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The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures

WRITING THE EDGE OF EMPIRE:

JOSEPH ROTH’S GALICIA

A Dissertation in

German

Nicole L. McInteer

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

December 2016

The dissertation of Nicole L. McInteer was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Daniel Purdy Professor of German Studies Dissertation Adviser and Committee Chair

Thomas Beebee Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Comparative Literature and German Head of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures

Richard Page Associate Professor of German and Linguistics

Sophie De Schaepdrijver Associate Professor of History

Ursula Bettina Brandt Special Member Fellow-in-Residence Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences

*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School.

Abstract

In 1924, Joseph Roth traveled to his birthplace of Galicia on assignment as a feuilletonist for the Frankfurter Zeitung. While traveling in the city of Lemberg, Roth claimed that the city had kosmopolitische Neigungen. This dissertation connects theories of cosmopolitanism to Roth’s writing, specifically his feuilletons that he wrote in France and Galicia, as well as his literary masterpiece Radetzskymarsch.

Moreover, this work argues that Roth’s cosmopolitanism can be connected with his

Galician roots. Joseph Roth, along with Galician authors Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos, constructed a literary space for Galicia that established a tradition of writing from the periphery. This project focuses on the region of Galicia

– part of modern day Ukraine – and on the authors who most ambitiously monumentalized it as an essential part of Austria.

Additionally, this dissertation contextualizes the space of Galicia by reading the Galician volume of the Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild.

Commissioned in 1884 by the Crown Prince Rudolf, thus often called the

Kronprinzenwerk, the project was intended to foster a sense of collective patriotism by celebrating the diversity of the Crown Lands. The relationship between the center and periphery is an essential theme for this work, and Die österreichisch- ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild is an excellent example of these tensions at play.

This dissertation demonstrates simultaneously how complicated and how much potential a multinational project can be. Nationalist causes that worked against the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire are most often cited as the

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primary cause of its downfall, but this dissertation complicates this narrative by pointing to Galicia, where multiculturalism – to a degree – existed and thrived for decades. Roth sees this multiculturalism as cosmopolitanism in Lemberg, which has its roots in the other works examined here: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Der Iluj demonstrates the potentiality of Galicia’s cosmopolitanism; Franzos’s Von Wien nach Czernowitz wittily examines topics like boundaries, stereotypes, and national identity; and the Kronprinzenwerk demonstrates how cosmopolitanism was a construction by the center for the periphery of Galicia. All of these sources provide a rich context for understanding how Joseph Roth envisioned Galicia in his fiction and reportage.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... vii

Acknowledgements ...... viii

Introduction A. Austrian Space and the Role of Literature ...... 6 B. Cosmopolitanism and the Nationality Problem ...... 12 C. Galicia ...... 16 D. Description of Chapters ...... 19

Chapter 1: Defining the Periphery from the Center A. Introduction ...... 23 B. Focus on Ethnic Difference ...... 32 C. Challenging the Maps ...... 39 D. The Kronprinzenwerk and Galicia ...... 46 E. Conclusion ...... 65

Chapter 2: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos: Literary Forerunners to Joseph Roth A. Introduction ...... 68 B. Austrians in Galicia ...... 70 C. Multiculturalism in Galicia ...... 75 D. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch ...... 81 E. Karl Emil Franzos ...... 94 F. Conclusion ...... 108

Chapter 3: Traveling with Roth: France, Galicia, and to the Edge of the Former Empire A. Introduction ...... 111 B. Travel, Cosmopolitanism, and the Feuilleton ...... 116 C. Packing His Suitcase: Roth’s Travel Beginnings ...... 123 D. Roth’s Travels in France ...... 126 E. Traveling to The White Cities ...... 129 F. Cosmopolitanism and The White Cities ...... 135 G. Back to Galicia and Re-assessing the Myth ...... 143 H. Conclusion ...... 159

Chapter 4: Reading the Periphery in Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch A. Introduction ...... 162 B. Radetzkymarsch and the Scholarly Debates ...... 167 C. “Österreich ist nicht in den Alpen zu finden…” – Roth’s definition and depiction of Austria ...... 172 D. Place and Radetzksymarsch ...... 178 E. The Painting and how it Represents the Space of Austria ...... 187

F. The Cost of Comopolitanism – Max Demant ...... 197 G. Conclusion ...... 210

Conclusion ...... 214

Works Cited ...... 225

List of Figures

Figure 1: Poster of the exhibition Mit Galicji / The Myth of Galicia International Cultural Centre in Cracow, Poland October 2014 – March 2015 ...... 148

Figure 2: Poster of the exhibition Mythos Galizien Wien Museum in Vienna, Austria March 2015 – August 2015 ...... 149

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Acknowledgements

To begin, I’d like to extend my gratitude to my adviser Dr. Daniel Purdy. In the spring of 2010, I asked Dr. Purdy to take an independent study on Viennese

Modernism, and it was in his office where the ideas for this dissertation started to form. His guidance, feedback, and patience were what helped get this project off the ground and what led to its completion. Thank you, Dr. Purdy, for all of your efforts. I appreciate it more than I can express.

My committee members have also been extremely influential during my time as a graduate student at Penn State. The feedback of Dr. Thomas Beebee, Dr. Bettina

Brandt, Dr. Richard Page, and Dr. Sophie De Schaepdrijver has been invaluable.

Thank you all for your thoughtful input. You all inspire me to be a better scholar and person.

This dissertation was written in Pennsylvania, Germany, Nebraska, and

North Carolina. Along the way, so many people helped and supported the process of getting these many words on these many pages. Libraries in all of these places, especially the library at Wake Forest University with their book delivery service, made the research for this dissertation possible.

When I think about why I began graduate school in German, I can’t help but reflect on the amazing teachers that have paved this path for me. They all have instilled a love of literature, language, culture, and travel. To Frau Spaihts at

Nitschmann Middle School, Herr Norwood at Liberty High School, as well as Dr.

McAllister and Dr. Redmond at Wake Forest University: This work is a result of the

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seeds you planted. Your enthusiasm for the study of German and your teaching expertise has led me here, and for that, I can’t thank you enough.

Many friends in the cubes made the process of writing this dissertation fun and meaningful. Especially Rebecca Zajdowicz, Jeff Horton, Atia Sattar, Janice

McGregor, Josh Brown, and Imke Brust – you all inspired me to cross the finish line.

Your support means the world to me, and I thank you for all the laughs and the pep talks. I would also like to express my gratitude to the support staff in the GSLL

Department at Penn State.

There are several other people to thank: Dean Martha Allman, who recognized the skills honed in the process of writing this dissertation, and has given me a meaningful, challenging career. My sister Allie Maka was a great support while working on my PhD. She quickly established the rule that I was only allowed to talk about my dissertation in 20 words or less, but always endeavored to understand my interests. I want to particularly thank my parents, Tom and Betty Ann McInteer.

Their support over the years has meant so much to me, and I wouldn’t be who I am without them. I am, however, very happy my dad can’t ever ask the question of which page I’m on around the dinner table. Lastly, I need to extend my gratitude to my amazing husband, Rob Shafer. He served – at times unwillingly – as mentor, friend, therapist, and editor. Rob, your hard work, dedication, and patience are the reasons I finished this dissertation. You inspire me, and I know I couldn’t have done this without you.

ix Introduction

Joseph Roth’s 1934 work Der Antichrist is one of his more enigmatic, as its plot is diffuse and there are no clear protagonists. The work reads more like a series of disparate essays on themes of moral and political chaos. Despite this confusion to the reader, Roth himself called the work a novel.1 In Der Antichrist, Joseph Roth displays a traveling narrator who is fearful of the change happening around Europe.

He finds the manifestation of the Antichrist in growing ideologies, whether it was

National Socialism, Communism, or the materialism that was awakened with the rise of Hollywood. In one chapter entitled “Die Stätte des Friedens,” Roth’s cosmopolitan point of view is revealed, especially when he discusses race and how humans have twisted racial characteristics into derogatory labels:

Wir wissen nicht, welche Farbe Adam hatte, der erste Mensch. Da aber

in der Schöpfungsgeschichte nicht nur jedes Wort einen bestimmten

Sinn hat, sondern auch jede Unterlassung, müssen wir annehmen, daß

die Hautfarbe Adams erwähnt worden wäre, hätte Gott einer

bestimmten den Vorzug gegeben. Aber ebensowenig, wie von der

Muttersprache, der Rasse oder der Nationalität des ersten Menschen,

von dem wir alle abstammen, die Rede ist, ebensowenig wird auch

von seiner Farbe gesprochen. Und es ist viel eher anzunehmen, daß er,

1 Sidney Rosenfeld has written about this novel: “In 1934, during a time he described to Stefan Zweig as one of great personal distress (BR 339), Roth reworked a series of journalistic pieces into the apocalyptic book-essay Der Antichrist (1934; Antichrist). In another letter to Zweig, he declared that this new book was “a thousand times better than ‘Tarabas’” (BR 320) and curiously called it a novel, although it actually constitutes an odd composite of religious vision, cultural criticism, and political polemics” (62).

der Ursprung der Menschheit, den Urgrund aller Sprachen, aller

Rassen, aller Völker, aller Hautfarben in sich getragen hat. (642-643)

In this chapter, Roth claims that the antichrist is responsible for establishing and maintaining power structures that support division based on racial characteristics.

Roth points out that the antichrist serves both sides – the side with power and the side of the subordinated – in order to support these misguided labels. However, in this novel, Roth’s narrator advocates for a more unified body: “Beleidigt man die

Nase des Juden oder den Mund des Negers oder die Augen des Mongolen oder die

Bleichheit des weißen Menschen, so beleidigt man damit auch die Nase, die Augen, den Mund und die Farbe Gottes” (643). Roth seems to view the reemergence of discrimination and denigration that had arisen in Europe in the 1930s as obstacles to the more ideal state of cosmopolitanism.

Roth’s assertions in Der Antichrist are cosmopolitan in nature, and it is this cosmopolitanism that I seek to connect with a larger body of Roth’s oeuvre.

Moreover, I argue that Roth’s cosmopolitanism can be connected with his Galician roots. I focus on the region of Galicia – part of modern day Ukraine – and on the authors who most ambitiously monumentalized it as a part of Austria. This dissertation explores a variety of texts that are centered around the theme of participating in the Empire from the periphery. Galicia was at the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and thus its position vis-à-vis the

Habsburg Monarchy at the center of the Empire is a central line of inquiry for this dissertation. Joseph Roth, along with other authors, constructed a literary space for

Galicia that followed a tradition of writing from the periphery.

My work aims to examine the three different authors from Galicia that all share similar paths during their lifetimes – Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Karl Emil

Franzos, and Joseph Roth – in an attempt to show how the space of Galicia was created in their writings. All three writers hailed from Galicia, studied in the center of the Empire, traveled extensively, and wrote about Galicia in their texts. These three authors offer an underappreciated portrait of an area with which they were intimately familiar, but also had an objective distance because of their many travels to other parts of the Empire. By reading their works together, and putting their works into dialogue with historiography and other scholarship, one can explore the ways in which these authors demonstrated their Austrian-ness, as well as their identification with more local groups within the multiethnic Empire.

Scholarship has thus far not adequately argued for a connection between

Joseph Roth’s literary output and his Galician heritage. In fact, most scholars who highlight Roth’s Eastern-ness only do so in the context of his Jewish background, most notably with his texts Hiob and Juden auf Wanderschaft. As a result,

Joseph Roth is often cast in the role of a Jewish author.2 However, due to his most lasting contribution to the canon of Austrian literature, Radetzkymarsch, other scholars have argued that Roth is not a Jewish author, but instead an Austrian one.3

Both of these kinds of analyses have served to bring Roth’s body of texts into the forefront, but both omit something in their assessments. David Bronsen, author of

2 See: Hans Otto Horch’s article “Im Grunde ist er sehr jüdisch geblieben…’ Zum Verhaltnis von ‘Katholizismus’ und Judentum bei Joseph Roth” in Literatur in der Gesellschaft: Festschrift für Theo Buck zum 60. Geburtstag (1990) and Katharina Ochse’s book Joseph Roths Auseinandersetzung mit dem Antisemitismus (1999). 3 See: David Bronsen’s article “Austrian verus Jew: The torn Identity of Joseph Roth” (1973).

the seminal article “The Jew in Search of a Fatherland: The Relationship of Joseph

Roth to the Habsburg Monarchy” is one of the first scholars to tease out the connections between Roth’s Jewish and Austrian identities. Bronsen traces this schism not only from Roth’s literature, but to Roth’s entire being: “It was a split that expressed itself not only in his writing but also in his fractured sense of self, his political views, his religious orientation, and his mode of life” (54). Kati Tonkin discusses this issue with Roth scholarship in her book Joseph Roth’s March into

History: From the Early Novels to “Radetzkymarsch” and “Die Kapuzinergruft,” but focuses more on the question of how to reconcile Roth’s early works with his later ones.4 As one can see, Roth’s body of work is that it is large and complex and refuses any kind of convenient categorization.

