the account of the incident at Solferino contained in the reader makes claims to history yet, embellished almost beyond recognition, is neither historically accurate nor reflects a greater truth, rather is intended as propaganda for young and impressionable minds. 490 Scheible, Joseph Roth 149. 491 Scheible, Joseph Roth 150. 492 Scheible, Joseph Roth 150. 493 Scheible, Joseph Roth 151. 494 As Roberts explains, in this genre fact is secondary to the demands of the fictional form: “fact is at the service of fiction in its domain […] the historical novel is not falsifiable by an appeal

130 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch publication of Radetzkymarsch that he was now for the first time writing “einen historischen Roman”495 suffices to prove Scheible’s contention,496 since the meaning of this statement depends very much on what one understands by the term historical novel. What Roth describes in 1934 as his first and last endeavour to write something historical497 refers to the attempt to write a novel centred on a historical personage – Napoleon – and consisting of the reconstruction of actual events. Roth’s comment on such a pursuit is that it is “unwürdig, einfach unwürdig, festgelegte Ereignisse noch einmal formen zu wollen”.498 Radetzkymarsch is quite a different undertaking, however, with the historical figure Franz Joseph playing a relatively minor role beside the fictional protagonists and, as we have seen, the narrator taking care that the reader not forget that there is no record of the Trottas’ meetings with the Emperor – they, their deeds and their interactions with the historical Franz Joseph are products of the writer’s imagination.

Several critics have contended contra Scheible that Radetzkymarsch is indeed a historical novel, in very different senses. For Menhennet, it is a historical novel in the sense that “it is imbued with a strong sense of time, not only as transience, but also as permanence. A primary element in its structure is the recurrent theme of conflict and change between the generations, with the continuing reign of a single monarch as a kind of temporal counterpoint”.499 Ian Foster focuses not on the relationship of the novel to “history per se”, but on “notions of historical and fictional truthfulness”, in part by revealing Roth’s self-conscious use of clichés from the Zeitroman about the Habsburg Army. His conclusion is that the novel

to evidence”: David Roberts, “The Modern German Historical Novel: An Introduction,” in The Modern German Historical Novel: Paradigms, Problems, Perspectives, ed. David Roberts and Philip Thomson (New York; Oxford: Berg, 1991), 1. 495 Letter to Carl Seelig, 11.11.1934, Briefe 394. Fritz Hackert surmises that Roth is referring to his Napoleon novel Die Hundert Tage and notes that Roth saw this novel as something completely different in kind from Radetzkymarsch: Hackert, Kulturpessimismus 87. 496 Scheible cites this letter in partial support of his contention that Radetzkymarsch is not a historical novel: Scheible, Joseph Roth 146. He argues his claim is further supported by the text, in that the narrator clearly blocks any attempt to synchronize the reality of the novel (“Romanwirklichkeit”) with the historical reality: Scheible, Joseph Roth 146-47. 497 “Das ist das erste und das letzte Mal, daß ich etwas ‘Historisches’ mache”: undated letter to René Schickele, cited in Hackert, Kulturpessimismus 87. 498 Undated letter to René Schickele, cited in Hackert, Kulturpessimismus 87. 499 Menhennet, “Flight of a Broken Eagle,” 54.

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“occupies a position at the boundaries of the historical novel”.500 Doppler differentiates between the historical novel as Unterhaltungsliteratur and what he calls the legitimate form of the historical novel, which achieves the portrayal of “poetische Wahrheit”.501 Radetzkymarsch succeeds as a historical novel, he argues, because although some aspects of the portrayal of the historical Habsburg Monarchy would be questioned by historians, Roth has achieved “eine ästhetische Wirklichkeit […], eine epische Metapher, deren Grundbedeutung den Wert einer historischen Quelle hat.”502

All of these critics pick up on important aspects of the novel, but none of them goes far enough. Radetzkymarsch is not a historical novel in the sense that Scheible understands the term – as a record of chronological time, a precise reproduction of historical events based on fact, which keeps the reader at a distance rather than drawing him into a narrative world503 – but a historical novel in the terms proposed by Georg Lukács, for whom this genre is a created and mediated form characterized by a very particular authorial intent:

What matters […] in the historical novel is not the re-telling of great historical events, but […] that we should re-experience the social and human motives which led men to think, feel and act just as they did in historical reality. And it is a law of literary portrayal which first appears paradoxical, but then quite obvious, that in order to bring out these social and human motives of behaviour, the outwardly insignificant events, the smaller (from without) relationships are better suited than the great monumental dramas of world history.504

Despite its theoretical biases,505 in particular with respect to the choice of texts, Lukács’s analysis of the historical novel from Walter Scott to Romain Rolland

500 Foster, “Radetzkymarsch,” 357, 369. 501 Doppler, “Historische Ereignisse,” 73-74. 502 Doppler, “Historische Ereignisse,” 80-81. 503 “Der Leser soll nicht, distanziert, einen historischen Roman lesen, sondern er soll hineingezogen werden in die Handlung […]”: Scheible, Joseph Roth 147. 504 Lukács, Historical Novel 42. As Agnes Heller notes in an essay on Lukács’s Historical Novel, the author’s freedom of portrayal is considerably greater if the protagonists of the historical novel are fictitious rather than the actual historical protagonists: Ágnes Heller, “History and the Historical Novel in Lukács,” in The Modern German Historical Novel: Paradigms, Problems and Perspectives, ed. David Roberts and Philip Thomson (New York; Oxford: Berg, 1991), 28. 505 Lukács’s study has been criticized for its ideological bias and resultant failings. See, for example, Maike Oergel, “‘Wie es wirklich wurde’: The Modern Need for Historical Fiction, or the Inevitability of the Historical Novel,” in Travellers in Time and Space – Reisende durch Zeit und Raum: The German Historical Novel – Der deutschsprachige historische Roman, ed.

132 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch remains a standard work on the subject, and his observations on the genre offer a fresh approach to understanding Roth’s most famous novel in connection with his early work.

The protagonist of a Lukács historical novel is not a great historical personage but a “decent, average” man, typical of his time and representative of his class and nation.506 A number of Roth scholars have recognized the compliance of Radetzkymarsch with this formal element of Lukács’s historical novel.507 Thus the non-fictional Emperor Franz Joseph plays only a small (if significant) role in Roth’s novel, while the protagonists are both fictional and representative of ordinary, if privileged, members of Franz Joseph’s Empire. Lukács himself drew attention to this aspect of Radetzkymarsch in a 1939 review of the novel:

Seine handelnden Personen sind mittelmäßige Beamte und Offiziere. […] Die epische Begabung Roths besteht in dem Vermögen, außergewöhnliche Situationen zu erfinden, dank deren das Mittelmäßige, ohne seine Mittelmäßigkeit zu verlieren, eine künstlerische Bedeutung erreicht.508

Lukács does not explicitly refer to Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel in his review, an omission which is on one level surprising, since much of what he writes suggests that the novel fulfils the criteria he had delineated just two years earlier. Apart from noting the “mediocrity” of Roth’s protagonists,509 Lukács writes that the author succeeds in portraying through them the social background and psychology of the demise of the Empire:

Osman Durrani and Julian Preece, Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik (Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi, 2001), 435-36; Paul Michael Lützeler, “Georg Lukács and the Historical Novel of the Restoration Period,” in The Modern German Historical Novel: Paradigms, Problems and Perspectives, ed. David Roberts and Philip Thomson (New York; Oxford: Berg, 1991); Heller, “History and the Historical Novel”. 506 The historical novel begins for Lukács with Walter Scott, of whose protagonists Lukács writes: “The ‘hero’ of a Scott novel is always a more or less mediocre, average English gentleman. […] That he builds his novels round a “middling”, merely correct and never heroic ‘hero’ is the clearest proof of Scott’s exceptional and revolutionary epic gifts […]”: Lukács, Historical Novel 33. 507 See, for example, Hackert, Kulturpessimismus 85; Klaus-Detlef Müller, “Joseph Roth: Radetzkymarsch. Ein historischer Roman,” in Interpretationen. Romane des 20. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1993), 299; Dollenmayer, “History as Fiction,” 302. The present study seeks to deepen the analysis beyond this formal element of Lukács’s theory. 508 Georg Lukács, “Radetzkymarsch,” in Hackert, Kulturpessimismus 149. The review was originally published in Russian in Literaturnaja gazeta, Moscow, 15.8.1939; the German translation by Maria Enberg appears in Hackert, Kulturpessimismus 147-51. 509 For Klaus-Detlef Müller this fact alone suffices to demonstrate that Lukács considered Radetzkymarsch to be a historical novel: Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 299.

133 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch

Indem er die persönlichen Schicksale seiner Helden schildert, dringt er mit einer Tiefe und Realistik in deren Psychologie ein, daß hinter ihren persönlichen Handlungen und Erlebnissen der ganze soziale Hintergrund zum Vorschein kommt und die Psychologie der Untergangsperiode des Reiches hervortritt.510

In his study of the historical novel Lukács wrote in similar terms of Walter Scott:

Scott endeavours to portray the struggles and antagonisms of history by means of characters who, in their psychology and destiny, always represent social trends and historical forces. […] [His] greatness lies in his capacity to give living human embodiment to historical-social types.511

It seems likely that the Marxist critic refrained from calling Radetzkymarsch a historical novel because of what he identifies as “ideological weaknesses” in the text, principally the discontent of the oppressed classes as a factor in the collapse of the Empire: “Dieser anscheinende Faktor des heranreifenden Zusammenbruchs dient bei Roth bestenfalls als Hintergrund, keinesfalls aber als Haupttriebfeder der Handlung.”512 Lukács could forgive the “sober, conservative petty aristocrat”513 Scott his political views, for history had not yet reached a point where the writer and intellectual must recognize the necessity and inevitability of communism. Since Roth was writing in the 1930s, however, he could not be forgiven for resisting a socialist solution to his novel, and for this reason Lukács cannot classify Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel. Nevertheless, he calls Radetzkymarsch

ein bedeutender Roman, in dem die wichtigsten sozialen Faktoren des Untergangs eine abgeschlossene künstlerische Verkörperung in den Einzelschicksalen der dargestellten Personen des Romans gefunden haben.514

Lukács’s critique of Roth is ideological. However, his recognition of the relationship between past and present in the historical novel remains valid and applicable to Radetzkymarsch. Indeed, Lukács argues that the great artistic merit of the novel is strongly connected with, if not determined by, the “ideologische[...] Schwäche” of the author, the fact that, according to Lukács, Roth’s heart was on the side of the declining monarchy:

510 Lukács, “Radetzkymarsch,” 148. 511 Lukács, Historical Novel 34-35. 512 Lukács, “Radetzkymarsch,” 147. 513 Lukács, Historical Novel 54. 514 Lukács, “Radetzkymarsch”, 147.

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Hätte Roth nicht seine Illusionen, so hätte es ihm kaum gelingen können, so tief in die Welt seiner Beamten und Offiziere hineinzublicken und so voll und ganz und wahrhaftig den Prozeß ihres sittlichen und sozialen Verfalls darzustellen.515

It is this ability to convey the reality or the truth of the past that constitutes the central distinguishing feature of the historical novel for Lukács; such a novel reflects a belief or feeling that “a real understanding for the problems of contemporary society can only grow out of an understanding of the society’s prehistory and formative history.”516 In a statement that recalls Roth’s arguments in “Schluß mit der ‘Neuen Sachlichkeit’!”, Lukács writes that art is uniquely suited to the analysis of such problems, since, unlike history, philosophy and other disciplines, art is capable of expressing the totality, the absolute meaning of the relative. A historical or philosophical reflection of reality must admit its relativity, for if it claims absolutely to reproduce “the infinity of objective reality, it is inevitably falsified and distorts the picture.” In literature, on the other hand, the relative, incomplete image is able “to appear like life itself, indeed in a more heightened, intense and alive form than in objective reality.”517 Quoting Balzac, Lukács argues that

nothing betrays the incompetence of the author more than the heaping-up of facts […]. Talent flourishes where the causes which produce the facts are portrayed in the secrets of the human heart, whose motions are neglected by the historians.518

The historical novel, then, is capable of presenting a complete picture, a “feeling of the totality of life” 519 where analytic discourse fails, and therefore it is capable of capturing and illuminating the relationship of the present to the past, the “prehistory” of contemporary problems.520

515 Lukács, “Radetzkymarsch,” 148. Again there is a parallel with Lukács’s assessment of Scott: “there is a certain contradiction here between Scott’s directly political views and his artistic world picture. He too, like so many great realists, such as Balzac or Tolstoy, became a great realist despite his own political and social views”: Lukács, Historical Novel 54. 516 Lukács, Historical Novel 231. 517 Lukács, Historical Novel 91-92. 518 Lukács, Historical Novel 42; emphasis added. 519 Lukács, Historical Novel 92. 520 Cf. Oergel, “‘Wie es wirklich wurde’,” 440.

135 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch

This characteristic of the historical novel, essential to Lukács’s conception of this genre, is not mentioned in Hackert’s or Dollenmayer’s analysis of Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel,521 and is alluded to only obliquely at the end of Müller’s study.522 It is my contention, however, that it is a defining feature of Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel. While Lukács himself would not have accepted Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel because of his commitment to a Marxist view of history, the novel does conform to his criteria, in particular this recognition of the past as a concrete step to the present, and it is in this tangible relationship of the past to the present that the connection between Roth’s early works and the “Österreich” novels can be found.523 Faced with the problems of a chaotic post-war Central Europe, Roth in his early novels attempted to understand these problems directly by representing the contemporary situation and extrapolating what he saw as possible, even likely paths of development in the near future. To an extent previously unrecognized, Roth’s concern with the problems of the post-Habsburg order, which was so clear in his early novels, remains in Radetzkymarsch and Die Kapuzinergruft, in which he looks back to the Habsburg Empire in an effort to understand the roots of contemporary problems.

“Er war Slowene”:524 Identity – Myth – Generational Patterns

It is often said that Radetzkymarsch is the story of three generations,525 yet the elder Trotta dies at the end of the first chapter, appearing thereafter only in the portrait which hangs in his son’s house and haunts his grandson. It is not Joseph Trotta himself but the legend of the Hero of Solferino whose presence is felt

521 Hackert, Kulturpessimismus; Dollenmayer, “History as Fiction”. 522 At the end of his article, Müller suggests that Roth saw National Socialism as “eine zweite, nunmehr definitive Endzeit: das Ende des Humanismus und aller seiner Traditionen, denen er sich noch stärker verbunden fühlte als seiner jüdischen Herkunft”: Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 318. 523 The relationship to the present for Lukács “does not consist in alluding to contemporary events […] but in bringing the past to life as the prehistory of the present, in giving poetic life to those historical, social and human forces which […] have made our present-day life what it is and as we experience it”: Lukács, Historical Novel 53. 524 Roth, Radetzkymarsch (V, 139). 525 See, for example, François Derré, “Militärerziehung und Vater-Sohnkonflikt in österreichischer Sicht,” Modern Austrian Literature 7 (1974): 52; Hansjürgen Böning, Joseph Roths Radetzkymarsch. Thematik, Struktur, Sprache (München: W. Fink, 1968) 78; Rosenfeld, Understanding 5; Peter Branscombe, “Symbolik in Radetzkymarsch,” in Joseph Roth. Der Sieg über die Zeit. Londoner Symposium, ed. Alexander Stillmark, Stuttgarter Arbeiten zur Germanistik (Stuttgart: Heinz, 1996), 103.

136 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch through the remainder of the text.526 The novel may more accurately be described as the story of the grandson, Carl Joseph,527 beginning with the annual summer visit home of the fifteen-year-old cavalry cadet in the second chapter and ending with his death soon after the outbreak of war in the final chapter.528 This is not to deny the significance of the first chapter, which portrays the events at Solferino and their aftermath; the consequences of its omission in Michael Kehlmann’s 1965 film version529 show just how critical it is to the reader’s interpretation of the remainder of the novel.530 Its primary purpose is not, however, to explain the genesis of the ennobled branch of the Trotta family but to introduce the major themes of the novel; in this sense it may be viewed as an extended prologue.531 Three linked themes are raised in this opening chapter: identity, myth and generational patterns; together they underpin the text as a historical novel, revealing the “different and specific form”532 taken by contemporary problems in the last half-century of Habsburg rule.

526 This invalidates Boning’s argument that the elder Trotta can be considered a hero or protagonist of the novel because he remains for both the characters and reader “lebendig, weil sich die Personen […] immer wieder ehrfürchtig an ihn erinnern”: Böning, Radetzkymarsch 78. 527 The story of Carl Joseph’s father, the Bezirkshauptmann, is told primarily in chapters X (Jacques’s death and the Bezirkshauptmann’s ensuing crisis of consciousness), XI (his visit to Carl Joseph’s garrison and confrontation with the approaching “Untergang seiner Welt”), XVI (his return to W., relinquishment of control over his son and awareness of the changed times), XVIII (his “Bittgang” to the Emperor on behalf of his son), and the epilogue (the effect of Carl Joseph’s death, the death of the Emperor and then his own death). The Bezirkshauptmann’s crisis of consciousness and its resolution in death functions to shed light on the identity struggle of his son. 528 The deaths of the Emperor and the Bezirkshauptmann are narrated in the epilogue, underscoring the fact that the novel proper is the story of Carl Joseph. 529 Michael Kehlmann, “Radetzkymarsch. Fernsehfilm in 2 Teilen nach dem gleichnamigen Roman von Joseph Roth,” (Austria: 1965). 530 Müller demonstrates that the omission of the first chapter from the film results in a falsification of the author’s intent: “Damit fehlt dem Betrachter der Maßstab für die historische Einschätzung einer Lebenslüge, die für den begrenzten Fortbestand der Ordnung symptomatisch ist”: Klaus-Detlef Müller, “Michael Kehlmanns Verfilmung von Joseph Roths Roman Radetzkymarsch,” in Joseph Roth. Interpretation Rezeption Kritik, ed. Michael Kessler and Fritz Hackert (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1990), 229. 531 This reading of the novel’s structure is supported by the fact that Roth did not originally intend to begin the novel with the Battle of Solferino; rather, he intended it to span the period from 1890 to 1914: Letter to Stefan Zweig, 20.11.1930, Briefe 188. Cf. Bronsen, Biographie 392. 532 Lukács, Historical Novel 231.

137 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch

Identity

As discussed in the first chapter of this study, at the heart of Roth’s anxiety after the division of the conquered Habsburg Empire into nation-states was the post- war upsurge in chauvinist ethno-linguistic nationalism in both Germany and German-Austria (Deutschösterreich). Believing that each individual’s identity was both intricate and mutable, Roth was highly distrustful of an ideology which demanded absolute allegiance to one language, one culture, one people, and which sought to categorize people according to a biologically defined and one- dimensional nationality. Although in his preface to the newspaper serialization of Radetzkymarsch Roth claimed the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had enabled him to be “ein Patriot und ein Weltbürger zugleich […], ein Österreicher und ein Deutscher unter allen österreichischen Völkern”,533 the restriction of the free formation of identity in the former Empire emerges as a major theme of the novel, suggesting that this preface belongs within the fiction. This interpretation is supported by Roth’s claim in the preface to have known the Trotta family,534 a claim given the lie by the author’s game of truth and fiction described above.535

The third sentence of the novel appears to be a simple statement of the Hero of Solferino’s ethnic identity: “Er war Slowene” (V, 139). Yet the simplicity of this statement is ironic: Joseph Trotta’s identity is anything but simple, as the reader soon learns. Catapulted into the lower nobility as a result of his actions at the Battle of Solferino, Trotta not only receives a new rank and title, but is simultaneously deprived of his former life and feels as if he has been sentenced to walk for the rest of his life “in fremden Stiefeln auf einem glatten Boden” (V, 141). This image of life in another man’s boots is a potent one, signifying a new way of life and an identity in which Trotta will never feel entirely comfortable. His new identity – as a member of the German-speaking Austrian minor nobility – appears false to Trotta, as if it has been “in einer Werkstatt angefertigt[…]” (V, 141), which implies that his pre-Solferino Slovene identity was authentic by comparison.

533 “Vorwort zu meinem Roman: Der Radetzkymarsch” (V, 874). 534 Roth, “Vorwort” 875. 535 Roth’s claim to personal knowledge of his protagonists was by now familiar to readers of Die Flucht ohne Ende and Zipper und sein Vater.

138 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch

Perhaps it was authentic, in the sense that he felt heimisch in it – but was it Slovene, as we are led to believe in the third sentence of the novel? What does the word “Slovene” signify in the context of the multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire in 1859? In the nineteenth century, nationality in the Empire was determined with reference to language, but the definition of language in census statistics changed over time. In the 1846 census, the test used was native tongue (Muttersprache).536 After 1848, however, local administrations began to conduct censuses, which were an important tool in the national struggles of the second half of the century; these censuses defined language as the “language usually used” (Umgangssprache).537 After the Ausgleich of 1867 this latter definition of language as the criterion for determining Volkszugehörigkeit (ethnic or national belonging) was enshrined in law.538 Joseph Trotta is described as a Slovene in the context of the Battle of Solferino of 1859, a time when the definition of Volkszugehörigkeit on the basis of language was in transition from Muttersprache to Umgangssprache. The deceptively simple statement “Er war Slowene” at the beginning of the novel thus raises more questions than it answers and signals that the issue of language and identity will be central to the novel.

Given the statement “Er war Slowene”, we might expect Slovene to be Joseph Trotta’s Umgangssprache or at least his Muttersprache, but it is neither. His grandfather was a Slovene peasant in Sipolje, the village from which the family hails, but his father left the land and became a paymaster and later sergeant in the gendarmerie stationed on the Empire’s southern border (V, 141). As the first generation to have left the land, Joseph’s father still speaks Slovene as well as German, but the young lieutenant, having grown up in the town where his father was stationed and been educated in a cadet school (V, 142) in which the language of instruction was German, has only a fragmentary and passive knowledge of the

536 “The census of 1846 was taken by Imperial officials without national allegiance, though no doubt with unconscious German prejudices: having no propaganda purpose, it took the test of ‘mother tongue’, and therefore gave something like a historical picture”: Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 284. 537 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 284-85. Taylor notes that while the figures were unreliable in the disputed areas and in the towns merely represented the dominant culture, “the census gives a generally fair picture of the national balance in the countryside, where the figures represent the nationality of unawakened peasants.” 538 Hamann, Hitlers Wien 10.

139 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch language of his forebears: “Vor fünf Jahren noch hatte [der Vater] zu seinem Sohn slowenisch gesprochen, obwohl der Junge nur ein paar Worte verstand und nicht ein einziges selbst hervorbrachte.” (V, 143) Joseph’s father speaks to him “im harten Deutsch der Armee-Slawen” (V, 143), but Slovene is expressly referred to as the father’s Muttersprache in a manner which also implies that it is not the son’s Muttersprache:

Heute aber mochte dem Alten der Gebrauch seiner Muttersprache von dem so weit durch die Gnade des Schicksals und des Kaisers entrückten Sohn als eine gewagte Zutraulichkeit erscheinen, während der Hauptmann auf die Lippen des Vaters achtete, um den ersten slowenischen Laut zu begrüßen, wie etwas vertraut Fernes und verloren Heimisches.(V, 143).

Thus Slovene is neither Captain Trotta’s Muttersprache nor his Umgangssprache; he speaks German, and the loss of the language of his forebears implies the loss not only of Slovene nationality, but also of Slovene identity.539 In sociological terms, by refusing to speak Slovene with his son, the father is symbolically excluding him from Slovene identity, or preventing him from having recourse to this identity:540 “[L]osgelöst war der Hauptmann Trotta von dem langen Zug seiner bäuerlichen slawischen Vorfahren. Ein neues Geschlecht brach mit ihm an.” (V, 144)

Captain Trotta experiences this severance from his forebears as a sudden loss caused by his elevation in the military: “Es ist tatsächlich aus! dachte der Hauptmann Trotta. Getrennt von ihm war der Vater durch einen schweren Berg militärischer Grade.” (V, 143-44) Yet his military promotion and elevation to the nobility is only the last nail in the coffin of his former Slovene identity (to paraphrase a recurring metaphor from the novel541); the process of estrangement

539 Language is typically one of the most powerful core values of ethnic identity, and thus language loss will lead to loss of identity or exclusion from the group: Joshua Fishman, “Language and Ethnicity,” in Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations, ed. Howard Giles, European Monographs in Social Psychology 13. (London: Academic Press, 1977), 25. 540 “[I]ngroup speech […] can serve as a symbol of ethnic identity and cultural solidarity; language is often the major embodiment of this ethnicity. It is used for reminding the group about its cultural heritage, for transmitting group feelings, and for excluding members of the outgroup from its internal transactions”: Howard Giles, Richard Y. Bourhis, and Donald M. Taylor, “Towards a Theory of Language in Ethnic Group Relations,” in Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations, ed. Howard Giles (London: Academic Press, 1977), 307. 541 The metaphor is used of Demant’s father, of Demant and of Carl Joseph: “Die Uniformen, die des Unteroffiziers, die des Postoffizianten Demant, hingen noch nebeneinander im Schrank […]. Sie sahen aus wie Mumien, und sooft der Schrank geöffnet wurde, glaubte der Sohn,

140 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch began long before. In this first chapter we are told that the grace of the Emperor (V, 143) is not the beginning but the end of the process of identity loss and alienation. As the story of the next two generations of Trottas gradually unfolds we learn that at the root of this loss of identity are the complex structures of the Empire. Although it was ostensibly a supranational organization in which “to be Austrian was to be free of national feeling”,542 the monarchy recognized German as the language of culture, and its bureaucrats, while they were not German nationalists, “never supposed that the Empire could be anything other than a German state.”543 The role of the monarchy and of two of the pillars of the Empire – the bureaucracy and the army544 – in the rise of nationalism that contributed to its fall is explored as the novel progresses.

The Habsburg Myth

The second theme raised in the opening chapter of the novel is the “Habsburg Myth”, or the discrepancy between appearance and reality, Schein and Sein which pervades the Empire, symbolized by “die riesigen Schatten, von geringen Gegenständen an die kahlen, blaugetünchten Wände geworfen” (V, 142). With time, Captain Trotta grows used to his changed circumstances and even comes to feel at home (heimisch) in his rank, station and fame, fully expecting that his sons and grandsons will become soldiers, and that he himself will one day die in battle. His world is shaken to its foundations for a second time, however, when his young son’s first school reader reminds him that his identity as Captain Trotta is an artificial creation of his Emperor maintained, it transpires, by a falsified account of the events at Solferino: he has become part of the Habsburg Myth.545 The Captain’s fury at the rewriting of history for the consumption of young readers is shared by neither his wife nor his chess partner, the lawyer. When a

zwei Leichen seines seligen Vaters nebeneinander zu sehn.” (V, 212) “Der Leutnant hängte den Säbel [Demants] in den Schrank. […] Trotta schloß den Kasten; er schloß einen Sarg.” (V, 254) “Der Koffer stand noch offen, die militärische Persönlichkeit Trottas lag drinnen, eine vorschriftsmäßig zusammengefaltete Leiche.” (V, 432) 542 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 25. 543 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 27. 544 The three “pillars” of the Empire were “[das] stehende[...] Heer der Soldaten, [das] sitzende[...] Heer der Bureaukraten und [das] kniende[...] Heer der Geistlichen”: E. Bagger, Franz Joseph (Zürich; Leipzig; Wien, 1927); quoted in Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 23. 545 Cf. Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 303.

141 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch protest to the Minister for Culture and Education is dismissed with the assurance that the “adjustment” to the facts has occurred in the name of the best possible pedagogical goals, and even the Emperor seems to find nothing improper in his ministers’ decisions, the disillusioned Captain Trotta resigns his post in the army and retires to his father-in-law’s estate in Bohemia.

The amusing account of the Knight of Truth’s valiant battle against the “Lüge” in the school reader masks a sinister reality: the institutionalization of lies and their acceptance by the population as part of the fabric of life in the Empire: “Es wird viel gelogen” (V, 148), as the Emperor confirms. Trotta’s wife and the lawyer consider the distortion of events for the reader harmless, each of them justifying it with the explanation “es ist für Kinder” (V, 146), but the lawyer’s statement “Die richtige Wahrheit erfahren sie dann später!” (V, 146) ironically reveals the problem inherent in their attitude: there may be big lies and little lies, but there are no degrees of truth. The fairy tales and fables contained in the same school reader are not factual, but neither do they pretend to be, in contrast to the account of the Battle of Solferino. And unlike the story of this battle, they are not propaganda designed to encourage the development of patriotic feeling (V, 148), but communicate to children a deeper truth. Driven from the paradise of his simple faith in Emperor and virtue, truth and justice, Trotta may have recognized, the narrator notes, “daß die Schlauheit den Bestand der Welt sicherte, die Kraft der Gesetze und den Glanz der Majestäten.” (V, 149) Whether or not Trotta himself has recognized it, Roth through his narrator is certainly making an unflattering observation about the mechanisms of power in the Empire, while exposing the myth-making machinery that underpins it.546

The discrepancy between what is said, written or believed and what is true is not restricted to the depiction of historical events in school readers but extends throughout society and manifests in the gap between professed morality or codes of behaviour and what actually happens behind closed doors. The connection between this state of affairs and the mythologizing practices of the Empire is

546 Cf. Philip Manger, “The : Joseph Roth and the Habsburg Myth,” in The Viennese Enlightenment, ed. Mark Francis (London: Croom Helm, 1985), 48.

142 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch indicated when Captain Trotta storms away from his conversation with the lawyer:

Er ging in die Kaserne, überraschte den diensthabenden Offizier, Leutnant Amerling, mit einem Fräulein in der Schreibstube des Rechnungsoffiziers, visitierte selbst die Wachen, ließ den Feldwebel holen, bestellte den Unteroffizier vom Dienst zum Rapport, ließ die Kompanie antreten und befahl Gewehrübungen im Hof. (V, 146-47)

The fact that Trotta does not react to finding the duty lieutenant with a young woman in the paymaster’s office, but does order soldiers absent from his snap rifle drill to report the next day, indicates that although officially army rules would not tolerate a lieutenant entertaining a young woman while on duty (and certainly not in the paymaster’s office!), there is tacit acceptance that such things occur, and that one does not speak of them. The Knight of Truth himself, then, the “grimmiger Feind jeder Lüge” (V, 144) is involved in a web of deception of which he is apparently unaware. Furthermore, he is so bound up in the social structures of the Empire that even he in effect lies (by omission) in order to maintain appearances, never speaking with his wife of his family background or inviting his father to visit because he feels “daß die Tochter des älteren Staatsbeamtengeschlechts ein verlegener Hochmut von einem slowenischen Wachtmeister trennen würde.” (V, 150)

Despite being enmeshed in the structures of his society, however, Baron Trotta is indeed the paragon of truth when compared with his fellow citizens who believe the falsification of history is perfectly acceptable. When he dies, the Knight of Truth is buried according to his wishes near his father, and little more remains of him, the narrator remarks, than a simple military headstone with the carved epithet “Der Held von Solferino”, faded glory, and the portrait painted by his son’s friend. Symbolically, what is buried is the truth and what survives is the myth of the Hero and the portrait representing this myth,547 which later engages the imagination of his grandson, determining to a certain extent the path of Carl Joseph’s unhappy life.

547 The suggestion that the Hero of Solferino’s glory has faded is undercut by the letter of condolence the Baron’s son receives from the Kaiser that same week, in which it is twice mentioned that his father’s services will be forever remembered; in other words, the myth will live on.

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Generational Patterns: Linking Past and Present

Along with the myth, a further intangible legacy of the Hero of Solferino is suggested in the opening chapter by the letters exchanged between the Baron and his son:

Zweimal im Monat empfing [der Baron] gehorsame Briefe seines Kindes. Einmal im Monat antwortete er in zwei kurzen Sätzen, auf kleinen, sparsamen Zetteln, den Respekträndern, die er von den erhaltenen Briefen abgetrennt hatte. (V, 152)

For five years as a lieutenant in the army, Joseph Trotta wrote to his father every second week:

Wie Urlaubsscheine und Dienstzettel glichen die Briefe einander, geschrieben auf gelblichen und holzfaserigen Oktavbogen, die Anrede ‘Lieber Vater!’ links, vier Finger Abstand vom oberen Rand und zwei vom seitlichen, beginnend mit der kurzen Mitteilung vom Wohlergehen des Schreibers, fortfahrend mit der Hoffnung auf das des Empfängers und abgeschlossen von der steten, in einen neuen Absatz gefaßten und rechts unten im diagonalen Abstand zur Anrede hingemalten Wendung: ‘In Ehrfurcht Ihr treuer und dankbarer Sohn Joseph Trotta, Leutnant.’ (V, 142)

The rigidity reflected in the meticulous sameness of the letters is a mark of Joseph Trotta’s personality, and this behaviour is replicated and amplified by his son, the young boy whose obedient letters arrive like clockwork and who grows up to become the punctilious and assiduous Bezirkshauptmann in Moravia, and later his grandson, who is damaged by this legacy but unable to transcend it.548 Just as this behaviour is passed down from one generation to the next, the myth of the Hero of Solferino will shape the course of his grandson Carl Joseph’s life. This determining effect of the past on the present is expressed in the metaphor with which the first chapter closes:

Also geht ein Bauer im Frühling über den Acker – und später, im Sommer, ist die Spur seiner Schritte überweht vom Segen des Weizens, den er gesät hat. (V, 155)

This metaphor also expresses Roth’s conviction that while contemporary Central Europe looks very different from the pre-war Austro-Hungarian and German Empires, there is an underlying causal relationship between past and present. In

548 François Derré describes the letter-writing motif in both Roth and as “Symbol eines Mechanismus, der mit der Zucht des Militärlebens zusammenhängt und jeden Ausdruck irgendwelcher echten Gefühle, Haß oder Liebe, ausschließt”: Derré, “Militärerziehung,” 53.