This perceived lack of continuity with the themes of Roth’s writings has puzzled scholars, and led to dynamic discussions of Roth’s identity and work. More recently, the trend in Roth scholarship is to label the apparent contradictions as ambivalence. Jon Hughes has explained these contractions in Roth’s life that many have interpreted with his work:

The signposts of ambivalence and paradox line the well-trodden

routes by which scholars have traditionally approached his work; he

is the ‘socialist’ who argued the case for the Habsburg monarchy, the

Jew who declared himself Catholic, the prolific journalist and master

4 She writes: “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 contented or implied that Roth was always a conservative at heart” (2).

of the ‘kleine Form’ best remembered for an epic realist novel, the film

reviewer who attacked the cinema, the Berlin correspondent who

came to detest Berlin. (2)

Helen Chambers, editor of the volume Co-existent Contradictions: Joseph Roth in

Retrospect, would agree with Hughes’s assessments, and has written: “It is in the coexistence of contradiction, in the vital tension between artistic, political and cultural opposites that Roth’s power and charm resides,” (ix).5

One of my goals is to make a case for Roth as a literary cartographer, where both Austrian and Jewish author – and many more roles – have a place within his oeuvre. Reading Roth’s work – not just his fiction, but his travel pieces and his journalism – a reader, especially one today, is granted with a sense of the vastness of the Empire and immense diversity of its membership. His texts are a view into the lesser-studied regions Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and his writings reveal a cosmopolitan character inherent in the space of Galicia that I will demonstrate has its roots from other authors who also hail from the peripheral region.

Cosmopolitanism is not an arbitrary word for this dissertation, but one asserted by Roth himself when he was writing about Galicia during his tenure with the Frankfurter Zeitung, which biographer Wilhelm von Sternburg has labeled the

“Höhepunke seiner Zeitungskarriere” (32). His choice for this label will be further discussed in the third chapter. While there seems to be a consensus amongst scholars that Roth himself was a nomadic wanderer and therefore a kind of a

5 This particular edited volume was born out of the Joseph Roth Symposium in 1989 at Leeds University in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of Roth’s death. The conference and the printed volume that resulted are evidence that scholars are interested in finding new ways to view the texts of Joseph Roth.

cosmopolitan, I seek to avoid labeling Roth’s identity. Instead, I turn to his work for traces of cosmopolitanism. In doing so, I hope to intertwine theories of cosmopolitanism and travel, Roth’s various genres of writing, as well as contextualizing Roth’s writings on Galicia with the authors Leopold von Sacher-

Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos. What results is a more nuanced portrait of a region that has been less investigated in the wider field of Austrian Studies, especially

Austrian literature. This dissertation contributes to not only dialogues about the texts of Joseph Roth, but also Austrian identity, space, and peripheries.

A. Austrian Space and the Role of Literature

What geographical space is included under the label of Austria is an essential theme to consider. Biographer Wilhelm von Sternburg emphasizes Roth’s

Heimatlosigkeit when it comes to questions of Roth’s national belonging: “Mit einer sich auf Wochen beschränkenden Ausnahme wird er nie eine eigene Wohnung mieten. Seit er sich als 19-jähriger Student in den Universitäten von Lemberg und

Wien eingeschrieben hat, lebt er zur Untermiete, in Pensionen und Hotels oder gelegentlich bei Freunden – bis zu seinem Tod” (31). While Sternburg writes about

Roth’s physical sense of home, Roth confirmed what Sternburg asserts, but on a more emotional level, in a letter to his publisher Gustav Kiepenheuer: “Ich habe keine Heimat, wenn ich von der Tatsache absehe, daß ich in mir selbst zu Hause bin und mich bei mir heimish fühle” (Briefe 165).

While Roth is known for having lived a wandering life in many different countries around Europe, there is also the need to point out his sense of nationalism

for Austria, even if this nationalism was for a system that was no longer in existence.

For example, in a letter that Roth sent Stefan Zweig on August 31, 1933, Roth writes of his own Austrian patriotism and urges Zweig to find his own sense of Austrian- ness:

Auch ist etwas noch dabei: ich verstehe nicht ganz, daß Sie nicht ganz

und ungeteilt Österreicher sind. Sie sind ein konservativer

ehrfürchtiger Mensch. Alles, was Sie an literarischen und

menschlichen Qualitäten haben, ist altes Österreich. […] Sie müssen

Österreich lieben, es wird Sie wieder lieben. Es ist nicht Preußen. Ich

habe die Österreicher und Preußen im Kriege kennen gelernt, als ich

einer preußischen Division zugeteilt war. Von da an datiert mein

aktiver österreichischer Patriotismus. (Rietra and Siegel 117)6

The Austria that Roth was referring to with this letter to Zweig is the dissolved

Empire, but it is alive in Roth’s literary space. Roth would later refer to the

Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary as the only fatherland he had ever had, which demonstrates Roth’s insistence on keeping the old world alive via his literature.7

While critics are quick to compartmentalize Roth’s life and work into categories, the two characterizations Roth made for himself about his national identity accentuate the various contradictions within Roth and his literature. However, it is my goal to highlight how the theme of cosmopolitanism manifests in Roth’s literature that ultimately adds to a greater understanding of Austrian space and Austrian

6 Emphasis is in the original. 7 See letter from Roth to Otto Forst-Battaglia on October 28, 1932. Found in Michael Hofmann’s volume Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters on page 221.

literature. In this process of understanding how Roth’s texts reflected themes of cosmopolitanism, a renewed importance on the space of Galicia will be revealed.

This study is particularly influenced by the work of Pieter M. Judson, whose work on nationalism within the Austro-Hungarian Empire will be discussed in several of the individual chapters. His 2016 tome The Habsburg Empire: A New

History has called for a refreshed way of understanding this multi-national state: “As we shift our lens farther away from the nation-states that today dominate the map of central and eastern Europe to focus instead on the empire as our subject, we desperately need new general narratives around which to organize our findings”

(15). Judson criticizes the fact that “[s]ince the collapse of the Habsburg Monarchy at the end of the First World War in 1918, narratives of nationhood have dominated its history” (12), and he rightfully points out that “[l]ess often have scholars made the empire itself the focus of their interpretations” (12-13). This dissertation takes up the charge for which Pieter Judson advocates in that it analyzes a somewhat underappreciated part of the Empire and tries to place it in a context of Austrian literature and history.

Recently there has been a resurgence in studying the origins of Austrian identity, let alone if one even exists.8 Franz Mathis ponders the question “Have 1,000 years of Austrian history been a source of Austrian identity or have they been a myth that has done more harm than good to the creation of a solid Austrian identity?” (20) in the edited volume Austrian Historical Memory and National

8 In the 1954 article, “Austrian Literature Since 1927,” Friedrich Torberg wrote: “Austrian Literature, like Austria itself, is in the peculiar position of not knowing whether it exists. Its right and necessity to do so, its very raison d’étre is being constantly questioned, doubted, challenged, even denied…” (15).

Identity, edited by Günter Bischof and Anton Pelinka. Peter Thaler has further explored the theme of Austrian identity in his monograph The Ambivalence of

Identity: The Austrian Experience of Nation-Building in a Modern Society, but with a post-1945 focus. While both of these scholarly inquiries exclude any kind of voice from the margins, there has also been an attempt by scholars to look to the peripheries to add to the discourses of Austrian identity.9 It is increasingly evident that in academic discourse, the conceptualizations of Austrian identity are widening to include more voices that have previously gone unheard that nonetheless contribute to a collective category.

In the edited volume Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in

Österreich-Ungarn, the editors Endre Hárs, Wolfgang Müller-Funk, Ursula Reber, and

Clemens Ruthner provide a definition of terms that is useful for this dissertation:

“Das Zentrum (die Metropole) ist jener Ort, an dem sich auch die symbolische

Produktion der jeweiligen Kultur großteils vollzieht (Verlage, Medien, Museen, etc.), während die Peripherie vor allem als Gegenstand bzw. Setzung dieser Produktion auftritt” (1). They continue in their description why the Austro-Hungarian Empire provides a unique setting for this dichotomy: “Zur Besonderheit und Brisanz des

Gesamtgefüges des k.(u.)k. Vielvölkerstaates gehört, dass hier das Verhältnis wie

‘Stadt vs. Land’, ‘Wildnis vs. Zivilisation’ etc. eingeschrieben sind, häufig auch von sprachlicher/ethnischer oder religiöser Differenz begleitet ist” (1). As will be

9 Examples include: Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in Österreich-Ungarn (2006), Austrian Identities: Twentieth-Century Short Fiction (2004), The German Legacy in East Central Europe as Recorded in Recent German-Language Literature (2004), and Fictions from an Orphan State: Literary Reflections between Habsburg and Hitler (2012).

discussed more in the second and third chapters, it will be shown that Galicia certainly fits into the definition of existing as a periphery within the Habsburg

Empire, although the latter has historically been overshadowed by inquiries concerning the center. Roth, Franzos, and Sacher-Masoch are compelling authors, because they give a voice to those from the periphery. As will be demonstrated in the third chapter of this dissertation, Roth even argues for Galicia’s status as a periphery after the Empire had dissolved.

An important aspect of Roth’s, Franzos’s, and Sacher-Masoch’s roles as authors and citizens of the Habsburg Empire is that they traveled throughout, and as a result, experienced the space of Austria-Hungary. All three dedicated significant texts to write about the spaces they had observed. While other authors, most notably Robert Musil’s notion of Kakania, have endeavored to identify and locate what is essentially Austria, Joseph Roth particularly has a unique perspective. Roth played many roles, traveled to many places, and wrote about his experiences in his fiction. As such, one of the goals of this dissertation is to establish a firmer link between Joseph Roth and travel writing. Michel de Certeau claimed “[e]very story is a travel story – a spatial practice” (89). I argue that travel is an essential element that links these three authors and their texts. The intersection of travel and writing cannot be overestimated for the goals of this dissertation.

Indeed, there are many who have theorized the significance of travel, and how the act of writing can enhance or engender meaning for the travel experience.

As Susan L. Roberson has written: “From the literary travelogue to narratives of political conquest, writing makes sense of the travel experience, manipulating it by

the play of memory and imagination, literary and linguistic tradition, ideology and politics” (61). All the texts examined in this dissertation can be viewed through the lens of travel writing in that they seek to explore a space via the written page. While this travel aspect of Roth’s writing has been explored in a personal narrative by

British filmmaker and broadcaster Dennis Marks, there has to date not been, to my knowledge, an academic exegesis to understand Roth as a travel writer, nor connect him to other authors hailing from Galicia.10

The three authors Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Karl Emil Franzos, and

Joseph Roth write in their narratives about Galicia and the essential characteristics to the space. In doing so, they create an imagined community for Galicia that not only has an important role within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but also marks itself as unique among the other crown lands of the monarchy. Borrowing the term imagined community from Benedict Anderson, the Galicia that these authors described is considered imagined because Galicia was not a true nation, but instead a community where people shared a common experience of identification with an extended community within limited geographic borders. Anderson’s analysis is particularly useful for this dissertation because nationalism is seen as the downfall for the Habsburg Empire. Even if Sacher-Masoch, Franzos, and Roth were not advocating a kind of Galician nationalism, they certainly participate in constructing it via their literature in imagining essential characteristics to the space of Galicia.

10 Another applicable link between travel and writing is the exploration of power structures, especially when connected to Empire. Scholars Anne McClintock, Sara Mills, Mary Louise Pratt, and J.B. Harley, to name a few, have written about this issue, although not with specific regard to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. An interesting analysis would prove to be fruitful between the Habsburg Empire power structures and travel writing, but not exactly the goal of this dissertation.

The book Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism is especially helpful when understanding how literature, space, and nationalism serve and support one another.11 While Anderson deals more with the concept and history of nationalism, his definitions are more applicable to the case of Austria-

Hungary after it had dissolved. It is not my intention to argue that Roth was a nationalist author, but instead to demonstrate that his literature encompassed many forms of identification that included the local, the national, and the supranational. It is in these layers of identification that I find a cosmopolitan character to Roth’s work, especially when it is concerned with the space of Galicia. Whether it manifests itself in positive, negative, or neutral ways, these authors demonstrate that there is a tradition behind portraying Galicia as diverse and cosmopolitan.

B. Cosmopolitanism and the Nationality Problem

In his 2008 monograph Empire and Identity: Biographies of the Austrian State

Problem in the Late Habsburg Empire, Fredrik Lindström begins his study by introducing the reader to the Austrian statesman and historian Joseph Redlich.

Lindström discusses Redlich and his work Das österreichischiche Staats- und

Reichsproblem, an uncompleted work written in the early 1920s. In so doing, he claims that Redlich’s tome “has retained a special quality as a result of its origins as a work aiming to find the solution to a problem that was strongly present in the life

11 Anderson writes: “Why this transformation should be so important for the birth of the imagined community of the nation can best be seen if we consider the basic structure of two forms of imagining which first flowered in Europe in the eighteenth century: the novel and the newspaper. For these forms provided the technical means for ‘re-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation” (24-25).

of its author” (2). In that vein, he explores the nationality problem in the biographies of six individuals who lived during the Dual Monarchy and their responses to it. It seems to be a trend in scholarship to label the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in negative terms that have greater implications for how we have understood the interaction of the different ethnolinguistic groups of the multiethnic Empire.