144 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch concrete terms, 1918 may have brought radical changes to the territory, form of government and ethnic composition of Austria, but the exclusive linguistic and cultural (and increasingly biological) German nationalism is a legacy of past structures and norms of behaviour.

“Man lebte im Schatten des Großvaters!”:549 The Crisis of Carl Joseph

The first chapter closes with this multivalent metaphor of the farmer sowing seed which will in time become wheat billowing in the fields. The remainder of the novel charts the intensifying existential crisis of the representative of the third and last generation of the Trotta family, the futility of whose desperate desire for a viable identity in a world in a terminal state of decline is reflected in the pervasive “Untergangsstimmung” and the frequent evocation of death and decay. The articulation of the crisis of consciousness or “Zerfall der Werte” (Broch) which led to the collapse of the traditional hierarchical order in the First World War is a characteristic feature of the modern German novel. The typical protagonist of such novels is the isolated individual who is unable to reconcile self and society. But where other modern novels of the early twentieth century, such as Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (1924), ’s Der Steppenwolf (1927) and Robert Musil’s Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930), focus on the condition of alienation, Radetzkymarsch focuses on the process.550 The progressive alienation of the protagonist Carl Joseph both mirrors and illuminates the decline of the Habsburg Empire, a place and an idea which failed to be “eine Heimat aller”551 and contained within its structures the seeds of contemporary German nationalism. By revealing an unconscious German bias in the idea of “Österreich”, Roth constructs Radetzkymarsch as a historical novel in Lukács’s sense, “giving poetic life to those historical, social and human forces”552 which have led to the Central Europe of Roth’s own time.

549 Roth, Radetzkymarsch (V, 198). 550 “[Bei Castorp, Harry Haller und Ulrich ist] die Isolierung bereits vollzogen, dargestellt in continuum wird ein Bewußtsein in seiner Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Zustand. Im Radetzkymarsch dagegen ist der sich vollziehende Prozeß der Isolierung der eigentliche Darstellungsgegenstand”: Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 60. 551 Joseph Roth, Der stumme Prophet (IV, 922). 552 Lukács, Historical Novel 53.

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Carl Joseph’s Summery Idyll

The reader’s introduction to Carl Joseph occurs in an idyllic setting: it is summer and the sky is always blue, old chestnut trees cast their wide cool shadows right into the middle of the road, larks trill and the military band plays the Radetzky March to the visible delight of the listeners. This is the setting in which the third generation of the von Trotta family is introduced:

Der fünfzehnjährige Sohn der Bezirkshauptmanns, Carl Joseph von Trotta, Schüler der Kavalleriekadettenschule in Mährisch-Weißkirchen, empfand seine Geburtsstadt als einen sommerlichen Ort; sie war die Heimat des Sommers wie seine eigene. (V, 157)

The use of the verb empfinden invites the reader’s cautious scepticism, suggesting that the reality of Carl Joseph’s native town is perhaps quite different from his subjective and limited experience of it. The foregoing depiction of the town is thereby thrown into doubt, and the categorical opening sentence of the chapter – “Es gab im ganzen Machtbereich der Division keine schönere Militärkapelle als die des Infanterieregiments Nr. X in der kleinen Bezirksstadt W. in Mähren” (V, 156) – which seemed to require the reader’s acceptance of it as a statement of fact, suddenly cannot be said unequivocally to represent the narrator’s perspective, but may express the feelings of the pensive band audience or Carl Joseph himself. The narrator is elusive, but a number of seemingly incidental remarks serve to undermine the otherwise idyllic description and suggest a reality which differs from the summery idyll depicted: the Kapellmeister’s view that his colleagues’ habit of not conducting the first march is “ein deutliches Anzeichen des Untergangs der kaiserlichen und königlichen Monarchie” (V, 156), and the description of Herr von Winternigg as “ein kümmerliches Stück von Winter” driving through “den satten Sommer” (V, 157) indicate to the reader open to the incongruities in the text that caution is advisable: all may not be as it seems.

In this same chapter we learn that Carl Joseph’s identity, like his father’s, is based on an unquestioning identification with Emperor and Empire. The Bezirkshauptmann speaks in “das nasale österreichische Deutsch der höheren Beamten und des kleinen Adels” (V, 163), and his muttonchop whiskers are described as part of his uniform, “ein Abzeichen, das seine Zugehörigkeit zu der Dienerschaft Franz Josephs des Ersten beweisen sollte, als einen Beweis seiner

146 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch dynastischen Gesinnung” (V, 163). His loyalty to a supranational, not a German, Austria is reflected in his repeated reprimanding of Fräulein Hirschwitz, who spent many years living in Germany and speaks hochdeutsch (V, 162). Carl Joseph for his part identifies unconditionally with the Habsburg dynasty with the eagerness of a child and an exaggerated awareness of his status as son of one of his Majesty’s officials:

Jeden Sonntag spielte [die Militärkapelle] um die Mittagszeit vor dem Amtshaus des Bezirkshauptmanns, der in diesem Städtchen keinen Geringeren vertrat als Seine Majestät den Kaiser. Carl Joseph stand verborgen hinter dem dichten Weinlaub des Balkons und nahm das Spiel der Militärkapelle wie eine Huldigung entgegen. Er fühlte sich ein wenig den Habsburgern verwandt, deren Macht sein Vater hier repräsentierte und verteidigte und für die er einmal selbst ausziehen sollte, in den Krieg und in den Tod. Er kannte die Namen aller Mitglieder des Allerhöchsten Hauses. Er liebte sie alle aufrichtig, mit einem kindlich ergebenen Herzen, vor allen andern den Kaiser, der gütig war und groß, erhaben und gerecht, unendlich fern und sehr nahe und den Offizieren der Armee besonders zugetan. Am besten starb man für ihn bei Militärmusik, am leichtesten beim Radetzkymarsch. (V, 160)

The narrator slips in and out of erlebte Rede, the shift into Carl Joseph’s thoughts being signalled by the use of the phrase “Seine Majestät den Kaiser” rather than simply “den Kaiser”.553 The use of erlebte Rede here lends an ironic note to Carl Joseph’s childlike devotion and the fantasy of a heroic death inspired by the strains of the Radetzky March.554 The naïveté of his beliefs is underscored by the phrase “mit einem kindlich ergebenen Herzen”, which reminds the reader that his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino, was “[v]ertrieben […] aus dem Paradies der einfachen Gläubigkeit an Kaiser und Tugend, Wahrheit und Recht” (V, 149) and appeared to grow old very suddenly when he discovered that machinations and myth-production were responsible for maintaining “den Bestand der Welt […], die Kraft der Gesetze und den Glanz der Majestäten.” (V, 149) Carl Joseph’s

553 The Bezirkshauptmann is very particular about the words he uses to refer to the Emperor: “Bei feierlichen Anlässen sagte man: Seine Majestät. Im gewöhnlichen Leben sagte man: der Kaiser.” (V, 286). The control he exercises over his son and the repeated indications in the novel that Carl Joseph unconsciously mimics his father allow the assumption that Carl Joseph also refers to the Emperor as “Seine Majestät” on solemn occasions, such as when he is thinking about his relationship to the Emperor and duty to die for him. A further indication that this paragraph consists largely of the reported thoughts and fantasies of the character is the first sentence of the following paragraph: “Jacques stand hinter seinem [Carl Josephs] Rücken und räusperte sich.” (V, 160) 554 Hoffmeister points particularly to the “Häufung der auf den Kaiser bezogenen Adjektive ‘gütig … groß … erhaben … gerecht’” and the sharp irony of the final sentence as revealing

147 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch naïve faith in his Emperor, and by implication the Empire, is at this stage still intact, but Roth’s irony – most barbed in the last sentence of the quoted passage – presages its disintegration.

“‘Erzählen Sie vom Großvater, Jacques!’”555 Searching for Truth

Carl Joseph is a military cadet, destined by his family name to have a successful career in the army and, he believes, to die a glorious and heroic death protecting Emperor and Empire. Cadet school and military life is a topos of the Austrian novel, and was a favourite subject of retired soldiers turned writers in the former Empire.556 Many of these writers expressed nostalgic longing for the good old times.557 Military life, from cadet school onward, appears in the memory of writers such as Karl Baron Torresani and Franz Karl Ginzkey as

die geistige Heimat, der Zufluchtsort vor allen Gefahren der Außenwelt. Das Bewußtsein, zu der mächtigsten Stütze des Kaiserreichs zu gehören, erhöht und umgibt von einem Glorienschein das allzumenschliche Gefühl der Geborgenheit.558

By contrast, the military in Radetzkymarsch is unable to provide Carl Joseph with this sense of Heimat or belonging familiar to readers of other “Kasernenromane”:559

Nach Generationen, die hingebungsvoll dem Staat dienten, des Kaisers Rock mit Stolz und ohne Vorbehalte trugen, treten Menschen auf, die dieses

the critical undertone inherent in the erlebte Rede in this passage: Hoffmeister, “Erzählhaltung,” 168. 555 Roth, Radetzkymarsch (V, 169). 556 Derré, “Militärerziehung,” 51. 557 Such unambiguously nostalgic and transfiguring texts stem for the most part from lesser writers. In the work of a writer of the calibre of Ferdinand von Saar, military life appears in a rather more bleak light. Derré cites von Saar’s Leutnant Burda, Ginevra, Schloß Kostenitz and Außer Dienst as examples: Derré, “Militärerziehung,” 56, note 5. 558 Derré, “Militärerziehung,” 52. Torresani wrote in the 1890s, Ginskey in the 1920s, and therefore their nostalgia has different roots: “Bei Torresani ist es die übliche Wehmut wegen der dahingegangenen Jugend, bei Ginzkey spürt man die aus den damaligen Zeitläuften entsprungene Trauer um eine untergegangene Welt”: Derré, “Militärerziehung,” 52. See also Foster, “Radetzkymarsch,” 358-60. 559 Robert Musil’s often-quoted dismissal of Radetzkymarsch as “ein sehr hübsch geschriebener Kasernenroman” (Morgenstern, Flucht und Ende 82) is a misreading and underestimation of the novel. Foster discusses Roth’s self-conscious use of genre clichés from pre-1914 Austrian fiction on the Habsburg Army, demonstrating the contribution of these clichés to Roth’s exploration of notions of historical and fictional truthfulness: Foster, “Radetzkymarsch”.

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Dasein als Zwang empfinden und ihm widerstreben.560

The process of estrangement from the life Carl Joseph’s father has chosen for him is gradual and the fifteen-year-old cadet has not yet begun to question it, but the depiction of his first sexual encounter with Frau Slama intimates symbolically that Carl Joseph’s entry into adulthood marks the onset of an internal struggle between the dictates of his upbringing and Beruf and those of his soul:

Er hatte Angst, sich umzuwenden. Auf einmal lagen ihre beiden schimmernden Ärmel an seinem Hals, und ihr Gesicht lastete auf seinen Haaren. Er rührte sich nicht. Aber sein Herz klopfte laut, ein großer Sturm brach in ihm aus, krampfhaft zurückgehalten vom erstarrten Körper und den festen Knöpfen der Uniform. (V, 166)

The reader has learned during Carl Joseph’s examination that although his riding has improved from the “Schande” (V, 158) it was the previous year, the cavalry cadet does not ride well, signifying that he is not called to the Beruf his father has chosen for him. His “erstarrte[r] Körper” recalls the passage just a few pages earlier in which the Bezirkshauptmann is described in similar terms several times:

Außer den Lippen bewegte sich nichts in diesem Gesicht. […] Aufrecht saß er am Tisch, als hielte er Zügel in den harten Händen. Wenn er saß, sah es aus, als stünde er, und wenn er sich erhob, überraschte immer wieder seine kerzengrade Größe. […] Zwischen dem zweiten und dritten Gang pflegte er aufzustehen, um sich ‘Bewegung zu machen.’ Aber es war eher, als wollte er seinen Hausgenossen vorführen, wie man sich erhebt, steht und wandelt, ohne die Reglosigkeit aufzugeben. (V, 163)

Together with the military training he receives at cadet school, Carl Joseph’s regimented Erziehung by his exacting father, so vividly evoked in the portrayal of the excruciating examination to which his father subjects him earlier in this chapter, is designed to produce an obedient and unquestioning servant of his superiors, the type envisaged in the concept of “Subordination” (V, 159).561 Carl Joseph’s development as an autonomous individual is being stifled by representatives of the two “pillars of Empire” which Roth portrays in this novel –

560 Derré, “Militärerziehung,” 54. Derré’s analysis refers to both Radetzkymarsch and Franz Werfel’s Nicht der Mörder, der Ermordete ist schuldig. 561 The fact that Carl Joseph is unable to quote verbatim the definition of subordination is a further early hint that he will not become “heimisch” in the army as his grandfather did before him; more significantly, the exchange between father and son over the wording of the definition reflects the Bezirkshauptmann’s emphasis on form over content, which corresponds to his preference for appearances over reality and allows him to continue to believe in the myth of Austria longer than Carl Joseph does.

149 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch the bureaucracy and the military. As his existential crisis intensifies, the Empire marches inexorably towards its doom and it gradually becomes apparent that for Roth there is an inextricable link between the intertwined fates of Carl Joseph and the Empire and the structures of Habsburg society.

That his sexual awakening and relationship with Frau Slama cause Carl Joseph to begin to question the tenets of his upbringing and faith in the monarchy is indicated by its conjunction with his repeated attempts to learn something more about his grandfather: “Immer, wenn Carl Joseph von Frau Slama heimkehrte, ging er zu Jacques in den Hof und setzte sich auf die Kante. ‘Erzählen Sie vom Großvater, Jacques!’” (V, 169) Carl Joseph seems to suspect that there is something he does not know, some deeper truth perhaps concealed in – or by – the portrait of the Hero of Solferino. Curious about “die erloschene Gestalt und den verschollenen Ruhm des Großvaters”, he tries examining the portrait from different angles and distances:

Carl Joseph [stieg] auf einen Stuhl und betrachtete das Bildnis des Großvaters aus der Nähe. Es zerfiel in zahlreiche tiefe Schatten und helle Lichtflecke, in Pinselstriche und Tupfen, in ein tausendfältiges Gewebe der bemalten Leinwand, in ein hartes Farbenspiel getrockneten Öls. Carl Joseph stieg vom Stuhl. Der grüne Schatten der Bäume spielte auf dem braunen Rock des Großvaters, die Pinselstriche und Tupfen fügten sich wieder zu der vertrauten, aber unergründlichen Physiognomie, und die Augen erhielten ihren gewohnten, fernen, dem Dunkel der Decke entgegendämmernden Blick. (V, 168)562

“[D]ie stummen Unterhaltungen des Enkels mit dem Großvater” which reveal nothing to the grandson form a contrast with the earlier “stumme Zwiesprache” which the grandfather held “mit seinem Angesicht”. (V, 153) The elder Trotta had been sceptical about the ability of a one-dimensional picture to reflect the totality of his being,563 but gradually “im Kommunikationsaustausch zwischen dem Dargestellten und dem Lebendigen wird eine Wahrheit menschlicher Existenz transparent mit der der alte Trotta sich im Einklang befindet”:564

[Das Porträt] weckte in ihm nie gekannte Gedanken, Erinnerungen,

562 Carl Joseph’s attempts to glean something hidden from the portrait recall to the reader his grandfather’s first response to his likeness, which was to turn it over as if seeking further details which had been left out on the front. (V, 153) 563 Cf. Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 68. 564 Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 68.

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unfaßbare, rasch verschwimmende Schatten von Wehmut. Er hatte erst des Bildes bedurft, um sein frühes Alter und seine große Einsamkeit zu erfahren, aus der bemalten Leinwand strömten sie ihm entgegen, die Einsamkeit und das Alter. War es immer so? fragte er sich. Immer war es so? (V, 153-54)

It was not always thus: his early old age and his Einsamkeit were a result of his disillusionment, his discovery of the lies upon which his existence was founded. The positive changes which occur in the grandfather’s life and manner after this recognition reflect the importance of a true understanding of oneself and one’s society. Carl Joseph’s attempts to discover a hidden truth in the portrait of his grandfather, which represents his faith in and sense of obligation to the Emperor, signals the beginning of his own search for such an understanding.565

Finding that his attempts to glean something from the portrait only leave him feeling more disconnected from the truth of the past – so much so that he feels there must come a time when only a blank canvas will stare down at him from the black frame – Carl Joseph asks the one person he believes might have access to the truth about his grandfather, the servant Jacques.566 Yet not even Jacques is privy to the truth about the Hero of Solferino, because his master never spoke of it:

Alle haben gewußt: Er hat dem Kaiser das Leben gerettet, in der Schlacht bei Solferino, aber er hat nichts davon gesagt, keinen Mucks hat er gegeben. Deshalb haben sie ihm auch ‘Der Held von Solferino’ auf den Grabstein geschrieben. (V, 169)

Thus the Knight of Truth himself was in part responsible for the perpetuation of the myth and the fact that his own grandson cannot know the truth. After Jacques has told the same story for at least the twentieth time567 Carl Joseph’s disappointment at the absence of new insight is evident in the narrator’s comment, which appears to reflect Carl Joseph’s thoughts: “Das war alles.” (V, 169) The paragraphs which immediately follow this expression of disappointment that the truth remains concealed behind the legend of his grandfather suggest that Carl

565 His father, the Bezirkshauptmann, remains unquestioning of the truth concealed by the portrait: cf. Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 68. 566 That Carl Joseph does not ask his father suggests that he is at least at some level aware that his father accepts the portrait and all it represents at face value. 567 “Und wie immer und wie schon gute zwanzig Mal begann [Jacques]: ‘Ich bin immer mit ihm ausgekommen!’” (V, 169)

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Joseph is aware that any subsequent success is due to this myth rather than his own abilities:

Einmal […] sagte der Bezirkshauptmann beim Abschied: ‘Ich hoffe, daß alles glattgeht. Du bist der Enkel des Helden von Solferino. Denk daran, dann kann dir nichts passieren!’ Auch der Oberst, alle Lehrer, alle Unteroffiziere dachten daran, und also konnte Carl Joseph in der Tat nichts passieren. Obwohl er kein ausgezeichneter Reiter war, in der Terrainlehre schwach, in der Trigonometrie ganz versagt hatte, kam er ‘mit einer guten Nummer’ durch, wurde als Leutnant ausgemustert und den X-ten Ulanen zugeteilt. (V, 169)

Through his affair with Frau Slama, then, Carl Joseph has begun to sense the discrepancy between appearance and reality in other areas of his life as well. The Bezirkshauptmann, having been made aware of the affair by Sergeant Slama and determined to teach Carl Joseph the meaning of “Subordination”, exposes his son (and Sergeant Slama) to a scene of the most excruciating humiliation. That he then considers the matter closed is signalled by his placing his hand over his son’s. The Bezirkshauptmann believes life has returned to normal and intends to act as if the affair and its unfortunate end never happened:

Aus dem Tor der Bezirkshauptmannschaft tritt der Wachtmeister Slama im Helm, mit Gewehr und aufgepflanztem Bajonett und Dienstbuch unter dem Arm. ‘Grüß Gott, lieber Slama!’ sagt der alte Herr von Trotta. ‘Nichts Neues, was?’ ‘Nichts Neues!’ wiederholt der Wachtmeister. (V, 192)

However while the Bezirkshauptmann’s power over Slama remains unbroken, the Sergeant colluding (and having little choice but to collude) in his superior’s denial of what has happened, Carl Joseph has discovered that behind the surface reality which his father believes has now been restored lies a deeper and more complex truth:

[Der Wachtmeister] steht hinter der Lehne eines Sessels, umfaßt sie mit den Händen, er hält sie vor sich wie einen Schild. Vor mehr als vier Jahren hat ihn Carl Joseph zuletzt gesehn. Damals war er im Dienst. Er trug einen schillernden Federbusch am schwarzen Hut, Riemen überkreuzten seine Brust, das Gewehr hielt er bei Fuß, er wartete vor der Kanzlei des Bezirkshauptmanns. Er war der Wachtmeister Slama, der Name war wie der Rang, der Federbusch gehörte wie der blonde Schnurrbart zu seiner Physiognomie. Jetzt steht der Wachtmeister barhäuptig da, ohne Säbel, Riemen und Gurt, man sieht den fettigen Glanz des gerippten Uniformstoffs auf der leichten Wölbung des Bauchs über der Lehne, und es ist nicht mehr der Wachtmeister Slama von damals, sondern der Herr Slama, ein Wachtmeister der Gendarmerie im Dienst, früher Mann der Frau Slama, jetzt Witwer und Herr dieses Hauses. (V, 185-86)

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Like the image of the dead Kathi Slama, this discovery that identity and life are more complex than he had believed remains with Carl Joseph as he goes to his first posting in Moravia. For the first time he is aware of the possibility of a different sort of life from the one prescribed by the Bezirkshauptmann, but he is too weak and passive to be capable of taking responsibility for himself and indulges in a romantic fantasy of his ancestors’ peasant existence. In so doing he not only fails to comprehend and thus possibly transcend the myth of the Hero of Solferino, but adds a further layer to it:

Der Vater des Großvaters noch war ein Bauer gewesen. Sipolje war der Name des Dorfes, aus dem sie stammten. Sipolje: Das Wort hatte eine alte Bedeutung. Auch den heutigen Slowenen war es kaum mehr bekannt. Carl Joseph aber glaubte, es zu kennen, das Dorf. Er sah es, wenn er an das Porträt seines Großvaters dachte, das verdämmernd unter dem Suffit des Herrenzimmers hing. Eingebettet lag es zwischen unbekannten Bergen, unter dem goldenen Glanz einer unbekannten Sonne, mit armseligen Hütten aus Lehm und Stroh. Ein schönes Dorf, ein gutes Dorf! Man hätte seine Offizierskarriere darum gegeben! Ach, man war kein Bauer, man war Baron und Leutnant bei den Ulanen! (V, 193)

While many critics assume that the narrator’s perspective coincides with Carl Joseph’s and thus consider Roth to have romanticized the pre-modern past,568 the sentence “Carl Joseph aber glaubte, es zu kennen, das Dorf” signals a switch to erlebte Rede, meaning that the following description of the village, including the exclamation “Ein schönes Dorf, ein gutes Dorf!”, is narrated not from the narrator’s point of view but from the character’s. An ironic distance is thus signalled which is underscored in the use three times in quick succession of the impersonal pronoun man.569 The use of man instead of the expected er in this passage of erlebte Rede signifies Carl Joseph’s reluctance to identify completely with his own thoughts, thus relieving him of the responsibility of following through with his fantasy.570 This interpretation is supported by the next image,

568 Marchand, for example, contends: “Der Radetzkymarsch ist ganz und gar ein sehnsüchtiges Beschwören der verlorenen bäuerlichen Herkunft”: Marchand, Wertbegriffe 199. 569 On the various different functions of the pronoun man in Radetzkymarsch see Böning, Radetzkymarsch 33-34; and Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 62-65. Scheible and Trommler are more sceptical about Roth’s use of the pronoun: see Scheible, Joseph Roth 105- 08; and Frank Trommler, Roman und Wirklichkeit. Eine Ortsbestimung am Beispiel von Musil, Broch, Roth, Doderer und Gütersloh (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966) 59. 570 Reidel-Schrewe comes to a similar conclusion about a different passage: Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 63-64. The final line quoted above, “Ach, man war kein Bauer…”, which begins a new paragraph, could also be understood as the narrator’s parody of the character.

153 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch which relates Carl Joseph’s feelings of being trapped in his life as Baron and Lieutenant:

Immer, wenn er in die Kaserne am Nachmittag heimkehrte und das große, doppelflügelige Tor hinter ihm schloß, hatte er die Empfindung, gefangen zu sein; niemals mehr würde es sich vor ihm auftun. (V, 193)

Just as the gate opens each day to release him, Roth suggests Carl Joseph’s feeling of being trapped, a victim of his fate, is an illusion or, at least in part, of his own doing since he refuses to take responsibility for himself and his identity, taking refuge instead in bucolic fantasy. As Reidel-Schrewe convincingly argues, the frequent use of man in the narrating of Carl Joseph’s reflections signifies his doubt about the “Autonomie seines Ichs […]. Nicht Identitätsverlust oder Selbstentfremdung kennzeichnen diesen Charakter, vielmehr das Unvermögen, eine Identität anzunehmen.”571

Carl Joseph and Max Demant: Ungleiche Brüder

The reasons for Carl Joseph’s inability to construct an identity for himself emerge through his interactions with others who have a significant impact on his life. The regimental doctor Max Demant seems also to suffer from the consciousness of living “von den Toten” (V, 220), but there are important differences between him and Carl Joseph.572 The fact that Demant remembers his grandfather clearly,573 whereas Carl Joseph never knew his, suggests that the doctor has a more realistic view of the past and its relationship to the present than his younger friend. This contrast is underscored by Demant’s mysterious insight into the complexity of the man Carl Joseph knows only as the legendary Hero of Solferino:

‘Ihr Großvater’, sagte der Regimentsarzt, ‘war einer der merkwürdigsten Menschen der Armee. Haben Sie ihn noch gekannt?’ ‘Ich habe ihn nicht mehr gekannt’, antwortete Carl Joseph. ‘Sein Bild hängt bei uns zu Hause im Herrenzimmer. Wie ich klein war, hab’ ich es oft betrachtet. Und sein Diener, der Jacques, ist noch bei uns.’ (V, 206)

That Carl Joseph fails to remark upon Demant’s curious description of his grandfather as “merkwürdig” underscores the one-dimensional view of his

571 Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 64. 572 The tendency in the secondary literature is to see only the similarities between the two characters: see, for example, Herzog, “Der Segen,” 122. 573 “Er erinnerte sich noch deutlich seines Großvaters.” (V, 210)

154 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch grandfather represented in the portrait and his correspondingly naïve and skewed vision of the past.

Carl Joseph believes that it is the weight of expectation represented by their grandfathers that unites him in friendship with Demant, but the narrator distances himself from the character’s perspective and casts doubt on the veracity of Carl Joseph’s belief:

Auf einmal weiß er, daß der Regimentsarzt seit Wochen sein Freund ist; ein Freund! Sie haben sich jeden Tag gesehn. Einmal ist er mit dem Regimentsarzt auf dem Friedhof, zwischen den Gräbern, spazierengegangen. ‘Es gibt so viele Tote’, sagte der Regimentsarzt. ‘Fühlst du nicht auch, wie man von den Toten lebt?’ ‘Ich lebe vom Großvater’, sagte Trotta. Er sah das Bildnis des Helden von Solferino, verdämmernd unter dem Suffit des väterlichen Hauses. Ja, etwas Brüderliches klang aus dem Regimentsarzt, aus dem Herzen Doktor Demants schlug das Brüderliche wie ein Feuerchen. ‘Mein Großvater’, hat der Regimentsarzt gesagt, ‘war ein alter, großer Jude mit silbernem Bart!’ Carl Joseph sah den alten, großen Juden mit dem silbernen Bart. Sie waren Enkel, sie waren beide Enkel. (V, 220)

Here, as so often in the novel, the narrative perspective is elusive. The repetition of the word “Freund” with the added exclamation mark and the variation of the article from “sein” to “ein” indicates a shift in the narrative perspective to erlebte Rede: we have entered the incredulous and child-like mind of Carl Joseph. If the rest of the paragraph is read – as the shift to erlebte Rede suggests it should be – as a continuation of Carl Joseph’s thoughts and his subjective memory of the conversation in the cemetery, it is divested of any veneer of objectivity, and the accuracy of Carl Joseph’s interpretation of his friend’s words as indicating a shared burden and sense of commonality – “etwas Brüderliches” – becomes doubtful.574 The evocation of the portrait which hangs “verdämmernd unter dem Suffit des väterlichen Hauses” in this context underscores the likely inaccuracy of Carl Joseph’s impression: his experience of the portrait as “verdämmernd” was

574 In fact, while their relationship is experienced by both as a rare friendship, Demant’s manner towards Carl Joseph is less brotherly than fatherly. When they first meet he accompanies Carl Joseph to the brothel as if wishing to protect him (“‘Müssen Sie mit?’ fragte er den Leutnant Trotta leise. ‘Es wird wohl so sein!’ flüsterte Carl Joseph. Und der Regimentsarzt ging wortlos mit.” – V, 207), and when Carl Joseph suddenly confesses his love for the dead Kathi Slama (without knowing why he does so), Demant does not reciprocate with a story of his own, but says as a voice of wisdom: “‘Sie werden noch andere Frauen lieben!’” (V, 207) During the night before the duel they seem even further apart in age, Carl Joseph surrendering himself to weeping like a child and saying over and again “‘Ich will nicht, daß du stirbst, ich will nicht, daß du stirbst, ich will nicht! Ich will nicht!’” (V, 235), while Demant maintains a reasoned tone, raising his voice only once (V, 237-38).

155 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch earlier evoked in conjunction with his imagining of the village of Sipolje, which the narrator parodied (V, 193). Demant’s realistic view of his grandfather, reflected in his matter-of-fact description of him as “ein alter, großer Jude mit silbernem Bart”, forms a stark contrast to Carl Joseph’s metaphysical understanding of the generational relationship: “Sie waren Enkel, sie waren beide Enkel.”

Carl Joseph’s over-developed consciousness of being a grandson signifies the inability to construct a viable identity in the present due to an overwhelming orientation towards a mythologized past. His subsequent descent into a self- destructive existence of drunken profligacy is a mark of this inability to deal with present reality575 and is indicated to be a result of the overshadowing of his life by the past, specifically the myth of his grandfather, when Carl Joseph declares to his troubled and bewildered father in drunken anguish:

‘[A]n das Bild hab’ ich immer gedacht. Ich bin nicht stark genug für dieses Bild. Die Toten! Ich kann die Toten nicht vergessen! Vater, ich kann gar nichts vergessen! Vater!’ (V, 296-97)

Demant shares with Carl Joseph the awareness of living “ein Leben mit Widerhaken” (V, 210), but in his case it does not result from a paralyzing feeling that he is unable to fulfil expectations imposed by the past. While he knows that his Orthodox Eastern Jewish grandfather576 would have been horrified to know that his grandson had assimilated and joined the army,577 his sense of a mired life

575 Carl Joseph’s inability to confront and assess his present reality is given metaphoric expression in his inability to calculate his financial debt and his childlike abandonment of any attempt to do so: “Er konnte nicht rechnen. Seine kleinen Notizbücher hätten von seinen trostlosen Bemühungen, Ordnung zu halten, zeugen können. Unendliche Zahlenkolonnen standen auf jeder Seite. Sie verwirrten und vermischten sich aber, er verlor sie gleichsam aus den Händen, sie addierten sich selbst und trogen ihn mit falschen Summen, sie galoppierten vor seinen sehenden Augen davon, sie kehrten im nächsten Augenblick verwandelt zurück und waren nicht mehr zu erkennen. […] Schließlich langweilte ihn jede Zahl. Und er gab ein für allemal jeden Rechenversuch auf, mit dem Mut, den Ohnmacht und Verzweiflung erzeugen.” (V, 373) 576 Demant’s grandfather’s long silver beard signifies that he is an Orthodox Jew: “Für streng erzogene Juden, besonders für Anhänger des Chassidismus, geht das Tragen eines Vollbarts […] auf die Vorschriften des Gesetzes und der Bibel zurück. ‘Ihr sollt euer Haar am Haupt nicht rund umher abschneiden, noch euren Bart gar abscheren’, heißt es ausdrücklich (3 Mose 19:27)”: Edward Timms, “Doppeladler und Backenbart. Zur Symbolik der österreich- jüdischen Symbiose bei Joseph Roth,” Literatur und Kritik 247/248 (1990): 320. 577 “Wenn er gewußt hätte, daß sein Enkel einmal in der Uniform eines Offiziers und mörderisch bewaffnet durch die Welt spazieren würde, hätte er sein Alter verflucht und die Frucht seiner Lenden.” (V, 210-11)

156 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch has resulted from his failure to change its course, a failure he attributes to fate,578 but which in truth is the result of his incapacity to make decisions and act upon them:

Man sank der Armee geradezu in die Arme. Sieben Jahre Essen, sieben Jahre Trinken, sieben Jahre Kleidung, sieben Jahre Obdach, sieben, sieben lange Jahre! Man wurde Militärarzt. Und man blieb es. […] Und ehe man einen Entschluß gefaßt hatte, war man ein alter Mann. (V, 212)579

The use of the pronoun man instead of er distances the decision to join and remain in the army from the person who made the decision, this signifying an unwillingness, whether conscious or unconscious, to take responsibility for the decision and passivity in the face of discontent. In addition, the use of the imperfect (sank, wurde, blieb) after man gives the statements a ring of finality, while at the same time implying the wish that it were otherwise, “der Wunsch, daß man kein Militärarzt wäre”.580 As Reidel-Schrewe explains,

[i]n der Doppeldeutigkeit dieser Sprachform, die sowohl die Gebundenheit an die Vergangenheit als auch den Wunsch, sich aus dieser Gebundenheit zu lösen, zum Ausdruck bringt, manifestiert sich die Stagnation der Gegenwartserfahrung im Bewußtsein des Reflektierenden.581

Demant’s inability to extricate himself from the past and the consequent stagnation of his life sheds further light on Carl Joseph’s predicament. Demant has continued to live the life of an army doctor despite recognizing it to be a meaningless existence, as he expresses on the eve of the duel: “‘Dieser Tod ist unsinnig! […] So unsinnig, wie mein Leben gewesen ist!’” (V, 233) This recognition and the ability to articulate it distinguishes Demant from Carl Joseph, but the reality of a meaningless existence applies to both of them. What renders their lives so futile is revealed through Demant’s memory of his father, the postal official and former military paymaster. The father’s tarot-playing, his drunken command of the regimental crockery each year on the Emperor’s birthday, and especially his regimental uniform, which hangs symbolically in the cupboard “wie

578 “Wenn mir das Schicksal günstig gewesen wäre, hätte ich Assistent des großen Wiener Chirurgen und wahrscheinlich Professor werden können.” (V, 210) 579 This passage recalls Werfel’s description of the Habsburg world as permeated by a “grandiose inertia which showed itself in its masterly ability to defer solutions”: cited in Manger, “Roth and the Habsburg Myth,” 50. Thus Demant’s inability to make decisions represents a certain mentality fostered by the Habsburg Empire. 580 Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 65.