Characterizing the multinational situation as a problem, or something that at least had a more ideal solution than the one created by the Dual Monarchy, is one way to understand the Habsburg Monarchy and how the many different languages, ethnicities, religions, and cultures were intertwined. For instance, Nancy M.

Wingfield has written in her edited volume Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and

Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe that many factors coalesced to reinforce, and even aggravate, the differences between groups of the multiethnic Empire:

The topics the essays consider include the role of geography in the

ethnic identity and stereotyping, the formation of civil society

(bürgerliche Gesellschaft), the importance of increasing administrative

centralization in the attempt to create homogenous territory and

patterns of behavior, the contestation of administrative centralization

from the margins, the transformation of the rural landscape and the

formation of peasant national identity, and the psychology of

nationalism. (4)

The various essays included in the volume demonstrate how ethnic difference escalated to conflict within the multiethnic dynamic. The focus of the volume concerns itself primarily, and unsurprisingly, with the rise of nationalism after 1848.

Thus, this volume is another corroboration for the overarching narrative of the nationality problem.

Scholarship has heretofore chosen to focus on the features of the Empire that caused division: eleven officially recognized languages, many different cultures and religions, and brewing nationalist sentiment. Roth depicts instead one Empire to which everyone is loyal, and of which everyone is a member. I am not arguing that

Roth’s version of empire is more correct than the pessimistic ones that focus on conflict; rather, I am suggesting that Roth describes some aspects of the Austrian empire that have hitherto gone nearly unnoticed, but that were of vital importance for its political stability over many years. Therefore, I use Roth’s writings to focus my work and argument on cosmopolitanism within the Empire, and how that brought these varying cultures together under the crown of the Habsburgs. While there are certainly nationalist forces that contributed to the downfall of the

Habsburg Empire, I suggest a different, and more nuanced, view of understanding national difference that has grown out of the works of Roth, and supported by the texts of Sacher-Masoch and Franzos. Roth, Sacher-Masoch, and Franzos all wrote about Galicia and how the multiethnic character added to the essential features of the place. They demonstrated that cosmopolitanism – whether it was from the center or from the space of Galicia – played a significant role in understanding this particular periphery’s relationship to the center.

The thread that inevitably links these three authors is their presentation of cosmopolitanism. Meaning literally citizen of the world, cosmopolitanism now carries connotations of the political, ethical, hospitable, and judicial. To tersely

define this oft-used concept, it is the belief that people are members of a world community with a shared morality. One of the founding texts of modern cosmopolitanism is Immanuel Kant’s essay Idea for a University History with a

Cosmopolitan Purpose, in which he provides a guideline for modern nations to avoid war and instead adopt the rights of universal hospitality. This form of political cosmopolitanism is not so applicable when discussing the work of Roth, Franzos, and Sacher-Masoch and their portrayals of the Habsburg Crown Lands. Instead, I am interested in the kind of conversation that arises when one adopts a cosmopolitan attitude: one that posits local versus national and peripheries versus the metropolis.

Martha C. Nussbaum has written about how cosmopolitanism can incorporate all these queries that can complicate one’s interaction with the nation, and in this case, the Empire. In her history of cosmopolitanism, she stresses that it is not about simply becoming a member of a larger community while abolishing any kind of local allegiance. According to Nussbaum, “[t]he Stoics stress that to be a citizen of the world one does not need to give up local identifications, which can be a source of great richness in life. They suggest that we think of ourselves not as devoid of local affiliations, but as surrounded by a series of concentric circles” (158). Instead of understanding cosmopolitanism simply as becoming a citizen of the world,

Nussbaum allows for a more nuanced understanding that incorporates all layers of identification.

However complicated the concept of cosmopolitanism may be, Ulrich Beck provides an effective summation:

What do we mean, then, by the ‘cosmopolitan outlook’? Global sense, a

sense of boundarylessness. An everyday, historically alert, reflexive

awareness of ambivalences in a milieu of blurring differentiations and

cultural contradictions. It reveals not just the ‘anguish’ but also the

possibility of shaping one’s life and social relations under conditions

of cultural mixture. It is simultaneously a skeptical, disillusioned, self-

critical outlook. (3)

With Nussbaum’s and Beck’s assessments in mind, we can explore how Roth and his predecessors provide a unique vantage point for understanding Galicia.

Many different theorists have defined the academic concept of cosmopolitanism in many different ways. Nussbaum and Beck’s definitions allow for nuance and are not restricted to one specific circumstance, as so many definitions are.12 As such, Roth and his predecessors present a cosmopolitanism that provides key insights that precede more contemporary discussions of cosmopolitanism.

C. Galicia

The history of Galicia and the people who lived there create a story with many layers. It is a region that has had many economic and political functions, and many languages have been spoken within its borders. Most interesting for this study is the time period when Galicia was a Crown Land for the Habsburg Empire. I have

12 See, for example: On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness and On Hospitality by Jacques Derrida, which largely center on the relationship between hospitality and cosmopolitanism. Georg Simmel’s “The Stranger” refers to a cosmopolitanism of a city and his definition includes how Jews assimilated. One can also go back to the Enlightenment era and see Emmanuel Kant’s work On Perpetual Peace.

turned to literature and travel pieces that discuss and imagine the space of Galicia to develop a more layered and literary understanding of the area.

Galicia was quite the unique Crown Land in that it not only had a high Jewish population, but was very ethnically diverse, even by Habsburg standards. As historian John Czaplicka has pointed out in regards to the capital city of Lvov: “The cultural distinctions among the city’s residents strongly affect how the city has been perceived and how its histories have been written” (16).13 He elaborates his point by drawing attention to the many different roles the capital of Galicia has played in the area of Eastern Europe: “It is a city that seemed in its myth and history an island, an outpost of civilization, on the periphery or frontier, a place between borders, and a defender of civilization or Christianity against some untoward force. During certain periods of Lviv’s history all of these characterizations are true to a degree”

(16).

In a similar vein, Paul Robert Magosci’s article Galicia: A European Land contributes to the dialogue on Galicia’s multiethnic character: “No matter how we might define Galicia, one thing is indisputable: throughout a millennium of recorded history Galicia has been inhabited by a multiplicity of peoples – among them

Ukranians, Poles, Jews, Germans, Armenians, Lemko-Rusyns, and more recently,

13 In her book Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine, Anna Reid writes: “Fifty miles east of today’s Polish-Ukrainian border, Lviv was ruled by Austria from the first partition of Poland in 1773 until the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1918. Christening the city Lemberg, the Austrians made it the capital of the ‘Kingdom of Galicia’, a patched-together province stretching east from Cracow to the river Zbrucz. With the rebirth of Poland the city went back to its Polish name of Lwow, and in 1945 it fell, for the first time in its history, to the Russians, who deported the Polish population and renamed it Lvov. It only became Lviv in 1991, with Ukrainian independence. Visually, it is the Polish Lwow and Austrian Lemberg that have survived best. […] The Austrians gave it parks, cobbled boulevards, Jugendstil villas, a flamboyant opera house, municipal buildings painted the Habsburgs’ reassuring mustard yellow, and the matronly bronze caryatids that grace the lobby of the George Hotel” (71).

Russians” (3). Magosci’s research illustrates that there are two waves of German colonization in Galicia. The first was in 1241 when the Polish Kingdom wanted to have its southeastern borders strengthened with new settlers. Magosci claims that this first wave of immigration did not have a lasting effect on Galician history, because they largely became assimilated into the preexisting culture (Historical

Survey 249). The second wave of Germans in Galicia was in 1772 when the region became a part of the Habsburg Empire. As a result, Emperor Joseph II brought more than 15,000 colonists to the region in an effort to simultaneously improve the local economy, while strengthening Austrian control of the new province.14 Whereas the first group of German colonists assimilated, this second group of Austrians in the easternmost province of the Habsburg Empire typically did not.

My dissertation thus expands from current scholarship by exploring the theme of cosmopolitanism in Roth’s writing about the Dual Monarchy. I argue that

Roth portrays Galicia as an integral part and participating member of the vast, multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. This is a particularly important point, because Galicia was seen as especially backwards within the Monarchy. It was a region known for its hostility towards Otherness, with Jews a particularly targeted ethnic group. Thus, the theme of cosmopolitanism coming from a region of severe ethnic tension, as reported by a Jew who was himself a potential target for such tension, is worth investigating.

14 See page 249.

D. Description of Chapters

My first chapter examines an early attempt towards cosmopolitanism in the ethnographic project entitled Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und

Bild. Commissioned in 1884 by the Crown Prince Rudolf, the project was intended to foster a sense of collective patriotism by celebrating the diversity of the

Crown Lands. Each volume focused on a different part of the Empire by exploring the prosaic aspects of culture from that specific area. Scholars have since argued that the project ironically confirmed and essentialized ethnic differences, which in turn contributed to the growing nationalist sentiment.15 I am particularly interested in the volume on Galicia, published in 1898, and I seek to understand how the region was portrayed by the official discourses of imperial power. The relationship between the center and periphery is an essential theme for my work, and

Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild is an excellent example of these tensions at play.

My second chapter compares two literary pieces from the authors

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos. I argue that they are literary forerunners to Joseph Roth in their depictions of Galicia and of the region’s cosmopolitanism. While the former author is best known for Venus im Pelz (1870),

Sacher-Masoch also wrote many short stories describing life in Galicia during the late nineteenth century, as did Franzos. Both Franzos and Sacher-Masoch cultivate the literary space of Galicia, and act as precursors to Joseph Roth’s cosmopolitan

15 See Regina Bendix’s article “Ethnology, Cultural Reification, and the Dynamics of Difference in the Kronprinzenwerk” in Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in the Habsburg Central Europe (2003).

depiction of the area and its uniqueness within the space of the Austro-Hungarian

Empire. Sacher-Masoch and Franzos both illustrate how the cosmopolitanism in the

Empire was cultivated from the top down – or perhaps more appropriately, out from the center to the periphery. While they differ from Roth in that they do not necessarily see cosmopolitanism in practice in Galician space, they do stress the cosmopolitan potential of the area. Reading their texts, it is apparent that the multiethnic character of Galicia is an essential characteristic to this particularly unique area of the periphery, but it also can have negative connotations.

The third chapter of my dissertation revisits the region of Galicia through the travel writings of Roth himself. Written in 1925, well after Galicia had become a part of Poland, these essays directly respond to Franzos’s and Sacher-Masoch’s depictions of the area, but also demonstrate that Roth was more of a proponent of the cosmopolitanism of the area. Roth insists on Galicia’s enduring cosmopolitan character as product of once being a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I will discuss how scholars have adopted the tendency to describe Galicia as a myth – for example, the 2015 exhibit at the Wien Museum was titled Mythos Galizien. Roth’s contribution to this myth is certainly paradoxical, because he is often an author that is instead described as a realist writer.16 However, Roth’s texts on Galicia written while he was in Galicia are most relevant. Additionally, I provide background on the genre of the feuilleton and how Roth, I argue, subverted the genre. For this investigation, I use his 1925 essays on France that were posthumously published under the collection Die weißen Städte. This chapter combines themes of travel

16 Ulrich E. Back noted: “It might seem counterintuitive to look to Roth in a study on Austrian colonial utopias, considering that he is known as a twentieth-century realist writer” (8).

writing, how the feuilleton is unique in how it describes space, and how Roth’s travel writing connects to his fiction.

The fourth chapter of my dissertation concerns itself with Joseph Roth’s most canonical text: Radetzkymarsch. I argue that his most famous novel contains elements of cosmopolitanism through the protagonist’s participation in the Empire from the periphery. While scholars have debated whether this novel should be considered a nostalgic lamentation for a lost Empire, or an expository explanation of why the Empire fell, I read the novel in a new light by considering how the space of

Galicia is depicted in the novel. One of the characters Roth wrote in this novel hails from the region and has been largely understudied in scholarly literature. I interweave theories concerning cosmopolitanism into this renowned text of

Joseph Roth’s to reveal a more comprehensive portrait of the k.u.k. Monarchie that insists on including its eastern periphery.

These themes in my dissertation are still of social and political importance today. While my work is concentrated around the city of modern-day Lviv, which is located in Western Ukraine, there is much unrest in Eastern Ukraine. As I’m writing this introduction, Ukraine is engaged in a war that was started by a Euromaidan movement, whose protesters demanded more European integration. The protests called for the resignation of the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. These protests and uprisings are – to put it simply – tensions between West and East, and what belongs to Europe and why. These tensions have their roots in the ethnic uncertainties and nationalistic aspirations of Roth’s time. My dissertation brings together a variety of texts, and reads them in new ways to add to the growing

scholarship of studies on the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Beyond the specific historical and literary insights gleaned through the close reading of these unique texts, my dissertation contributes to the current theoretical discourse on cosmopolitanism, especially in its relation to empire.

Chapter 1

Defining the Periphery from the Center

A. Introduction

Investigating maps and other visual representations of the Austro-Hungarian

Empire – contemporary cartography, as well as more recent iterations – is a fascinating exercise, in that they help us to visualize the complexity of how the multiple cultures of the Crown Lands were represented. Most maps divide the different territories of the Empire by the language spoken in each specific region. All of these regions had, unsurprisingly, their own distinct culture in addition to language. In fact, the Habsburg government officially recognized eleven different languages (Rozenblit 18). The maps of this time seem to suggest that each region functioned like its own country, in that the borders between the different regions draw a firm line between these areas. When looking at these maps, it is not immediately evident how the varying groups belonged to a single political or imperial entity.