157 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch eine in drei Teile zerlegte und immer noch lebendige Persönlichkeit” (V, 211) evidence some sort of identity crisis, but the source of this crisis is not immediately apparent. As with his son the regimental doctor, there is no evidence that the father feels a loss of identity as a result of his assimilation, though such a reading is not unthinkable. The posthumous transformation of the father in his wife’s memory, however, suggests that an alternative interpretation is more likely:

Und im getreuen Gedächtnis der Witwe blieb der Tote haften, das Muster eines Ehemannes, gestorben im Dienste des Kaisers und der kaiser- königlichen Post. Die Uniformen, die des Unteroffiziers, die des Postoffizianten Demant, hingen noch nebeneinander im Schrank, von der Witwe mittels Kampfer, Bürste und Sidol in stetem Glanz erhalten. Sie sahen aus wie Mumien, und sooft der Schrank geöffnet wurde, glaubte der Sohn, zwei Leichen seines seligen Vaters nebeneinander zu sehn. (V, 212)

The two corpses, together with the fiction of a death in the service of Emperor and Empire – Demant’s father died of a stroke in bed – suggest symbolically that these two pillars of the Empire, the army and the bureaucracy, are bereft of content (sinnentleert).582 Father and son, both in the employ of the state, suffer a crisis of identity not because of their assimilation but because of the moribund state of the Empire they serve.

That the memory of seeing his father’s corpse-like uniforms is followed directly by the statement “Man wollte um jeden Preis Arzt werden” (V, 212) implies that Demant wanted to become a doctor at all costs because he recognized the lack of meaning afforded by service to the Empire, whether in the military or in the bureaucracy; his subsequent enlistment was not due to a change of heart but to poverty (V, 212). Demant’s insight sheds light on Carl Joseph’s dilemma. Unlike Demant’s “kluger Kopf” (V, 239), “der einfache Kopf” (V, 239) of Carl Joseph is not capable of comprehending that “die Lebensform des Offiziers ist nicht mehr von sich aus sinnerfüllt”;583 nevertheless, Carl Joseph too suffers “zunehmend unter der Leere seines Dienstes, in dem sich, ohne daß er es zunächst ahnt, die

581 Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 65. 582 In connection with the military corpse, the father’s drunken commanding of the kitchen regiment implies that in the absence of any higher meaning, military life has been reduced to play-acting. 583 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 306.

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Agonie einer zum Untergang bestimmten Welt niederschlägt.”584 Without understanding why or how, Carl Joseph, the quintessential representative of the Habsburg Myth, has lost faith in the Empire in which he as a fifteen-year-old cadet believed so utterly and which he was so eager to serve (V, 160).

Chojnicki’s Insight

The reason for the loss of meaning in serving Emperor and Empire, symbolized in the military and bureaucratic corpses of Demant’s father, is articulated by Graf Chojnicki, the eccentric Polish count who becomes a second father-figure to Carl Joseph. Chojnicki asserts that if he were to become Minister for Culture and Education or section head in the Ministry of the Interior that would be no less peculiar than it is for him to continue to make his absurd and futile attempts to produce gold: “‘[w]eil das Vaterland nicht mehr da ist.’” (V, 289). His explanation to the bewildered and dismayed Bezirkshauptmann recalls and further illuminates the earlier image of the military and bureaucratic corpses:

‘Natürlich! […] wörtlich genommen, besteht [die Monarchie] noch. Wir haben noch eine Armee’ – der Graf wies auf den Leutnant – ‘und Beamte’ – der Graf zeigte auf den Bezirkshauptmann. ‘Aber sie zerfällt bei lebendigem Leibe. Sie zerfällt, sie ist schon verfallen! Ein Greis, dem Tode geweiht, von jedem Schnupfen gefährdet, hält den alten Thron, einfach durch das Wunder, daß er auf ihm noch sitzen kann. Wie lange noch, wie lange noch?’ (V, 290)

The monarchy itself is moribund. The institutions that support it – the army and the bureaucracy – still exist in the literal sense of the word, but they cannot halt the inevitable decline of the last Emperor and have become themselves the “Spiegelbild der Hinfälligkeit des Reiches”.585 Furthermore, the third pillar of the Empire, the Church, which is evoked here for the first time in the text, is not only unable to arrest the process of decline and help rejuvenate the monarchy (the “Greis”), but has itself been replaced by a modern form of religion:

‘Die Zeit will uns nicht mehr! Diese Zeit will sich erst selbständige

584 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 306. Much later, after Carl Joseph has become aware of this fact, his inability to do as Demant advises before his death and leave the army in order to have some hope of a meaningful existence, is conveyed with the same image of the corpse: “Er stand auf, um die offene Tür des Kleiderschranks zu schließen. Da hing, sauber und gerade, eine gebügelte Leiche, der frei, dunkelgraue, zivilistische Trotta. Über ihm schloß sich der Kasten. Ein Sarg: begraben! begraben!” (V, 377) Carl Joseph’s passivity is underscored by the use of the passive voice in the second-last sentence. 585 Bronsen, Biographie 406.

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Nationalstaaten schaffen! Man glaubt nicht mehr an Gott. Die neue Religion ist der Nationalismus. […] Die Monarchie, unsere Monarchie, ist gegründet auf der Frömmigkeit: auf dem Glauben, daß Gott die Habsburger erwählt hat, über soundso viel christliche Völker zu regieren. Unser Kaiser ist ein weltlicher Bruder des Papstes, es ist Seine K. u. K. Apostolische Majestät, keine andere wie er apostolisch, keine andere Majestät in Europa so abhängig von der Gnade Gottes und vom Glauben der Völker an die Gnade Gottes. Der deutsche Kaiser regiert, wenn Gott ihn verläßt, immer noch; eventuell von der Gnade der Nation. Der Kaiser von Österreich-Ungarn darf nicht von Gott verlassen werden. Nun aber hat ihn Gott verlassen!’ (V, 290)

Some critics contend that Roth styled Chojnicki – the “hellsichtige[r] Analytiker der Zeit” and “Sprachrohr des Erzählers”586 – on himself, thus implying that the reader may take Chojnicki’s words as indicative of Roth’s own views.587 Conversely, these critics also tend to project the views Roth expressed in his journalism of the 1930s onto the fictional character, reading more into the Count’s words than can be justified by the text. Sidney Rosenfeld, for example, asserts that for Roth Austrian universality was “an article of faith” and thus

the monarchy was fated to decline when its constituent peoples betrayed the principle of supranationality for what Roth condemned quite literally as the idolatory of nationalism. […] In The Radetzky March it is the Galician-Polish landowner Count Chojnicki, portrayed as the embodiment of Austrianism, who voices this conviction, clearly in Roth’s own name.588

Critics such as Rosenfeld who project Roth’s politics onto Chojnicki place too much emphasis on the Count’s observation that the people have replaced faith in God and the Emperor with faith in nationalism and neglect to ask why. Yet Roth’s interest extends well beyond the diagnosis of a failure of belief; he wants to know why people stopped believing in “Österreich” and turned to nationalism. His conclusion is that “Österreich” was only a myth, a myth which was continually reinforced and reproduced and which is symbolized in the novel by the March of the title.

586 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 310. Böning also interprets Chojnicki as voicing the views of the narrator: Böning, Radetzkymarsch 86. 587 Landwehr explicitly states that Chojnicki voices Roth’s views: Margarete Johanna Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics in Joseph Roth's Radetzkymarsch: The Crisis of Meaning and the Role of the Reader,” The German Quarterly 76, no. 4 (2003): 404. See also Karlheinz F. Auckenthaler, “Man hat den Doppeladler verjagt: und die Aasgeier sind gekommen. Joseph Roth und Österreich,” in Lauter Einzelfälle. Bekanntes und Unbekanntes zur neueren österreichischen Literatur, ed. Karlheinz F. Auckenthaler, New Yorker Beiträge zur österreichischen Literaturgeschichte (Bern: Lang, 1996), 325. 588 Rosenfeld, Understanding 47. See also Bronsen, Biographie 397; Böning, Radetzkymarsch 86.

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The March: “Einmal in der Woche, am Sonntag, war Österreich”589

Between the time of its preprint in the Frankfurter Zeitung in April 1932 and its publication by Kiepenheuer later that same year, the title of Roth’s novel was amended from Der Radetzkymarsch to simply Radetzkymarsch.590 Roth’s last- minute decision to omit the definite article is an indication that the March has metaphorical significance in the novel. The complex subtext of the March is threefold, but most critics limit their analysis to the first and most immediately apparent of its connotations: Field Marshall Radetzky’s591 decisive victory at Custozza in 1848, which more than any other event enabled the survival of the Empire at that critical moment in history.592 In 1848 the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy seemed imminent: revolutionary violence forced Metternich to resign and Emperor Ferdinand I to flee Vienna twice and eventually abdicate in favour of his nephew Franz Joseph, and both the Italians and the Hungarians were preparing to break free from Habsburg hegemony.593 Radetzky’s victories against the Italians not only preserved the territorial integrity of the Empire, but also contributed to the failure of the revolutions of 1848, enabling the Monarchy’s power to be restored.594 Radetzky’s role in the Monarchy’s salvation inspired Johann Strauß the elder to compose “Der Radetzky-Marsch” in the Field Marshall’s honour, that famous composition of which it has been said: “Wenn es eine völkerumspannende Seele Alt-Österreichs gab, im Radetzky-Marsch hatte sie unsterblichen Ausdruck in Rhythmen gefunden.”595 By alluding to the celebration of Radetzky’s victory and the triumphant reinstatement of Habsburg hegemony,

589 Roth, Radetzkymarsch (V, 424). 590 Bronsen, Biographie 400. 591 Joseph Wenzel Graf Radetzky von Radatz was Field Marshall from 1836 until 1857, and is legendary for his virtually unbroken record of victory: Kessler, “Überdauern im ewigen Untergang,” 636. 592 For a detailed account of Radetzky’s role in this survival see Alan Sked, The Survival of the Habsburg Empire: Radetzky, the Imperial Army and the Class War, 1848 (London; New York: Longman, 1979). 593 Sked, Survival ix. 594 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 41. 595 Kurt Honolka, in K. Honolka, K. Reinhard and L. Richter, Knaurs Weltgeschichte der Musik (München; Zürich, 1968) 409; quoted in Kessler, “Überdauern im ewigen Untergang,” 636. Magris similarly claims that the March “[verkörpert] mit ihrem mitreißenden Rhythmus fast die Seele der Monarchie”: Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 117.

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Roth’s title evokes, on one level, “die letzte Glanzzeit des Militärs”,596 encouraging nostalgia for an intact and powerful Habsburg Empire.

Most critics who discuss the implications of the novel’s title mention only this most obvious association and take it as evidence of Roth’s nostalgic and escapist intent.597 Yet the connotations are more complex and ambiguous than they first appear. Radetzky’s Italian victories did reverse the embattled Monarchy’s fortunes, but not for long: just eleven years later the Battle of Solferino saw the Habsburg Army experience a decisive defeat against a Franco-Piedmontese alliance598 – the first of a series of defeats which would stand like milestones along the road to the Empire’s collapse.599 The juxtaposition of the novel’s title with the Battle of Solferino depicted on the first page is deliberate,600 reminding the reader that Radetzky’s triumph was in fact a “last hurrah” – it was the last time military strength would save the doomed Monarchy and Empire:601

Von da an gab es nur noch Niederlagen. Und auch dort, wo Schlachten gewonnen wurden, standen am Ende verlorene Kriege und verlorene Provinzen. Am Ende die verlorene Monarchie.602

From the opening pages of the novel, then, the nostalgia evoked by the title Radetzkymarsch is undercut, this adding a second layer of meaning to the use of the March as a leitmotif.603

596 Albert Klein, “Joseph Roth: Radetzkymarsch,” in Deutsche Romane von Grimmelshausen bis Walser. Interpretationen für den Literaturunterricht, ed. Jakob Lehmann (Königstein/Ts: Scriptor, 1982), 272. 597 See, for example, Kessler, “Überdauern im ewigen Untergang”. Bronsen does not suggest any other connotations of the title, but does recognize Roth’s ironic intention, insofar as the “Österreich” evoked by the March – Österreich as idea – is shown to exist only as an ideal, not as a reality: Bronsen, Biographie 398-400. 598 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 102. 599 The Habsburg Army lost again to Prussia in 1866, this loss both determining their exclusion from the German Reich in 1871 and forcing the Habsburgs into the Ausgleich with Hungary in 1867, after which it never recovered its former strength. 600 The first mention of the Battle of Solferino occurs in the second sentence of the novel. 601 As Branscombe notes, Roth would not have had to explain to his Austrian readers that the Battle of Solferino was “eine entschiedene Niederlage”: Branscombe, “Symbolik in Radetzkymarsch,” 96. 602 Hellmut Andics, Das österreichische Jahrhundert. Die Donaumonarchie 1804-1900 (Wien; München: Molden, 1976) 114. 603 Cf. Heath, who notes that the title of the novel reflects the theme of Sein versus Schein: “the Radetzky March was intended to reflect imperial glory, while Radetzky’s deeds in 1848 actually marked the beginning of the end”: Heath, “Legacy of the Baroque,” 334.

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The immediate consequence of the loss at Solferino was the cession of Lombardy to Sardinia-Piedmont. It was the first time a territory had been taken from the Habsburgs in the nationalist cause, in this case the campaign for Italian unification.604 The Italian movement represented “an idea totally subversive of the Habsburg Monarchy”, threatening the very “Austrian idea”:

The Italian radicals did not seek concessions from the Habsburgs, did not seek to ‘capture’ the dynasty, or to secure a special position within the Empire; they did not even seek historic respectability by invoking ‘the iron crown of Lombardy’.605

For Klaus-Detlef Müller, one of few critics to comment on the significance of the starting point of the novel,606 Roth’s reason for choosing the 1859 battle to begin his epic tale is clear: “Roth hat im Radetzkymarsch ganz ausdrücklich den Nationalismus der Teilvölker als Ursache für die Zerstörung des habsburgischen Reiches verstanden”.607 Yet although this conclusion is supported by Müller’s arguments,608 Roth’s meaning is far more complex: the intricate interplay between the Battle of Solferino as depicted first by the narrator and then in a very different version in the school reader, its historical outcome from which both of these narrations depart, and the nostalgia evoked by the novel’s title critically evokes the Habsburg Myth and links the operations of this myth with the nationalism of the Monarchy’s subject peoples. This is the third level of signification of the novel’s title.

The Myth of the Hero, the Habsburg Myth and the Radetzky-Marsch

While the historical Battle of Solferino ended in inglorious defeat for the Habsburg Empire, this fact is never acknowledged by the novel’s characters in whose collective memory of the event only the glorious triumph of the Hero of

604 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 301. Müller notes the role played also by Napoleon III’s power politics: Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 300. 605 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 41. 606 Müller himself comments on the surprising lack of commentary on this point: Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 300. 607 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 301. 608 Müller cites the narrator’s reference to Solferino in Chapter XVIII (“[…] und der Name ‘Solferino’ weckte in ihnen Schauder und Ehrfurcht, der Name der Schlacht, die zum erstenmal den Untergang der kaiser- und königlichen Monarchie angekündigt hatte”: V, 402) and Chojnicki’s declaration that nationalism is the new religion as evidence for his conclusion: Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 301.

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Solferino and the Emperor as related in the school reader are evoked.609 The omission of any mention of the defeat leads Bronsen to conclude that the novel begins “mit Siegeszuversicht und dem Gefühl der Sicherheit”.610 Yet Roth’s intention in choosing the Battle of Solferino as the starting point for his novel is not to create a false “heile Welt” in comparison with which the decline depicted in the remainder of the novel will appear more stark, but to indicate that the operation of the Habsburg Myth is already underway. The sense of security of which Bronsen writes is ironically undercut when the myth created by the bureaucrats around Lieutenant Trotta’s “Heldentat” is exposed, since the outcome of the battle lost by the Habsburgs is also falsified in the school reader: “Damals geriet die ganze feindliche Reiterei in Gefangenschaft.” (V, 145) The fact that nobody from Trotta’s wife and his friend to the Emperor himself objects to the falsification not only of Trotta’s part in the story, but also of the outcome of the battle, suggests a widespread willingness to suppress uncomfortable facts which do not accord with people’s idea of the world. The Radetzky March is implicated in this conspiracy of silence, since from the second chapter through to the end of the novel Carl Joseph connects the March’s victorious tones with the legend of his grandfather.611 Thus the Radetzky March serves to symbolize the Habsburg Myth critically evoked by Roth’s several re-writings of the Battle of Solferino.

The primary component of the Habsburg Myth, that collective “flight from reality” which arose in the early nineteenth century, initially as a result of efforts at the political level “für ein immer problematischer werdendes Staatsgefüge Existenzgründe zu finden und auf solche Weise die Energien von der konkreten Wahrnehmung der Wirklichkeit abzulenken,”612 was the idea of Austria as a supranational Empire:

609 Only once, towards the end of the novel, is the true significance of Solferino acknowledged: “[D]er Name ‘Solferino’ weckte in ihnen Schauder und Ehrfurcht, der Name der Schlacht, die zum erstenmal den Untergang der kaiser- und königlichen Monarchie angekündigt hatte.” (V, 402) Yet significantly, the defeat is not spoken of; the characters are simply reported to shudder and feel reverence at the mention of the word Solferino, so that it appears only the narrator is consciously aware of the loss of the battle and its significance for the future of the Empire. 610 Bronsen, Biographie 416. 611 Cf. Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 302. 612 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 10.

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Das übernationale Ideal, das noch in der väterlich-strengen Anfangswendung der Proklamationen Franz Josephs ‘An meine Völker’ Ausdruck findet, war das ideologische Fundament der Donaumonarchie, ihre geistige und propagandistische Stütze im Kampfe gegen das moderne Erwachen der nationalen Kräfte, kurz, eine Waffe des habsburgischen Kampfes gegen die Geschichte.613

The link which Roth demonstrates between the myth of supranationalism and the nationalism of the Monarchy’s subject peoples is the most obscure but also the most important aspect of the title’s subtext.

Radetzky’s Italian victories are recognized to have contributed to the failure of the 1848 revolutions, not only in Vienna, but across Europe. In 1850 French Baroness Blaze de Bury recalled:

The proof of the importance of Radetzky’s Italian Campaign lay in the discouragement [with] which the revolutionists were seized, upon the news of his successes. When the entrance into Milan of the Austrians was known in Paris, you would have thought the republicans had heard their death- knell.614

The collapse of the revolution in Austria was naturally experienced by both the nobility and the Monarchy as a victory; yet the survival of the Monarchy came at a cost which is not often acknowledged but which plays a vital role in Radetzkymarsch. Radetzky was celebrated in the Strauß March above all as “the restorer of order in 1848”615 – because of his role in the defeat of the revolution. The March is thus associated with the Habsburgs’ use of military force not only against an external foe but also against its own citizens, whose revolutionary aims blended democratic and national aspirations616 and thus conflicted with an Imperial tradition built on loyalty to the dynasty and the supranationalism that

613 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 12. Le Rider gives a much more hardline reading: “[T]he principle of supranationality can be reckoned as one of the finest deceptions of the official ideology, a cloak for the hegemony of the German and Hungarian nations and the tendency for nationalistic and racist feeling to intensify”: Jacques Le Rider, “Hugo von Hofmannsthal and the Austrian Idea of Central Europe,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 125. 614 The Baroness Blaze de Bury, Germania: Its Courts, Camps and Peoples, 2 vols. (London, 1850) Vol. II, 144-45, fn. 2; quoted in Sked, Survival ix-x. 615 Johnston, The Austrian Mind 51. 616 The circumstances surrounding Strauß’s composition mirror this internal struggle: he composed his celebratory march in part as a demonstration against his revolutionary sons, who had gone to the barricades: Bronsen, Biographie 399. Strauß’s son Johann Strauß the younger composed revolutionary marches: Kessler, “Überdauern im ewigen Untergang,” 636.

165 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch loyalty entailed.617 In this context, Demant’s quotation of the biblical aphorism “Wer die Hand gegen seinesgleichen erhebt, ist ein Mörder” (V, 234) on the eve of his duel with Tattenbach acquires a significance beyond the Jewish doctor’s fear of betraying his people.

This last implication of the novel’s title and leitmotif is extended and given concrete form in the present in the description of Carl Joseph’s first garrison in Moravia:

Es schien, als wäre die Kaserne als ein Zeichen der habsburgischen Macht von der kaiser- und königlichen Armee in die slawische Provinz hineingestellt worden. […] Stand man am äußersten Nordrand der Stadt am Ende der Straße […], so konnte man an klaren Tagen in der Ferne das breite, gewölbte, schwarzgelbe Tor der Kaserne erblicken, das wie ein mächtiges habsburgisches Schild der Stadt entgegengehalten wurde, eine Drohung, ein Schutz, und beides zugleich. Das Regiment war in Mähren gelegen. Aber seine Mannschaft bestand nicht aus Tschechen, wie man hätte glauben mögen, sondern aus Ukrainern und Rumänen. (V, 192)

The paradox inherent in Habsburg hegemony is that it both protects its Slav citizens from external enemies and threatens them as an internal enemy.618 The unstated reason for the rank and file in this Moravian garrison consisting not of Czechs but of Ukrainians and Rumanians is the climate of intensifying nationalism: “Because the army might have to put down agitation by Bohemian Sokols or Ruthenians in Bukovina, officials stationed Slav recruits far from their homelands under German officers.”619

Carl Joseph’s first and only experience of active military duty before the outbreak of war pits him against an internal enemy: the striking workers from the brush factory. The suppression of “staatsgefährliche Umtriebe” (V, 331) by Carl Joseph’s platoon echoes the crushing of the 1848 revolutionaries by an army then under Radetzky’s command.620 The reference to Carl Joseph in this context as a

617 Not surprisingly, it became increasingly difficult to administer the state on these terms after 1848: Williams, The Broken Eagle 106. 618 Cf. Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 307; Adolf D. Klarman, “Das Österreichbild im Radetzkymarsch,” in Joseph Roth und die Tradition, ed. David Bronsen (Darmstadt: Agora, 1975), 154. 619 Johnston, The Austrian Mind 50. 620 This parallel is underscored when Carl Joseph thinks of Frau von Taußig “im ‘Süden’” with Chojnicki and feels betrayed (“verraten”): “Da lag er nun in der Grenzgarnison am Wegrand und wartete – nicht auf den Feind, sondern auf die Demonstranten.” (V, 336)

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“Protektionskind”621 (V, 333) emphasizes his role as the representative of the Emperor, so that when he faces the workers, it is as if Franz Joseph himself, who began all his proclamations with the words “An meine Völker”, were commanding the soldiers to shoot at these his people.

That the use of violence against its own people is an immediate cause of the fall of the Monarchy is revealed by the narrator through the reporting of Carl Joseph’s thoughts as he is faced by the workers singing the “Internationale” in three languages (V, 336), representing a very different idea from the Radetzky March:622

Den Leutnant ergriff eine dunkle Ahnung vom Untergang der Welt. Er erinnerte sich an den bunten Glanz der Fronleichnamsprozession, und einen kurzen Augenblick schien es ihm, als wallte die finstere Wolke der Rebellen jenem kaiserlichen Zug entgegen. Für die Dauer eines einzigen hurtigen Augenblicks kam über den Leutnant die erhabene Kraft, in Bildern zu schauen; und er sah die Zeiten wie zwei Felsen gegeneinanderrollen, und er selbst, der Leutnant, ward zwischen beiden zertrümmert. (V, 336)

Fronleichnam: Belief and Blindness

It is significant that Carl Joseph remembers the “bunte[…] Glanz der Fronleichnamsprozession” at this point, a visual performance of the Habsburg Myth which he ecstatically witnessed during a trip to Vienna in the previous chapter. In the Habsburg Empire Fronleichnam, the Corpus Christi procession, celebrated the interdependence of church and state each year on the Thursday following Trinity Sunday.623 The ritual celebration of the transubstantiation of the body and blood of Christ is a metaphor for the ostensible vitality of a moribund Monarchy and hints at the role of the Church in maintaining the myth of the Habsburgs and of an intact Empire. The juxtaposition of this parade with the grim

621 Johnston details the inequities of the institution of Protektion, by which the upper nobility influenced most aspects of public life: Johnston, The Austrian Mind 43-44. 622 Cf. Klein, “Radetzkymarsch,” 275. 623 Johnston, The Austrian Mind 57. Since the Enlightenment and the influence of Joseph von Sonnenfels, religion in Austria had been seen as an instrument for the support of state authority: see Robert A. Kann, Kanzel und Katheder. Studien zur österreichischen Geistesgeschichte vom Spätbarock zur Frühromantik (Wien, 1962): 174f.; cited in Wolfgang Martens, “Die Habsburgische Monarchie als sakrale Instanz bei Joseph Roth,” Sprachkunst 22 (1991): 239. This is reflected in the Bezirkshauptmann’s attitude to religion: “[…] zeit seines Lebens [hatte er] die Angelegenheiten des Himmels den Theologen überlassen und im übrigen die Kirche, die Messe, die Zeremonie am Fronleichnamstag, den Klerus und den lieben Gott für Einrichtungen der Monarchie gehalten”. (V, 290-91)

167 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch reality of the military’s role in the border areas of the Empire sheds further light on the operations of the myth of supranationalism. Carl Joseph’s struggle to identify with the ideal of Emperor and Empire with which he has been instilled since childhood has intensified with his move to the Galician garrison on the Empire’s far-eastern border, where the signs of decay and decline are more obvious than at the Empire’s centre. The outward symptoms of his increasing resignation – his falling prey to alcohol and gambling624 – prompt his father- figure friend Chojnicki to send him to Vienna with Frau von Taußig, a much older woman who becomes his second mother-figure and lover after Frau Slama. Carl Joseph’s affairs with maternal older women indicate that in adulthood he has remained a child,625 incapable of taking responsibility for himself. His immaturity is implicated in his eager, if ultimately transitory, embrace of the appearance of a still intact world which is presented in the parade, his fervour reflecting his desperate desire to identify with the Austrian ideal through his role in the military and his idea of the example of his grandfather:

In Carl Joseph standen die alten kindischen und heldischen Träume auf, die ihn zu Hause, in den Ferien auf dem väterlichen Balkon, bei den Klängen des Radetzkymarsches erfüllt und beglückt hatten. Die ganze majestätische Macht des alten Reiches zog vor seinen Augen dahin. Der Leutnant dachte an seinen Großvater, den Helden von Solferino, und an den unerschütterlichen Patriotismus seines Vaters, der einem kleinen, aber starken Fels vergleichbar war, mitten unter den ragenden Bergen der habsburgischen Macht. Er dachte an seine eigene heilige Aufgabe, für den Kaiser zu sterben, jeden Augenblick zu Wasser und zu Lande und auch in der Luft, mit einem Worte, an jedem Orte. (V, 320)

The narrator’s pointedly ironic description of Carl Joseph’s subjective experience of his relationship with Frau von Taußig is placed just prior to the above passage and indicates that the reader should approach Carl Joseph’s response to the parade sceptically. The narrator not only distances himself from Carl Joseph’s interpretation of the nature of his relationship with Frau von Taußig, but openly contradicts it:626

624 That Carl Joseph’s struggle is not unique is reflected in the addictions of his fellow officers. 625 “[D]as Kindsein setzt sich bis in das Mannesalter fort”: Derré, “Militärerziehung,” 57. Carl Joseph’s inability to take responsibility for himself is reflected also in his friendships with the father-figures Demant and Chojnicki. 626 Cf. Derré, who notes the self-deception which this return to childhood beliefs entails: “Nach jedem Schlag bedeutet die Rückkehr zum Vater, zum Väterlichen in der legendären Kaisergestalt, Rettung aber gleichzeitig den feigen Wunsch, sich in einer Scheinwelt weiter treiben zu lassen”: Derré, “Militärerziehung,” 58.

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Dem Leutnant Trotta erschien die Welt verändert. Infolgedessen stellte er fest, daß er soeben die Liebe kennengelernt habe, das heißt: die Verwirklichung seiner Vorstellungen von der Liebe. In Wirklichkeit war er nur dankbar, ein gesättigtes Kind. (V, 320)

Carl Joseph’s self-deception is mirrored in Frau von Taußig’s insatiable appetite for young men in her attempts to ward off the aging process:

Frau von Taußig stellte dem nahenden Alter junge Männer entgegen wie Dämme. Aus Angst vor ihrem erkennenden Blick ging sie mit geschlossenen Augen in jedes ihrer sogenannten Abenteuer. Und sie verzauberte mit ihren Wünschen die törichten Männer für den eigenen Gebrauch. (V, 317)

The wilful blindness seen earlier in the novel in Dr. Demant, who “liebte nicht, um jeden Preis die Wahrheit zu hören” (V, 214), is comically heightened in the descriptions of Frau von Taußig’s desire “ihr wirkliches Alter zu vernichten, auszurotten, in dem Meer ihrer Leidenschaft zu versenken” (V, 330). The determination of both Demant and Frau von Taußig not to see the truth reflects the importance of appearance over reality which characterizes Roth’s depiction of the Habsburg Empire.627 Just as Frau von Taußig’s wilful blindness is an expression of her desire to appear young, the duel is fought for the sake of the appearance of honour, and Taittinger declares to the assembled officers: “Also, Hauptsache, meine Herren, ist strengste Diskretion gegenüber der Zivilbevölkerung!” (V, 222) The most extreme exponent of the importance of appearances is the Bezirkshauptmann, who manifests a wilful blindness in the face of nationalist movements:

In seinem Sprachschatz, auch im dienstlichen, kam [das Wort Revolution] nicht vor; und wenn er in dem Bericht eines seiner Untergebenen etwa die Bezeichnung ‘revolutionärer Agitator’ für einen der aktiven Sozialdemokraten las, so strich er dieses Wort und verbesserte mit roter Tinte: ‘verdächtiges Individuum’. Vielleicht gab es irgendwo in der Monarchie Revolutionäre: Im Bezirk des Herrn von Trotta kamen sie nicht vor. (V, 270)

The comic sub-plot of Frau von Taußig’s attempts to ward off age through vampire-like liaisons with young men both indicates the prevalence of the desire to deny reality and represents the futility of any attempt to do so. Just as Frau von Taußig cannot become younger, denying the reality of the decline of the Empire

627 For Landwehr the leitmotif of blindness “suggests the subjective nature of meaning. The pervasive references to and toying with notions of blindness and clarity suggest that meaning is imposed upon reality by the viewer”: Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics,” 407.

169 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch and the emptiness of the Austrian myth – “Nein, die Welt ging nicht unter, wie Chojnicki gesagt hatte, man sah mit eigenen Augen, wie sie lebte!” (V, 322)628 – will not prevent the inevitable. The narrator’s irony could scarcely be more palpable, since the impending collapse has been evoked in the potent image of the previous paragraph:

Kein Leutnant der kaiser- und königlichen Armee hätte dieser Zeremonie gleichgültig zusehen können. Und Carl Joseph war einer der Empfindlichsten. Er sah den goldenen Glanz, den die Prozession verströmte, und er hörte nicht den düstern Flügelschlag der Geier. Denn über dem Doppeladler der Habsburger kreisten sie schon, die Geier, seine brüderlichen Feinde. (V, 322)

The eyes deceive, and the mind eagerly believes.

Watching the parade evokes in Carl Joseph the happy memory of his childhood visits to his father’s house and the Sunday concerts which always began with the Radetzky March. Carl Joseph has encountered the March twice in quite different contexts since becoming a lieutenant: first in the brothel, where its degradation through the setting629 is matched by the shocked Carl Joseph’s discovery and rescue of the portrait of the Emperor “[i]n einem bronzenen, von Fliegen betupften Rahmen” (V, 209); then in the bar where he finds Demant just hours before the duel where the March is corrupted even further:

In der Wirtsstube schmetterte der Musikapparat wieder, ein Potpourri aus bekannten Märschen, zwischen denen die ersten Trommeltakte des Radetzkymarsches, entstellt durch heisere Nebengeräusche, aber immer noch kenntlich, in bestimmten Zeitabständen erklangen. (V, 233)

The progressive debasement of the Radetzky March in these episodes underscores the decay of the military and the Empire, marching towards its collapse. Now, in the context of memories evoked by the Fronleichnam parade, the March is restored to its original military splendour as the inspiration for Carl Joseph’s “alte[...] kindische[...] und heldische[...] Träume”. The reader recalls that it was

628 The childish conviction is attributable to Carl Joseph through its context – his perception of the parade has just been described – but the pronoun man here also encompasses the entire audience of the procession. 629 This degradation is also signalled in transformation of the sound: where once “[d]ie herben Trommeln wirbelten, die süßen Flöten pfiffen, und die holden Tschinellen schmetterten” (V, 156) now a piano tinkles: “Drinnen begann das Klavier sofort zu klimpern: den Radetzkymarsch.” (V, 207)

170 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch not only Carl Joseph who was affected by the Radetzky March at those Sunday concerts:

Auf den Gesichtern aller Zuhörer ging ein gefälliges und versonnenes Lächeln auf, und in ihren Beinen prickelte das Blut. Während sie noch standen, glaubten sie schon zu marschieren. Die jüngeren Mädchen hielten den Atem an und öffneten die Lippen. Die reiferen Männer ließen die Köpfe hängen und gedachten ihrer Manöver. Die ältlichen Frauen saßen im benachbarten Park, und ihre kleinen, grauen Köpfchen zitterten. Und es war Sommer. (V, 156-57)

The highly evocative language and imagery in this passage is precisely the kind that has led so many critics to read only nostalgia and transfiguration in Radetzkymarsch. The narrator’s irony in this early passage is so understated as to be easily overlooked: it is only the restrained ironic repetition of the final line of this paragraph at the beginning of the next – “Und es war Sommer. / Ja, es war Sommer.” (V, 157) – that undercuts the seemingly nostalgic evocation of an idealized past. This ironic repetition of phrases with a slight variation or in a changed context is characteristic of Roth’s literary texts and functions to expose the reality hidden behind the words.630 The ironic note that accompanies the Radetzky March in this second chapter is heightened by its reappearance in conjunction with the Fronleichnam parade, the portrayal of which conveys the appearance of an intact Empire and masks the reality of its inevitable decline. While for Carl Joseph the Radetzky March is the “Nachklang einstiger Vollkommenheit”,631 for the novel’s author it symbolizes the pervasive Habsburg mentality which refuses to acknowledge present reality, preferring to live in and off an imagined past.

Carl Joseph’s Recognition

Carl Joseph’s nostalgic reminiscence of a childhood full of heroic dreams as he watches the Fronleichnam parade includes the pleasurable recollection of hearing the Radetzky March. This concurrence of memory and music is repeated in the next chapter with an ironic variation when Carl Joseph suddenly recollects the Fronleichnam parade as he faces the workers singing the “Internationale” and has a vision of himself crushed between the opposing forces of the Monarchy and the

630 Fraiman, “Dichter des Offenen,” 37. 631 Bronsen, Biographie 417.

171 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch new nationalism. The function of this ironic repetition is to remind the reader of the superficial splendour of that parade which could only mask the inexorable decline of the Empire. Watching the parade, Carl Joseph had been convinced that the world was not going under (V, 322); just a few days later he sees that it is. What has enabled him to see this – if only for a moment – is the opposition of the Monarchy, which he represents, and the people, represented by the demonstrators.

Carl Joseph’s role in the deaths of these demonstrators marks a further stage in his disillusionment. He is “entschlossen, endlich den Abschied zu nehmen” (V, 339), and it is implied that this decision is due to a recognition: “Er hatte eine Art Heimweh nach dem Vater, aber er wußte zugleich, daß sein Vater nicht mehr seine Heimat war. Die Armee war nicht mehr sein Beruf.” (V, 339) The Monarchy, represented by the two pillars of bureaucracy (the Bezirkshauptmann) and military, cannot give Carl Joseph a sense of belonging. Presumably in an attempt to recapture his youthful hope and faith, Carl Joseph re-reads some of the books his father had assigned to him as holiday reading, “und jede Zeile erinnerte ihn an den Vater und an die stillen, sommerlichen Sonntagvormittage und an Jacques, an Kapellmeister Nechwal und an den Radetzkymarsch.” (V, 340) The lack of any suggestion that these memories are comforting to Carl Joseph, or that they rekindle his lost faith, implies that he has no reaction to the memories, an implication subsequently confirmed when he sees the Emperor at manoeuvres four weeks after leaving hospital:

[Trotta] stand vor seinem Zug, blaß, mager und gleichgültig. Als sich ihm aber der Kaiser näherte, begann er, seine Gleichgültigkeit zu bemerken und zu bedauern. Er hatte das Gefühl, eine Pflicht zu versäumen. Fremd geworden war ihm die Armee. Fremd war ihm der Allerhöchste Kriegsherr. Der Leutnant glich einem Manne, der nicht nur seine Heimat verloren hatte, sondern auch das Heimweh nach dieser Heimat. […] Der Leutnant hätte sich jenen Rausch wieder gewünscht, der ihn in allen festlichen Stunden seiner militärischen Laufbahn erfüllt hatte, daheim, an den sommerlichen Sonntagen, auf dem Balkon des väterlichen Hauses, und bei jeder Parade und bei der Ausmusterung und noch vor wenigen Monaten beim Fronleichnamszug in Wien. Nichts rührte sich im Leutnant Trotta, als er fünf Schritte vor seinem Kaiser stand, nichts anderes regte sich in seiner vorgestreckten Brust als Mitleid mit einem alten Mann. (V, 352-53)

Carl Joseph is not incapable of feeling, as his regret and sympathy reveal. But he is incapable of believing any longer in what has been revealed as the myth of his Emperor and the Empire, the myth of “Österreich”. The Empire is not intact, it is

172 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch in inexorable decline, and its depravity is reflected most potently in its willingness to use its army against its own people. As the Emperor himself recognizes:

Ihm ging die große goldene Sonne der Habsburger unter, zerschmettert am Urgrund der Welten, zerfiel in mehrere kleine Sonnenkügelchen, die wieder als selbständige Gestirne selbständigen Nationen zu leuchten hatten. Es paßt ihnen halt nimmer, von mir regiert zu werden! dachte der Alte. Da kann man nix machen! fügte er im stillen hinzu. Denn er war ein Österreicher… (V, 352)

Nevertheless, at the end of the second part of the novel the narrator indicates that most people loyal to the Monarchy do not want to acknowledge what the Emperor has admitted to himself:

Dabei bemerkte [der Kaiser] nicht, daß an seiner Nase ein glasklarer Tropfen erschien und daß alle Welt gebannt auf diesen Tropfen starrte, der endlich, endlich in den dichten, silbernen Schnurrbart fiel und sich dort unsichtbar einbettete. Und allen ward es leicht ums Herz. Und die Defilierung konnte beginnen. (V, 354)

The significance of the drop on the end of the Emperor’s nose emerges only when one of Chojnicki’s comments in an earlier chapter is recalled. Explaining his view that the Monarchy was doomed, Chojnicki said to the Bezirkshauptmann: “‘Ein Greis, dem Tode geweiht, von jedem Schnupfen gefährdet, hält den alten Thron, einfach durch das Wunder, daß er auf ihm noch sitzen kann.’” (V, 290) The drop on the end of the Emperor’s nose is a visible sign of his frailty and approaching death which, as Chojnicki has predicted in no uncertain terms, will mean the end of the Monarchy and the world as they know it: “‘Dieses Reich muß untergehn. Sobald unser Kaiser die Augen schließt, zerfallen wir in hundert Stücke.’” (V, 265) The Fronleichnam celebration, which allowed Carl Joseph briefly to believe again in the myth of the Habsburgs, commemorates the last meal of Christ before the crucifixion and implies his eternal life. The Emperor’s body, however, is a material reality and his death and the collapse of the Empire will be final. Yet the self-deception of the Habsburg people continues: while Carl Joseph has lost not only his faith in the Monarchy but also his ability to experience, at the sight of the Emperor, the intoxication (“Rausch”) which has in the past enabled him to believe in the myth (V, 353), others manage to believe, as long as the visible signs of the approaching end remain hidden, like the drop on the Emperor’s nose which is a reminder of his mortality.

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Behind the Supranational Myth: What is “Österreich”?

Klaus-Detlef Müller contends that the exposure of the myths inherent in the structures of the Empire is the narrative principle upon which Radetzkymarsch is built.632 While this is an important recognition which differs from the more common interpretation that both the novel and its writer have fallen prey to the Habsburg Myth, Müller’s analysis does not go far enough. For Müller Radetzkymarsch is a historical novel in Lukács’s sense because Roth portrays the process of disintegration rather than the actual collapse.633 He argues that the story of the Trottas symbolizes both the decline of the Habsburg Monarchy and its historical “Überlebtheit”,634 a condition which has been acute since the Battle of Solferino and of which Roth is fully aware:

[Roth] schildert den Untergang der Donau-Monarchie im Zeichen des von der Forschung vielfach nachgewiesene (sic) ‘Habsburg-Mythos’ mit Nostalgie und Trauer, jedoch durchaus kritisch und mit dem fortwährend artikulierten Bewußtsein, daß die in ihm gestaltete Welt überlebt und nicht mehr lebensfähig ist.635

Müller’s article makes an important contribution to the literature in demonstrating that Radetzkymarsch fulfils some of Lukács’s criteria for the historical novel, but in omitting any analysis of the relationship that emerges from the novel between the world depicted in the novel and Roth’s contemporary context, he fails to take the analysis to a deeper level. For what is even more important than Roth’s revelation of the role of myth in keeping an Empire alive which was out of step with the times is the truth that is concealed by the myth: the unacknowledged reality of German cultural superiority which was at odds with the supranational ideal, and which is directly linked to the nationalism of German Austrians in the post-war present. It is in the exposure of this truth that Radetzkymarsch truly becomes a historical novel in Lukács’s sense, revealing the past as the “prehistory” of the present.

In the preface to the newspaper serialization of Radetzkymarsch in 1932, Roth claimed that the Empire had allowed him to be “ein Österreicher und ein

632 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 305. 633 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 299. 634 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 317. 635 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 299-300.

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Deutscher”.636 Taken at face value this statement feeds into the reception of the novel as a nostalgic paean to a lost era of supranational harmony.637 It should be remembered, however, that Roth had a propensity to play with his readers in the prefaces to his novels, most transparently in the Vorwort to Die Flucht ohne Ende, in which Roth satirizes the then popular literary movement Neue Sachlichkeit:

Im Folgenden erzähle ich die Geschichte meines Freundes, Kameraden und Gesinungsgenossen Franz Tunda. Ich folge zum Teil seinen Aufzeichnungen, zum Teil seinen Erzählungen. Ich habe nichts erfunden, nichts komponiert. Es handelt sich nicht mehr darum zu ‘dichten’. Das wichtigste ist das Beobachtete. Paris, im März 1927 JOSEPH ROTH (IV, 391)

This preface, which has been understood by critics and readers as “ein Manifest der Neuen Sachlichkeit”,638 conflicts with and is refuted by the poetic style of the novel,639 Roth’s avowed distaste for the movement (detailed at the beginning of this chapter), and finally his subsequent insistence that critics and readers had misunderstood the preface: “bei dem Ruf nach dem Dokumentarischen [war] durchaus nicht die berühmte ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ gemeint […], die das Dokumentarische mit dem Kunstlosen zu verwechseln möchte.”640 Similarly, the claim in the preface to Radetzkymarsch that the defunct Empire had allowed Roth to be both an Austrian and a German must be read for what it is: a statement which appears to be a matter of simple fact but which belies a greater, and contradictory, truth. For while it was possible for German-speakers to be both Austrian and German, for the various other peoples in the Habsburg Empire, Roth

636 “Vorwort zu meinem Roman: Der Radetzkymarsch” (V, 874). 637 See, for example, Auckenthaler, “Man hat den Doppeladler verjagt,” 330. 638 Rainer Wild, “Beobachtet oder gedichtet? Joseph Roths Roman Die Flucht ohne Ende,” in Neue Sachlichkeit im Roman. Neue Interpretationen zum Roman der Weimarer Republik, ed. Sabina Becker and Christoph Weiß (Stuttgart; Weimar: Metzler, 1995), 27. See also Trommler, “Neue Sachlichkeit,” 276; Pazi, “Exil-Bewußtsein,” 170-71; Cohen, “Männerwelt,” 61; Rosenfeld, Understanding 29 639 An early critic noted that already on the second page of the novel the author uses highly poetic language: “‘Der Pole zählte seine Worte wie Perlen, ein schwarzer Bart verpflichtete ihn zur Schweigsamkeit’ […]. Das ist heftig gedichtet; es ist ein Stil von starrer, dem Erhabenen zuneigender Art’”: W.E. Süskind, “Joseph Roth,” in Die Literatur 34, no.1 (1931) 17; quoted in Trommler, “Neue Sachlichkeit,” 278. 640 Joseph Roth, “Es lebe der Dichter”, Frankfurter Zeitung 31.3.1929 (III, 45). Nevertheless, critics persist in reading Die Flucht ohne Ende as an example of Neue Sachlichkeit. Wild acknowledges and explores the discrepancies between Roth’s declaration in the preface and the text of the novel but concludes that Roth was at the time unaware that his text was a refutation of the tenets of Neue Sachlichkeit: Wild, “Beobachtet oder gedichtet?,” 44.

175 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch suggests, such a dual identity was unachievable, despite the supranational rhetoric.

Slovene and Austrian: Mutually Exclusive Identities

For the Trotta family, becoming Austrian entails the relinquishing of their Slovene identity, as the experience of Lieutenant Joseph Trotta in the opening chapter of the novel demonstrates. When the narrator says of Joseph Trotta: “Er wurde ein kleiner slowenischer Bauer” (V, 149), it is not, as Reidel-Schrewe has argued, testimony to his “untrügliche[s] Bewußtsein von der Autonomie seines Ichs, das sich eine seiner inneren Wahrheit gemäße Wirklichkeit schafft”;641 rather, this statement ironically reveals the limits of this autonomy: Joseph Trotta in fact has been cut off “von dem langen Zug seiner bäuerlichen slawischen Vorfahren” (V, 144), and while he may make the decision to leave the army and work on the land, it is as heir to an estate in Bohemia, not as a landless peasant in Sipolje. There is no indication that he actively wishes to return to Sipolje and reconnect with the way of life of his Slovene forefathers, yet his alienation, his “große Einsamkeit” (V, 154) revealed to him by the portrait, suggests that he has been resigned to, rather than been in control of, his fate. Disabused of his faith in the Monarchy, he resigns his commission in the army and ensures that his son will never become an officer, but his grudging acceptance that there can be no escape from the destiny of his family to serve the Empire is reflected in his refusal to allow his son to quit his legal career and manage the family estate:

Der Major sagte: ‘Es ist zu spät! Du wirst in deinem Leben kein Bauer und kein Wirt! Du wirst ein tüchtiger Beamter, nichts mehr!’ Es war eine beschlossene Sache. War der Name Trotta auch aus den autorisierten Schulbüchern verschwunden, so doch nicht aus den geheimen Akten der hohen politischen Behörden, und die fünftausend Gulden, von der Huld des Kaisers gespendet, sicherten dem Beamten Trotta eine ständige wohlwollende Beobachtung und Förderung unbekannter höherer Stellen. (V, 154)

The description of the consequences of the Emperor’s favour for the Major’s son reveals the meaning of the enigmatic words “Es ist zu spät!”: it is too late for a

641 “Die Flexibilität des alten Trotta, den Soldatenstand mit dem Bauernstand zu vertauschen, beruht auf seinem untrüglichen Bewußtsein von der Autonomie seines Ichs, das sich eine seiner inneren Wahrheit gemäße Wirklichkeit schafft”: Reidel-Schrewe, “Im Niemandsland,” 67.

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Trotta to become a peasant or even a landlord because the family has been made part of the Dienstadel642 by the Emperor and is thus destined to serve the Empire for generations to come.643 Given their destiny, the Major expresses the hope in his will “daß die Trottas, dem Kaiser dankbar für seine währende Huld, im Staatsdienst zu Rang und Würden kommen und glücklicher als er, der Verfasser des Testaments, im Leben werden könnten” (V, 154). That his unhappiness in life stems from his estrangement from his heritage is indicated in his desire, also expressed in the will, to be buried without pomp or ceremony near his father (V, 155).

The reader is reminded that the Emperor’s decree and the consequent estrangement of the Trottas from their ethnic heritage are both final and eternal when Carl Joseph wishes to be transferred from the cavalry in Moravia to an infantry regiment near Sipolje, which he imagines will be almost as good as “eine Heimkehr zu den bäuerlichen Vorfahren” (V, 246):

Die Dankbarkeit Franz Josephs hatte ein langes Gedächtnis, und seine Gnade hatte einen langen Arm. Wenn eines seiner bevorzugten Kinder im Begriffe war, eine Torheit zu begehn, griffen die Minister und Diener des Kaisers rechtzeitig ein und zwangen den Törichten zu Vorsicht und Vernunft. Es wäre kaum schicklich gewesen, den einzigen Nachkommen des neugeadelten Geschlechts derer von Trotta und Sipolje in jener Provinz dienen zu lassen, welcher der Held von Solferino entstammte, der Enkel analphabetischer slowenischer Bauern, der Sohn eines Wachtmeisters der Gendarmerie. (V, 255)

The narrator’s ironic undertone lends a sinister note to what on the surface is presented as the common sense approach of the Emperor and his ministers. Their motives are soon revealed through the Bezirkshauptmann who, the reader is informed, is of one mind with the authorities. The Bezirkshauptmann cannot fathom the wish of his son to be transferred to the Slovene province from which their family hails, for he has never felt the desire to visit his forefathers’ Heimat:

642 On the distinction between the upper nobility (Hochadel or Aristokratie) and the lesser nobility (Briefadel or Dienstadel) see Johnston, The Austrian Mind 39. The Trotta family belongs to the Dienstadel because the title was conferred on Joseph Trotta for service to the crown. 643 This same acceptance of events as beyond his control is earlier reflected in Joseph Trotta’s rather inadequate attempt to explain to his son that having a title makes them no better than Joseph’s father, the Gendarmerie Sergeant, whom he admonishes his son to remember and tells his wife was “ein guter Mann”: “‘Er war nur ein Gendarmeriewachtmeister’, sagte der Vater, ‘ich habe dem Kaiser in der Schlacht von Solferino das Leben gerettet – und dann haben wir die Baronie bekommen.’” (V, 151)

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“Er war ein Österreicher, Diener und Beamter der Habsburger, und seine Heimat war die Kaiserliche Burg zu Wien.” (V, 255) The Bezirkshauptmann’s thoughts here betray that Austrian and Slovene identity are mutually exclusive, a fact underlined in his letter to his son: “‘Das Schicksal hat aus unserm Geschlecht von Grenzbauern Österreicher gemacht. Wir wollen es bleiben.’” (V, 256) In expressing this sentiment the Bezirkshauptmann is typical of the Dienstadel, which Magris describes as the

treue[...] und loyale[...] Kategorie par excellence […], die sich – sei es aus dankbarem Stolz auf das jüngst erhaltene Adelsprädikat, sei es auf Grund des Militär- oder Verwaltungsdienstes – mit dem kaiserstaatlichen System identifizierte.644

This identification with the Imperial system entails a sacrifice of individual identity, whether one serves in the role of Bezirkshauptmann or as a servant of the Dienstadel, like Jacques. The story of Jacques’s name, given to him by his original master, the Hero of Solferino, in an arbitrary act which mirrors the Hero’s own unwanted change of name and rank at the hands of the Emperor, is a metaphor for this sacrifice of identity (V, 277). Just as the Bezirkshauptmann has come to identify completely with his bureaucratic role and feels no connection to the land of his forebears, Jacques has become so used to the identity given to him by his master that he rejects the suggestion he should revert to his old name, Franz Xaver Joseph (V, 278) and declares that he would like “Jacques” on his gravestone (V, 279). The sacrifice is given symbolic form in the pictures of St. Antony and St. George which the dying Jacques gives to the Bezirkshauptmann: St. George was an early Christian martyr who became an ideal of selflessness and martial valour in the Middle Ages; St. Antony is considered the founder of Christian monasticism and lived a life of extreme asceticism. These saints thus symbolize the self-denial which has characterized both the Bezirkshauptmann’s and Jacques’s life of service.

Both Jacques’s decisive “‘Ich bleib’ lieber beim Jacques!’” (V, 278) and the Bezirkshauptmann’s “‘Wir wollen es [Österreicher] bleiben.’” (V, 256) suggest a power of agency which is illusory: having become Austrians, the Trottas cannot

644 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 197. Magris uses the term Beamtenadel rather than Dienstadel to refer to people like the Trottas.

178 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch ever become Slovenes again.645 The restriction of Carl Joseph’s choice to serving in the interior of the Empire or on its eastern border symbolizes the restriction of the free formation of identity which the Monarchy’s structures require. When he finally leaves the army and briefly experiences a different kind of life, he becomes contented (V, 434), but he does not become a Slovene peasant. Roth has been taken to task by a number of critics for evoking a bucolic idyll in this chapter,646 yet a careful reading reveals that this is just another illusion. Carl Joseph experiences leaving the army as a kind of death and rebirth:

Der Koffer stand noch offen, die militärische Persönlichkeit Trottas lag drinnen, eine vorschriftsmäßig zusammengefaltete Leiche. Es war Zeit, den Koffer zu schließen. Nun ergriff der Schmerz plötzlich den Leutnant, die Tränen stiegen ihm in den Hals, er wandte sich Chojnicki zu und wollte etwas sagen. Mit sieben Jahren war er Stift geworden, mit zehn Kadettenschüler. Er war sein Leben lang Soldat gewesen. Man mußte den Soldaten Trotta begraben und beweinen. Man senkte nicht eine Leiche ins Grab, ohne zu weinen. (V, 432)

Living his new life in the little house on the edge of the woods Carl Joseph feels “als hätte er niemals ein anderes Leben geführt” (V, 434). Yet throughout this chapter Roth repeatedly negates statements made only paragraphs before, this ironic negation undermining the impression given of Carl Joseph’s fulfilling new life. Carl Joseph believes himself to have buried his military personality, yet he continues to write the same letters to his father in the same way, “auf gelblichem, fasrigem Kanzleipapier, die Anrede vier Finger Abstand vom oberen Rand, den Text zwei Finger Abstand vom seitlichen” (V, 433). The narrator reports “Er kannte nun die Sprache des Landes” (V, 433), but when Carl Joseph dies the narrator notes that he wanted to say “In Ewigkeit. Amen! […] Es waren die einzigen ruthenischen Worte, die er sprechen konnte” (V, 445). The action of hiding his face from passing officers is described as “eine überflüssige Vorsicht” because his physical appearance is so changed that “man konnte ihn kaum erkennen” (V, 433), and yet Onufrij has no trouble at all recognizing him (V, 434). The cumulative effect of these negations and contradictions is to imply an

645 The fact that the power of choice is an illusion is underscored when the Bezirkshauptmann, the Empire’s servant, has both Jacques’s real and his assumed names engraved on the headstone, despite Jacques’s stated wish: “Er […] gab die Inschrift an: ‘Hier ruht in Gott Franz Xaver Joseph Krimichl, genannt Jacques, ein alter Diener und ein treuer Freund.’” (V, 281) 646 Bance claims that “large parts” of Roth’s novels are “nostalgically bucolic”: Bance, “In My End is My Beginning,” 34. See also Marchand, Wertbegriffe 205-06.

179 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch ironic distance to the passage of erlebte Rede which immediately precedes Chojnicki’s announcement that war has arrived:

Ausgelöscht waren die Jahre beim Militär, als wäre man immer schon über Felder und Landstraßen gegangen, den Stock in der Hand, niemals den Säbel an der Hüfte. Man lebte wie der Großvater, der Held von Solferino, und wie der Urgroßvater, der Invalide im Schloßpark von Laxenburg, und vielleicht wie die namenlosen, unbekannten Ahnen, die Bauern von Sipolje. (V, 435)

Carl Joseph’s belief that his life has changed and that he has reconnected with his Slovene roots is an illusion, and thus it comes as no surprise when he returns to the garrison and the life he had left just weeks previously without a moment’s hesitation when the war is announced: “Trotta kehrte in seine Montur zurück, in seine Heimat.” (V, 440)647 The Habsburg army is the only identity he knows; he has been unable to create any other. That this identity is hollow, as both Demant’s father’s “corpses” and Carl Joseph’s own indicate, means that his return to the Heimat of his Austrian identity must end in death.

First Among Equals: Germans and the Empire

In what, then, does this Austrian identity consist? Roth reveals that an identification as “Österreicher” entails not only loyalty to the Habsburg dynasty and the supranational ideal, but also, and paradoxically, a commitment to German culture and Bildung. Thus, he implies, Austrian identity was open to the non- German nationalities, but only at the price of assimilation to a German-language culture. Roth’s analysis in this respect mirrors the situation regarding the use of the term “Österreich” after 1867:

Der Name ‘Österreich’ wurde zwar intern in den deutschen Teilen Cisleithaniens verwendet, war aber nicht legal. Denn sowohl Tschechen wie Polen, Italiener und die anderen Völker Cisleithaniens weigerten sich, den Namen Österreich als den ihren zu akzeptieren, empfanden sie als diskriminierend und als Ausdruck der Vorherrschaft der Deutschen.648

647 This return is foreshadowed at the beginning of Carl Joseph’s new life through Jan Stepaniuk, the Unterförster with whom he will share a house, and who served in the military for 12 years: “Er sagte ‘Herr Leutnant’ zu Trotta, heimgekehrt zur militärischen Muttersprache.” (V, 433) 648 Hamann, Hitlers Wien 129.

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The commitment to German culture and Bildung implied in the identification as “Österreicher” is revealed through the highly ironic, if sympathetic,649 characterization of the Bezirkshauptmann. The Bezirkshauptmann’s identity is based on an absolute identification with the Emperor and the Empire. His repeated admonishment of Fräulein Hirschwitz for speaking Hochdeutsch reflects an emphatic consciousness of difference and separateness from the Reichsdeutsche, and his view of German students in Prague singing the “Wacht am Rhein” seemingly confirms his commitment to a supranational Austrian Empire, not a greater Germany:

Im ‘Fremdenblatt’ hatte man gestern noch lesen können, daß die deutschen Studenten in Prag die ‘Wacht am Rhein’ gelegentlich singen, diese Hymne der Preußen, der mit Österreich verbündeten Erbfeinde Österreichs. Auf wen konnte man sich da noch verlassen? (V, 272)

However, in a number of episodes the Bezirkshauptmann’s words reveal an unconscious prejudice about the superiority of the German culture and language, a prejudice which Roth suggests is both a cause of the rise of nationalism in the non-German peoples of the Empire from the middle of the nineteenth century and linked to the chauvinist pan-German nationalism of post-Habsburg Central Europe.

The first signs of the Bezirkshauptmann’s prejudice emerge in the portrayal of fifteen-year-old Carl Joseph’s examination at the beginning of his summer holiday, a three-hour ordeal to which the young cadet is evidently subjected each year according to exactly the same schedule – the Bezirkshauptmann is an extraordinarily rigid man. This time, the examination focuses on literature – of course, because German is the uncontested language of culture at this time, and the class to which the Trottas now belong is German- speaking. The Bezirkshauptmann speaks at length on the importance of Grillparzer and recommends to his son – “als ‘leichte Lektüre’ für Ferientage” (V, 159) – and Ferdinand von Saar. All three of these writers were Austrian, and all three contributed – albeit in very different ways – to the

649 As Hoffmeister has demonstrated, Roth retains “eine bestimmte Art von Sympathie” with all of his characters, and his ironic critique, unlike Musil’s in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, never amounts to antipathy: Hoffmeister, “Erzählhaltung,” 163.

181 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch development or maintenance of the Habsburg Myth;650 indeed Magris cites Grillparzer’s work as “der erste, vollendete Ausdruck des habsburgischen Mythos.”651 Having initially supported the revolutions of 1848, Stifter, Grillparzer and many other writers soon began to fear anarchy and the disintegration of the fatherland and to preach “Rückkehr zur Ordnung, zur alten Sicherheit und zur Autorität des Staates.”652 In June 1848 Grillparzer wrote his famous poem honouring “Feldmarschall Radetzky”;653 the verse “In deinem Lager ist Österreich”, which expresses Grillparzer’s heartfelt loyalty to the unity of Austria and gratitude to the man who seemed to have protected it, must surely be amongst the most frequently quoted in Austrian literature. Readers familiar with this most famous of Grillparzer’s poems will assume that its sentiment forms at least part of the reason for the arch-conservative Bezirkshauptmann’s belief in the poet’s importance, particularly given the title of Roth’s novel.

It is significant that the text the Bezirkshauptmann chooses to test his son’s reading is not one by a Habsburg Austrian author but Zriny, a military saga by the German nationalist writer Theodor Körner. For many of his contemporaries, Körner was the “Inbegriff eines patriotischen Dichters”,654 both because of his deeply patriotic poetry and plays,655 and also because he was killed in the war of liberation in 1813. Zriny (1812/13) is based on the Croatian and Hungarian myth of Nikolaus von Zriny, the heroic defender of the southern Hungarian fortress Sigeth against the Turks in the sixteenth century. The myth of Zriny is mirrored by the myth of the warrior and poet Theodor Körner, who was celebrated for

650 See Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 91-134 (Grillparzer), 35-52 (Stifter), 91-202 (von Saar). 651 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 98. Bartsch disputes Magris’s interpretation, arguing that Grillparzer cannot be seen as a slave to or victim of the Habsburg Myth: Bartsch, “Literatur aus Österreich,” 5. 652 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 95. Magris notes further: “Eine der bemerkenswertesten Folgen des Wiener Revolutionsjahres ist die Aussöhnung der Schriftsteller und Dichter, der einstigen Gegner, mit dem Regime und dem starren System. Treu scharen sie sich nun um die grandiose Statik und die habsburgische Ordnung, die für sie Abwehr von Zusammenbruch und Auflösung bedeutet”: Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 96. 653 Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 116. 654 Marijan Bobinac, “Theodor Körner im Kroatischen Theater,” Kakanien Revisited (2003): 1. 655 The significance of Körner’s contribution to the development of German national patriotism during the wars of liberation is reflected in Johnston’s study of the German national myth in this period, which devotes a chapter to Körner and his influence: Otto W. Johnston, Der

182 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch having proved his German nationalist zeal on both the military and the literary fields.656 Johnston reveals how Körner’s death itself became part of the German national myth. At least seven witnesses were called to explain the circumstances in which he was killed, but their accounts conflicted in significant ways, and only the account which was the most flattering to Körner was recorded by Prussian historians:

Körner erscheint als triumphierender Held, der noch im Sieg von einem geschlagenen und hinterlistigen Feind ermordet wurde. Die Preferenz dieser Darstellung in der patriotischen Geschichtsschreibung des wilhelminischen Deutschlands bestätigt abermals die enge Beziehung zwischen dem historisch Belegbaren und dem modernen Mythosaufbau, bei dem ideologisierende Chronisten eine ihre Gesinnung unterstützende Zeugenaussage in die Mitte der Diskussion rücken, damit ein ‘heroisches Beispiel’ im Leser eine erwünschte sozialpolitische Haltung bewirkt. […] Das primäre Ziel einer solchen Geschichtsschreibung ist die Einprägung einer bestimmten Einstellung dem Heroisch-Patriotischen gegenüber, nicht die Verbreitung oder Vertiefung historischer Kenntnisse.657

The parallel between the manipulation of historical fact in this instance and the school reader account of the circumstances in which Lieutenant Trotta saves the Emperor’s life in Solferino is unmistakable. While it is impossible to know whether such a parallel was intended by Roth, it is certainly possible he knew of the conflicting witness accounts, since they were published in 1898.658 Bobinac notes that an essential feature of both the Zriny and the Körner myths is

der ‘freudige Opfertod’ ihrer Protagonisten, der dem Vaterland gilt. So wurde durch den heroischen Widerstand und die bewusste Opferung Zrinys und seiner Mitkämpfer das weitaus überlegene türkische Heer bei der Belagerung von Sigeth 1566 so geschwächt, dass es auf den geplanten Zug nach Wien schließlich verzichten musste. Einen ähnlichen Opfertod erblickten Körners Zeitgenossen im Schicksal des jungen Dichters, der als Freiwilliger des Lützow'schen Freikorps schon zum Beginn der Befreiungskriege 1813 ums Leben kam.659

The first level of signification of the reference to Zriny in Radetzkymarsch, then, is the mirroring of Zriny’s and Körner’s willingness to die for the fatherland in the

deutsche Nationalmythos: Ursprung eines politischen Programms (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1990) 178-94. 656 Bobinac, “Theodor Körner,” 1. 657 Johnston, Der deutsche Nationalmythos 191. 658 Emil Peschel and Eugen Wildenow, Theodor Körner und die Seinen (Leipzig, 1898); cited in Johnston, Der deutsche Nationalmythos 190. 659 Bobinac, “Theodor Körner,” 1-2.