This chapter will explore how the efforts by the powers at the center of the

Empire endeavored to conceptualize the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a cosmopolitan state that was above national or merely imperial divisions.17 In my consideration of this phenomenon, I will not only look at contemporary texts

17 The concept of state is tricky to define vis-à-vis the Habsburgs. As A.J.P. Taylor has written: “The Habsburg lands were a collection of entailed estates, not a state; and the Habsburgs were landlords, not rulers – some were benevolent landlords, some incompetent, some rapacious and grasping, but all intent on extracting the best return from their tenants so as to cut a great figure in Europe. They could compound with anything, except with the demand to be free of landlords; this demand was their ruin” (10). He also writes: “Joseph II had watched with impatience the caution and compromise of his mother. When she died in 1780, he set out at once to carry her work to its logical conclusion and to make his Empire a centralised egalitarian state” (17).

authored before and during the time the authors discussed in this dissertation lived, but I will also examine how historians have evaluated, and more recently reevaluated, the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire. What emerges from the dialogue of these texts is an appreciation of Habsburg diversity. It is not my intention to claim that this diversity did not exist without any conflict; rather, I wish to discuss the attitudes and conceptions about the Austrian empire that have hitherto been somewhat unappreciated, yet were of vital importance for its political stability over many years. In particular, I aim to focus on the end of the time of the

Empire, especially with regard to the main focus of this chapter: the

Kronprinzenwerk.

This chapter will not explicitly discuss the works of Joseph Roth or other authors from Galicia, but it is still important to bear in mind that the political discourse around discussions of multiculturalism was reflected in their literary output and their depiction of the time. As such, this discussion is essential to consider before a more detailed analysis of the cosmopolitan Austro-Hungarian

Empire in their literature. What is more, the ethnography presented in this chapter is not only essential to inspect because it was one of the first examples of its kind, but it also adds another layer to understanding the depiction of Galicia in that it depicts the region simultaneously from the outside and from the center of power.

To begin, one must consider how historians have evaluated the role of ethnic conflict within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and their appraisement of the degree to which the multiethnic character of the k.u.k. Monarchy was a crucial aspect of its downfall. My research demonstrates that many historians are quick to ascribe the

failure of the multiethnic state to ethnic tensions.18 However, there are some newer voices that propose a revised understanding of how the different ethnolinguistic minorities interacted.19 These scholars have focused on members of the state that chose to appreciate and actively foster its diversity, rather than view it as a reason to engender and perpetuate conflict. Their arguments of ethnic cooperation are particularly influential to this dissertation, because they demonstrate that cosmopolitanism for Austria-Hungary was not confined to the literary realm, but that it was an actual practice during the multilingual time period. While Roth uses cosmopolitanism as a means to express his views of the Empire, the historians I discuss in this chapter insist that there was more cooperation among the varying ethnic groups than previously believed, especially when considering how the

Austro-Hungarian Empire has been conceptualized in the maps with which I began this chapter.

After discussing trends in the analyses of historians, past and current, and how they have come to conceptualize the Austro-Hungarian Empire, I find it significant to go to the center of the monarchy to discuss a version of how the periphery was imagined from there. By choosing to look at the metropole and how it

18 The following is a sample of works that rely on the narrative of the “Nationalitätenproblem” to explain the ultimate failure of the Donaumonarchie: Robert A. Kann’s A History of the Habsburg Empire 1526-1918 (1974), Laurence Cole’s edited volume Different Paths to the Nation: Regional and National Identities in Central Europe and Italy, 1830-70 (2007), Oscar Jászi’s The Dissolution of the Habsburg Monarchy (1929), Z.A.B. Zeman’s The Break-up of the Habsburg Empire 1914-1918: A Study in National and Social Revolution (1961), John W. Mason’s The Dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire 1867-1918 (1985), Pieter M. Judson and Marsha L. Rozenblit’s edited volume Constructing Nationalities in East Central Europe (2005) and Nancy Wingfield’s edited volume Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe (2003). 19 Most notably, I am referring to István Deák’s Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Crops 1848-1918 (1990), Pieter Judson’s work Guardians of the Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (2007), and Tara Zahra’s Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for the Children in the Bohemian Lands 1900-1948 (2008).

depicted Galicia, it is evident how the space of Galicia was constructed as a foil to the center. In subsequent chapters, I pay considerable attention to authors from the area, but before taking a closer look at their literature, I assert that it is necessary to understand the center, and how the Crown Lands were envisioned, before moving to the periphery. After understanding how the periphery is constructed by the center, it becomes more evident how Galicia was framed in varying ways and how these viewpoints contradict or overlap.

One series of documents that is a stellar example of how the totality of the

Monarchy was envisioned and then inscribed is Die österreichische-ungarische

Monarchie in Wort und Bild. This 24-volume set is commonly labeled the

Kronprinzenwerk because the impetus and implementation of the project is attributed to the Crown Prince Rudolf, son of Kaiser Franz Joseph and Empress

Elizabeth, who is most often remembered for his mysterious death at the Mayerling hunting lodge.20

The Crown Prince Rudolf was known for his liberalism and his views on equality throughout the empire. Richard Barkeley has written about Rudolf’s early political views: “[Rudolf’s] self-appointed task of creating the conditions for a government composed of Liberals and based on equal rights for all nations was made much more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. But he refused to give up hope – yet” (77). Barkeley also makes a point to emphasize how Rudolf’s interactions with the entirety of the empire were vastly different from his father’s:

20 See for example Richard Barkeley’s The Road to Mayerling: Life and Death of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria (1958).

The Habsburg domains still stretched from Central Europe far into the

Near East, and the Crown Prince, driven by his interest in the animal

world, went frequently to those regions which were not generally

included in official visits. In this way he had a good opportunity of

getting to know what was to be one day his heritage. […] He had a

homely way of talking and knew how to put people at their ease […].

The hereditary lands (Erblande), as Austria was called in the

antiquated language of the Habsburg family laws, in this way became

a living reality to him. He no longer had to rely as much on official

reports as his father did; his judgments on far-away provinces and

their problems could be based on his own observations, and his

political opinions were often founded on experience. He knew the

country, and his easy command of many of the languages spoken in

the Empire made possible direct contact with people in all walks of

life. (86-87)

Before his death, he was responsible for initiating the compendium with the ostensible goal of understanding and recording the Monarchy’s vast diversity of subjects. Jason Stagl claims that the work “intended to show that the Habsburg

Monarchy was a product of necessity and not of chance” (22) and claims that the readers of the work “are to be educated in tolerance and mutual appreciation, so that the patriotism of the whole Empire may be rekindled” (23). Indeed, in the introduction of the Übersichtsband to the Kronprinzenwerk written by the Crown

Prince himself, he clearly states the goal of the collection: “Durch den wachsenden

Einblick in die Vorzüge und Eigenthümlichkeiten der einzelnen ethnographischen

Gruppen und ihre gegenseitige und materielle Abhängigkeit von einander muß das

Gefühl der Solidarität, welches alle Völker unseres Vaterlandes verbinden soll, wesentlich gekräftigt werden” (5-6). The argument could be made that the project is imperialist in nature due to Crown Prince Rudolf’s position at the helm and in consideration of the fact that the text was published in only German and

Hungarian.21 However, I agree with Paul Baiersdorf when he states that when reading the Kronprinzenwerk, the feel of the text is predominately heuristic. The text’s acute attention to detail for not only geographical markers, but people, customs, and histories of a diverse range of locations endow these documents with a very cosmopolitan intention. In an essay that explores cosmopolitanism vis-à-vis competing ideologies, Kwame Anthony Appiah highlights the benefits of a cosmopolitan worldview. Appiah makes a statement about cosmopolitanism that corroborates the arguments I have made about the purpose of the Kronprinzenwerk.

He states: “The humanist requires us to put our differences aside; the cosmopolitan insists that sometimes it is the differences we bring to the table that make it rewarding to interact at all” (“Patriots” 111). The Kronprinzenwerk was created with this goal in mind and clearly conveys this message to the reader.

The collection that became the Kronprinzenwerk included 24 volumes and each one was dedicated to particular Crown Lands. The entirety of the project took

21 Regina Bendix, whose argument will be discussed later, has asserted this view: “The [Kronprinzenwerk’s] goal was to emulate the belletristic style of the ‘land and peoples’ model, but the [Kronprinzenwerk] was also heavily informed by the paternalistic and controlling impetus of statistical inquiry. The potentially liberating impulse inherent in an invitation to cultural self- representation found itself at cross-purposes with the heavy hand of scholarly and editorial control exercised by the committee in charge of preparing the work for publication” (154).

17 years, included 587 articles by over 400 authors and 4,500 illustrations by 264 artists. Although the contributors to the Kronprinzenwerk were most always local to the area they were depicting, Jason Stagl makes it clear that the Crown Prince Rudolf was the driving force and overseer of the project: “He presided over almost every committee meeting in Vienna and Budapest and did much of the editorial work himself. Twice a year he invited all contributors for dinner – the first occasion that intellectuals were thus honoured by the imperial house” (25). While Rudolf’s father was known for his military adeptness, Rudolf was focused on introducing a liberal, inclusive way to represent the totality of the Empire.

To contextualize the Kronprinzenwerk with trends in art history and the role of art, especially meant for the public, Matthew Rampley’s monograph The Vienna

School of Art History: Empire and the Politics of Scholarship, 1847-1918 is particularly useful. Not only does he demonstrate that the study of art history was cultivated by the state in the mid-nineteenth century, but that the artwork had a distinct purpose:

[T]he very notion of ‘scientific’ art history was ideologically charged:

its espousal by Viennese art historians was a coded means of claiming

that they stood above the fray of local political disputes, and in this

way they could claim a position akin to that of the dynasty itself: aloof

from local, nationally driven interests, with an impartial view of the

whole. (74)

However, Rampley claims that despite a great push to define national characteristics via the medium of the visual arts, there is very little to come from this time period that would meet this goal. Rampley explains the difficulties of producing such art for

the case of Austria-Hungary “were complex but were undoubtedly linked to the difficulties in defining ‘Austrian’ and ‘Austro-Hungarian’” (75). Therefore, the

Kronprinzenwerk is notable not only for its impressive scope, but for standing out as a unique project that portrays and includes ethnolinguistic minorities in its concurrent evaluation and construction of Austrian space.22

Despite the collected volume’s cosmopolitan propensity attributed to the

Kronprinzenwerk, Regina Bendix has argued that the outcome of the project was much different than the one intended:

[T]he work was very successful in confirming, if not essentializing

cultural difference, both aesthetically and conceptually. This very

effectiveness, however, contributed to the growing nationalist

tendencies in numerous parts of the Monarchy’s extremely diverse

population, rather than fostering the holistically patriotic goal

envisioned by the Crown Prince. (150)

Although Bendix presents a case for the negative effects from the Kronprinzenwerk and how it contributed, to a degree, to the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, its cosmopolitan purpose should not be overlooked. The various issues that Bendix presents are not unique to the Kronprinzenwerk and readily apply to ethnography as a discipline. Beyond doubt, Bendix raises important considerations concerning the

Kronprinzenwerk, but from the evidence left by Rudolf himself, one has to look at the

22 Matthew Rampley goes as far to say about the Kronprinzenwerk: “In this idealized image, therefore, Austria-Hungary played a crucial mediating role in Europe as a whole and brought together its individual cultures into a harmonious whole that was to the greater benefit of all” (83).

work as a product of its time and appreciate the cosmopolitan intention that was grounded in its inception.

Scholars have yet to thoroughly dissect this massive collection of articles, illustrations, local histories, and ethnography. Instead, most have described the project as a whole, its intention, and its reception. 23,24 While scholars have been fascinated with this project in its entirety, there are deeper connections to be made about the Kronprinzenwerk and its symbolic significance. Thus, I argue that Die

österreichische-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild is a tangible manifestation of how the peripheries and entirety of the Empire were understood, represented, and imagined by the powers at the center. Furthermore, I propose to investigate the nineteenth volume on Galicia. Published in 1898, the volume saddles the time periods between when Roth was reporting on the area and when the descriptions of

Sacher-Masoch and Franzos were being published. This document contextualizes these fictional and journalistic works and creates a broader portrait of Galicia. To understand this periphery within the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one needs to see its cultural and political position vis-à-vis the center. Additionally, all three authors discussed in this dissertation traveled widely through the Empire and often to

Vienna – both Roth and Franzos even studied at the Universität Wien. As such, the

23 The only academic assessment to be found about a single crown land is Vilmos Heizler’s chapter “Ungarischer (magyarischer) Nationalismus im “Kronprinzenwerk” (1997). 24 There is a chapter in Werner Telesko’s book Geschichtsraum Österreich: Die Habsburger und ihre Geschichte in der bildenden Kunst des 19. Jahrhunderts (2006), Justin Stagl’s chapters “Das ‘Kronprinzwerk’ – eine Darstellung des Vielvölkerreiches” (2002) and “The Kronprinzenwerk – Representing the Multi-National State” (1998), Zoltán Szász’s chapter “Das ‘Kronprinzenwerk’ und dessen Konzeption” (1997), as well Regina Bendix’s chapter “Ethnology, Cultural Reification, and the Dynamics of Difference in the Kronprinzenwerk” (2003).