183 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch young Carl Joseph’s dreams of a heroic death in the service of his Emperor.660 The reader has by this time gleaned enough of the authoritarian relationship between the exacting father and his obedient son to infer that the Bezirkshauptmann’s request that Carl Joseph recite the plot of Zriny for him will reinforce the impressionable young cadet’s belief in the appropriateness of Körner’s ideal of Opferbereitschaft for his own life, whether or not this is the Bezirkshauptmann’s intention. That his retelling of the play act by act deeply affects Carl Joseph is evident from the narrator’s concluding comment: “Dann setzte er sich, müde, blaß, mit trockener Zunge.” (V, 159)

A further aspect of Zriny which is important in this context is Körner’s unequivocal nationalism which had as its ultimate goal the political unification of the German nation. In Zriny, Körner is not interested in the complexities of the historical event, but in writing a political text which emphasizes the national aspect of the conflict, the war being fought for “Freiheit, Ehre, Glauben, Vaterland” – an anachronism, given the setting in the sixteenth century, and clearly intended as a representation of the war of liberation against Napoleon.661 Körner combines a popular and accessible style with a “Freund-Feind-Schema” formulated in unmistakably national terms:

Von daher ist im Gegenspieler Zrinys, dem greisen Sultan Soliman, eine teuflische Napoleon-Figur leicht zu erkennen, während an der Autorität des deutschen Kaisers, der die Besatzung von Sigeth schließlich im Stich lässt, hingegen nicht gerüttelt wird.662

Although the historical Zriny was Croatian-Hungarian, Körner portrays him as unambiguously Hungarian, intending him to represent the Germans and his Turkish opponents to represent the French.663 The complexity of identity in Central Europe – both in the actual sixteenth century setting and in the implied nineteenth century setting – is thus smoothed over, multifaceted identities being “ironed out” in favour of one-dimensional identities. The ideology upon which Zriny is based, then, is very much at odds with the Bezirkshauptmann’s professed

660 Bobinac notes: “Überhaupt wird in Zriny ununterbrochen eine Todesbereitschaft zelebriert, die ihresgleichen in der Weltliteratur suchen muss”: Bobinac, “Theodor Körner,” 4. 661 See Bobinac, “Theodor Körner,” 4; Johnston, Der deutsche Nationalmythos 179. 662 Bobinac, “Theodor Körner,” 3-4. 663 Bobinac, “Theodor Körner,” 5.

184 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch loyalty to the supranational idea of Austria. His apparent acceptance of the text as appropriate reading for his son suggests a lack of understanding of the extent to which this play promotes that pan-German nationalism which is anathema to him. The Bezirkshauptmann is certainly not consciously German nationalist – indeed he is consciously pro-Austrian and anti-German (Prussian) – but the attitudes and prejudices which are revealed in this second chapter are demonstrated in the course of the novel to be linked to the chauvinist German nationalism of the 1920s and 1930s.

The Bezirkshauptmann is less of an individual than a type: he represents the German-speaking administrative caste which was unflinchingly loyal to the Emperor, reflecting the values and ideals of the Habsburg dynasty. As such, the pro-Austrian, anti-“Prussian” Bezirkshauptmann’s paradoxical de facto German bias is indicative of a similar bias within the German-speaking ruling class as a whole, including the House of Habsburg. This unconscious bias had a long tradition: a prime example of its operation is the Sprachpatent issued by Emperor Joseph II in 1784, which decreed that German was to replace Latin as the language of governance in the Kingdom of Hungary.664 Joseph II’s motives for standardizing German as the language of administration throughout the Empire were pragmatic and instrumental – he wanted to rationalize the operations of the bureaucracy.665 He had no intention of attempting a forced Germanization of either the Hungarians or the other peoples under his rule,666 but the Sprachpatent was perceived as a threat to Hungarian culture and it precipitated a backlash with far-reaching ramifications.667 Joseph failed to predict the hostile reaction to his reforms because, as heir to the Habsburg tradition, he did not think of himself as

664 For a detailed discussion of the Sprachpatent and its consequences see Leslie Bodi, “Widersprüche der Aufklärung: das Sprachpatent von 1784 und die Folgen,” in Literatur, Politik, Identität – Literature, Politics, Cultural Identity (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2002). 665 The decree which made German instead of Latin the language of administration in Hungary “betont, daß es sich hier um eine praktische, aufgeklärte Verordnung handle, die rein pragmatisch der Vereinfachung und Rationalisierung des Amtsganges diene”: Bodi, “Widersprüche der Aufklärung,” 332. 666 Bodi, “Widersprüche der Aufklärung,” 333. 667 Bodi writes that the potential to develop “eine[n] über ethnische Grenzen hinausgehenden gesamtstaatlichen Patriotismus” within the cosmopolitan, universal ideology of enlightenment was thrown into doubt by Joseph’s reforms, which precipitated a wave of xenophobia and “Deutschenhaß”: Bodi, “Widersprüche der Aufklärung,” 331-34.

185 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch belonging to a German nation. Nevertheless, without perceiving any contradiction or inconsistency, he regarded himself as the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and believed that German was “eine höher entwickelte Sprache […] als Ungarisch oder die slawischen Sprachen der Erblande.”668 This attitude was common to the ruling class:

The Imperial system created by Maria Theresa was strictly Imperial, or even ‘Austrian’; it had no defined national character. Still, the members of the Imperial Chancellery in Vienna and most of the captains of circles [Bezirkshauptmänner] were Germans: they received a German education and used German as the language of official business among themselves. They would have been surprised to learn that they were discharging a ‘German’ mission. All the same, once German national spirit stirred, the Germanized bureaucracy gave German nationalism its claim to the inheritance of the Habsburgs; and the Habsburgs themselves came to puzzle over the question whether they were a German dynasty.669

After the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved in 1806, the Habsburgs continued to lay claim to its heritage.670 In 1809 Friedrich Schlegel was commissioned to write a historical account of the “Österreichischer Nationalcharakter”.671 Although the connection to the Holy Roman Empire had officially been severed in 1806, “Schlegel’s ‘Austrian idea’ appropriated the whole of the Christian Roman universalist tradition” and was “designed to mask one of the most fundamental changes in the structure and orientation of central Europe since the Thirty Years’ War.”672 Rosenfeld contends that Roth too “persisted in regarding Habsburg Austria as a divinely ordained hierarchical entity, as the living heir to the Holy

668 Bodi, “Widersprüche der Aufklärung,” 333. See also Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 20. 669 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 19. 670 In 1806 Emperor Franz II abdicated as Holy Roman Emperor, having declared himself Emperor Franz I, Erbkaiser Österreichs (Hereditary Emperor of Austria) two years earlier: Joachim Whaley, “Austria, ‘Germany’, and the Dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 3. See also Johnston, The Austrian Mind 12. 671 On Schlegel’s role in promoting Austrian patriotism see Edward Timms, “National Memory and the ‘Austrian Idea’ from Metternich to Waldheim,” Modern Language Review 86 (1991): 899-906, esp. 901f. See also Friedrich Heer, Der Kampf um die österreichische Identität (Wien; Köln; Graz: Hermann Böhlaus Nachf., 1981) 170-83. 672 Whaley, “Austria, ‘Germany’,” 3. Whaley notes that despite the propagandistic aspect of his work, Schlegel’s idealism was genuine: “He hoped [the ‘Austrian idea’] would provide the foundation for a new era of Habsburg moral leadership. The religious and political values embodied in the House of Habsburg would, he believed, bring peace and stability to the whole of post-revolutionary Europe.” Timms contrasts Schlegel’s Austrian with Hegel’s Prussian model of the state: Timms, “National Memory,” 900f.

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Roman Empire of the German Nation, the center of which it had once formed.”673 Yet while this idea does find expression in Roth’s journalism, especially after 1933,674 in Radetzkymarsch he suggests that laying claim to this heritage was inherently problematic for the Habsburg Monarchy, since it implied the superiority of one nation over the others in the supposedly multi-national Empire.

This point is expressed most clearly in the Fronleichnam episode. In the colourful pageantry of the parade the black and yellow Habsburg colours – “schwarz- gelbe[...] Töne[...]”, “schwarz-goldene[...] Helme”, “goldbestickte[...], schwarze[...] Röcke[...]”, “gelb-schwarze[...] Pantherfelle[...]” and so on (V, 321) – harmonize with the colours of the various uniforms from all over the Empire, like a common thread weaving the diverse parts of the parade together. Yet one image stands out:

Die blutroten Feze auf den Köpfen der hellblauen Bosniaken brannten in der Sonne wie kleine Freudenfeuerchen, angezündet vom Islam zu Ehren Seiner Apostolischen Majestät. (V, 321)

Bosnia and Herzegovina had been under Habsburg administration since the end of the Russo-Turkish war in 1878 but remained officially part of the Turkish Empire. Between 1878 and 1908, when Austria-Hungary annexed the two provinces, Bosnia and Herzegovina were “the only territorial expression of the ‘common monarchy’ and thus the last relic of the great Habsburg Monarchy which had once directed a united Empire.”675 The annexation of the territory in 1908 was thus yet another symbol of the progressive disintegration of the Austrian idea; it also precipitated the ‘Bosnian crisis’ which, although short-lived,676 inflamed the Serb- led South Slav nationalist movement and contributed to the outbreak of World War I five years later.677 The image of the Bosnians with their blood-red fezzes in the midst of all the black and yellow harmony of the Fronleichnam-parade, then, is not so much, as Riemen argues, a confirmation of the universalism of Habsburg

673 Rosenfeld, Understanding 47. 674 See, for example, “Dreimal Österreich: Bemerkungen zum Buch des Österreichischen Bundeskanzlers von Schnuschnigg”, Das Neue Tage-Buch (Paris), 22.1.1938 (II, 774f.). 675 Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 166. 676 The crisis was resolved in March 1909 when Germany compelled Russia to abandon Serbia: Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 233. 677 See Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 233f.

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Catholicism,678 the inclusiveness and tolerance of an Empire which embraces Catholics, Jews and Muslims, but a reminder of the national tensions simmering beneath the surface of all this apparent harmony, underscoring the irony of Carl Joseph’s briefly restored childlike faith in the durability of the Monarchy (V, 322). The depiction of the end of the parade again evokes the national aspirations of the Teilvölker and the end of the Empire that this nationalism implies:

Blaue, braune, schwarze, gold- und silberverzierte Uniformen bewegten sich wie seltsame Bäumchen und Gewächse, ausgebrochen aus einem südlichen Garten und wieder nach der fernen Heimat strebend. […] [D]ie Fiaker und selbst die Automobile hielten vor [den Leibgardisten] an wie vor wohlvertrauten Gespenstern der Geschichte. […] Die goldenen Helme der Feuerwehrmänner […] funkelten, heitere Mahner an Gefahr und Katastrophe. (V, 322-23)

Carl Joseph is of course oblivious to these ominous signs, but the narrator distances himself from Carl Joseph’s perception, thus underscoring the veracity of the signs:

All das schüttete die Welt über den Leutnant Trotta aus. Er saß im Wagen neben seiner Freundin, er liebte sie, und er fuhr, wie ihm schien, durch den ersten guten Tag seines Lebens. (V, 323)

Roth links the nationalist discontent hinted at in the depiction of the Fronleichnam parade with the contradiction between the supranational ideal embodied by the Monarchy, symbolized in the profusion of black and yellow finery, and its de facto German bias. This bias is signalled in the repeated reference to the Habsburgs’ claim to the heritage of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation:

Vom Stephansdom dröhnten die Glocken, die Grüße der römischen Kirche, entboten dem Römischen Kaiser Deutscher Nation. Der alte Kaiser stieg vom Wagen mit jenem elastischen Schritt, den alle Zeitungen rühmten, und ging in die Kirche wie ein einfacher Mann; zu Fuß ging er in die Kirche, der Römische Kaiser Deutscher Nation, umdröhnt von den Glocken. (V, 322)679

The supranational ideal is exposed as a myth in the next paragraph, the “goldene[r] Glanz” of the parade able briefly to obscure but not to negate the existence of the “brüderliche Feinde”, the intensifying nationalism of the

678 Riemen, “Judentum – Kirche – Habsburg,” 387. 679 The reference to Franz Joseph as the Holy Roman Emperor of the German Nation also underscores the theme of the myths woven around and by the Monarchy, since the Habsburg Emperors had not been able to use this title since 1806.

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Monarchy’s diverse peoples which threatens the Habsburgs (V, 322). Thus the image of the Emperor entering the church is ominous: the bells are tolling for him and his Empire,680 and the repeated reference to the privileged position of the Germans in this ostensibly supranational Empire evokes a clear connection between this reality behind the propaganda and the Empire’s inexorable decline.

German Dominance as the Link between Past and Present

The unspoken, unconscious identification with German ethnicity that is implied in Austrian identity is shown by Roth to have its counterpart in post-war German nationalism in the German-speaking parts of the former Empire which found expression in calls for the Anschluß of Austria to the German Reich. Roth implies that the obsolete myth of the Habsburgs, cloaking as it did the cultural superiority of the ethnic Germans, fed directly into the post-war revisiting of the großdeutsch question. In a number of key events in the novel the attitudes of German-speakers are linked to the racism of Germans and Austrians that characterized Roth’s post- war context. The duel between Rittmeister Tattenbach and the regimental doctor Demant is one such event. The code of honour (Ehrenkodex), which requires the settling of disputes by duelling, is both symptom and symbol of a system hopelessly out of step with modern times681 and afflicted by an extreme form of paralysis. But the chapter relating the duel has an additional function in the novel: it suggests a link between the norms and structures of the late Habsburg Empire and the German nationalism of the post-war era. The link is implied in Roth’s use in this chapter of a particular combination of colours,682 which is taken up again in

680 This implication is underscored in the following paragraph by the reference to Carl Joseph’s inability to hear “den düstern Flügelschlag der Geier” (V, 322). 681 The duel had died out in England by the middle of the nineteenth century but “in Austria- Hungary until 1911 a challenge by one officer to another imposed a sacred obligation. An officer who declined a challenge would lose his commission, besides being cut dead in good society”: Johnston, The Austrian Mind 53-54. See also Norbert Elias, Studien über die Deutschen. Machtkämpfe und Habitusentwicklung im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1989) 66-71. 682 Kessler has pointed to Roth’s striking use of colour adjectives, suggesting that a thorough study of the frequently unusual use of such adjectives in Roth’s work would be worthwhile: Kessler, “Überdauern im ewigen Untergang,” 643, note 10. Kessler’s remarks in this article are restricted to the use of the adjective gelb. Pauli writes of Roth’s striking use of colour symbolism and analyzes the significance of the colour yellow and its combination with black in Die Kapuzinergruft: Klaus Pauli, Joseph Roth “Die Kapuzinergruft” und “Der stumme Prophet”. Untersuchung zu zwei zeitgeschichtlichen Porträtromanen (Frankfurt/M: Peter Lang, 1985) 152-54.

189 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch subsequent chapters.683 When Taittinger begins to relate the circumstances of the challenge, he induces a feeling of dread in the assembed officers:

Alle fühlten, daß [Taittinger] den Tod angerufen hatte. Der Tod schwebte über ihnen, und er war ihnen keineswegs vertraut. Im Frieden waren sie geboren und in friedlichen Manövern und Exerzierübungen Offiziere geworden. Damals wußten sie noch nicht, daß jeder von ihnen, ohne Ausnahme, ein paar Jahre später mit dem Tod zusammentreffen solle. Damals war keiner unter ihnen scharfhörig genug, das große Räderwerk der verborgenen, großen Mühlen zu vernehmen, die schon den großen Krieg zu mahlen begannen. Winterlicher weißer Friede herrschte in der kleinen Garnison. Und schwarz und rot flatterte über ihnen der Tod im Dämmer des Hinterstübchens. (V, 223; emphasis added)

The passage ends with two sentences which evoke the colour combination black, red and white – the colours of the flag of the Second German Reich,684 and in Roth’s own time associated with anti-democratic and anti-republican forces,685 in particular with Hitler’s National Socialists.686 The combination is evoked a second time at the end of Taittinger’s recounting of the circumstances leading to the duel:

Mit schwarzen und roten Fittichen rauschte der Tod über ihren Köpfen. ‘Zahlen!’ rief Taittinger. Und sie verließen die Konditorei. Es schneite neuerlich. (V, 226; emphasis added)

The reference to snow in this passage recalls the “[w]interlicher weißer Friede” of the first. The repetition of the colours black, red and white at the beginning and end of Taittinger’s story suggests symbolically that the Germans in the Habsburg Empire are already thinking in ethnic national terms. In this context, the role that anti-Semitism plays in the provocation of the duel acquires particular significance.

683 This same combination appears at least once in each of the chapters XI-XV. 684 Hattenhauer explains how this colour combination came to replace the black, red and gold of the earlier nineteenth century as the national colours of the Germans during the reign of Wilhelm II: Hans Hattenhauer, Geschichte der deutschen Nationalsymbole. Zeichen und Bedeutung (München: Olzog, 1990) 23-27. It was not until 1892 that the black, white and red flag of the military and merchant navy was adopted officially as the national flag: Hattenhauer, Nationalsymbole 26. 685 Hattenhauer, Nationalsymbole 29. Roth had held grave fears for the future of the Weimar Republic since at least 1925, when Paul von Hindenburg seemed likely to be elected president after the death of Friedrich Ebert. Roth is reported by Max Krell from the Ullstein-Verlag to have said: “Wenn es Hindenburg wird, reise ich ab, ich weiß, was dieser Zeit folgen wird.” Krell goes on in his memoir to state: “Am anderen Morgen sah ich die schwarzweißroten Fahnen und nicht die der Republik, Roth saß bereits im Zug nach Frankreich”; quoted by Klaus Westermann in “Nachwort” (II, 1024). 686 Hitler designed the swastika flag in 1920 using the colours of the Kaisserreich: Hattenhauer, Nationalsymbole 37-38.

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It is not the insult to his honour as Eva Demant’s husband but Tattenbach’s anti- Semitic taunt that finally provokes Demant to challenge him to a duel:

‘Also, “ich tät lieber zu Haus sitzen und aufpassen”, lallt der Tattenbach weiter. “Unsereins läßt seine Frau nicht um Mitternacht mit Leutnants spazieren!” – “Sie sind besoffen und ein Schuft!” sagt der Demant. Und wie ich aufstehn will und eh ich mich noch rühren kann, fängt der Tattenbach an, wie verrückt zu rufen: “Jud, Jud, Jud!” Achtmal sagt er’s hintereinander, ich hab’ noch die Geistesgegenwart gehabt, genau zu zählen.’ (V, 225-26)

Tattenbach insinuates twice that Demant’s wife is having an affair with Trotta but each time Demant attempts to deflect attention from the accusations, telling Tattenbach that he is drunk and a scoundrel. Furthermore, it is only after Tattenbach begins yelling “Jud!” that Taittinger sends the orderlies away, indicating that it is only the racist gibe that is considered by the onlookers to make a challenge inevitable. Roth also hints that the anti-Semitism behind the drunken Tattenbach’s reckless taunt is more widespread: neither Taittinger’s listeners nor the onlookers at the club express any disapproval of Tattenbach’s behaviour.687

Anti-Semitic incidents are few in number in Radetzkymarsch, and their portrayal is so muted that they could easily pass unnoticed. Indeed the characters themselves seem not to notice, and this is Roth’s point: it is the failure of people to remark upon and condemn non-violent, everyday anti-Semitism that allows it to burgeon. A case in point is the incident which occurs when the Bezirkshauptmann and Carl Joseph are joined by the Kapellmeister Nechwal for coffee after lunch in Chapter II. The narrator describes the operetta-going Nechwal with barely concealed irony as “ein Weltmann” before relating an aspect of the customary conversation between the Nechwal and the Bezirkshauptmann:

Herr Nechwal erzählte von der letzten Lehár-Operette in Wien. Er war ein Weltmann, der Kapellmeister. Er kam zweimal im Monat nach Wien, und Carl Joseph ahnte, daß der Musiker auf dem Grunde seiner Seele viele Geheimnisse aus der großen nächtlichen Halbwelt barg. Er hatte drei Kinder und eine Frau ‘aus einfachen Verhältnissen’, aber er selbst stand im vollsten Glanz der Welt, losgelöst von den Seinen. Er genoß und erzählte jüdische Witze mit pfiffigem Behagen. Der Bezirkshauptmann verstand sie nicht, lachte auch nicht, sagte aber: ‘Sehr gut, sehr gut!’ (V, 164)

687 Two of Taittinger’s listeners do express disapproval (“Schäbig!”) at Tattenbach’s opening remark to Demant (“Servus, Doktorleben!”), but after Taittinger excuses Tattenbach with the remark “Gewiß, schäbig, aber besoffen! Was soll man da?”, no further protests are heard. (V, 224-25)

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Nechwal’s attendance of Lehár operettas, his three children and wife “aus einfachen Verhältnissen” all mark him as a fairly typical member of the German- speaking middle class. A penchant for Jewish jokes is thus by implication also not peculiar to him but standard, at least in the circles within which he moves. That the Bezirkshauptmann neither understands nor laughs at the jokes could be understood as a mark of better breeding and consistent with a belief in and commitment to the ideal of supranationalism, were it not for his apparent expression of approval (“Sehr gut, sehr gut!”), however insincere. It is not enough, Roth suggests, simply not to be actively anti-Semitic; by not condemning anti-Semitism, the Bezirkshauptmann and others like him implicitly condone it.688 The long-term consequences of such behaviour are symbolically suggested in the concert which forms the backdrop to this episode. The concert which began with the Radetzky March, the tribute to the man who for many was the saviour of the multinational empire, ends with the overture from the anti-Semitic and German nationalist Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser.689 Unremarkable as they are, then, the anti-Semitic incidents depicted in Radetzkymarsch are indicative of further anti-Semitic and aggressive nationalist potential hidden beneath the surface of the Empire of the King of Jerusalem.690

The False Opposition between “dazumal” and “heutzutage”

If there is a utopian moment in Radetzkymarsch, it exists in the form of an implied question: Could the decline of the Empire have been halted if the Monarchy had not failed to modernize, if it had adapted to the post-1848 socio-political circumstances? Roth’s hostility towards manifestations of modernity from

688 Roth’s condemnation of such neutrality is expressed more explicitly in a 1939 polemic: “Ein einziger Mensch, dem es egal ist, ob ein Jude geschlagen wird oder nicht, ist schädlicher als die zehn, die den Juden – oder den Neger oder den Rothaarigen oder den Grünäugigen – mit eigenen Händen schlagen. Verglichen mit der ‘Neutralität’ ist die Bestialität geradezu eine human zu nennende Eigenschaft. Die Gleichgültigkeit ist der Feind aller Völker; nicht die Juden; nicht einmal der Antisemit: nur der Gleichgültige”: Joseph Roth, “Das Feind aller Völker”, Pariser Tageszeitung, 3.1.1939 (III, 861). 689 In typical fashion, Roth does not explicitly state that the overture is the last piece to be played, but as Nechwal arrives the musicians are preparing to march off, and the Bezirkshauptmann compliments Nechwal “heute wie jeden Sonntag” (V, 164), indicating that the same concert takes place each week. 690 Like several of the Habsburg Emperor’s titles, which reflected “die jahrhundertelange Geschichte und die Kompliziertheit dieses Vielvölkerreiches mit Eroberungen, Erbschaften

192 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch technology to cinema to fascism has been well documented.691 In Radetzkymarsch, however, the representation of modernity is distinctly ambivalent. In Chapter XII, it is negatively associated with the gambling hall that has been eagerly anticipated in the border garrison (V, 300f.) and the colour symbolism of the roulette table and the cards – the black, red and white which has already been associated with anti-Semitism in Chapter VII – links the moral corruption this brings with that most terrible expression of modernity, Nazism (V, 302, 306, 340). Yet the depiction of the gambling hall is juxtaposed with another manifestation of the changed world: modern politics has brought awareness to the workers that they have rights that are not being observed (V, 303-04).692 The sympathetic portrayal of the workers in comparison with the exploitative factory owners, who prefer not to adhere to the “unbequeme und kostspielige Vorschriften” (V, 303) which would protect the workers’ health, implies that the empowerment of the workers is a positive outcome of modernity. Furthermore, the young officers who fall prey to the moral corruption represented by the gambling hall are the same young officers who oppose the workers’ strike and incur the narrator’s biting irony:

Die jüngeren Offiziere stellten sich vor, daß ‘das Volk’, das hieß die unterste Schicht der Zivilisten, Gleichberechtigung mit den Beamten, Adligen und Kommerzialräten verlangte. Sie war keinesfalls zu gewähren, wollte man eine Revolution vermeiden. Und man wollte keine Revolution; und man mußte schießen, ehe es zu spät wurde. Der Major Zoglauer hielt eine kurze Rede, aus der all das klar hervorging. Viel angenehmer ist allerdings ein Krieg. Man ist kein Gendarmerie- und Polizeioffizier. Aber es gibt vorläufig keinen Krieg. […] Befehl ist Befehl. Er hindert vorläufig keinen Menschen, in Brodnitzers Lokal zu gehen und viel Geld zu gewinnen. (V, 304)

und reichen Heiraten”, the title “König von Jerusalem” “hatte[...] nur noch historische Bedeutung”: Hamann, Hitlers Wien 127. 691 Most often cited is the 1934 essay “Der Antichrist”, a lengthy diatribe against every imaginable technological advance as well as the ideological manifestations of modernity capitalism, communism and nationalism: Joseph Roth, “Der Antichrist” (III, 563-665). Reifowitz argues that between 1927 and 1939 Roth “consistently opposed his Austria to Modernity” and was “the enemy of Modernity”: Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 120. See also Robertson, “1918,” 360f; Pizer, “‘Last Austrians’”; Wolfgang Müller-Funk, “Der Antichrist. Joseph Roths Dämonologie der Moderne,” Literatur und Kritik 243/244 (1990); Manger, “Roth and the Habsburg Myth,” 58f. Landwehr argues that Roth “felt ambivalent towards technology”: Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics,” 404. 692 Roth draws attention to this juxtaposition by ending the description of the gambling with the line “Die ganze Welt war verändert.–”, and beginning the next paragraph, which concerns the workers’ protests, with the ironic repetition “Ja, die ganze Welt!” (V, 303)

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Roth suggests that the failure to modernize in order to respond to changed circumstances was the result not only of a desire on the part of the ruling classes to maintain their dominance, but also of an excessive, almost pathological orientation towards the past which prevented the Monarchy, the army and the bureaucracy from even realizing that it needed to adapt. Carl Joseph’s desperate attempts to identify with a mythical past represented by his grandfather – or rather the legend of his grandfather – are symptomatic of an age which oriented itself exclusively to the past,693 a past which was in any case so mythologized in the service of propaganda aimed at maintaining the status quo that it had lost all relationship to reality, and therefore by definition could not provide the necessary conditions for the development of a viable identity.

Roth’s criticism of this excessive orientation to the past finds symbolic expression in a passage from the novel which, ironically, is often quoted in support of the argument that Radetzkymarsch is a backward-turned utopia:

Damals, vor dem großen Kriege, da sich die Begebenheiten zutrugen, von denen auf diesen Blättern berichtet wird, war es noch nicht gleichgültig, ob ein Mensch lebte oder starb. Wenn einer aus der Schar der Irdischen ausgelöscht wurde, trat nicht sofort ein anderer an seine Stelle, um den Toten vergessen zu machen, sondern eine Lücke blieb, wo er fehlte, und die nahen wie die fernen Zeugen des Untergangs verstummten, sooft sie diese Lücke sahen. […] So war es damals! Alles, was wuchs, brauchte viel Zeit zum Wachsen; und alles, was unterging, brauchte lange Zeit, um vergessen zu werden. Aber alles, was einmal vorhanden gewesen war, hatte seine Spuren hinterlassen, und man lebte dazumal von den Erinnerungen, wie man heutzutage lebt von der Fähigkeit, schnell und nachdrücklich zu vergessen. (V, 242-43)

In this lengthy introduction to the eighth chapter, which portrays the aftermath of the deaths of Demant and Tattenbach in the duel, the narrator compares the attitude to the past in the Habsburg Empire with that in early 1930s Austria – and finds both wanting. The sardonic interpolation “So war es damals!” undermines the nostalgic tone of the first part of the passage which describes the seemingly laudable values of pre-war citizens of the Empire compared with their post-war counterparts. The corrective follows: the narrator’s summarizing comment “man lebte dazumal von den Erinnerungen, wie man heutzutage lebt von der Fähigkeit,

693 Cf. Pazi, who writes of the generation of grandsons in Roth’s “k. und k. Romane”: “der Lebensmut und -willen dieser Gestalten [werden] von der sie hemmenden Sehnsucht nach der Welt ihrer Großväter gelähmt”: Pazi, “Exil-Bewußtsein,” 183.

194 Chapter 3: Radetzkymarsch schnell und nachdrücklich zu vergessen” suggests a parity, revealing that Roth is as critical of the Habsburg tendency to live (or wallow) in the past as he is of the post-war desire to forget or suppress the lines of continuity between then and now. While his contemporaries are condemned for living solely in the present, elements of Habsburg society are faulted for living so much in the past that they failed to adapt to the challenges of changing times. The Bezirkshauptmann and Carl Joseph, as representatives of the bureaucracy and the military respectively, embody this fixation on the past which inhibits development in or even accurate perception of the present.

Critics who read the passage as a straightforward condemnation of the present and nostalgic glorification of the past, then, have failed to notice the nuances in the text. But the real significance lies not in the condemnation of either the past or the present but in the relationship between past and present expressed in the words: “Aber alles, was einmal vorhanden gewesen war, hatte seine Spuren hinterlassen”. The image recalls the allegory of the peasant from the opening chapter of the novel with which Roth expressed the hidden relationship between the past and the present: just as the magnificent billowing wheat which conceals the traces of the peasant’s footsteps would not exist if those footsteps had not been taken, so Roth implies in this passage a correspondence between past and present despite surface dissimilarities. He views a proper examination of the relationship between past and present as vital to the understanding of what ails his society and is deeply concerned that historical continuities are being disregarded by his contemporaries. This, rather than nostalgia for better times, is the implication of his criticism of the modern “Fähigkeit, schnell und nachdrücklich zu vergessen”, and it is this that makes Radetzkymarsch a historical novel rather than a backward-turned utopia.

195

Chapter 4 “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland”?694 Die Kapuzinergruft and the Confrontation with History

Ich ging an der Kapuzinergruft vorbei. Auch vor ihr ging ein Wachtposten auf und ab. Was hatte er noch zu bewachen? die Sarkophage? das Andenken? die Geschichte?695

Not long after completing Radetzkymarsch Roth is reported to have declared: “Der Leutnant Trotta, der bin ich”.696 This curious statement implies a congruence between Carl Joseph’s fate and that of his creator which is perhaps not immediately apparent. Although Carl Joseph is not Jewish, his family’s progression from Slovene peasants to “Österreicher, Diener und Beamte[...] der Habsburger”697 puts him in a comparable position to Roth, the assimilated German-speaking Jew from the Empire’s periphery whose maternal grandfather was an Orthodox Jew:698 each has an assimilated Habsburg identity which is three generations old, and each is estranged from the traditions of his forebears. German-speaking Austrian Jews such as Roth had identified in Habsburg times simultaneously as subjects of the Austrian Emperor, as German by culture and as Jewish in terms of ethnicity and culture, and in addition often had a regional or provincial identity which implied a solidarity with the local Slavic population.699 After the collapse of the Empire, the unspoken German bias in the idea of Austria which Roth exposed in Radetzkymarsch became explicit: “Austrian” implied German ethnicity and the idea of a multiethnic Austria was increasingly

694 Working title for Die Kapuzinergruft: Joachim Reiber, “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland. Zur Entwicklung des Österreichbildes bei Joseph Roth,” Literatur und Kritik 243/244 (1990): 113. 695 Roth, Die Kapuzinergruft (VI, 296). 696 Prof. Dr. med. Ernst Wollheim, quoted in Bronsen, Biographie 398. 697 This phrase is used to describe the Bezirkshauptmann in Radetzkymarsch (V, 255). 698 Bronsen, Biographie 40. Despite the Orthodoxy of the father, Roth’s mother’s family spoke German at home. Roth’s father, Nachum Roth, was from Western Galicia and grew up in the Eastern Jewish sect of Hassidim. His and his family’s influence on Roth’s path was negligible because he disappeared before his son’s birth: see Bronsen, Biographie 40-42. 699 Roth’s Galician identity meant that he identified not as Polish but with Poles to a certain extent, as his life-long friendship with the Polish-speaking Galician Jew Józef Wittlin attests. Roth and Wittlin spoke Polish together and Wittlin stressed Roth’s great love for the Poles in his memoir to his dead friend: Józef Wittlin, “Erinnerungen an Joseph Roth”, in Joseph Roth. Leben und Werk, ein Gedächtnisbuch, edited by Hermann Linden (Köln, 1949) 56; cited in Pazi, “Exil-Bewußtsein,” 161.

196 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft unpopular. With political parties of all hues championing the Anschluß of Austria to Germany,700 Austrian Jews, like their counterparts in the Weimar Republic, found themselves excluded from claiming identification with the German nation, since they were considered ethnically (and therefore nationally) non-German. Thus, like Carl Joseph, assimilated Jews such as Roth were left with nothing but history to identify with – the history of the supranational Monarchy which had seemed to accommodate their multiple identifications as Jews, Austrians, Germans and so on.