Kronprinzenwerk makes for a vital connection between not only these three authors, but the space about which they were writing and creating.

B. Focus on Ethnic Difference

In his terse, yet comprehensive, book A Concise History of Austria, the prolific scholar Steven Beller provides a succinct explanation for why the imperial state of

Austria-Hungary dissolved: “Irredentism, the wish for national populations and territory to be ‘redeemed’ for the national homeland, destroyed the Habsburg

Monarchy” (178). Beller also makes the claim that World War I should have been avoided because Austria-Hungary “desperately needed to solve its internal problems” (185). While his statements are especially reductive in terms of understanding all the precise nuance of why the Habsburgs could not keep their empire together, his summation reflects the most commonly held view on why

Austria-Hungary could not continue as a multi-ethnic state.

One unique book concerning the topic of nationalities within Austria is the

1914 book The Whirlpool of Europe: Austria-Hungary and the Habsburgs by

Archibald and Ethel Colquhoun. They begin with the inception of the Habsburgs in

1027 at the castle of Habsichtsburg in southern Swabia. While their historical narrative is perhaps not novel, this book is an interesting object to inspect because of the time it was published; just as the face of the Austria-Hungary was about to dramatically change. On the very first page of their telling of Austria-Hungary’s history, the authors are quick to point out the loyalty of the many citizens of the

Habsburg Empire to their collective crown:

It has to be clearly understood that the fact of mutual dislikes among

the various people of Austria-Hungary does not necessarily impair

their loyalty to the house which has stood for so long a period as the

acknowledged representative to each of the kingly power, the

keystone of the social and political system, not only of the whole

realm, but of each separate part of it. (1)

While the point the authors seem to make largely is concentrated on how the house of Habsburg united the people, they present this loyalty in spite of the ethnic tension. The fact the authors even use the label mutual dislikes is indicative of the attitudes during the time in which the book was written. The second aspect mentioned in this passage is how the Kaiser was a unifying force for the varying ethnic groups. This is an important facet of the Empire’s cosmopolitanism that will be discussed in the next section of this chapter.

In their chapter entitled The House of Habsburg and Modern Europe, the authors provide a contemporary analysis of the efficacy of Habsburg power and preserving the cohesive Empire. They first claim that the Habsburgs have to simply maintain the status quo.25 However they then hint at the future of the state and what must change in order to prolong the life of the Empire: “Whether the proverbial luck which has attended the Habsburgs in political life will continue to come to their rescue is impossible to say, but it seems likely that the descendants of Francis

Joseph must develop more statesmanship than most of his ancestors possessed, if

25 They write: “The House of Habsburg, with Metternich as its adviser, believed the whole monarchical system, and more especially its own safety, to depend on maintaining the status quo throughout Europe; by preserving the conservative forces against anarchy, and preventing the rise of nationalities or groupings” (71).

they are to retain their position under modern conditions” (90). This particular passage is especially haunting as it demonstrates the acute grasp of the situation the authors had at the time of writing.

A similar book to the Colquhouns’ volume is Dr. Karl Renner’s Das

Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen in besonderer Anwendung auf Oesterreich, published in 1918. Even the first chapter of the book labels the contemporary situation in Austria as “Das nationale Problem Oesterreich-Ungarns” (3). The immediate reaction to the war and its impetuses by scholars affords us today a vantage point that lacks the kind of hindsight scholars today have. Additionally, by selecting sources that were written immediately after the war, we can perhaps gain insight into how Joseph Roth would have understood events. Renner writes of the war as a conflict between an old-world order and new times and openly declares a challenge for the leaders of the Austria that will emerge from the First World War:

Alles kommt darauf an, ob die für die Geschichte des Staates

Verantwortlichen die Kraft und den Mut haben, sich offen, zielsicher,

ohne Umschweife und ohne Konzession zur Internationalität, zu dem

einfach gegebenen Lebensprinzip eines Nationalitätenstaats zu

bekennen und danach mit eiserner Folgerichtigkeit auch zu handeln.

(34)26

26 Concerning the tension between old and new times, he writes: “Nur ein Ausschnitt dieses Problems sind die Wirren im Habsburgerreicht Oesterreichs Regierungsleute, die seit langer Zeit gewohnt sind, den Staat so zu verwalten, wie ein alter Erbförster das Waldgut seines Herrn, und Oesterreichs Parteimänner, die von den krisenhaften Zuckungen eines Weltteils kaum mehr wahrnahmen als die boshafte Störung ihres Kirchspielfriedens durch anderssprachige Stänkerer, rissen die Augen gewaltig auf, als sie durch einen leichtfertigen Streithandel mit einem aufsässigen Nachbarn einen Weltbrand entzündet hatten und dadurch sich plötzlich in den Strudel der Weltgeschichte hineingerissen sahen” (3).

Renner is concerned primarily with the political and legal aspects of living in the multicultural state of Austria-Hungary. He even poses a question that sums up the spectrum of his concern: “Die Aufgabe, die uns gestellt ist, lautet: da und wo viele Nationen in einem Staatswesen zusammenleben müssen, unter welchen

Rechtsformen und politischen Einrichtungen können sie da am besten bestehen?”

(41). Renner’s book is written more like musings on a problem that needed to be solved. He does not view it from the point of view of an actual citizen, but instead on a greater, diplomatic scale, and concerns himself with the issues at hand on a governmental level.

Both books, The Whirlpool of Europe and Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der

Nationen, while not strictly academic, provide a contemporary representation of the time when the country was changing the most.27 Their portraits both focus on ethnic conflict as one of the primary reasons that the multinational realm came to an end, and use overwhelmingly negative rhetoric when referring to the different nationalities that were a part of the k.u.k Empire. Their books reflect a tendency of the time to characterize the unique situation in Austria-Hungary as a problem in need of a solution.

Reading historiography of the monarchy is an attempt at untangling a complicated web of national conflicts. In his monograph The Habsburg Monarchy,

1809-1918: A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, historian A.J.P.

Taylor outlines the various tugs-of-war and the different political policies that were

27 The author of Das Selbstbestimmungsrect der Nationen is listed as Dr. Karl Renner, but it is unclear whether he is affiliated with an academic institution. The Whirlpool of Europe authors Archibald R. Colquhoun was the British Administrator of Southern Rhodesia from 1890-1892, traveled for various expeditions, and wrote prolifically on his experience.

decreed, disputed, and in many cases, redacted.28 Taylor depicts the time period of

1897-1908 as particularly devastating to maintaining a united front when it comes to the multi-national state, and even claims that the Empire as a whole was only persevered in one institution: “The Habsburg Monarchy lived only in the Austro-

Hungarian army; and the only question for the future was whether this army could survive a war, or still more a defeat” (213).29 Taylor’s monograph is rich with information, and like historians before him, also couches to the multinational state in Austria-Hungary in terms of “the national question” (197). His analysis also assumes that the Germans and Magyars were “master-races” (204), an extremely problematic designation for understanding the multicultural project of the

Habsburg Empire.

In the 1960’s, fueled by Hungarian historian Péter Hanák, there was a scholarly shift from understanding the multiculturalism in Austria-Hungary as the predominant reason for its downfall to a more nuanced view that incorporated the multitude of reasons the Habsburg Empire did not survive. 30 Hanák’s main argument – outlined in his edited volume Die nationale Frage in der Österreichisch-

Ungarischen Monarchie 1900-1918 – is to insist that social and economic factors

28 Two examples of policies meant to relieve ethnic tension are described in his chapter “Democratic Pretence: The Indian Summer of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1897-1908”: One would be the “Badeni ordinance” of 1897 that decreed that the languages of the inner service in Bohemia would be Czech and German, the other is the “Fiume resolutions” that demanded the reunion of Dalmatia with Croatia. 29 This is an astute observation, as much of Joseph Roth’s oeuvre deals with plots involving soldiers and the army. 30 In Victor-L. Tapié’s book The Rise and Fall of the Habsburg Monarchy (1971), he writes: “A Hungarian historian, P. Hanák, has recently made the point that a great many different forces were at work during the latter years of Austria-Hungary and warned historians of all schools, liberal or Marxist, against the danger of oversimplifying what is a highly complex problem. This is to say, in the language of the present day, that no ‘unilateral’ explanation can be accepted either for the preservation of the system until 1914 or for its collapse during the course of the war” (353).

played a massive role in the latter years of the Empire. Nevertheless, in Hanák’s description of how economics affected society, his analysis rests on ethnic differences:

Einige Völker sind auf ihrem ethnischen Gebiet durch alle

gesellschaftlichen Klassen vertreten, ihre Sprache ist deshalb die

Sprache des gesamten gesellschaftlichen und kulturellen Lebens.

Andere Völker setzen sich im wesentlichen aus Bauern und den

unteren Schichten der städtischen Bevölkerung zusammen, die

oberen Klassen auf ihrem ethnischen Gebiet (der Adel mit seinem

Großgrundbesitz, die Bourgeoisie mit ihrem Kapital) gehören zu einer

anderen ethnischen Gruppe, Beamtentum und Intelligenz bestehen

meist aus Fremden und Assimilierten, die Sprache des höheren

gesellschaftlichen Lebens und der höheren Kultur ist eine für die

Mehrheit der Bevölkerung fremde Sprache. (11)

Hanák’s insistence that economic factors should be more heavily taken into consideration is important to note for changing the tune of historiography on the subject. Nonetheless, it is still apparent that his characterization of economic difference in Austria-Hungary is not only striking for its ethnic component, as well as perpetuating yet another duality that seems to pervade historiography on

Austria-Hungary. Whether it is Cisleithania versus Transleithania, Vienna versus

Budapest, Crown Land versus Capital, historians have created dualities that characterize the complexities inherent in the kaiserlich und königlich Empire, but

also reduce it to certain binaries that do not allow for a more nuanced interpretation of history.31,32

These binaries that inevitably created tension were apparent in Vienna.

When discussing the years 1913-1914 in Vienna, Frederic Morton claims “[i]nside

[Parliament] seethed a witches’ sabbath of nationalisms. Here the ethnic groups of the Empire’s non-Hungarian part went at each other through their representatives”

(Thunder 18). Morton makes it clear that ethnic tension was not just reserved for local groups on the periphery, but that it affected politics on the Ringstraße, especially before World War I.

How this multiculturalism affected Galicia is very relevant, because it proved to be both cosmopolitan, yet also have its own unique brand of ethnic tension. This point will be discussed in the next chapter, when I shift my focus from the Austro-

Hungarian Empire at large to the more specific Eastern region. Nonetheless, in the pages of this section, one can see that I have demonstrated how historians have focused on national conflict, particularly by referring to the multi-ethnic situation as a nationality question. While it is undeniable that the national tensions ran high, especially during the end of the Empire, the scholarship I have outlined thus far presents a rather one-sided account, in that multiculturalism was a problem that eventually led to the collapse of the monarchy. However, there is a new wave of

31 Péter Hanák’s book The Garden and the Workshop: Essays on the Cultural History of Vienna and Budapest is a rife example of how the two capitals of the Austro-Hungarian Empire are similar and disparate. 32 Robert A. Kann writes: “As to the aristocracy, the whole history of the Habsburg monarchy shows a distinct conflict between what may be called the territorial aristocracy in the historico-political entities; namely, those Habsburg lands of independent cultural-political tradition, on the one hand, and the high court nobility at the administrative center of the empire in Vienna on the other” (10).

scholarship that investigates the benefits, even willingness, of ordinary citizens of the state to participate in and encourage multiculturalism.

C. Challenging the Maps

One of the unique features of the Habsburg Empire was its multiculturalism, and how close these cultures were to one another. Unlike any other Empires of the era, for example the British or Ottoman, the Habsburg Empire was contiguous.

However, other features made it unique as well: the particular devotion to Kaiser and König Franz Joseph, a high level of relative sovereignty for the different regions of the Empire, as well as policies that were developed to promote tolerance and representation of the varying ethnicities and religions.33 The maps that present the

Habsburg Empire as a conglomeration of independent, discrete ethnicities and languages are misleading when one takes the aforementioned qualities of the

Habsburg Empire into consideration. As will be discussed, there were distinct measures, at the center as well as the periphery, taken to incorporate minority cultures under the Habsburg umbrella. Robert Lemon has observed that the

Habsburg Empire united its citizens under the idea and power of the “Habsburg myth, the notion of a supra-national allegiance to the imperial throne” (2) and that the Habsburgs “conceived of imperialism as a matter of domestic, rather than foreign policy, a foundational myth that did not harness, but rather repressed the nationalist energies of its diverse population” (2).

33 In the book Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (2010), authors Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper state: “A hallmark of Habsburg rule was its cultivation of ethnic and religious minorities. In 1781, Joseph’s Edict of Toleration gave Protestants, Orthodox, and Uniates the same rights as Catholics and reduced restrictions on Jews” (347).

However, this Habsburg myth, first theorized by Claudio Magris, should not be merely relegated to the fictional realm, but instead regarded as an actual phenomenon that existed for many reasons that the following historians attempt to trace. Furthermore, there were a great number of ambiguous or multiple cultural identification(s) on the part of the citizens, as well as many who were wholly ambivalent to the rising nationalist movements. There has been an effort to uncover additional narratives about the Habsburg Empire that move beyond ascribing its downfall to only national tensions. In this way, these narratives challenge the maps that suggest languages, ethnicities, and identifications only occurred within concrete, geopolitical borders and that these relationships were dictated by inflexible labels.

This appreciation of multiculturalism is traced most often to Joseph II’s

Toleranzpatente, which began in October 1781. They first mandated tolerance of

Greek Orthodox, Calvinist, and Lutheran subjects, and were later extended to Jews.

Nancy Wingfield explains the lasting effects of these edicts: “Although these edicts faced fierce opposition, as a number of bishops obstructed their implementation, they laid the basis for full legal equality, which Emperor Franz Joseph would eventually grant the Protestants in 1861 and the Jews in 1867” (63). Additionally,

Joseph II initiated many reforms for the churches, legal system, and social systems that “took a decisive step towards establishing the economic freedom and security of the monarchy’s peasants” (Ingrao 201). Joseph II’s actions during his time as ruler have been labeled a tour de force by Charles Ingrao (202) and would have lasting effects for the multiethnic Empire.

Josephinism did not occur without its controversies: Charles Ingrao has written that “Christians of all persuasions derided Joseph as ‘emperor of the

Jews’“(199) and when Joseph II proclaimed in 1784 that the universal language of administration for the Empire would be German, it was met with much opposition and eventually was repealed by his successor.34 However, as Nancy Wingfield notes,

Joseph II’s legacy was largely positive when it comes to the appreciation of the

Empire’s varied peoples.35 Joseph II’s impact in Galicia will be further discussed in the next chapter.

Turning now to how historians have started to view the Empire as more cosmopolitan, I would like to first discuss István Deák’s compelling study Beyond

Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg Officer Corps, 1848-1918

(1990). Deák’s focus aligns well with the point I am asserting about reevaluating the

Habsburg Monarchy to focus not on ethnic difference, but cosmopolitanism. While

Deák limits his focus to the officer corps between the years of 1848 and 1918, he is particularly effective in demonstrating that the Habsburg army, “the most important all-monarchical institution in the realm” (4), “did not direct these officers toward any specific political orientation” (211). According to Deák, “an enormous number of

Joint Army officers had, for all intents and purposes, no nationality” (184). Deák’s thesis is especially important in my consideration of national and ethnic difference, because he claims that the very soldiers fighting in World War I were, in fact, not

34 See Wingfield, pgs. 63-64 35 Wingfield writes: “Numerous anecdotes recounting his visits to small towns and villages and his meetings with common people, be it the butcher, the cattle handler, or the weaver, were passed down from one generation to the next and reflected Joseph II’s enduring reputation as the benevolent emperor who behaved, in encounters with his people, as ‘like among like’” (66).

participating in the ethnic struggles that historians have claimed were a prominent contributing factor to the fall of the Empire. The army, according to Deák’s assessments, is a significant group in understanding how the Habsburg Empire functioned above national lines and thus moved beyond the maps that simply deny this kind of participation in the Empire.

Given the various cultures and nationalities within its borders, the Habsburg

Empire from 1848 to 1918 is often seen as a patchwork of mutually exclusive ethnolinguistic territories, with language frontiers running between them. While I did not discuss language in the previous section, it is the case that these maps were created by a question on the census concerning the language spoken in each region.

The data ultimately came from the census that first was established in 1880. The question that decided what color a person would become on the map was the question of their Umgangssprache. While the maps were drawn based on these answers, this question and its significance for national identification has since been looked at with a more critical eye. The notion of an Umgangssprache becomes increasingly complicated when taken into the territory of the Sprachgrenzen. The process of researching and creating these maps conflates language and identity into an answer that seems too simplistic when understanding these culturally diverse areas of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Even the census demonstrates how identity was seen as a monolithic entity that allowed for only one language.

The two preeminent historians that have challenged this view of mutually exclusive territories are Pieter Judson and Tara Zahra. Judson’s Guardians of the

Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria and Zahra’s

Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian

Lands, 1900-1948 demonstrate that in the areas known as Sprachgrenzen, there was great effort by nationalist groups to battle the national indifference that was seen as a hindrance to the local nationalist effort.

Judson is quick to explain that the very notion of Sprachgrenzen and

“contends rather that most inhabitants of such regions rarely viewed themselves specifically as ‘frontier people’ or their regions as frontiers between nations” (3).

While the map paints a seemingly rigid border between these ethnolinguistic groups, Judson points out that the people actually living there often spoke two or more languages, socialized with people who spoke a different language and often sent their children to different language schools (2-3). Zahra would agree with

Judson on this point as she calls attention to the fact that appreciating differences that were located close to home was seen in a positive light:

Czech-speaking children commonly spent their summer holidays or

even a school year with German-speaking families (and vice versa) for

the purpose of learning the second provincial language. As adults,

most participants remembered these exchanges fondly as vehicles for

linguistic and national understanding. (1)

Judson and Zahra both agree that Otherness was not necessarily viewed negatively or with disdain at the Sprachgrenzen, as many nationalists would have liked to believe. Instead Judson argues that that people living on the borders of a language group were not participating in any kind of nationalist discourse, much to the dismay of nationalist groups: Indeed, Judson “provides a corrective to nationalist

historiography, disproves the confident presumption of a nationalized rural populace, and demonstrates how that illusion was created and disseminated” (181).

Judson and Zahra have complicated traditional narratives about the Austro-

Hungarian Empire, and from their work arises a sense of how the periphery was vastly different than the center. As previously mentioned, Frederic Morton has discussed the fervent nationalist conflict within the Viennese parliament. 36

However, Judson and Zahra’s work emphasize how history has recorded the nationalist unrest, but how what was happening at the periphery has been heretofore neglected. Judson firmly states this view in his article “Do Multiple

Languages Mean a Multicultural Society? Nationalist ‘Frontiers’ in Rural Austria,

1880-1918”:

Rural life in Austria certainly had its share of social conflicts, but those

conflicts were not often produced by a prior sense of belonging to one

nation or another or by a sense of profound victimization based on

one’s own language use. Nor does the evidence suggest that local

differences in language use had traditionally led to skirmishes within

rural communities in multilingual regions. […] Instead of giving

political voice to existing cultural differences in rural Austria, as

nationalists claimed they did, their rhetoric constituted an attempt to

create new social boundaries in multilingual communities precisely

where few such boundaries had traditionally existed. (61)

36 In his book Thunder at Twilight: Vienna 1913/1914, Morten has written: “Instead of exploding the Empire, nationalist fury spent itself in theater. Representatives bristled so histrionically against each other that often they had little energy left to use against the Emperor’s Double Eagle under whose wings they were allowed to stage their confrontation” (19).

There is much contention over how Austria’s history has been written and what was happening in places under Austrian control. Judson and Zahra never explicitly engage in theories of periphery and center, but this relationship between the two spatial designations is certainly worth considering.

One recent volume that engages with the topic of periphery and multiculturalism is the 2014 volume Understanding Multiculturalism: The Habsburg

Central European Experience, edited by Johannes Feichtinger and Gary Cohen.

Although they do not label the Habsburg lands as cosmopolitan, they do provide a definition that lends itself well to this conclusion: “History shows that diversity as a lived and intensely debated experience does not, in defiance of all differences necessarily articulate in divisive terms” (5).

Particularly helpful in framing the discussion here is Moritz Csáky’s chapter

“Culture as a Space of Communication,” in which he also asserts that historians and other academics need to challenge the view that national difference was the primary reason for the fall of the Empire:

Historiography thus remains predicated upon the national narrative

of the nineteenth century; it rarely tries to see the constitutive

linguistic and cultural differences of the region, which nationalist

movements exploited for their ends from a point of view that is not

indebted to the category of the nation state. (187)

Csáky’s solution to the problem would be to “approach the issue from the angle of

Kulturwissenschaft” (187). While the collection of essays that constitute the volume

Understanding Multiculturalism do not particularly engage with literature produced

during the time of Roth’s career, this volume makes it clear that scholars should look beyond established trends and preconceptions, and incorporate a variety of sources when understanding the Habsburg experiences of multiculturalism. These analyses I have discussed are blazing a trail for this method. As such, these scholars have particularly inspired this dissertation in that it is possible to hold the perspective that multiculturalism within the Habsburg lands was not inevitably linked to problems and strife. We can today investigate this multiculturalism in new ways to gain a deeper understanding of ethnicity, identity, cosmopolitanism, literature, and

Habsburg history.

D. The Kronprinzenwerk and Galicia

Galicia’s portrait depicted by authors during the time of Habsburg rule has been less than flattering. In her book Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian

Galicia, historian Alison Fleig Frank utilizes literary examples to demonstrate how

Galicia became synonymous with dirtiness and poverty. She writes: “Galicia appears only peripherally in Robert Musil’s unfinished novel The Man Without Qualities, written in the 1930s. It is, for example, the birthplace of a Jewish chambermaid and a potent symbol of dirty and unpleasant travel – both images that are typical for the memory of Galicia” (246). Frank emphasizes the initial hope and ultimate failure of the oil production in Galicia, and thus employs more negative accounts of Galicia to corroborate her narrative of how the oil dried up in Galicia. Yet, what is most germane about her analysis is the fact that she underscores the pessimistic image of the province in texts of the time.

Even Joseph Roth, in his 1924 journalism about Galicia acknowledges stereotypes held by Western Europeans about the Eastern periphery. He begins his essay with this admission: “Das Land hat in Westeuropa einen üblen Ruf. Der wohlfeile und faule Witz des zivilisierten Hochmuts bringt es in eine abgeschmackte

Verbindung mit Ungeziefer, Unrat, Unredlichkeit” (Joseph Roth auf Reisen 19). In a similar vein, after having visited the Galician oil town of Boryslaw in 1928, Roth warns the readers of the Frankfurter Zeitung of the area: “Ich hoffe, lieber Freund, daß ich Ihnen eine Ahnung von der Atmosphäre des osteuropäischen Kalifornien vermitteln konnte. Ich beschrieb es Ihnen, um Ihnen zu zeigen, daß ich nicht durchaus Idyllisches aus diesem Land zu berichten entschlossen bin” (Joseph Roth auf Reisen 64). While Roth was describing the industrial wasteland that held remnants of the oil industry, his portrait of the area does not exactly beckon travelers.

Even in his literary texts, Roth acknowledges the perceived backward and decrepit image of Galicia. His 1937 novel Das falsche Gewicht: Die Geschichte eines

Eichmeisters narrates the story of civil servant Anselm Eibenschütz and is set in the fictional town of Zlotogrod. Eibenschütz is assigned to the area by the government to inspect the weights and measures. The area is depicted as remote and its citizens as inhospitable. Fate is not kind to Eibenschütz, as he loses his wife to his office worker and undergoes a series of unfortunate events. At the end of the novel, he gives up hope for life and is eventually killed by a local tavern owner. Even though

Roth portrayed an aspect of Galicia that directly contradicts the more laudatory and multicultural characteristics of the eastern region, I find it crucial to point out that

Roth acknowledged Galicia’s reputation within his fiction. Indeed, the depressing novel Das falsche Gewicht: Die Geschichte eines Eichmeisters makes for a more nuanced portrait of the former crown land.

For as negative as the image of Galicia was depicted in contemporary fiction, the Kronprinzenwerk makes for a striking counterpoint to these portrayals. For example, in the opening lines of the Galician volume of the Kronprinzenwerk, the author describes the trip to Cracow and what one experiences along the way: “Je mehr man sich der Stadt nähert, desto mehr fühlt man sich von der Gegend angezogen. Dem Thale entlang ziehen sanfte Hügel, von Buchen, Tannen und

Lärchen bewachsen; aus dunklen Waldungen schießen junge, leichte und duftige

Birken empor” (4). This depiction directly contrasts that of the aforementioned authors, as well as Karl Emil Franzos, for example, which will be discussed in the next chapter. To say that the Kronprinzenwerk asserts an idyll is an understatement, but it is one that is carefully constructed with the center of the Empire in mind.

While its bucolic qualities make sense considering the aim of the project, reading the

Galician volume is striking in how different Galicia is portrayed compared to literary texts of the time period.

The Galician volume of the Kronprinzenwerk is primarily dedicated to rich descriptions of cities, landscapes, people, and architecture. The 890-page tome, the thickest of all volumes of the Kronprinzenwerk, is split into six main sections:

“Landschaftliche Schilderung,” “Geschichte,” “Volkskunde,” “Literatur und Theater,”

“Bildende Kunst,” and “Volkswirthschaftliches Leben.” Under each heading, there are lists that separate the various cultures living in the region. For example, under

the heading “Volkskunde,” there seven sub-headings that are delineated by national group: “Das Volksleben der Polen,” “Das Volksleben der Ruthenen,” “Die Armenier,”

“Die deutsche Colonisation,” “Die Juden,” “Die polnischen Mundarten,” and “Die ruthenischen Mundarten.” Similarly, under the heading “Literatur und Theater” is listed “Polnische Literatur” and “Ruthenische Literatur.”37 In this way, the Galician volume stands out as unique to the rest of the volumes that comprise the

Kronprinzenwerk. Even in the tenth volume on Austrian Littoral – an area where

Italian, Slovene, Croatian, and German were spoken – there is no breakdown of specific aspects belonging to each ethnolinguistic group. Therefore, the multiculturalism that is unique to Galicia is emphasized even in the

Kronprinzenwerk.