However, as Roth shows through Carl Joseph, this history was to a great extent myth, and therefore the identification with history is intensely problematic. At the same time, any attempt to revert to the identity of the forefathers – Carl Joseph’s vain desire to reconnect with his ethnic heritage as a Slovene – is chimerical: the process of assimilation to Austrian identity, once begun, cannot be reversed.701 With the outbreak of war rendering ongoing denial of the imminent collapse of the Empire impossible, Carl Joseph’s death signifies that there will be no place for those who have no ethno-national identity within the new socio-political structures of Central Europe. Doktor Skowronnek’s assessment of the Bezirkshauptmann and the Emperor thus applies equally to Carl Joseph:

‘Ich hätte noch gern erwähnt’, sagte der Bürgermeister, ‘daß Herr von Trotta den Kaiser nicht überleben konnte. Glauben Sie nicht, Herr Doktor?’ ‘Ich weiß nicht’, erwiderte der Doktor Skowronnek, ‘ich glaube, sie konnten beide Österreich nicht überleben.’ (V, 455)

Radetzkymarsch, then, is a novel about Roth’s own predicament after the collapse of the Empire, written in such a way as to allow the author both to identify with it and to distance himself from it. Like Goethe before him, Roth writes his protagonist to death in order to save himself. But it is a vain attempt: after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire Roth has no place in Europe,702 and his

700 See Stanley Suval, The Anschluß Question in the Weimar Era: A Study of Nationalism in Germany and Austria, 1918-1932 (Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974) 169f. 701 Here too Roth is expressing his own situation: although he tended to idealize the Orthodox Eastern Jewry of his heritage, he recognized that a return was neither possible nor even ultimately desirable. Cf. Ochse, Auseinandersetzung 215. 702 Cf. Reifowitz: “Roth was doubly alienated from his chosen homeland, first as a Galician-born Jew in the Republic of Austria, and finally [in the 1930s] as a supranational Austrian in a land of rampant German nationalism”: Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 130.

197 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft peripatetic existence after returning from the war, rather than reflecting a crisis of belonging, is simply an appropriate response to this recognition.703 The rise of National Socialism and the Anschluß of Austria to Germany in 1938 revealed just how prescient Roth was; at the time of the Anschluß he underscored the parallels between his fate and Carl Joseph’s with a paraphrase of the sagacious Doktor Skowronnek: “Warum soll ich Österreich überleben?”704

Die Kapuzinergruft, begun in 1937 and completed in the immediate aftermath of the Anschluß, represents a coda to Radetzkymarsch’s tale of homelessness, in which the first person narrator Franz Ferdinand, unable to come to terms with the 1930s present, looks back to the Habsburg past in an attempt to both identify and salvage it as his Heimat. Die Kapuzinergruft is often interpreted as an inferior sequel to Radetzkymarsch,705 in which “[t]he hapless reactions of the narrator in the face of history are […] a faithful reflection of the past-oriented nostalgic conservatism of Roth himself.”706 Even critics who qualify the interpretation of Radetzkymarsch as a backward-turned utopia, arguing that it portrays “both the majesty and the folly of the Habsburg Monarchy under Franz Joseph”,707 read Die Kapuzinergruft as “an idealized version of a multinational paradise that barely resembled the reality of the past”.708 Yet although the author’s unremitting pessimism about the contemporary political situation is evident on every page, he

703 Roth himself saw nothing strange in his itinerant existence, as he wrote to Stefan Zweig: “Seit meinem achtzehnten Lebensjahr habe ich in keiner Privatwohnung gelebt, höchstens eine Woche als Gast bei Freunden. Alles was ich besitze sind 3 Koffer. Und das erscheint mir gar nicht merkwürdig”: Letter to Stefan Zweig, 27.2.1929, Briefe 145. 704 Roth is reported to have said this to Klaus Dohrn, quoted in Bronsen, Biographie 527. Klaus Dohrn was a German member of the Austrian monarchist movement and introduced Roth to Otto von Habsburg: Bronsen, Biographie 672-73. 705 See, for example, Koester, Joseph Roth 83; Andrew W. Barker, “Austrians in Paris: The Last Novels of Joseph Roth and Ernst Weiß,” in Co-existent Contradictions: Joseph Roth in Retrospect. Papers of the 1989 Joseph Roth Symposium at Leeds University to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death, ed. Helen Chambers (Riverside, CA: Ariadne Press, 1991), 208, 12-13; Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 264; Zelewitz, “Zweimal politische Illusion,” 101; Rosenfeld, Understanding 4. For Reifowitz Die Kapuzinergruft is “of an inferior literary quality to Radetzkymarsch” but “more compelling because it showed the depths of Roth’s personal anguish”: Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 129. By contrast, Pauli argues the aesthetic merits of the novel: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 77 and passim. 706 Barker, “Austrians in Paris,” 214. See also Dollenmayer, “History as Fiction,” 309; Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos 262; Williams, The Broken Eagle 108; Menhennet, “Flight of a Broken Eagle,” 61. 707 Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 123. 708 Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 120. The quotation refers to all of Roth’s work after 1933.

198 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft does not idealize the past, instead using the form of the novel to critically examine the flight from reality of which he himself is accused and to castigate present-day Austrians for failing once again to break out of their political inertia. The futility of Franz Ferdinand’s endeavour to identify with history is exposed in the rhetorical question which ends the novel: standing outside the closed Kapuzinergruft, Franz Ferdinand’s silent question is “Wohin soll ich, ich jetzt, ein Trotta?…” (VI, 346) Franz Ferdinand’s flight to the Kapuzinergruft is not an indication, as Reifowitz argues, that Roth has, with his narrator, “escaped into the past”,709 but a recognition that such an escape is impossible. “The emperor [Franz Joseph] is dead, unattainable, irrelevant”;710 his tomb is locked.711

“[Ich] sehe […] mich genötigt”:712 Monarchist out of Necessity

Just three months after Hitler came to power Roth penned a letter to his friend Stefan Zweig from Parisian exile which is often quoted in support of the contention that in the face of Hitler’s barbarism Roth’s earlier reservations about the Monarchy dissolved:713

[E]s ist ganz finster – in der Welt und auch für uns, Individuen. […] Was mich persönlich betrifft: sehe ich mich genötigt, zufolge meinen Instinkten und meiner Überzeugung absoluter Monarchist zu werden. Ich lasse in 6-8 Wochen eine Broschüre für die Habsburger erscheinen. Ich bin ein alter österreichischer Offizier. Ich liebe Österreich. Ich halte es für feige, jetzt nicht zu sagen, daß es Zeit ist, sich nach den Habsburgern zu sehnen. Ich will die Monarchie wieder haben und will es sagen.714

Bronsen reads this letter as an unambiguous declaration of faith in the Habsburgs:

Mit dem Aufkommen des Nationalsozialismus und der aufgezwungenen und nicht mehr selbstgewählten Heimatlosigkeit des Exils wurde [Roth] im Rückblick der Verlust des großen Österreich zu einem tiefen Einschnitt und zur Zerstörung der Welt, in der er aufgewachsen war.715

709 Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 130. 710 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 164. 711 Cf. Pauli, who notes that the locked tomb signifies that “die Zuflucht zur Geschichte [ist] als realisierbare Möglichkeit ausgeschlossen”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 26. 712 Letter to Stefan Zweig, 28.4.1933, Briefe 262. 713 Bronsen, Biographie 482. 714 Letter to Stefan Zweig, 28.4.1933, Briefe 262. 715 Bronsen, Biographie 478.

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Yet as Reiber explains, “[d]ie Formulierungen dieses Schreibens machen deutlich, mit welcher Bewußtheit und welcher Willensanstrengung sich Roth für den Monarchismus als seine einzig mögliche Reaktion auf den Nationalsozialismus entscheidet.”716 Reiber’s argument that Roth’s monarchist conviction was less than unequivocal and was contingent on his reaction to National Socialism717 is compelling, and it is supported by the assessment of Martin Fuchs, editor of the Österreichische Post and an authoritative voice in the monarchist movement. For Fuchs the primary reason for Roth’s commitment to the monarchist cause was that he believed (whether rightly or wrongly718) that a revived Monarchy would be a bulwark against Nazism:

Als Journalist stand Roth dem Zeitgeschehen nahe, und er verkannte nicht die propagandistischen und psychologischen Möglichkeiten, die Otto von Habsburg als Träger des monarchistischen Gedankens und als Gegenfigur zu Hitler darstellte.719

Similarly, Roth’s professed Catholicism, the extent of which has never been verified, may have been “une position politique”.720 Joseph Gottfarstein, an Eastern European Jewish journalist who knew Roth intimately from 1934 until Roth’s death in 1939, reports that Roth professed to have converted to Catholicism only because it was an indispensable element of his monarchist

716 Reiber, “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland,” 112. 717 “Daß Roth sich so verzweifelt an die Idee der Habsburger-Monarchie klammerte, hängt eng mit seiner Einschätzung des Nationalsozialismus zusammen”: Reiber, “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland,” 112. See also Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 176. 718 According to Carsten, the legitimist movement in Austria was small but active, and its goal of preventing the Anschluß was not unrealistic: “eine Restauration würde dem Anschluß einen Riegel vorgeschoben haben. Die Nationalsozialisten wußten das und sprengten daher häufig monarchistische Versammlungen”: C.F. Carsten, Faschismus in Österreich. Von Schönerer zu Hitler (München, 1977) 259; quoted in Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 348. 719 Martin Fuchs, quoted in Bronsen, Biographie 480. Fuchs cites “eine Art Heimweh nach dem alten Österreich” as a second reason for Roth’s legitimism, saying that Roth knew the faults of the Monarchy but as Jew and Galician believed that he had experienced a tolerance in the multinational Empire which he did not find in the nation-states which replaced it: Bronsen, Biographie 480-81. 720 Pierre Bertaux, quoted in Bronsen, Biographie 489. Professor Bertaux knew Roth from 1927 and met with him from time to time until 1939: Bronsen, Biographie 671. Other friends of Roth to cast doubt on the truth of his conversion include René Schickele, Soma Morgenstern, and Roth’s long-time companion Andrea Manga Bell: Bronsen, Biographie 489-90.

200 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft engagement, which in turn was necessary to prevent the catastrophe of the Anschluß:721

Roth [sagte]: ‘Ich schwöre dir, es ist alles Lüge von A bis Z. Glaubst du, daß ich wirklich ein Abtrünniger bin? Glaubst du, daß ich wirklich den Kopf verloren habe? […] Verstehst du nicht, daß man die reine Wahrheit weder sprechen noch spielen kann? Man kann sie nur schweigen.’ Und dann meinte er, er müsse so weiter machen, weil er im Sinne der Monarchie handeln müsse und weil es darum gehe, Europa vor der letzten Katastrophe zu bewahren.’722

These personal testimonies from people close to Roth suggest that his monarchism was pragmatic and instrumental rather than an article of faith. It is no surprise that those journalistic writings which directly comment on contemporary politics are unconditional in their support of the monarchist cause: their purpose is propagandistic.723 Some of the less directly political pieces, however, are more qualified in expression. “In der Kapuzinergruft”724 is a short reminiscence on the funeral of Emperor Franz Joseph which is often cited as an example of Roth’s thoroughgoing nostalgia for the Monarchy and his “liebevolle[...] Verherrlichung des Kaisers Franz Joseph”.725 Reiber contrasts this piece with “Seine k. und k. apostolische Majestät”,726 a feuilleton written five years before Hitler’s assumption of power, and finds that where the earlier piece balances criticism with nostalgia, seven years later Roth “verklärt, verwischt, beseitigt Konturen, die

721 Joseph Gottfarstein reports: “War er bei mir, führte er sich als Superjude auf; verkehrte er mit anderen, trat sein anderes Ich [das Katholische] in Erscheinung”: Joseph Gottfarstein, quoted in Bronsen, Biographie 548. 722 Joseph Gottfarstein, quoted in Bronsen, Biographie 549. Martens notes a discrepancy between Roth’s letters, speeches and articles of the 1930s, in which the religious element is prominent, and his novels, in which it is conspicuously absent: “[i]n allen die Vergangenheit der habsburgischen Monarchie heraufbeschwörenden Dichtungen Roths, ist das religiöse Element, wenn es überhaupt in den Blick kommt, eine Randerscheinung”: Martens, “Sakrale Instanz,” 238. This inconsistency lends weight to the theory that Roth’s professed Catholicism was politically rather than religiously motivated. 723 Cf. Doppler: “Die Rücksicht auf den politischen Tageskampf veranlaßte Roth in den journalistischen Arbeiten von 1938/39 zu Formulierungen, die so klingen, als gäbe es noch praktische politische Möglichkeiten für eine Restauration des habsburgischen Österreich”: Alfred Doppler, “Die Kapuzinergruft: Österreich im Bewußtsein von Franz Ferdinand Trotta,” in Joseph Roth. Interpretation Rezeption Kritik, ed. Michael Kessler and Fritz Hackert (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1990), 93. 724 Joseph Roth, “In der Kapuzinergruft”, Wiener Sonn- und Montags-Zeitung, 27.5.1935 (III, 671-73). 725 See, for example, Riemen, “Judentum – Kirche – Habsburg,” 391; Reiber, “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland,” 104-05. 726 Joseph Roth, “Seine k. und k. apostolische Majestät”, Frankfurter Zeitung, 6.3.1928 (II, 910- 15).

201 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft er einst mit mühevoller Akribie aufgezeichnet hat”.727 This interpretation underestimates the subtlety of Roth’s prose and ignores a crucial parallel between the two feuilletons. In the first, Roth draws attention to the human tendency to look back with fondness on whatever is associated with one’s childhood, recalling

die zwiespältige Trauer über den Untergang eines Vaterlandes, das selbst zur Opposition seine Söhne erzogen hatte. Und während ich noch verurteilte, begann ich schon, es zu beklagen. […] Die Sinnlosigkeit seiner letzten Jahre erkannte ich klar, aber nicht zu leugnen war, daß eben diese Sinnlosigkeit ein Stück meiner Kindheit bedeutete. Die kalte Sonne der Habsburger erlosch, aber es war eine Sonne gewesen. (II, 910-11)

The faults of the Monarchy are expressly acknowledged, but they do not detract from the writer’s sorrow at its passing, because for all its faults its passing marks the passing of his own childhood: mourning and sober recognition coexist.

In the later feuilleton “In der Kapuzinergruft”, written in 1935, the association of the Emperor and Monarchy with the author’s childhood recurs. In this case there is no explicit acknowledgement of the “Sinnlosigkeit” of the Monarchy’s last years, an omission which leads Reiber to conclude that the rain Roth conjures up has washed away his “Zwiespalt”.728 However, the express, repeated connection drawn between the author’s childhood and youth and his sense of bereavement indicates Roth’s acute awareness of the operations of nostalgia:

Wem weinte ich damals nach? – Gewiß dem Kaiser Franz Joseph: aber auch mir selbst, meiner eigenen Kindheit, meiner eigenen Jugend. Und obwohl ich in jener Stunde wußte, daß ich bald, bald für den toten Kaiser und für seinen Nachfolger zu sterben befohlen und bestimmt war, und obwohl ich damals noch so jung war, schien es mir, daß es beinahe unschicklich sei, später zu sterben als der Kaiser, dessen Glanz meine Jugend erleuchtet und dessen Leid meine Jugend verdüstert hatten. Damals fühlte ich, daß ich ein Österreicher bin; ein alter Österreicher. Alle Kaiser von Österreich waren meine Kaiser gewesen. Alle Kaiser von Österreich, die noch kommen könnten, werden meine Kaiser sein. […] Aber Kaiser Franz Joseph ist mein besonderer Kaiser, der Kaiser meiner Kindheit und meiner Jugend … (III, 672; emphasis in original)

The criticism of the Monarchy may be more muted in this later text, but it is there nonetheless in the reference to the battle that Roth was about to fight for a dead

727 Reiber, “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland,” 105. 728 Reiber, “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland,” 104.

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Emperor, and the fact that he might die for that Emperor.729 The fact that the writer is mourning the loss of childhood simultaneously with the death of the Emperor suggests that he is grieving for what Franz Joseph represents on a personal level: the innocence of Roth’s youth. The repetitive nature of the depiction points to an expectation on the part of the writer that readers will be able to identify with this nostalgia for youth and childhood but will also know it is irrational and falsifies the past it remembers. The effect of the connection between the end of childhood and grief over the death of Franz Joseph is heightened through its repetition at the end of the passage as a mute address to the dead Emperor, which the writer claims he delivers each time he visits the Emperor’s tomb:

‘Lieber Kaiser! […] Alle österreichischen Kaiser liebe ich: jenen, der dir gefolgt ist, und alle, die dir noch folgen werden. Aber dich, mein Kaiser Franz Joseph, suche ich auf, weil du meine Kindheit und meine Jugend bist. Ich grüße dich, Kaiser meiner Kinderzeit! Ich habe dich begraben: Für mich bist du niemals gestorben! Dein Joseph Roth’ (III, 672-73)

These excerpts articulate a wry recognition of the human tendency to look back on the past through rose-coloured glasses. Roth’s nostalgia is certainly palpable, finding particular expression in the lengthy description of the rain at the Emperor’s funeral, which he calls “ein besonderer Regen […] – ein ganz besonderer Regen”. (III, 671) Yet the poignancy of even this melancholy image is undercut by the ironic repetition of the adjective in the phrase “mein besonderer Kaiser, der Kaiser meiner Kindheit und meiner Jugend” on the next page.730 Just as the association of the Emperor with the author’s childhood undercuts the nostalgia expressed, the repetition of the adjective “besonderer” lends an ironic undertone in retrospect to the melancholy atmosphere evoked by the rain. That the years between 1928 and 1935 have seen the institution of a barbaric regime in Germany and increasing ethnic German nationalism in Austria has undoubtedly and understandably intensified Roth’s conviction that the Habsburg Monarchy, for all its faults, was far better than what replaced it, but through his gentle

729 A further point of criticism occurs later in the article: “[…] und nicht einmal das k.u.k. Dienstreglement, das damals meine Empfindungen regelte, dämpfte und unterdrückte, konnte mich hindern zu weinen” (III, 672). 730 It is further undercut by Roth’s direct reference to the clichéd metaphor “Der Himmel weint” (III, 672).

203 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft exposure of the processes by which nostalgia is created Roth demonstrates that he is still capable of balancing criticism and nostalgia.

Even in some of Roth’s more overtly political pieces from the late 1930s, which are provocative in their demonizing of Germany and eulogizing of the Habsburgs and Old Austria, the careful reader can still detect signs of critical distance and balance, if not towards Germany then at least towards Habsburg Austria. In his essay on Grillparzer Roth contends that there are two types of Germans, “der Typus des deutschen Weltbürgers”, which was produced by Habsburg Austria, and his “Stiefbruder, [der] national gebundene[...] Deutsche[...]”.731 The former was defeated and destroyed by the latter at Sadowa, Roth claims, and thus began the progression foreseen by Grillparzer: “Von der Humanität durch Nationalität zur Bestialität”.732 The Habsburgs are seemingly absolved of any responsibility for the nationalism that has engulfed not only Germany but all of the Habsburgs’ former territories as well; it is Protestant Germany that must bear the responsibility: “‘Von der Humanität durch Nationalität zur Bestialität’ heißt: von Erasmus durch Luther, Friedrich, Napoleon, Bismarck zu den heutigen europäischen Diktaturen.” (III, 745)

And yet, Roth does admit that the Habsburgs were partly to blame for the fate of Austria: in a passage which echoes the charge made in Juden auf Wanderschaft ten years earlier that the Monarchy “hätte den Beweis für das Gegenteil [der Nationalitätentheorie] liefern können, wenn sie gut regiert worden wäre” (II, 834), Roth accuses the Habsburgs of having misunderstood and abused their own motto Divide et impera “für innerstaatliche Verhältnisse”:

In der sinngemäßen Übersetzung heißt es: Dezentralisiere und übe Einfluß aus! Nicht Trenne und unterdrücke! Aber: wie wenige konnten – damals schon! richtig Latein verstehen? Seit Joseph II., der den preußischen Zentralismus, die Aufklärung nach friderizianischem Muster nachzuahmen versuchte, der die Kirche beschränkte und – sicherlich, ohne es zu wollen und zu wissen – die moralische und geistige Basis für den späteren nationalistischen Hochmut der deutschen Österreicher gegenüber den anderen Österreichern schuf (die ‘Diktatur’ könnte man sagen), war eine der letzten Zufluchtstätten des

731 Joseph Roth, “Grillparzer: Ein Portrait”, Das Neue Tage-Buch (Paris), 4.12.1937 (III, 745). 732 “‘Von der Humanität durch Nationalität zur Bestialität’: kein Aperçu, sondern ein Angstschrei angesichts des nahenden Zerfalls der Monarchie, des Endsiegs der erwachenden nationalen Barbarei” (III, 744).

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universal Lateinischen von oben her zerstört […]. (III, 745)

Roth’s idealization of the universalism of the Habsburg Monarchy in comparison with the nationalism of Germany is tempered by his acknowledgement that as far back as Joseph II the Habsburgs misunderstood their own supranational mission,733 and that through their mistakes they were responsible for the rise of a supercilious nationalism among the ethnic Germans in the Empire. Here, as in Radetzkymarsch, the universalism and supranationalism of the late Habsburg Empire are exposed as more myth than reality.

This is not to deny that Roth argued passionately in many articles for the return of the Habsburgs or that he truly believed that the only way to prevent the Anschluß was to bring about a return of the Monarchy. As Pauli has remarked, even when all of the tactical, political, socio-cultural and ideological reasons for Roth’s legitimism are taken into account, it remains “noch merkwürdig genug”.734 It must be acknowledged that some of Roth’s actions and attitudes in the 1930s smacked of reaction – for instance his support for the authoritarian corporate state.735 However his conservatism “ist vor allem daran zu messen, wogegen er Widerstand leistet, wenn ihm auch zuweilen das genaue Bewußtsein darüber fehlte, was historisch noch möglich und sozialpolitisch erforderlich war.”736 Moreover, it is important to recognize that aspects of Roth’s post-1933 journalism suggest that he was not completely convinced by his own rhetoric, instead

733 A similar acknowledgement of misgovernance can be found in the later essay “Dreimal Österreich”: “[…] daß die alte österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie eine universale Aufgabe zu erfüllen bestimmt war, unter deren Last sie zusammengebrochen ist, und nicht ohne eigene Schuld”: Roth, “Dreimal Österreich” (III, 779). 734 Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 186. 735 This attitude was in fact typical of Austrian Jews, who viewed the Ständestaat “not only as the lesser evil [compared with Hitler’s Germany] but also as a shelter necessary for survival”: Bruce F. Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution. A History of Austrian Anti-Semitism (Chapel Hill, N.J., 1992) 260-74; cited in Anton Pelinka, “Austrian Identity and the ‘Ständestaat’,” in The Habsburg Legacy: National Identity in Historical Perspective, ed. Ritchie Robertson and Edward Timms (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1994), 171. Despite his public support for the Ständestaat, however, in private Roth disparaged its leaders: Soma Morgenstern, “Joseph Roth im Gespräch,” in Joseph Roth und die Tradition. Aufsatz und Materialiensammlung, ed. David Bronsen (Darmstadt: Agora, 1975), 41, 56-57. See also Morgenstern, Flucht und Ende. In a 1934 letter to Ernst Krenek Roth declared: “Offen gesagt: ich mißtraue Schuschnigg”: 31.10.1934, Briefe 391. Pauli cites this statement as evidence that Roth’s support for Schuschnigg and the corporate state was “eine künstlich forcierte Sympathiebekundung”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 179. 736 Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 37.

205 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft viewing the Monarchy not as a perfect form of government, but as a better form than the nationalistic dictatorship of Hitler. It should also be remembered that it was in the context of the Weimar Republic that Hitler came to power, and so it is not altogether surprising that Roth had little faith in democracy.737 The reader who remembers these qualifications, together with the fundamental importance of differentiating between narrator and writer, is more likely to be open to the critical undertones of Roth’s final novel, Die Kapuzinergruft.

The Dialogue between Past and Present in Die Kapuzinergruft

In Die Kapuzinergruft, Roth extends the dialogue between past and present begun in Radetzkymarsch. While in the historical novel Radetzkymarsch the post-war present is evoked only intermittently and the novel ends before the fall of the Habsburg Empire, in Die Kapuzinergruft Roth chooses a form midway between the historical novel and the Zeitroman which was typical of his early work, the novel spanning the period from late Habsburg times until the Anschluß of 1938, Roth’s present. Even though the greater part of the text is set in the five years prior to 1918,738 the present predominates through the first person retrospective narrator, Franz Ferdinand. His post-war perspective is made abundantly clear in the opening chapter through the references to “der Wille dieser Zeit”, “[das] heutige[...] Österreich”, “[die] früheren Kronländer[...]”, “[die] verschollenen Annalen der alten österreichisch-ungarischen Armee” (VI, 227) and Franz Ferdinand’s father the rebel and patriot, “eine Spezies, die es nur im alten Österreich-Ungarn gegeben hat” (VI, 228). The link between past and present is thus made far more explicit in this novel than in Radetzkymarsch, although in a way which at first glance seems to encourage the reader to accept at face value the narrator’s idealization of the past due to his rejection of the present.

737 In an unpublished manuscript from 1937 Roth argued on the basis of the failed aspiring dictators in Belgium and the Netherlands that “der Monarch allein verhütet den Usurpator”: Joseph Roth, “Der Monarch verhindert den Diktator”, Manuscript from 1937, Leo Baeck Institute (New York) (III, 765). 738 Howes calculates that 26 of the 34 chapters are set before 1920 but the only dates mentioned in the text are 1913 (Ch. II) and 1918 (Ch. XXIII). The first 22 chapters, or 69 of 119 pages, are thus set prior to the fall of the Empire. There are occasional historical references which allow the dating of several chapters, for example the introduction of the new currency, the Schilling, in 1922 (Ch. XXIX). Only the last 2 chapters are clearly set in the 1930s: 1934 and 1938 respectively – the civil war and the Anschluß are the historical markers.

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Franz Ferdinand’s abhorrence of the present from which he is narrating is declared on the first page:

Ich bin nicht ein Kind dieser Zeit, es fällt mir schwer, mich nicht geradezu ihren Feind zu nennen. Nicht, daß ich sie nicht verstünde, wie ich es so oft behaupte. Dies ist nur eine fromme Ausrede. Ich will einfach, aus Bequemlichkeit, nicht ausfällig oder gehässig werden, und also sage ich, daß ich das nicht verstehe, von dem ich sagen müßte, daß ich es hasse oder verachte. (VI, 227)

This passage also establishes Franz Ferdinand as an unreliable narrator,739 a fact underscored by Chojnicki towards the end of the novel: “Mir scheint, Sie sind ein Schwindler.” (VI, 338) Franz Ferdinand’s unreliability makes it imperative that the reader differentiate between the narrator and author,740 a distinction which critics who view Die Kapuzinergruft as “historical escapism”,741 as “inspired thematically by the retrogressive utopian vision of old Austria that Roth cherished”,742 as opposing “to the new order a conservative Utopian vision of the lost Empire”,743 or as describing “a world that had never really existed”744 fail to make. As Howes has argued, although “the virtual contemporaneity of the narration and the composition of the novel”745 mean that Roth and his fictional narrator are “writing” in the same situation, it would be a mistake to attribute Franz Ferdinand’s beliefs and attitudes to Roth: “Roth’s Austrianism is ironic and Trotta’s is not. Roth is desperate but intelligent; Trotta is merely desperate.”746 The novel therefore must be read “nicht als Bekenntnis, sondern vor allem als

739 The fragmentary form of the text itself suggests the subjective nature of memory, this further underscoring the unreliability of the narration. Cf. Pauli: “Die Aufteilung in meist sehr kurze Kapitel kennzeichnet schon optisch die mosaikhafte Zersplitterung der Erinnerungen, die Suggestivität der Stimmungen”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 78. 740 Pauli goes even further, distinguishing a “mehrfache Brechung der Darstellungsebene, nämlich zwischen erzählendem und erinnertem Ich – und dem Autor Roth”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 64. 741 Williams, The Broken Eagle 109. 742 Rosenfeld, Understanding 83. 743 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 156. Howes does not subscribe to this interpretation himself but cites Williams in particular as a proponent of this view: Williams, The Broken Eagle 108-09. 744 Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 130. 745 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 160. 746 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 161. Doppler is one critic who explicitly equates Franz Ferdinand and Roth: Doppler, “Historische Ereignisse,” 75. Rosenfeld appears to make the distinction between writer and narrator but then claims that “Roth also succumbed to the same romanticizing tendencies as his central figure”: Rosenfeld, Understanding 84. Pauli has demonstrated that Joseph Roth is politically much more perceptive than his narrator and that Franz Ferdinand’s beliefs and attitudes can therefore not be assumed to be identical to Roth’s: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 23, 31-32, 114-27 and 164-90.

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Darstellung eines Bekenntnisses”.747 Roth is critical both of his narrator’s nostalgia for an imagined Heimat in the past and of his frivolous apathy both then and in the present in the face of political realities which require urgent engagement and positive action.

Heimat with Hindsight

The first sentence of Die Kapuzinergruft indicates that Franz Ferdinand’s identity will be a primary concern of both his narration and the text. The fragmentation of the narrator’s identity stands in stark contrast to the definitive tone of his initial statement: “Wir heißen Trotta.” (VI, 227) While he may be certain of his name, he is not certain of much else, and the narrative consists in the documentation of his repeated failed attempts to construct a viable identity in the present through recourse to memory. Much in the novel, from the initial declaration that he is “nicht ein Kind dieser Zeit” (VI, 227) to the final plaintive but rhetorical question “Wohin soll ich, ich jetzt, ein Trotta?…” (VI, 346), suggests that Franz Ferdinand’s alienation is due to the radical changes in the political geography of his once intact Heimat. Yet a very different picture emerges from between the lines of the narration: it is in fact only with hindsight that Franz Ferdinand identifies, or tries to identify, with the Habsburg Empire as his Heimat. His disaffection with the 1930s present prompts him to seek refuge in a reconstructed past, but his perception of the past is “filtered through twenty years of increasing disillusionment and bitterness”,748 and therefore the novel is “a document of the thirties”749 despite its narrator’s focus on the past.

As we learn in the opening paragraph, Sipolje, the Slovene village from which Franz Ferdinand’s ancestors hail, no longer exists: “Sipolje besteht nicht mehr, lange nicht mehr.” (VI, 227) Franz Ferdinand’s identity in the present is predicated on a way of life and an Empire which no longer exist and perhaps never existed in the form he imagines. His only connection to the former Empire is through memory, just as he remembers the now vanished Sipolje from his childhood:

747 Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 14. 748 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 158.

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Mein Vater hatte mich einmal dorthin mitgenommen, an einem siebzehnten August, dem Vorabend jenes Tages, an dem in allen, auch in den kleinsten Ortschaften der Monarchie der Geburtstag Kaiser Franz Josephs des Ersten gefeiert wurde. (VI, 227)

Yet even Franz Ferdinand’s memories of a time when his identity seemed intact are unreliable: they are “Erinnerungen an Erinnerungen, Idealisierungen von Idealen”.750 Before the collapse of the Empire he was not so well disposed towards it, helping to accelerate its fall through reckless derision and political apathy, as he now admits. He is then, in a sense, “einigermaßen schwierig und resonanzlos zwischen den Zeiten angesiedelt”.751 While Franz Ferdinand’s father, who had dreamed of a “slawische[s] Königreich” and a “Monarchie der Österreicher, Ungarn und Slawen” (VI, 228), named his son “Erbe[...] seiner Ideen” (VI, 228) in his will, it is only after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire that Franz Ferdinand sees fit to claim this legacy – when it is too late:

Es war das Ende. Ich dachte an den alten Traum meines Vaters, den von einer dreifältigen Monarchie, und daß er mich dazu bestimmt hatte, einmal seinen Traum wirklich zu machen. Mein Vater lag begraben auf dem Hietzinger Friedhof, und der Kaiser Franz Joseph, dessen treuer Deserteur er gewesen war, in der Kapuzinergruft. Ich war der Erbe, und der körnige Regen fiel über mich, und ich wanderte dem Hause meines Vaters und meiner Mutter zu. Ich machte einen Umweg. Ich ging an der Kapuzinergruft vorbei. Auch vor ihr ging ein Wachtposten auf und ab. Was hatte er noch zu bewachen? die Sarkophage? das Andenken? die Geschichte? (VI, 296)

Franz Ferdinand’s relationship to his father’s convictions has always been at one remove, a fact signalled in his speaking Slovene not as his Muttersprache but only because his father taught him. (VI, 229) Without a genuine relationship to his father’s ideas Franz Ferdinand “cannot live them,”752 as Roth’s satire reveals. Franz Ferdinand’s belief that his experience of Slovenia is authentic is reflected in his enthusiastic declaration of affinity with his cousin Joseph Branco: “Ich fühlte: dies ist ein Bruder, kein Vetter!” (VI, 229) However, his attempts to acquire from his cousin “das Wichtigste, das zu einem echten Slowenen gehört: eine alte Kette, eine bunte Weste, eine steinschwere, stehende Uhr mit Schlüsselchen” (VI, 232) demonstrate the poverty of his understanding of what it is to be a Slovene peasant. While for Franz Ferdinand “jede folkloristische Attrappe” is a symbol of his

749 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 158. 750 Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 36. 751 Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 40.