Specifically for this dissertation, it is most telling to turn to the chapters on the cities of Lemberg and Cracow. Much of the literature discussed in subsequent chapters center around the town of Lemberg, and it’s location as a town at the

Eastern periphery of Galicia is important to note. Additionally, it is a place that has historically had much diversity, which will be discussed in the next chapter. With the Galician volume of the Kronprinzenwerk reaching nearly 900 pages, it is a point of departure to understanding and appreciating this massive tome. The section on

Cracow provides an interesting counterpoint to the section on Lvov, and includes descriptions that help us to gain insight into the Kronprinzenwerk as a document.

Additionally, the Kronprinzenwerk volume on Galicia only includes two descriptions

37 It is a curious observation that there is no German literature sub-heading listed here when this dissertation is asserting that there was a unique brand of literature in the German language that hailed from this area. In fact, the only time that the word “deutsch” appears in the “Inhalt” page is a section on “Die deutsche Colonisation.”

of cities: Krakau and Lemberg. The rest of the volume is broken down into the topics mentioned above, but only two explicit cities are described. It is within these descriptions that I will demonstrate the tone of how Galicia was depicted by the center.

From the very first lines of the Landschaftliche Schilderung of Krakau, the target audience of the Kronprinzenwerk is revealed:

Wenn man von Wien aus auf der Fahrt nach Galizien Schlesien mit

seinen Wohlstand und Ordnungsliebe zeugenden Städtchen und

Fluren verlassen und einen ziemlich öden, traurigen Theil des

Großherzogthums Krakau hinter sich hat, gelangt man plötzlich

mitten unter liebliche Hügel, unter anmuthige, wenn auch dem Blicke

eines von Westen ankommenden Touristen, arm und bescheiden

aussehende Dörfer. Man befindet sich eben in der von Dichtern

besungenen, von Malern mehrmals dargestellten Umgegend Krakaus.

(3)

The document immediately states that the traveler would be coming from Vienna, thereby placing Vienna as the core to the periphery that Cracow represents.

Important to keep in mind is how the periphery is constructed from the center. As the editors of the volume Zentren, Peripherien und kollektive Identitäten in

Österreich-Ungarn (2006) urge: “Wichtig ist hier unseres Erachtens, dass sich die

Dichotomie von ‘Zentrum’ und ‘Peripherie’ sinnvollerweise nur im Rahmen eines sozialen bzw. kulturellen Konstruktivismus – also nicht essenzialistisch – behaupten lässt, mit anderen Worten: der Gegensatz ist gemacht und existiert nicht außerhalb

der sozialen Praxis” (2). When reading the Kronprinzenwerk, readers of today especially must keep this in mind, but also appreciate the document for its rich cultural material and unique perspective.

From this introduction, it is easy to read the Kronprinzenwerk as a piece of travel writing and not merely an example of early ethnography, as often characterized by most scholars. This introduction to the city is also significant for how the traveler’s gaze is constructed through an aesthetic experience. The city should be seen and appreciated because it has been written about and painted, and the author of the volume is quick to mention this fact. As seen in this introduction to

Cracow, the Galician volume of the Kronprinzenwerk is a document for those who not only come from Vienna, and are not only literate, but also well-read, and can appreciate an aesthetic experience. The purported goal of the Kronprinzenwerk was to create an appreciation for the Empire, but from the onset, it is clear that this appreciation is one that is centered in Vienna and is exclusive to a certain strata of society that would find value in, and even expect, such an aesthetic experience.

To provide a contrast to the Kronprinzenwerk, consider the opening paragraph of the section on Galicia in the 1896 Baedeker guide Austria, including

Hungary, Transylvania, Dalmatia, and Bosnia:

General Remarks. Galicia, the N.E. province of Austria, slopes down in

terraces on the N. side of the Carpathians and contains many marshy

plains. Unprotected towards the N. and N.E., it has late springs, short

summers, and long and severe winters. It is rich in corn, wood, salt,

and petroleum, but poor in industries, which are chiefly in the hands

of the Jews (660,000 out of a population of 6 millions), to whom most

of the inns, taverns, and shops belong. The horse-dealers and

carriage-owners are always Jews. They differ in their dress and the

mode of wearing their hair from the other inhabitants, who despise

them but are financially dependent on them. Of the other inhabitants,

who are almost exclusively Slavonic, about one-half are Poles, who

dwell chiefly in the W. part of Galicia, the other half are Ruthenians,

who occupy the E. part; but Polish is the official and literary language

of the whole province. The Ruthenians (Russinians, Russniaks) differ

materially from the Poles in language, in religion, and in political

views. In culture they are considerably inferior; their churches and

houses, especially in the country districts are miserably poor and

squalid. (273)

The section begins with general information about geography, but that same geography is ultimately constructed as a type of barrier that separates the specific groups of people. The Baedeker guide also focuses on difference and utilizes vitriolic language to describe the various interactions of the multiethnic groups. The target audience of both the Baedeker guides and the Kronprinzenwerk would have been same: people who were interested in travel and other parts of the world, people who would be able to financially afford to travel, and those who would want to read about it. As Michael Maurer has written: “Die wesentliche Ursache für die Zunahme des Reisens im 18. Jahrhundert muß wohl im Bereich mentalitätsgeschichtlichen

Wandel, der bestimmte soziale Voraussetzungen hat, die man, mit einem

Schlagwort, als ‘Aufstieg des Bürgertums’ kennzeichnen kann” (406).

The Kronprinzenwerk and the Baedeker guides both reflect this rise of the bourgeoisie, and the Kronprinzenwerk is explicitly for a wider audience outside of the aristocracy. However, with both of these documents, it is evident how the authors of the Kronprinzenwerk made a conscious choice to not replicate the established narrative that the Baedeker guides employ. That is not to say that the

Kronprinzenwerk does not have its biases – on the contrary, it does – but that its perspective certainly slants towards the positive. Consequently, the Baedeker guide provides a litmus test that demonstrates the unique tone of the Kronprinzenwerk.

This difference lies in the fact that the Kronprinzenwerk is an imperial project and its intended aim was to unite, whereas the Baedeker guides are meant for information as it applies to tourism.

The difference between the two texts also underscores how the

Kronprinzenwerk is focused on an aesthetic experience, and wants to convey more about a place than the facts about the population, customs, and language. Mary

Louise Pratt has claimed that travel books “gave European reading publics a sense of ownership, entitlement and familiarity with respect to the distant parts of the world that were being explored, invaded, invested in, and colonized” (3). This distinction is broken down with the Kronprinzenwerk: those writing the travel reports were simultaneously in service of a project of the center that had the goal of highlighting similarities. If we are to read the Kronprinzenwerk in this manner according to Pratt, the Kronprinzenwerk supported this imperialist and peripheral

relationship of Galicia to the center, not only in its inception and creation, but by allowing other citizens of the Empire to view Galicia in this manner. However, it is more complicated than what Pratt analyses, as she focuses her analysis on German travelers from the early nineteenth century. On the one hand, Kronprinzenwerk employed locals to write about the place, thus supporting a more local view, but they were deliberately writing for a wider audience that had certain expectations of description. This tension between the local and the national, even supra-national, is what makes the Kronprinzenwerk such a fascinating document. Not only is space described and constructed, but the complicated networks of the periphery to the center can be detected in the idyllic descriptions of towns, cities, and architecture.

By setting up Cracow as a periphery, the Kronprinzenwerk is displaying a unique aspect of travel writing and the construction of space. According to Pratt:

While the imperial metropole tends to image itself as determining the

periphery […], it habitually blinds itself to the reverse dynamic, the

powers colonies have other their “mother” countries. For instance,

empires create in the imperial center of power an obsessive need to

present and re-present its peripheries and its other continually to

itself. It becomes dependent on its others to know itself. Travel

writing, among other institutions, is heavily organized in the service

of that need. (4)

If we take Pratt’s assumptions about the periphery and travel writing to be valid with the case at hand, then the Kronprinzenwerk becomes an important document not only for its cosmopolitan intentions, but also for its underlying

purpose of simultaneously reaffirming Vienna’s privileged position within the k.u.k.

Empire. Pratt mentions that there was a trend in travel writing in that the travelee’s voice – that is, those who have been visited – is never heard. This is not the case with the Kronprinzenwerk, precisely because locals to the region of each volume were hired to be authors. Yet, they are locals who carry certain assumptions about the position of Galicia vis-à-vis Vienna, and write for an audience that would primarily be located in the Habsburg capital.

Pratt writes of the contact zone as the “social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination – such as colonialism and slavery” (7). The process that results from the meeting at the contact zone is labeled transculturation by Pratt, which she defines as “how subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted to them by a dominant or metropolitan culture” (7). The

Kronprinzenwerk does show evidence of the contact zone, especially when discussing exactly how Cracow is on the periphery: “So wie hier, so waltet überall um Krakau herum Sage und Geschichte. Beide erzählen von langen Kriegen, von schweren Kämpfen mit europäischen und vornehmlich asiatischen Völkern, von der

Vertheidigung aller christlichen Länder gegen mongolische, mohamedanische

Übermacht und Barbarei” (4).

For the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Galicia is a contact zone because it marks the border of not only Austria, but Europe, Christianity and civilization. Austria was routinely threatened by the Ottoman Empire, and the Ringstraße is a project that is a reminder of how the Austrians protected themselves from Ottoman attack.

Austria-Hungary had a position in Europe that was different than other Western countries or Empires in that they abutted the Ottoman Empire. This proximity is reflected in the Kronprinzenwerk: not only is Galicia the periphery to Vienna, but to

Europe at large. Galicia is an example of the contact zone that Pratt describes, and the Kronprinzenwerk calls attention to this position.

As for the transculturation that Pratt asserts in her analyses of travel writing, the Kronprinzenwerk is rife with examples of such a process. Transculturation traces the extent to which the minority culture has adapted and readapted aspects of the dominant culture. The Kronprinzenwerk would therefore be a product of the process of transculturation, if it is to be understood that Austria is the dominant culture. The

Austrians came to Galicia in 1772 and established German as the language of government and administration, therefore the Kronprinzenwerk can be seen as example of how the process of transculturation transpired. Thus tension between the periphery and center are revealed in how the authors of the Kronprinzenwerk wrote in order to adhere to the standards of the Crown Prince Rudolf and his team at the center. However, they tended to do so in a way that does not diminish their local voice.

For example, within the description of Cracow, there is a mention of how traveling to there is like traveling back in time:

Die ‘thürmende Stadt’, von welcher Schiller spricht, scheint vor

unseren Augen auszutauchen. Man glaubt in vollständige

Vergangenheit einzufahren, aus der Gegenwart in frühere Zeiten zu

gerathen. Und das ist auch theilweise der Fall. Man möge nur die

krumme, zum Schloß führende Straße durchwandern, in welcher die

Domherren seit Jahrhunderten wohnen. Wie still ist sie, wie todt und

feierlich. Ein Wunder, daß hier kein Gras zwischen den Pflastersteinen

hervorquillt. Krakau ist ein Ort, wie Brügge, Mecheln oder Pisa, eine

Stadt, wo das Menschenleben der Vegetation zu sehr gleicht, daß man

dieselbe nicht auf den Straßen dulde. (5)

The first part of this passage makes reference to Friedrich Schiller’s poem

Der Spaziergang when he writes: “Prangend verkündigen ihn von fern die beleuchteten Kuppeln, / Aus dem felsigten Kern hebt sich die thürmende Stadt”

(208). By referring to Schiller, the author reveals the intended audience as intellectual, and one who would esteem German literature. Additionally, the relationship of the periphery to Galicia is described not in spatial terms, but in temporal, in that to travel to the periphery is to travel to the past. In suggesting this notion, it is implied that the people at the periphery do not evolve as those do in the center. Adolf Loos, writing from Vienna, has suggested a similar viewpoint in his seminal essay Ornament and Crime (1908):

I am living, say, in 1912, my neighbor around 1900, and that man over

there in 1880. It is a misfortune for a state if the culture of its

inhabitants stretches over too great a time span. The peasant who

farms in the shadow of the Großglockner lives in the twelfth century.

On the occasion of the festival procession to celebrate the Emperor’s

jubilee we shuddered to learn that here in Austria we still have tribes

from the fourth century. (170)

This passage by Adolf Loos certainly corresponds to the Kronprinzenwerk in that the expectations of the Viennese audience are the same. The readers of the

Kronprinzenwerk are looking for confirmation of their suspicions that the periphery lags behind the metropolis, and in this section on Cracow, their expectations would have been met.