209 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft father’s “Liebe zu den Slawen unseres Reiches” (VI, 231), a love with which he has been instilled since childhood, Joseph Branco “gets what a real Slovene peasant needs: money”.753 That Franz Ferdinand is incapable of any insight in this regard is indicated in his surprised commentary on his cousin’s willingness to sell him the items he so desires:

Und ich hatte doch im stillen gedacht, eingedenk der Lehren meines Vaters, daß ein slowenischer Bauer viel zu edel sei, um sich überhaupt um Geld und Geldeswert zu kümmern. (VI, 232)754

The very fact that Franz Ferdinand is motivated to acquire the trappings which will signify to his frivolous friends his “nahe Beziehung zu der originellen Erde des sagenhaften slowenischen Sipolje” (VI, 233) – a relationship these friends covet755 but which is also even for Franz Ferdinand “in Wirklichkeit unerreichbar”756 – suggests that his identity as a cosmopolitan assimilated member of the Habsburg Viennese upper class is not meaningful. He has no profession, and although he has enrolled to study law, it is only to please his mother and he in fact does not study at all (VI, 233). Although he claims “[u]nser Leben war vor dem großen Krieg idyllisch” (VI, 248-49), his description of the life he shares with his friends reveals the triviality and emptiness of their existence:

Ich lebte in der fröhlichen, ja ausgelassenen Gesellschaft junger Aristokraten, […]. Ich teilte mit ihnen den skeptischen Leichtsinn, den melancholischen Fürwitz, die sündhafte Fahrlässigkeit, die hochmütige Verlorenheit, alle Anzeichen des Untergangs, den wir damals noch nicht kommen sahen. (VI, 233)

It is because their lives are so meaningless that Franz Ferdinand and his friends embrace every diversion that presents itself, from the folkloristic novelty of a

752 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 161. 753 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 161. 754 For Pauli, Franz Ferdinand’s father is revealed in these pages to have similarly subscribed to a romantic “Austriazismus”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 54. However, since the only insight readers have into the father is through his son’s unreliable narration it is impossible to say whether this is the case or whether Franz Ferdinand was simply incapable of understanding what his father tried to impress upon him. 755 “Denn alle beneideten mich um Weste, Kette, Uhr. Alle hätten sie mir am liebten den ganzen Vetter abgekauft, meine Verwandtschaft und mein Sipolje.” (VI, 234) 756 Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 55.

210 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft genuine Slovene peasant to the advent of a war they know will spell the end of this apparently carefree, but empty, existence:

Es schien mir damals, daß mir der Krieg durchaus gelegen käme. In dem Augenblick, in dem er nun da war und unausbleiblich, erkannte ich sofort und ich glaube, auch alle meine Freunde dürften es genauso schnell und so plötzlich erkannt haben –, daß sogar noch ein sinnloser Tod besser sei als ein sinnloses Leben. Ich hatte Angst vor dem Tod. Das ist gewiß. Ich wollte nicht fallen. Ich wollte mir lediglich selbst die Sicherheit verschaffen, daß ich sterben könne. (VI, 258)

This explicit recognition of the hollow life which he has led in Habsburg Austria contradicts his earlier insistence that the war precipitated a loss of identity and Heimat: it is called the world war, he explains, “nicht etwa, weil ihn die ganze Welt geführt hatte, sondern weil wir alle infolge seiner eine Welt, unsere Welt, verloren haben” (VI, 252). And yet what was this world? Franz Ferdinand tells of the loss of not just one Heimat but several in succession, losses he claims are set in train by the coming war. However, Roth casts a critical and often ironic eye on each Heimat which Franz Ferdinand remembers losing, revealing each to have been a figment of his imagination.

Visiting the Galician Jewish fiacre driver Manes Reisiger in Zlotogrod before the outbreak of war, Franz Ferdinand is struck by the fact that most things about this strange town and its “fremde[...], flache[...], wehmütige[...] Landschaft” (VI, 251) seem “heimisch und vertraut” (VI, 252) to him. There follows a passage which could have been taken from one of Roth’s eulogizing political pieces on the fallen Habsburg Monarchy:

Ich spreche vom mißverstandenen und auch mißbrauchten Geist der alten Monarchie, der da bewirkte, daß ich in Zlotogrod ebenso zu Hause war wie in Sipolje, wie in Wien. Das einzige Kaffeehaus in Zlotogrod, das Café Habsburg, gelegen im Parterre des Hotels ‘Zum goldenen Bären’, in dem ich abgestiegen war, sah nicht anders aus als das Café Wimmerl in der Josefstadt, wo ich gewohnt war, mich mit meinen Freunden am Nachmittag zu treffen. Auch hier saß hinter der Theke die wohlvertraute Kassiererin, so blond und so füllig, wie zu meiner Zeit nur die Kassiererinnen sein konnten […]. Die Schachbretter, die Dominosteine, die verrauchten Wände, die Gaslampen, der Küchentisch in der Ecke, in der Nähe der Toiletten […]: all dies war Heimat, stärker als nur ein Vaterland, weit und bunt, dennoch vertraut und Heimat: die kaiser- und königliche Monarchie. […] Es dauerte kaum eine Woche, und ich war in Zlotogrod ebenso heimisch, wie ich es in Sipolje, in Müglitz, in Brünn und in unserem Café Wimmerl in der Josefstadt gewesen war. (VI, 252-53)

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Franz Ferdinand’s narration implies that not only he but all Habsburg subjects would feel “heimisch” in any one of its towns: it was in the nature of the Monarchy, “[das] durchaus natürliche[...] Gesetz eines starken Geistes” (VI, 252). However, the paragraphs either side of this passage reveal that this experience is restricted to those of Franz Ferdinand’s class. Franz Ferdinand has been invited to Zlotogrod by Manes Reisiger, for whom he professes to feel a longing757 and to whom he refers as his friend (VI, 253), and the invitation was expressly for Franz Ferdinand to stay with Manes: “‘Ich habe mir vorgestellt,’” Manes writes, “‘daß es auch Ihnen angenehm wäre, bei mir zu wohnen. Mein Häuschen ist arm, aber geräumig.’” (VI, 248) However, Franz Ferdinand chooses to stay at the Hotel “Zum goldenen Bären” because it is “[das] einzige[...] Hotel dieses Städtchens, von dem man mir gesagt hatte, es sei einem Europäer angemessen.” (VI, 249) The unstated implication is both that Manes Reisiger’s house would not be appropriate or fitting for a European and that Manes himself is not a “European”.

The only “Europeans” in Zlotogrod appear to be the Bezirkshauptmann Baron Grappik and the officers of the ninth dragoon regiment, who speak “das gleiche näselnde, ärarische Deutsch der besseren Stände” (VI, 253) and with whom Franz Ferdinand spends his evenings, having been driven around the district “im Fiaker meines Freundes Manes Reisiger” (IV, 253) during the day.758 His description of the countryside, which immediately follows his excursus on the virtues of the former Monarchy and its ability to make every provincial town “vertraut und Heimat”, betrays a further discrepancy between his experience of Heimat in Zlotogrod and the reality of life in the town:

Das Land war in Wirklichkeit arm, aber es zeigte sich anmutig und sorglos. Die weit gebreiteten, unfruchtbaren Sümpfe selbst erschienen mir saftig und gütig und der freundliche Chor der Frösche, der aus ihnen emporstieg, als ein Lobgesang von Lebewesen, die besser als ich wußten, zu welchem Zweck Gott sie und ihre Heimat, die Sümpfe, geschaffen hatte. (IV, 253)

As one of the “Europeans” who is only visiting this harsh and barren landscape and does not have to live here, Franz Ferdinand experiences its poverty – from the

757 “Plötzlich erfaßten mich die Ungeduld und sogar die Sehnsucht nach diesem Zlotogrod und nach dem Fiaker namens Reisiger.” (VI, 249) 758 Cf. Pauli, who writes that the trip to Zlotogrod, which is conceived by the narrator as an adventure and “als Suche in der Vergangenheit nach der eigenen Identität, endet doch wieder nur im Casino”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 49.

212 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft comfort of the fiacre and the hotel – as romantic, and his determination not to acknowledge its harsh reality is revealed to be symptomatic of his class when he attempts to explain his habit of drinking all night and sleeping during the day:

[W]ir suchten die Erklärung in der Tatsache, daß wir zu jung waren, um die Nächte zu vernachlässigen. Indessen war es, wie ich erst später sah, die Angst vor den Tagen, genauer gesagt, vor den Vormittagen, den klarsten Zeiten des Tages. Da sieht man deutlich, und man wird auch deutlich gesehen. Und wir, wir wollten nicht deutlich sehen, und wir wollten auch nicht deutlich gesehen werden. (VI, 254)759

This passage recalls the deliberate blindness of the characters in Radetzkymarsch, which signified both the prevalence of the desire to deny reality, thereby avoiding having to confront it, and the futility of any attempt to do so. Similarly here, the motif of blindness functions to cast doubt on the narrator’s retrospective perception of the Habsburg Empire as having been a vast Heimat for all its peoples, “weit und bunt, dennoch vertraut und Heimat” (VI, 253).

Franz Ferdinand’s narration of Habsburg times moves “from one imagined ‘Heimat’ to the next, but none of these is convincing as a true home, not least because of the ease with which Trotta is able to give them up.”760 Having described the military as his Heimat,761 he then expresses a feeling of alienation from his comrades, whose “Unbekümmertheit” (VI, 270) in the face of war offends him, although he has just admitted that he is as “oberflächlich, leichtsinnig, unkameradschaftlich, stupide” as they (VI, 268). Having decided that he wants to die “mit Joseph Branco, meinem Vetter, dem Kastanienbrater, und mit Manes Reisiger, dem Fiaker von Zlotogrod, und nicht mit Walzertänzern”, he leaves his regiment: “So verlor ich zum erstenmal meine erste Heimat, nämlich die Einundzwanziger, mitsamt unserer geliebten Wasserwiese im Prater.” (VI, 271) Drawn to his romanticized idea of Joseph Branco and Manes Reisiger and believing they represent a more authentic experience of Austria than “die

759 The unreliability of Franz Ferdinand’s perceptions of Zlotogrod as a new or extended Heimat is further exposed in his reaction to the breakfast habitually eaten by Manes: “Ich trank [den Tee] in der blau getünchten Küche, vor dem großen, weißblechernen Samowar, während Manes geschabten Rettich, Zwiebelbrot und Gurken aß. Es roch stark, aber heimlich, heimisch fast, obwohl ich niemals diese Art Frühstück gegessen hatte; ich liebte damals eben alles, ich war jung, einfach jung.” (VI, 255) 760 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 162. 761 “Die Wasserwiese der Einundzwanziger war meine Heimat.” (VI, 269)

213 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft verwöhnten Kinder unserer frohlebigen Wiener Gesellschaft” (VI, 272), Franz Ferdinand does not so much lose his “erste Heimat” as he abandons it. Before this point, he has not once referred to his Heimat in the military: “He brings it up only to mention that he loses it, but this loss is in fact a free choice; he casually leaves one home to pursue another mirage of a ‘Heimat’.”762 The very fact that he can leave it with such ease reveals that it was not a real Heimat, affording him no firm sense of identity or purpose, much like his cousin Carl Joseph in Radetzkymarsch.

Franz Ferdinand, Joseph Branco and Manes Reisiger are taken prisoner during their first and only battle at Krasne-Busk, sent to Siberia and eventually given brief sanctuary by the Siberian Pole Jan Baranovitsch. Witnessing the fight between Branco and Reisiger that precipitates their expulsion from this sanctuary, Franz Ferdinand claims to have been struck by the insight “daß ich nicht mehr zu ihnen gehörte.” (VI, 293) However, this is another delusion: as the reader knows, Franz Ferdinand has never belonged with the Slovene peasant and the Jewish fiacre driver,763 and his promotion to Lieutenant at the point of his transfer to the Thirty-Fifth Landwehr (VI, 274) is the visible sign of his difference and distance from them. The knowledge that he is to leave Baranovitsch triggers a sensation of loss in the narrator:

Das Wasser siedete, ich schüttete Tee in den Tschajnik, goß Wasser drauf und stellte den Tschajnik auf die Samowarröhre. – Zum letztenmal! dachte ich. Ich hatte keine Angst vor dem Lager. Es war Krieg, alle Gefangenen mußten ins Lager. Aber ich wußte nun, daß Baranovitsch ein Vater war, sein Haus meine Heimat war, sein Brot das Brot meiner Heimat. Gestern waren mir meine besten Freunde verlorengegangen. Heute verlor ich eine Heimat. Zum zweitenmal verlor ich eine Heimat. Damals wußte ich noch nicht, daß ich die Heimat nicht zum letztenmal verloren hatte. Unsereins ist gezeichnet. (VI, 294)

The melodramatic and sentimental exclamation “‘Zum letztenmal!’” in response to the simple act of making tea suggests that Franz Ferdinand’s belief that he is losing “[z]um zweitenmal […] eine Heimat” is exaggerated. Furthermore, the

762 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 162. Howes argues that Franz Ferdinand then “sets up another insubstantial home in his hasty marriage to Elisabeth”, but in fact the narrator never refers to his marriage as a Heimat. Instead, he calls it “ein ‘häusliches Leben’” (VI, 268), which he fears more than death and which appears to make the danger they face in war appear welcoming: “Und also waren wir gewappnet, [der Gefahr] entgegenzugehen, wie einer noch unbekannten, aber bereits freundlich winkenden Heimat …” (VI, 268) 763 Cf. Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 162.

214 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft incongruous claim that a hut he briefly inhabited in Siberia has been his Heimat casts doubt on his capacity to understand what Heimat is and suggests he is desperately trying to identify it anywhere he can.

“Der Tod kreuzte seine knochigen Hände…”:764 Fatalism and Apathy

The fight between the Slovene peasant Branco and Galician Jew Reisiger has the further function of symbolizing the growing discord between the Habsburg Empire’s ethnic groups. The Viennese aristocrat Franz Ferdinand’s failure to intervene in this unnecessary and trivial argument is indicative of the failure of the ruling classes to mediate and be a vehicle of reconciliation between the Monarchy’s peoples before it was too late.765 Hearing Branco and Reisiger fight, Franz Ferdinand leaves the kitchen where he is washing dishes – keeping things in order – but when he sees them he says nothing, feeling that he himself is immune to the “Wahn der Wüste” with which his friends have been seized:

Eine gehässige Gleichgültigkeit erfüllte mich. Ich ging zurück in die Küche, die Teller waschen. […] Nachdem ich mit meiner Arbeit fertig geworden war, setzte ich mich auf den Küchenschemel und wartete ruhig. Eine geraume Weile später kamen sie auch heraus, kamen sie gleichsam zum Vorschein, einer hinter dem anderen. Sie beachteten mich auch jetzt nicht. Es schien, als wollte mir jeder von den beiden, und jeder für sich, da sie doch Feinde untereinander waren, seine Geringschätzung dafür bezeugen, daß ich mich in ihren Kampf nicht eingemischt hatte. (VI, 292-93)

Franz Ferdinand’s apathy in the face of an argument so trivial it would have been easy for him to put an end to it is characteristic of his attitude to the troubled Monarchy before the war. While he does not explictly acknowledge a sense of guilt over his role in his friends’ argument, preferring to focus on the inconvenience it occasions him, his sense of remorse over the fall of the Habsburg Empire is palpable from the opening pages of the novel, and must therefore be seen as a key element of his motivation in writing. In the first chapter, regret is implicit in his imagining that his rebel father “hätte vielleicht den Gang der Geschichte verändern können, wenn er länger gelebt hätte” (VI, 228), and he chastizes himself for not having carried on his father’s struggle for a reform of the Monarchy before it was too late:

764 Roth, Die Kapuzinergruft (VI, 247). 765 Cf. Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 39, 136.

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Nicht umsonst hatte er mich auf den Namen Franz Ferdinand taufen lassen. Aber ich war damals jung und töricht, um nicht zu sagen: leichtsinnig. Leichtfertig war ich auf jeden Fall. Ich lebte damals, wie man so sagt: in den Tag hinein. Nein! Dies ist falsch: Ich lebte in die Nacht hinein; ich schlief in den Tag hinein. (VI, 228)

Franz Ferdinand’s very name – after the assassinated archduke who had wanted to reform the Austro-Hungarian dualism into a triangular monarchy of Austrians, Hungarians and Slavs – stands “für eine enttäuschte Hoffnung, für eine versäumte Gelegenheit, menschenfreundliche Lebensbedingungen zu schaffen”.766 He regrets his frivolous, unthinking existence before the war, repeatedly using adjectives such as “leichtsinnig” and “leichtfertig” to refer to his and his friends’ past behaviour in the course of his narration. After the war, his friend Chojnicki declares that Franz Ferdinand and his circle must bear responsibility for the destruction of the state due to their reckless indifference to political developments:

‘An allem seid ihr schuld, ihr, ihr’, er suchte nach einem Ausdruck, ‘ihr Gelichter’, fiel ihm endlich ein, ‘ihr habt mit euren leichtfertigen Kaffeehauswitzen den Staat zerstört. […] Ihr habt nicht sehen wollen, daß diese Alpentrottel und die Sudetenböhmen, diese kretinischen Nibelungen, unserer Nationalitäten so lange beleidigt und geschändet haben, bis sie anfingen, die Monarchie zu hassen und zu verraten. Nicht unsere Tschechen, nicht unsere Serben, nicht unsere Polen, nicht unsere Ruthenen haben verraten, sondern nur unsere Deutschen, das Staatsvolk.’ (VI, 315)

Franz Ferdinand’s response to Chojnicki’s outburst is revealing: “‘Aber meine Familie ist slowenisch’”. (VI, 315) This denial of his share of responsibility characterizes Franz Ferdinand’s narration from the outset, despite his apparent willingness to castigate himself and his friends for being “töricht”, “leichtfertig” and ‘leichtsinnig” (VI, 228).767 From the opening pages he implicitly justifies his behaviour and that of his aristocratic friends with his fatalistic view of history:

766 Doppler, “Kapuzinergruft,” 91-92. That his father’s dream, shared with the archduke, was perhaps unrealistic is reflected in Franz Ferdinand’s unconscious repetitive use of the word “träumen” in his description of his father’s desired reform of the Monarchy (VI, 228). Cf. Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 46. 767 Chojnicki is also guilty of blaming others rather than facing up to his own role. It is one thing to have recognized before the war that “Österreich wird an dieser Nibelungentreue zugrunde gehn, meine Herren!” (VI, 235); it is quite another to act to counter this nationalism. Roth satirizes Chojnicki’s pompous self-righteousness in the brawl with the Sudeten German Papa Kunz that follows his exchange with Franz Ferdinand: “‘Gott strafe die Sudeten!’ schrie Chojnicki, der eben eine Partie verloren hatte. Er sprang auf und lief mit erhobenen und geballten Fäusten auf den alten Papa Kunz los. Wir hielten ihn zurück. Schaum stand vor seinem Munde, Blut rötete seine Augen. ‘Markomannische Quadratschädel! rief er endlich. Es

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Über den Gläsern, aus denen wir übermütig tranken, kreuzte der unsichtbare Tod schon seine knochigen Hände. Wir schimpften fröhlich, wir lästerten sogar bedenkenlos. Einsam und alt, fern und gleichsam erstarrt, dennoch uns allen nahe und allgegenwärtig im großen, bunten Reich lebte und regierte der alte Kaiser Franz Joseph. Vielleicht schliefen in den verborgenen Tiefen unserer Seelen jene Gewißheiten, die man Ahnungen nennt, die Gewißheit vor allem, daß der alte Kaiser starb, mit jedem Tage, den er länger lebte, und mit ihm die Monarchie, nicht so sehr unser Vaterland wie unser Reich, etwas Größeres, Weiteres, Erhabeneres als nur ein Vaterland. Aus unsern schweren Herzen kamen die leichten Witze, aus unserem Gefühl, daß wir Todgeweihte seien, eine törichte Lust an jeder Bestätigung des Lebens: an Bällen, am Heurigen, an Mädchen, am Essen, an Spazierfahrten, Tollheiten aller Art, sinnlosen Eskapaden, an selbstmörderischer Ironie […]. (VI, 233)

Franz Ferdinand’s sense of being “todgeweiht” and his foreboding that the Monarchy will die with the Emperor echoes the fatalism of characters in Radetzkymarsch and Roth’s early novels. In relation to Radetzkymarsch, Margarete Landwehr has argued persuasively that

Roth both focuses upon and undermines the concept of fate as a cosmic or historical force by depicting apparently inevitable, tragic events as caused by fortuitous, alterable circumstances: that which the characters view as causality, the readers and the omniscient narrator perceive as chance.768

Although the characters in Radetzkymarsch perceive the demise of both the Trottas and the Habsburg Monarchy as inevitable, the narrator consistently undermines this fatalistic view from the very first paragraph in which we are told on the one hand that fate had chosen the first Lieutenant Trotta for a special deed,769 but on the other that he ensured that later times forgot him,770 implying that the individual has a power of agency denied by the concept of fate.771 The narrator constantly distances himself from the fatalism of his characters by revealing the disparity between their interpretation of events and reality. Thus, while Carl Joseph and Demant’s father-in-law Knopfmacher claim that nothing could have been done to save Demant’s life,772 the reader knows that his death is a

war der Gipfel seiner Rage. Jetzt wurde er zusehends sanfter.” (VI, 315-16) Chojnicki is typical of the intellectuals of pre-war Vienna described by Johnston who “would converse for hours without seeking to alter reality”: Johnston, The Austrian Mind 119. 768 Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics,” 401. 769 “Zu einer besonderen Tat hatte ihn das Schicksal ausersehn.” (V, 139) 770 “Er aber sorgte dafür, daß ihn die späteren Zeiten aus dem Gedächtnis verloren.” (V, 139) 771 The effect is heightened by another sentence towards the end of the same paragraph, which subverts the impression of Trotta as a hero guided by fate: “Niemals schoß er, ohne zu zielen, und jeder seiner Schüsse traf.” (V, 139) Cf. Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics,” 402. 772 The following is part of the exchange between Knopfmacher and Carl Joseph: “‘Er hat Eva gebeten, nach Wien zu fahren, ohne etwas anzudeuten. Und sie ist ahnungslos abgefahren.

217 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft result of human action and inaction, from Demant’s denial of his wife’s infidelity to Knopfmacher’s refusal – despite knowing of his daughter’s affairs with officers – to faciliate his son-in-law’s desire to leave the army,773 not to mention Demant’s failure to defy an archaic code of honour he knows is senseless.774

Similarly, the ironic portrayal of Carl Joseph’s refusal to see that his deepening financial crisis is the result of his own injudiciousness subverts his fatalistic interpretation of his altercation with Kapturak:

Er glaubte, die tückischen Schliche einer finsteren Macht zu erkennen, unheimlich erschien ihm der Zufall, daß Frau von Taußig gerade heute zu ihrem Mann hatte reisen müssen, und allmählich sah er auch alle düsteren Ereignisse seines Lebens in einen düsteren Zusammenhang gefügt und abhängig von irgendeinem gewaltigen, gehässigen, unsichtbaren Drahtzieher, dessen Ziel es war, den Leutnant zu vernichten. Es war deutlich, […] daß Leutnant Trotta, […] zu jenen unseligen Wesen gehörte, auf die eine böse Macht ein böses Auge geworfen hatte. […] Das Schicksal, sein Schicksal! (V, 383-84)

There can be no doubt that Carl Joseph’s financial debt to Kapturak is the result not of “the insidious machinations of fate”775 but of imprudence and a fatalistic approach to life. The ironic distance created by the use of erlebte Rede (signalled in the last line of the quotation) serves to underscore the discrepancy between reality and Carl Joseph’s despondent and self-justifying interpretation of it.

The cumulative effect of Roth’s exposure in Radetzkymarsch of the gulf between the characters’ belief in an ineluctable fate and the reality of their own choices is to “challenge[...] the view of the Danube monarchy’s demise as a collective historical destiny.”776 The sense of inevitable doom which pervades the novel as a result of the recurring motifs of death and rain is subverted when the two motifs coalesce in the scene in which Franz Ferdinand’s assassination is announced:

Und dann ist sein Abschiedsbrief gekommen. Und da hab’ ich gleich gewußt, daß nix mehr zu machen ist.’ ‘Nein, es war nichts zu machen!’” (V, 252) Later in the conversation Knopfmacher repeats his judgement: “‘Es war nix mehr zu machen!’ wiederholte Knopfmacher.” (V, 253) 773 Cf. Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics,” 402-03. 774 “Ein stupides, eisernes Gesetz ließ keinen Ausweg frei. ‘Ich bin ein Dummkopf, mein lieber Freund!’ sagte der Doktor. ‘Ich hätte mich von Eva längst trennen müssen. Ich habe keine Kraft, diesem blöden Duell zu entrinnen. Ich werde aus Blödheit ein Held sein, nach Ehrenkodex und Dienstreglement.’” (V, 239) 775 Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics,” 402. 776 Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics,” 403.

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Der Diener brachte den Zufall des Gewitters mit der schrecklichen Kunde [der Ermordung] in einen übernatürlichen Zusammenhang. Er bedachte, daß die Stunde endlich gekommen sei, in der sich übernatürliche Gewalten der Welt deutlich und grausam kundgeben wollen. (V, 418)

The servant’s superstitious interpretation of a natural event, the storm, as a supernatural omen “exposes the concept of fate as a human construct and an absurd one at that.”777 The assassination of the Archduke was, as readers know, the catalyst for the outbreak of the First World War. By ironically undermining the servant’s fatalistic interpretation of Franz Ferdinand’s death, Roth implies that the collapse of the Habsburg Empire which the war precipitated was also not inevitable or fated but the result of a confluence of factors, including the reality of German dominance behind the Habsburg Myth of supranationalism which Roth exposes in this novel.

In Die Kapuzinergruft, Franz Ferdinand’s fatalistic view of the fall of the Habsburg Monarchy finds expression in the leitmotif of death crossing his bony hands over the chalices from which Franz Ferdinand and his friends obliviously drink (VI, 233, 247, 249, 253, 268). Heath identifies this recurring image as the archetypal Baroque memento mori funeral motif and understands it to be a key element of Roth’s portayal of “the end of the Habsburg monarchy as the end of the world”, the two being “as intrinsically linked for Roth as they were for many intellectuals of the Baroque period.”778 Yet this interpretation fails to take into account the way in which Franz Ferdinand’s fatalism is consistently undermined in the novel. Candles burning towards their end – another Baroque motif779 – represent for Franz Ferdinand the approaching end of the world:

Es waren beinahe nur noch Stümpfe von Kerzen, und sie schienen mir das Ende der Welt, von dem ich wußte, daß es sich jetzt zu vollziehen begann, zu symbolisieren. (VI, 259; emphasis added)

For Heath, the fact that these candles are described as burning towards their end “gefaßt und sicher” (VI, 259) denotes that “in the world of confusion presented, only death is certain”.780 Yet Franz Ferdinand’s subjective certainty that the world

777 Landwehr, “Modernist Aesthetics,” 403. 778 Heath, “Legacy of the Baroque,” 330. 779 Heath, “Legacy of the Baroque,” 330. 780 Heath, “Legacy of the Baroque,” 330.

219 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft is about to end is ironic, just as his repeated pronouncements that he and his friends are doomed to die in the war are clearly false, since he has survived to tell his tale. The satire intended in the image of the candles and the meaning the narrator melodramatically ascribes to them is underscored at the end of the novel when the Jewish Cafetier Adolf Feldmann gives Franz Ferdinand two candles before leaving the café after the announcement of the Anschluß:

‘Dann leben Sie wohl, Herr Baron! Ich lösche die Lampen aus! Hier sind zwei Kerzen!’ Und damit zündete er zwei bleiche Kerzen an, und ehe ich mir noch von meinem Eindruck, er hätte mir Totenkerzen angezündet, eine Rechenschaft geben konnte, waren alle Lichter im Café erloschen, und blaß, mit einem schwarzen, steifen Hut auf dem Kopf, ein Totengräber eher als der joviale, silberbärtige Jude Adolf Feldmann, übergab er mir ein wuchtiges Hakenkreuz aus Blei und sagte: ‘Für alle Fälle, Herr Baron! Bleiben Sie ruhig bei Ihrem Schnaps! Ich lasse den Rollbalken zu. Und wenn Sie gehen wollen, können Sie ihn von innen aufmachen. Die Stange steht rechts neben der Tür.’ (VI, 344-45)

The composed and practical response of the Jew to the crisis – which poses far greater danger to himself than to Franz Ferdinand – heightens the absurdity of Franz Ferdinand’s irrational and self-centred histrionics. The candles have a practical purpose and it is only in Franz Ferdinand’s subjective imagining that they become “Totenkerzen, meine Totenkerzen!” (VI, 345)781 Thus the Baroque motifs identified by Heath reflect not the author’s but the narrator’s equation of the end of the Monarchy with the end of the world, a view from which Roth distances himself by repeatedly undermining or satirizing Franz Ferdinand’s fatalism.

“Was gingen mich noch die Dinge dieser Welt an?”782 Apathy and its Consequences

A fatalistic view of life relieves the individual of responsibility for action. Franz Ferdinand’s fascination with death is typical of the upper and middle bourgeoisie during the period Hermann Broch dubbed “die fröhliche Apokalypse” (1848- 1918):783 “To them death promised release from ennui; in a world gone stale it

781 Further underlining the satire, the candles absurdly remind Franz Ferdinand of “eine Art weißer, aufrechter, angezündeter Würmer. Ich erwartete jeden Augenblick, daß sie sich bögen, wie es Würmern eigentlich geziemt.” (VI, 354) 782 Roth, Die Kapuzinergruft (VI, 346). 783 Hermann Broch, Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit (München: R. Piper, 1964) 75f.

220 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft alone remained a mighty unknown.”784 In this class, financial security “prompted pursuit of pleasure for its own sake. Among people loath to make decisions spectacle and amusement gladdened daily life.”785 Indifference to political and social reform, or what Johnston calls “therapeutic nihilism”, went hand in hand with this decadent pleasure-seeking and living for and in the moment.786 Williams accuses Roth of never having overcome a propensity to fatalism,787 a charge which accords with the more typical pronouncement that Roth’s late work was characterized by historical escapism. Yet whether Roth’s engagement for the monarchist cause was realistic or not,788 he was at least taking action rather than waiting for the inevitable to happen and therefore cannot be accused of fatalism. Roth makes Franz Ferdinand’s fatalism and political apathy the centre of his concern in Die Kapuzinergruft because it is an attitude which he sees as both endemic and dangerous, in the sense that it can have horrendous political consequences.789 Through the exposure of parallels between Franz Ferdinand’s behaviour in the past and his conduct in the present Roth demonstrates that the failure to engage with politics not only characterized Habsburg times but was also typical of post-war Austrian society,790 and was in part responsible for the catastrophe of the Anschluß.791

784 Johnston, The Austrian Mind 169. 785 Johnston, The Austrian Mind 116. 786 Johnston contrasts what he calls the Austrian national attitude to death with the Hungarian dream of political action, arguing that Austrians “cultivated a Baroque vision of death as the fulfilment of life”: Johnston, The Austrian Mind 165. Williams writes that the upper middle class in fin de siècle Vienna was politically quiescent: “In alliance with the aristocracy and the civil service it was pledged to maintain the status quo upon which its prosperity and influence depended. In an Austria threatened with disruption and haunted by an ever-increasing loss of power and prestige, the upper middle class was loyal to the Crown but displayed at the same time a notable apathy towards politics in general”: Williams, The Broken Eagle xviii-xix. 787 Williams, The Broken Eagle 112. 788 Critics typically dismiss Roth’s Habsburg legitimism on the grounds that it was unrealistic – the least realistic of the anti-fascist choices available: see, for example, Williams, The Broken Eagle 102. 789 Cf. Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 31. For Pauli this makes Die Kapuzinergruft a political novel, because “auch die konsequente Darstellung eines unpolitischen Verhaltens – wie es am Beispiel Trottas ja mit all den Auswirkungen auf sein Leben vorgenommen wird – kann eine politisch aufklärende Absicht widerspiegeln”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 97-98. By contrast, for Scheible, who equates the narrator with the author, the novel “muß […], so sehr das dem Eindruck einer ersten Lektüre widersprechen mag, als nicht politischer Roman gekennzeichnet werden”: Scheible, Joseph Roth 164-65. 790 This in part explains his support for the regime of Dollfuss and Schuschnigg: in Dreimal Österreich, which Roth reviewed favourably, Schuschnigg promoted a specific interpretation of Austrian identity which was intended to “strengthen the government’s legitimacy in the

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Franz Ferdinand is himself unaware of the parallels between his past and present conduct. He is critical of his history of living “in die Nacht hinein” (VI, 228) before the war, thereby avoiding having to see and be seen clearly (VI, 254). The advent of war seems to precipitate a change in him and upon marrying Elisabeth he reflects:

Es war mir, als hätte ich jetzt die dreiundzwanzig leichtfertig und lieblos verbrachten Jahre meines Lebens wettzumachen, innerhalb einer Stunde, und statt wie sonst ein Jungvermählter die sogenannte neue Existenz anzufangen, bestrebte ich mich, vielmehr die verflossene zu korrigieren. Am liebsten hätte ich wieder bei der Geburt angefangen. Es war mir klar, daß ich das Wichtigste versäumt hatte. Zu spät. Ich stand vor dem Tod und vor der Liebe. (VI, 281)

The irony is that his desire to correct the past is just a way of once again avoiding present reality. By focussing on his past mistakes, Franz Ferdinand paradoxically fails to learn from them and is bound to repeat them.

The repetition of his pattern of inaction from pre-war times is demonstrated through the sub-plot of his relationship with Elisabeth after his return from the war. Perturbed by developments in Elisabeth’s life during his absence,792 by his “altes, wohlvertrautes [Gasthaus]” (VI, 303) which has become “fremd” and his father-in-law’s Stammlokal, and by conversation he does not understand (VI, 303), Franz Ferdinand seeks to regain control through the imposition of order:

Von Geburt und Erziehung dazu geneigt, Verantwortung zu tragen, und auch aus einem starken Widerstand gegen die Ordnung, die rings um mich herrschte und in der ich mich nicht auskannte, fühlte ich mich gezwungen, vor allem Ordnung in meinen eigenen Angelegenheiten zu schaffen. (VI, 306)793

eyes of Nazi Germany and also of the Western democracies”: Pelinka, “Austrian Identity,” 169. For Roth, any action taken to shore up support for an independent Austria was laudable. 791 Roth was consistently critical of such apathy in his journalism, from the 1923 polemic “Schweigen im Dichterwald” (I, 1068-69) through to the post-Anschluß piece “Der Feind aller Völker” (III, 859-61). 792 “An der Tür verkündete eine kleine Tafel: Atelier Elisabeth Trotta. Ich schreckte vor meinem Namen zurück. […] Ich wollte ihr die Hand küssen, aber sie drückte meinen Arm herunter und brachte mich dadurch allein schon aus der Fassung. Es war die erste Frau, die meinen Arm hinunterdrückte, und es war meine Frau! Ich verspürte etwas von jenem Unbehagen, das mich immer bei dem Anblick von Anomalien und von menschliche Bewegungen vollführenden Mechanismen befallen hatte: zum Beispiel von irren Kranken oder von Frauen ohne Unterleib.” (VI, 301) 793 Heath notes that following his return from war Franz Ferdinand uses the words “ordnen” and “Ordnung” nine times. This attempt to impose order and find consistency in life is for Heath

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To this end he speaks with his father-in-law:

Ich sagte ihm, daß ich nunmehr mein Leben regeln müsse, unser Leben vielmehr. Ich sei, so sagte ich, keineswegs gesonnen, das Entscheidende hinauszuschieben. Ich müßte alles sofort wissen. Ich sei ein systematischer Mensch. (VI, 305)

The use of the subjunctive form is telling: Franz Ferdinand is unconsciously distancing himself from his stated resolve. The reason for this distancing soon emerges when his dynamic but opportunistic father-in-law informs him that Elisabeth might not want to live with him and virtually commands him to speak with his wife before making any decisions (VI, 305): thus Franz Ferdinand’s first attempt to impose his own order on his new post-war life fails.

Embarking on a second attempt, he arranges a meeting with Elisabeth, but she arrives with Jolanth and, once again, Franz Ferdinand resigns himself to the state of affairs with which he is faced:

Ich hatte natürlich erwartet, daß sie allein kommen würde. Als aber auch Jolanth Szatmary erschien, wunderte ich mich gar nicht darüber. Es war mir klar, daß Elisabeth ohne diese Frau nicht gekommen wäre, nicht hätte kommen können. Und ich verstand. (VI, 306-07)

A pattern of discrepancy between Franz Ferdinand’s emphatically stated desire to order his affairs and the reality of his resignation and indecision is thus established. Even when, faced with Stettenheim’s deception of his mother, Franz Ferdinand appears to take control of his affairs, forbidding his mother from signing any cheques without his approval and telling Elisabeth “‘Um alles zu ordnen, Elisabeth! Du ziehst hierher, mit mir!’” (VI, 326), his decisiveness is once again illusory. Elisabeth does not immediately come to live with her husband and when she does, “eines Tages”, it is on her own initiative, apparently because she has decided that she wants a child (VI, 328).794

reminiscent of “the Barqoue striving for ordo” in response to the experience of a fragmented world: Heath, “Legacy of the Baroque,” 334-35. 794 The fact that Franz Ferdinand’s failure to impose his chauvinist attitudes on Elisabeth is implicitly criticized by Roth could be read as evidence of Roth’s own chauvinism. However, Roth’s intention here is not to make a judgement about Franz Ferdinand’s values but to show that he consistently fails either to impose his ideas and values or to come to terms with the reality of the situation with which he is faced. Pauli argues that both Franz Ferdinand’s and Roth’s attitude to Elisabeth is ambivalent: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 136.

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While the pattern of Franz Ferdinand’s irresolution and resignation continues, he claims that he is gradually becoming used to the new situation. Yet, importantly, this does not imply a newfound capacity to confront the present. Rather, it is a wallowing in misery which allows him and his friends to continue the pattern of avoiding dealing with the present:

Wir gewöhnten uns alle an das Ungewöhnliche. Es war ein hastiges Sich- Gewöhnen. Gleichsam ohne es zu wissen, beeilten wir uns mit unserer Anpassung, wir liefen geradezu Erscheinungen nach, die wir haßten und verabscheuten. Wir begannen, unsern Jammer sogar zu lieben, wie man treue Freunde liebt. Wir vergruben uns geradezu in ihn. Wir waren ihm dankbar, weil er unsere kleinen, besonderen, persönlichen Kümmernisse verschlang, er, ihr großer Bruder, der große Jammer, dem gegenüber zwar kein Trost standhalten konnte, aber auch keine unserer täglichen Sorgen. (VI, 316)

In fact, Franz Ferdinand and his friends manage as best they can to continue the existence they led before the war:

Oh, nicht, daß wir nicht imstande gewesen wären, noch ein paar kleine Freuden vor [dem ungeheueren Jammer] zu retten, sie ihm abzukaufen, abzuschmeicheln, abzuringen. Wir scherzten oft und lachten oft. Wir gaben Geld aus, das uns zwar kaum noch gehörte, das aber auch kaum noch einen Wert hatte. Wir borgten und verborgten, ließen uns schenken und verschenkten, blieben schuldig und bezahlten anderer Schulden. (VI, 316-17)

Characteristic of Franz Ferdinand’s failure to come to terms with and make the best of the present situation is his attitude to the pension he and his mother are obliged to open. When the Trottas’ lawyer Doktor Kiniower, who handles their financial affairs, advises Franz Ferdinand to convert their house into a pension in order to stave off financial ruin, there is initially no indication of Franz Ferdinand’s response. More than two pages later he reveals that he “suchte krampfhaft, den Gedanken an die Pension zu verdrängen” (VI, 324), although he knows that Kiniower is right and his wife’s craft business will ruin them (VI, 325). Contradicting his earlier insistence that he was raised to bear responsibility (VI, 306), Franz Ferdinand expresses horror at the thought of running a pension:

Ich – und eine Verantwortung! Nicht, daß ich feige gewesen wäre! Nein, ich war einfach unfähig. Ich hatte keine Angst vor dem Tod, aber Angst vor einem Büro, einem Notar, einem Posthalter. Ich konnte nicht rechnen, zur Not noch addieren. Meine Multiplikation schon schaffte mir Pein. Ja! Ich und eine Verantwortung! (VI, 325)

Here, as with Carl Joseph in Radetzkymarsch (V, 373), the inability to do simple calculations is a metaphor for the inability – or refusal – to confront present

224 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft reality. Just as Carl Joseph “gab ein für allemal jeden Rechenversuch auf, mit dem Mut, den Ohnmacht und Verzweiflung erzeugen” (V, 373), Franz Ferdinand continues to avoid the reality of his financial difficulties and the necessity to open the pension until the “Jolan-Werkstätte” is bankrupt and they are left with only one third of their house and a few thousand Schillings (VI, 327). Even then it is only due to the stubborn insistence of Doktor Kiniower, who “gehörte zu jenen sogenannten praktischen Menschen, die außerstande sind, eine sogenannte produktive Idee aufzugeben, auch wenn die Menschen unfähig sind, sie auszuführen” (VI, 329), that Franz Ferdinand finally accedes. It is, however, Doktor Kiniower who organizes the conversion of the house into the pension, arranging not only the licence but also the staff, telephone connections, beds and bells (VI, 329). Through his declaration that he is incapable, and impractical (VI, 329), Franz Ferdinand has already relieved himself of the responsibility of concerning himself either with the renovations or with the ongoing business of running the pension. There is no suggestion that Franz Ferdinand ever takes an active part in the running of the pension: he leaves the accounts to Elisabeth, declaring “[i]ch verstand nichts von den Rechnungen” (VI, 337).

While Franz Ferdinand’s mother, to his surprise, is “entzückt” with the pension and her “neues Leben” (VI, 330), her son sits passively by and watches it go to ruin, a metaphor for the lost opportunity of the First Republic. Roth suggests here that while post-war Austria was chaotic and difficult it also presented new opportunities. Rather than wallowing in the past and waiting fatalistically for the seemingly inevitable Anschluß, people should have made the most of these opportunities. Franz Ferdinand comments of his mother’s reaction to the pension: “Ich hatte sie noch niemals so gesehen.” (VI, 330) In this sentence is contained all the disappointed hope for a new beginning, since, although his mother adjusts to the changed circumstances and even embraces them, Franz Ferdinand refuses to involve himself in the running of the pension with the result that it fails. His folly is highlighted in the juxtaposition with his cousin, Joseph Branco, in the following chapter. Branco, who is much worse off than Franz Ferdinand and his mother and is not even allowed any longer to sell his chestnuts in the former crownlands of the Monarchy (VI, 333), makes the best of a bad situation, selling roasted apples instead when the chestnuts are full of worms. (VI, 332) Unlike Franz Ferdinand,

225 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft he has not been used to a life of indulgence and simply adapts to whatever challenges life brings, no matter how senseless they might appear to him: his new passport (VI, 333) is the visible symbol of his practical outlook.

After his mother’s death Franz Ferdinand withdraws completely from life, selling the house and, rather inexplicably, sending his son away to Paris:

Ich kümmerte mich nicht mehr um die Welt. Meinen Sohn schickte ich zu meinem Freund Laveraville nach Paris. Allein blieb ich, allein, allein, allein. Ich ging in die Kapuzinergruft. (VI, 341)

His visit to the Kapuzinergruft, mentioned here at the end of the penultimate chapter but not described in detail, signifies the flight from reality into history that many critics accuse Roth of having taken, but it is a journey of which Roth is critical, as the final chapter reveals. This chapter reports the Anschluß as seen through Franz Ferdinand’s apolitical eyes. Completely resigned and withdrawn from life, Franz Ferdinand lives only for the evenings (VI, 341), this mirroring his admission in the first chapter that before the war he “lebte in die Nacht hinein” (VI, 228): he has come full circle, without progressing.795 The totality of his resignation is signalled in the fact that he has stopped reading newspapers (VI, 342), and his own narration reveals the extent to which he continues to subscribe to a fatalistic worldview, just as he did before the war:

Ich setzte mich also ins Café, und während meine Freunde an meinem Tisch immer noch von ihren privaten Angelegenheiten sprachen, empfand ich, der ich durch ein ebenso unerbittliches wie gnädiges Schicksal jede Möglichkeit eines privaten Interesses ausgeschaltet sah, nur noch das allgemeine, das mich zeit meines Lebens so wenig anging und dem ich zeit meines Lebens auszuweichen pflegte… (VI, 342)

He sees himself as “ein vom Tode auf unbeschränkte Zeit Beurlaubter”, “[ein] nicht mehr zu dieser Welt Gehörende[r]” and asks rhetorically: “Was gingen mich noch die Dinge dieser Welt an?” (VI, 342) His words signify total withdrawal from life, yet, paradoxically, the failure of Franz Ferdinand and people of his ilk

795 This fact is reiterated at the conclusion of the novel, which ends with the word “Trotta” (VI, 346), mirroring the first sentence: “Wir heißen Trotta.” (VI, 227)

226 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft to be politically vigilant and engaged is implicated in the dramatic political event of the Anschluß:796

Dennoch bekümmerten sie mich, und besonders an jenem Freitag. Es war, als ginge es darum, ob ich, ein vom Leben Pensionierter, meine Pension in Ruhe weiterverzehren sollte, wie bis jetzt, in einer verbitterten Ruhe; oder ob mir auch noch die genommen würde, diese arme, verbitterte Ruhe, man könnte sagen: den Verzicht, den ich mir angewöhnt hatte, eine Ruhe zu nennen. Dermaßen, daß oft in den letzten Jahren, wenn dieser oder jener meiner Freunde zu mir kam, um mir zu sagen, jetzt sei endlich die Stunde da, in der ich mich um die Geschichte des Landes zu kümmern hätte, ich zwar den üblichen Satz sagte: ‘Ich will meine Ruh’ haben!’ – aber genau wußte, daß ich eigentlich hätte sagen sollen: ‘Ich will meinen Verzicht haben!’ Meinen lieben Verzicht! Auch der ist nun dahin! (VI, 342)

Howes argues that in this final chapter Franz Ferdinand is forced to “recognize that political concerns are not superfluous”.797 He cites three phrases used by the narrator as indicating the change in him, phrases in which he seemingly retracts his declared resignation:798 “The change is slight, barely perceptible, but it is significant because it is the bitter end of [Franz Ferdinand’s] refusal to pay attention to reality.”799 However, although Howes’s argument is compelling, the change he identifies in Franz Ferdinand is very short-lived. The third passage which Howes cites as signalling the change describes Franz Ferdinand’s reaction at the moment a strangely dressed young man enters the café to announce the Anschluß:

Und auch die Aufregung meiner Freunde, selbst an diesem Freitagabend, schien mir überflüssig; bis zu jener Sekunde, da die Tür des Cafés aufgerissen wurde und ein seltsam bekleideter junger Mann an der Schwelle erschien. (VI, 343)

For Howard, the words “bis zu jener Sekunde” suggest that Franz Ferdinand is “forced by the extremity of events to worry about the world, to resign, so to speak, his resignation”.800 However, Franz Ferdinand becomes fixated on the

796 Cf. Pauli: “Der Anschluß”, d.h.: der nicht verhinderte “Anschluß”, dokumentiert die Folgen eines solchen Mangels an politischer Wachheit”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 195. 797 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 164. 798 The relevant passages are: “Was gingen mich noch die Dinge dieser Welt an? Dennoch bekümmerten sie mich, und besonders an jenem Freitag” (VI, 342); “Ich […] hätte eigentlich sagen sollen: ‘Ich will meinen Verzicht haben!’ Meinen lieben Verzicht! Auch der ist nun dahin! (VI, 342); and “Und auch die Aufregung meiner Freunde, selbst an diesem Freitagabend, schien mir überflüssig; bis zu jener Sekunde, da die Tür des Cafés aufgerissen wurde” (VI, 343); Howes’s emphasis. 799 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 163. 800 Howes, “Kapuzinergruft,” 164.

227 Chapter 4: Die Kapuzinergruft man’s clothing, and his musings on the significance of the clothes’ colours indicate that his resignation and refusal to engage with present reality is ongoing:801

Ich war, ferne der Welt und der Hölle, die sie für mich darstellte, keineswegs geeignet, die neuen Mützen und Uniformen zu unterscheiden, geschweige denn, sie zu erkennen. Es mochte weiße, blaue, grüne und rote Hemden geben; Hosen, schwarz, braun, grün, blau lackiert; Stiefel und Sporen, Leder und Riemen und Gürtel und Dolche in Scheiden jeder Art: Ich jedenfalls, ich hatte für mich beschlossen, seit langem schon, seit der Heimkehr aus dem Kriege schon, sie nicht zu unterscheiden und sie nicht zu erkennen. (VI, 343)

He does take notice when the “neue deutsche Volksregierung” (VI, 343) is announced, and he engages with this fact long enough to reject it because the concept of a “Volksregierung” is as absurd for him as the idea of a woman sleeping with herself in order to create a baby (VI, 343-44), but the fact that he has failed to register the political reality is revealed in his response to his friends’ reaction: “Insbesondere deshalb überraschte mich der Schrecken, der bei der Ankunft des seltsam gestiefelten Mannes und seiner seltsamen Verkündung alle meine Freunde ergriff.” (VI, 344) He dismisses both the man and his announcement as “seltsam”, thus obviating the need for a reaction, as his continuing to sit alone in the café while everyone else hurriedly leaves reflects. His refusal to acknowledge the new reality is indicated in his insistence on the maintenance of routine, even when the silence, the darkness and the candles which appear to him to be “Totenkerzen” make him feel uneasy: “Da es mir unheimlich zu werden begann, rief ich: ‘Franz, zahlen!’ – wie sonst an jedem Abend.” (VI, 345)

“Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland”: Whose Search?

Roth’s final comment on Franz Ferdinand’s apolitical fatalism comes at the entrance to the Kapuzinergruft, to which Franz Ferdinand has wandered with the purpose of visiting “den Sarg meines Kaisers Franz Joseph” (VI, 346). Franz

801 Cf. Pauli: “Das permanente Desinteresse an allem Politischen führte auch zur Unterschätzung des über Jahre hinweg sich immer geschlossener formierenden – und uniformierenden, also eigentlich unübersehbar gewordenen Rechtsextremismus, seiner Parolen und paramilitärischen Aufmachung. Nicht von ungefähr wird gerade darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß Trotta die neuen Uniformen – als äußere Zeichen ideologischer Zugehörigkeit und Hörigkeit – nicht wahrnimmt, nicht wahrnehmen will, bzw. sie nur in ihrer Wirkung als lächerliche Draperie beiläufig registriert”: Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 194.

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Ferdinand’s desire to see the dead Emperor signifies an identification with history which Roth indicates is no solution to the political catastrophe of the Anschluß. It is both illusory (signified by the locked tomb) and cannot halt the march of history. Roth understands the impulse of his character to identify with the past, as his own declared affinity with Carl Joseph just after writing Radetzkymarsch reflects, but unlike his fictional character Franz Ferdinand, Roth recognizes that it is a chimera. Herein lies the significance of the final line of the novel, the rhetorical question: “Wohin soll ich, ich jetzt, ein Trotta?…” (VI, 346)

In writing his own story Franz Ferdinand has ostensibly been searching for his fatherland in the lost world of the past, as the novel’s working title “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland” suggests. Reiber argues that this phrase could be considered the motto of Roth’s own life:

Auch Roth erlebt ‘Heimat’ nicht real, nicht gegenwärtig, sondern nur in der dichterischen Projektion. Seine Zugehörigkeit zur Habsburger-Monarchie ist das späte Produkt einer ungestillten Sehnsucht. In Wahrheit blieb Roth immer ein Suchender.802

In reaching this conclusion Reiber fails, like many Roth scholars, to differentiate between the narrator Franz Ferdinand and author Roth. While Franz Ferdinand appears to experience, as Reiber maintains, a sense of Heimat and belonging not in the present but projected retrospectively, Roth exposes the unreality of this experience in the serial loss of Heimat Franz Ferdinand narrates. The reproduction of his life story has become a substitute for life, but it can only be temporary:

[A]m Ende dieses – wiederholbaren – Erinnerungsprozesses wird ihn immer wieder die Gegenwart einholen, und er wird sich stets die gleiche, verzweifelte Frage stellen müssen, in die der Roman so konsequent mündet.803

It is not Roth who has been searching vainly for his fatherland in the lost world of the Habsburg Monarchy but his narrator.

802 Reiber, “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland,” 113. Rosenfeld similarly argues that this image “aptly characterized the greater part of [Roth’s] fictional work and the entirety of his personal life: Rosenfeld, Understanding 81. This interpretation may also be attributed to David Bronsen, who adapted the working title of Die Kapuzinergruft for the title of one of his articles: Bronsen, “The Jew”. 803 Pauli, “Die Kapuzinergruft” 191.

229

Conclusion

In 1935 Roth published Die Büste des Kaisers, a short novella which has been cited as evidence of the writer’s increasingly desperate “Wirklichkeits- leugnung”804 in the wake of Hitler’s ascent to power in Germany. It has been described as painting “ein von Trauer überschattetes Bild einer goldenen Vergangenheit”805 and as “a tale of unconditional praise for the Habsburg Monarchy”.806 The oft-quoted description of the protagonist Count Morstin on the opening page of the novella as “einer der edelsten und reinsten Typen des Österreichers schlechthin, das heißt also: ein übernationaler Mensch und also ein Adeliger echter Art” (V, 655) certainly lends itself to this sort of interpretation. However, the subtext is a recognition of the historical fact of the Monarchy’s passing and an acceptance that there can be no return to the past. For although the Count attempts to reconstruct his life from the “Trümmer [s]einer alten Heimat” (V, 668), symbolically reinstating the Emperor “als hätte es keinen Krieg gegeben – als gäbe es keine neue polnische Republik – als ruhte der alte Kaiser nicht längst schon in der Kapuzinergruft – als gehörte dieses Dorf Lopatyny noch zu dem Gebiet der alten Monarchie” (V, 670), the illusion is short-lived, and he is forced to concede historical reality:

Ach! Es hatte keinen Sinn mehr, die Augen vor der neuen Welt der neuen Republiken, der neuen Bankiers und Kronenträger, der neuen Damen und Herren, der neuen Herrscher der Welt zu schließen. Man mußte die alte Welt begraben. Aber man mußte sie würdig begraben. (V, 673)

Through the Count’s ceremonious burial of the bust of the Emperor Roth acknowledges the past as past, thus precluding the escapist nostalgia of which he is accused, both in this text and generally in his 1930s fiction.807

804 Marchand, Wertbegriffe 186. See also Bronsen, “The Jew,” 54. 805 Riemen, “Judentum – Kirche – Habsburg,” 391. 806 Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 126. Both Reifowitz and Pazi equate Roth with his protagonist: “The Count’s comments reflect[...] the author’s complete and utter alienation from the world in which he lived”: Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 128; Pazi, “Exil- Bewußtsein,” 187. 807 Cf. Menhennet, who describes the burial as a practical act which “serves as a bulwark against mere escapist nostalgia by registering the ‘death’ of the old world in a concrete form”: Menhennet, “Flight of a Broken Eagle,” 57.

230 Conclusion

Roth affirms in this novella the relative humanity of the old Empire, but at the same time he implicitly questions the narrator’s808 and the Count’s memory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire as “[e]in kleines Abbild der bunten Welt” (V, 656), as a place of supranational harmony. Reiber contrasts the image of the fallen Empire presented in Die Büste des Kaisers with that expressed by the elderly Herr von Maerker in Der stumme Prophet, a novel fragment from 1929:

Und doch war zu meinen Zeiten, als noch der Mensch wichtiger war als seine Nationalität, die Möglichkeit vorhanden, aus der alten Monarchie eine Heimat aller zu machen. Sie hätte das kleinere Vorbild einer großen zukünftigen Welt sein können und zugleich die letzte Erinnerung an eine große Epoche Europas, in der Norden und Süden verbunden gewesen wären. Es ist vorbei.809

The use of the subjunctive in this passage from the earlier novel acknowledges that the Monarchy never realized its potential to become “eine Heimat aller”. Reiber argues that what Roth recognized as a “nicht verwirklichte[...] Möglichkeit” in 1929 he falsely presents as having been a historical reality in 1935.810 However, Count Morstin’s belief that the Monarchy was “ein großes Haus mit vielen Türen und vielen Zimmern, für viele Arten von Menschen” (V, 675) does not mean that Roth himself now believes that the projected ideal was a reality. That the Count is regarded as an eccentric (V, 668, 671) suggests that his views are not representative. The discrepancy between his beliefs and reality is reflected in the fact that what is buried is not the Emperor himself but an artistic representation – and an incomplete, “unscheinbare” and “unbeholfene[...]” (V, 670) one at that. The mysterious transformation of the crude bust into a work of artistic perfection is a metaphor for the mechanisms of memory and nostalgia that distort reality:

Und die unscheinbare Büste, hergestellt in billigem Sandstein, […] gewann mit der Zeit auch einen besonderen, einen ganz eigenen künstlerischen Wert – selbst in den Augen des Grafen Morstin. Es war, als wollte der erhabene

808 As if to forestall the equation of narrator and author Roth uses the word “Erzähler” rather than “Autor” on the first page: “Mögen die Leser freundlicherweise dem Erzähler nachsehen, daß er den Tatsachen, die er mitzuteilen hat, eine historisch-politische Erläuterung vorausschickt.” (V, 655; emphasis added) 809 Roth, Der stumme Prophet (V, 922). 810 Reiber, “Ein Mann sucht sein Vaterland,” 110. Reifowitz similarly argues that while in Der Stumme Prophet (1928) Roth used the conditional tense to talk of the possibility of what Austria could have been, “[i]n later works he discussed the Monarchy as if it had actually become a true homeland for all its nations, destroyed only by the blind forces of modernity”: Reifowitz, “Nationalism, Modernity,” 122.

231 Conclusion

Gegenstand, je mehr Zeit verging, das Werk, das ihn darstellte, verbessern und veredeln. Wind und Wetter arbeiteten, wie mit künstlerischem Bewußtsein, an dem naiven Stein. Es war, als arbeiteten auch Verehrung und Erinnerung an diesem Standbild und als veredelte jeder Gruß der Bauern, jedes Gebet eines gläubigen Juden bis zu künstlerischer Vollkommenheit das hilflose Werk der jungen Bauernhand. (V, 670-71)

This passage reveals a gulf between the reality of the Emperor and his Empire in the past and its transfiguration in post-Habsburg nostalgic remembrance. Thus, although Die Büste des Kaisers may be seen as evidence of Roth’s preference for the Habsburg Monarchy over Hitler’s Germany and an increasingly völkisch Austria, the picture he paints is more differentiated than most critics acknowledge. Their one-sided readings are symptomatic of the reductionism which characterizes much of Roth scholarship, dividing it into a “socialist” early and “monarchist” late period.

The early novels are best understood as stages in Roth’s journey towards the historical form he finds with Radetzkymarsch. In all three novels Roth draws attention to the continuities between past and present: in Das Spinnennetz he demonstrates that the roots of reactionary violence in the Weimar Republic lie in the socialization of a particular personality type in Wilhelmine Germany; in Hotel Savoy he exposes the belief that the war has changed everything as an illusion which masks a continuity in social and economic inequality from pre-war times; and in Die Rebellion history is presented not as progress but as repetition. In these novels Roth engages with the search for solutions which was a common literary response to the chaos of the 1920s, but he is too sceptical, as he himself stated in 1926,811 to commit to any of them. As a Jew he naturally rejects Theodor Lohse’s ethnic German nationalism, but he also distances himself from Benjamin Lenz’s anarchic apocalypticism, exposing its destructive potential. In Hotel Savoy he is critical of the apolitical apathy of his narrator Gabriel Dan, but likewise condemns the revolutionary violence of Zwonimir Pansin, showing himself to be unconvinced by the possibility of a socialist post-apocalyptic redemption. And in Die Rebellion Andreas Pum, an incarnation of the authoritarian personality type which appears in so many of Roth’s novels from Theodor Lohse in Das Spinnennetz to Carl Joseph in Radetzkymarsch, surrenders to an impotent

811 Letter to Bernard von Brentano, 11.2.1926, Briefe 79.

232 Conclusion apocalyptic impulse rather than taking active steps to change his situation in life. Contrary to the reductive interpretations which suggest that a form of socialism, whether ideological or merely emotional, underlies these novels, they are in fact linked by Roth’s resistance to the appeal of simplistic solutions.

David Roberts has used the term “apocalyptic interregnum”812 to refer to the situation of writers between 1914 and 1945. These writers – people such as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Hermann Broch and Elias Canetti – were all acutely aware that they were “living through a turning point of truly cataclysmic dimensions”.813 The result of their efforts “to make sense of their time” were novels which “unfold an historical perspective, [placing] contemporary events in a larger historical pattern.”814 Despite Roth’s rejection of the apocalyptic paradigm, his novels of the 1920s and the 1930s are also products of this historical experience. It is the desire to “make sense of his time”, not the escapist urge to take flight from an increasingly unbearable present, that compelled Roth to look to the Habsburg past in Radetzkymarsch. In this novel Roth does not portray the ideal of a multi-ethnic supranational Empire; on the contrary, he exposes this ideal as myth. The Habsburg Myth of a supranational Empire conceals the reality of German cultural and linguistic dominance in the structures of state, from the bureaucracy to the military, and is even associated with the third pillar of Habsburg power, the , through the celebration of the Emperor at Fronleichnam as “der Römische Kaiser Deutscher Nation” (V, 322). Two months before his death in 1939 Roth expressed this same idea more explicitly in an article entitled “Die Hinrichtung Österreichs”,815 in which he condemned what he called “die konstitutionell bedingt gewesene Bereitschaft aller Regierungen zu einem offenen oder verhüllten ‘Anschluß’” (III, 922) from the first day of the Republic to the last of the corporate state:

Eine konstitutionelle Bedingtheit übrigens, die sich aus den Irrtümern der alten Monarchie noch herleitet und die in der Hauptsache darin bestanden hat, innerhalb eines großen Reiches von sechzehn Nationen die deutsch- sprachigen Österreicher als eine Art von dominierendem ‘Staatsvolk’ gelten zu lassen. (III, 922-23)

812 Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending,” 155. 813 Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending,” 155. 814 Roberts, “The Sense of an Ending,” 155. 815 Joseph Roth, “Die Hinrichtung Österreichs”, Pariser Tageszeitung, 11.3.1939 (III, 922-25).

233 Conclusion

It is this German bias in Habsburg ideology against which the other peoples of the Monarchy rebel. In Radetzkymarsch it is thus not simply, as Müller contends, “de[r] Nationalismus der Teilvölker”816 which is reponsible for the failure of the Habsburg solution in Central Europe. Roth reiterates the relationship between German nationalism and the nationalism of the other Habsburg peoples in 1939: “Tatsache ist, daß, je mehr die deutschen Österreicher zu Wilhelm II. tendierten, sich die anderen Völker der Monarchie zu einer staatlichen Selbständigkeit drängten.” (III, 924) Roth’s tone after the Anschluß is far more bitter than in Radetzkymarsch but the sentiment is the same: it is only through understanding the past that we can hope to understand the present:

Von Berchtesgaden führt eine einzige Blutspur nach Österreich. Die historische Schuld daran ist alt. Die moralische ist jünger. Man darf nicht jene über dieser übersehen, wenn man die Vergewaltigung Österreichs verstehen will. Alle Schuld ist tiefer und früher gelegen, als es der ‘Aktualitätssinn’ ahnt. (III, 925)

Radetzkymarsch is thus a historical novel in Lukács’s sense: a novel which makes possible an understanding of the present through the portrayal of the past, of the “different and specific”817 forms that contemporary problems took in earlier times. The historical factors in the collapse of the Empire are reflected into the small world of the mediocre hero Carl Joseph, last representative of the von Trotta family, as the factors which make his life impossible. Carl Joseph is a tragedy of the Habsburg Myth: incapable of integrating past and present, self and world, individual perception and external ideology, he carries out an act of suicidal, unheroic folly. His attempt to fetch water for his troops in the midst of enemy fire is, on one level, the very opposite of the heroic act of his grandfather which lies at the beginning of and determines his existence. It represents the undoing of the Habsburg Myth, the falsity of which had already led to the disillusionment of his celebrated grandfather. On another level, however, the Hero of Solferino’s act of saving the Emperor’s life was itself senselessly heroic, since it was able only to postpone, but not to prevent, the dissolution of an Empire past its time. This is the sense of the Emperor’s declaration in the final chapter of the novel “‘Wär ich nur

816 Müller, “Radetzkymarsch,” 301. 817 Lukács, Historical Novel 231.

234 Conclusion bei Solferino gefallen!’” (V, 453), a declaration which, significantly, falls on deaf ears.

Roth sympathizes with Carl Joseph’s desire to identify with history but, through the unravelling of his protagonist’s life and the circumstances of his death, shows this identification to be futile. It is an insight which also informs Die Kapuzinergruft, a novel which is perhaps a lesser artistic achievement than Radetzkymarsch, but which nonetheless gives expression to Roth’s sense of the complex reality of the present and its relationship to the past. Through the critical portrait of Franz Ferdinand Roth reveals parallels between the failure of Austrians to prevent the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy in the past and their failure to avert the Anschluß in the present. Roth’s condemnation of his apathetic narrator is indicative of his continuing belief in the critical importance of political engagement, and thus the charge that he was indulging in a nostalgic flight from reality in this novel must be refuted.

Roth was well aware that history marches onward and there can be no return to a past which is subjectively remembered not as perfect but as preferable. In Radetzkymarsch he gently satirizes the desire for a different outcome to history in the chapter which depicts the duel between Demant and Tattenbach. The officers in Carl Joseph’s Moravian garrison gather to hear Rittmeister Taittinger relate the circumstances which have led to the duel, and although they have heard the tale many times already, they beg Taittinger to tell them again and again, “denn sie hofften im törichtesten und geheimsten Abteil ihrer Herzen, daß die Erzählung des Rittmeisters sich einmal verändern und eine spärliche Aussicht auf einen günstigeren Ausgang offenlassen könnte.” (V, 224) Taittinger’s tale is the same each time, but suddenly he remembers a trivial detail, which for a moment seems to his listeners to open the possibility of a different outcome:

Es war, als könnte sich aus der Tatsache, daß Tattenbach Namenstag hatte, eine ganz neue, günstige Lösung der traurigen Affäre ergeben. Jeder überlegte für sich, welcher Nutzen aus dem Namenstag Tattenbachs zu ziehen wäre. Und der kleine Sternberg, durch dessen Gehirn die Gedanken einzeln dahinzuschießen pflegten wie einsame Vögel durch leere Wolken, ohne Geschwister und ohne Spur, äußerte sofort, vorzeitigen Jubel in der Stimme: ‘Aber, dann ist ja alles gut! Situation total verändert! Namenstag hat er halt gehabt!’ (V, 225)

235 Conclusion

In contrast to his characters, Roth does not fall prey to the desire to rewrite history, but instead recognizes its inexorable forward movement. Even the title of this novel, Radetzkymarsch, signals this recognition: one does not march backwards. Roth recognizes and accepts the historical fact of the collapse of the Habsburg Empire as reality, and does not in retrospect attempt to idealize it but to understand the reasons for its failure and the connections between the nationalism of post-war Central Europe and the structures of the Monarchy. Marching into history is about the search for truth through fiction.

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