In the section on Cracow, many of the biases that are inherent within the

Kronprinzenwerk are revealed. In the Lemberg section, many of these biases still exist, but there is an emphasis on the multiculturalism that has come to define the city. The first sentences of the section on Lemberg emphasize not only the manmade fortifications, but the nature surrounding of the city, as well as the history of the place:

Lemberg ist eine Stadt ohne Perspective, nur aus der Vogelschau zu

sehen. Nicht wie es einer einst uneinnehmbaren Veste anstehen

würde, weit rundum das Land beherrschend, mit ihren Thürmen und

Zinnen Freund und Feind von Ferne sichtbar, sondern gleichsam auf

die Lauer gelegt oder sich ängstlich vor den wilden Schaaren bergend,

die so oft an ihren Mauren abgeprallt sind, liegt die galizische

Landeshauptstadt in einem ziemlich tiefen Kessel, ringsherum von

Anhöhen umgeben. (30)

From the opening sentences of the section on Lemberg, the author also addresses this expectation of describing cities as idyllic and like a painting. The fact that the author urges us to see Lemberg from a Vogelshau is indicative of this painterly approach to writing and description.

Adding to this aesthetic experience of the city are the many images that are presented to the reader within the Kronprinzenwerk. Many images are of well- known historical figures, while others are of buildings and architectural features, and even more are every-day scenes ranging from a typical kitchen in Krakau to a drawing of standard pottery. The scenes of people and cities far outnumber the illustrations of nature. Furthermore, while these initial sections focus on the cities, the Volkskunde section includes a huge number of pictures depicting the variety of peoples to be found. Illustrations with captions like “Bauernfamilie aus der Gegend von Krakau,” “Vodhalanen,” and “Trachten der Lasowiaken” are found scattered throughout the text. The illustrations serve the Kronprinzenwerk well in that they draw the reader in and contribute and even reinforce this painterly perspective to the Empire.

From the opening sentence on the description of the city of Lemberg, the author turns to acknowledge the negative portrayals of the city, but quickly ascribes more positive qualities to the city:

Von welcher Seite immer der Reisende der Stadt naht, rollt er

gleichsam in sie plötzlich hinein. Das Unmalerische der Lage und der

ziemlich morose Charakter der umgebenden Landschaft tragen jedoch

dazu bei, dass sich Lemberg dem Auge des Ankommenden als etwas

Unvermitteltes, Überraschendes darstellt, und der Reiz des

Unerwarteten wird noch gehoben, wenn man neben den stattlichen

Gassen und den stolz emporragenden Thürmen, die man selbst in

unmittelbarer Nähe der Stadt nicht geahnt, auch die vielen Gärten und

Parkanlagen überblickt, welche mit ihrem erquickenden Grün die

Häuserreihen unterbrechen. (30-31)

The fact that the author of the Lemberg section, Ladislaus Ritter von Lozinski, includes these negative characterizations into his own description, but then employs more positive language to describe the city demonstrates that he was not only familiar with the negative stereotypes of the area, but quite eager to convince the readers of the Kronprinzenwerk otherwise.

Also worth mentioning about this excerpt is that the author explicitly states his audience: der Reisende. The tourist is the targeted reader for the

Kronprinzenwerk, but the language of the Kronprinzenwerk is quite different than the travel language of the aforementioned Baedeker guides. As Wolfgang Reif has pointed out, travel guides at the turn of the century were focused on more exotic lands and were a product of growing imperialism, industry, and globalization. Reif cites Bernhard Kellermann’s travel piece Ein Spaziergang in Japan as typical of this time: “Der Titel gibt die Haltung des reisenden Autors exakt wieder. Als Flaneur und ohne vorgefaßte Reiseziele will er Japan auf sich einwirken lassen, jederzeit offen für neue Reize und Überraschungen, die ihm der Augenblick zuträgt” (438). The

Kronprinzenwerk uses these exact words – Reiz and Überraschung– to describe what the traveler is to experience in Galicia. The Kronprinzenwerk constructs Galicia to be exotic and thus exciting for the Viennese traveler. The tendency in travel writing at the turn of the century was to find more exotic and interesting locations, and the

Kronprinzenwerk section on Lemberg is attempting to lure their readers by complying to the trends of the time. In reading this section, one is not only intrigued

about Galicia and Lemberg, but is also being conditioned to expect something completely different from Vienna and the center.

Throughout the essay, the author continuously reminds the reader of

Lemberg’s history, but the fact that the city is facing forward. For example, the next passage is indicative of Lemberg’s Janus-faced position:

Dem Fremden, der in den Mauern Lembergs nur kurze Zeit verweilt,

ja selbst dem Einwohner, der seine Physiognomie nur oberflächlich

beobachtet, ist es eine durchaus neue, rasch emporwachsende, in

machen Theilen eben erst im hastigen Aufbau begriffene Stadt, dem

aufmerksameren Blicke entgeht jedoch nicht der vornehme

historische Zug, den sich die Stadt bis auf unsere Tage zu erhalten

wußte. (31)

Joseph Roth would go on to describe the city in a similar manner: one that recaptures the time of Habsburg rule, but is simultaneously crafting its own identity apart from the past. Both texts – the Kronprinzenwerk and Joseph Roth’s feuilletons

– are similar in that they depict the region’s tumultuous history, but ultimately leave the readers with impressions of Galicia’s enduring characteristics. Both Roth and the

Kronprinzenwerk contribute to the image of Galicia and how it is remembered in the written word.

The remainder of the passages on the city of Lemberg are written as if the author is walking around the city narrating its past. Each building has a history and is connected to famous denizens. In this way, the Kronprinzenwerk reads like a travel narrative. And like a traveler observing the space for the first time, the

narrative that is built is one that concentrates on the mundane details of the city that others might find exotic. For example, the author writes: “Mit geringer

Ausnahme sind es schmale, zweistöckige, dreifensterige Häuser, manche unter ihnen in architektonischer und decorativer Hinsicht recht interessant und bedeutend“ (32).

The emphasis is placed on the commonplace, and not the grandiose. There are moments within the text that convey to the reader the status of Lemberg vis-à- vis the rest of the Empire. For example, the narrator mentions the important buildings of the city, but with a particular caveat: “Das alte Lemberg ist allerdings klein und seine alterthümlichen Baudenkmale von höherer historischer oder künstlerischer Bedeutung sind an den Fingern zu zählen” (31). While it does make efforts to pique the curiosity of the reader, the audience is simultaneously reassured that Galicia is subordinate culturally and historically to Habsburg Vienna.

What is particularly salient is how the section on Lemberg represents the city’s diversity. Throughout the text, there are various references to different nationalities and cultures; an interesting development because at the time, there were no clear delineations of who belonged to which national group. For instance, consider the following passage:

Der Neuaufbau der eingeäscherten Stadt traf in den Zeitpunkt, in

welchem an Stelle des deutschen der italienische Einfluß in der

polnischen Baukunst maßgebend geworden und italienische

Baumeister sich verhältnißmäßig zahlreich in Lemberg angesiedelt

haben; daraus ergibt sich auch der architektonische Charakter der

ältesten Renaissance – und Barockhäuser Lembergs. Als das

stattlichste, palastartige Patrizierhaus stellt sich das sogenannte

Sobiesti’sche Haus an der Ostseite des Ringplatzes dar,

wahrscheinlich von dem Italiener Pietro Barbone für den Lemberger

Kaufherrn Constantin Korniakt aufgeführt, einem candiotischen

Griechen, der, nachdem er als Wein- und Baumwollenhändler und

königlicher Zollpächter große Reichthümer erworben, sein Haus

durch Heiraten mit den mächtigsten und glänzendsten

Adelsgeschlechtern Polens verband. (33)

In this one passage ostensibly concerning the history of the architecture of Lemberg, there are several references to national labels: German, Italian, Polish, and Greek.

However, these labels are never explored in great detail. As exemplified in this passage, the Kronprinzenwerk blurs these delineations of nationality to instead create an image of Galicia, and more specifically Lemberg, that exists to include all languages and cultures.

The diversity of the area is woven in to its history, while the author even deliberately positions Lemberg as a space that represents characteristics of the East and the West.

Und in diesen Überresten einstiger Decoration welch eine wechselnde

Charakteristik localen Geschmacks und welch ein buntes Musterbild

verschiedenartiger Motive hier, nach Lemberg hergebracht aus den

fernsten Welten: aus Ost und West – armenisches Schnörkelwerk

neben spätgothischen geometrischen Verschlingungen, schwungvolle

Linien italienischer Renaissance neben orientalisch auswucherndem

Ornament, je nachdem der Bauherr oder Architekt ein Armenier, ein

Deutscher, ein Florentiner oder ein Levantiner Franke gewesen!38

(34)

Galicia, therefore, is depicted as a place that includes not only nationalities that are a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but demonstrate that the city of Lemberg is abundant with diversity from more remote places. More importantly, these multicultural assets are essential to the space of Lvov and are crucial enough to be mentioned in the Kronprinzenwerk, which has the professed goal to capture the essence of a place.

Notable to mention about this chapter on the Landeshauptstadt of Lemberg is that this diversity extends beyond national characterization, extending into the multiple religious confessions that also mark the city as diverse and unique.

Es ist eine Spezialität Lembergs, recht auffallend für fremde Touristen,

dass es in seinen Mauren drei Erzbischöfe zählt, gleichsam ein

bleibendes Kennzeichen seiner Einstigen interconfessionellen

Einrichtungen, ein Vermächtniß aus den fernen Zeiten, in welchen es

die internationalste und polyglotteste Stadt auf dem ganzen Gebiete

des Polenreiches gewesen ist. Polnische, deutsche und italienische

Katholiken, ruthenische, griechische und bulgarische Orthodoxe,

protestantische Schotten, Mohamedaner und Juden vertrugen sich

hier zu Zeiten im Handel und Wandel friedlich miteinander. (35-36)

38 Emphasis is mine.

While other national groups are mentioned as essential to the space of Lvov, here the author specifically refers to the multiculturalism of the city as a Spezialität

Lembergs. Several adjectives that are synonymous with, and are markers of cosmopolitanism, are used: international, polyglot, and interconfessionell. When

Joseph Roth described the city as cosmopolitan in 1925, it was not an arbitrary adjective for his travelogue. He was echoing observations made decades before and echoing the narrative that had previously been crafted for the city. The

Kronprinzenwerk underscores the fact that the city has had a deep historical, cosmopolitan tradition. In many ways, it is surprising to discover that a small city located at the periphery of a vast empire would be described by Roth in this way. On the other hand, how this city’s history was displayed in the Kronprinzenwerk reveals that there is a deeply rooted tradition behind this Galician variety of cosmopolitanism.

E. Conclusion

It is the ethnic and national differences that come together in Galicia, which serve to make it such a unique space within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian

Empire. However, as discussed in the first section of this chapter, national conflicts were brewing at the time of the Kronprinzenwerk’s publication and have become the accepted narrative of why the Habsburgs failed to keep the empire together.

However, as historians have begun to reevaluate Habsburg history, a new narrative of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism is being revealed. Galicia, while not a part of these scholars’ conversations on appreciation and fostering of the multiethnic

empire, certainly adds a much-needed wrinkle to this conversation. This is especially so, considering that Galicia was farther away from the center of the

Empire. To be described as cosmopolitan might come as a surprise, but it is a narrative that was crafted and has persisted.

I began this inquiry into Habsburg historiography and the Kronprinzenwerk with a discussion of maps and how they represent the Austro-Hungarian Empire. I argued that these maps are misleading in that they artificially create and categorize groups of people based on a singular question concerning language use on the census. Especially today, we are given the impression that peoples belonging to these groups only identified with one group, and that there was no room for multiple or simultaneous identifications. These maps make it easy to simplify how national tensions arose and dissolved the empire. However, after having read the volume on Galicia from the Kronprinzenwerk – published less than two decades after the census was conducted – one can see how these maps are overly simplistic. On a basic level, they do not even leave room for the Galician multiculturalism.

Indeed, in the entirety of Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und

Bild, there is not a single map to be found. Regina Bendix claims that this was an intentional choice by the editorial committee: “Offering a visualization of the realm’s territory within a work intended for popular consumption could result in all kinds of reactions, including the bolstering of claims for independence based on suddenly available maps of linguistic and cultural terrain” (158). As Bendix affirms, maps of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, especially ones that mark the varied ethnolinguistic groups, are an intellectual construct with various motives, agendas, and biases.

However, maps are what historians have relied upon to create a historical blueprint in order to understand and interpret the causality of events in this area. Taken together, recent scholarship and the Kronprinzenwerk are, conversely, an underutilized lens through which to investigate the relationships within the

Habsburg Empire.

Chapter 2

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos:

Literary Forerunners to Joseph Roth

A. Introduction

In the previous chapter, I investigated how the center of the Empire created the periphery through the project of the Kronprinzenwerk, as well as more general historiographical trends that have come to define the fall of the Habsburg Empire.

With this chapter, I propose to focus on Galicia and how the space was described before Joseph Roth wrote about the region in 1924. As discussed previously, the space of Galicia was unique within the Austro-Hungarian Empire: indeed, a multitude of cultures, languages and religions were represented in this easternmost province of the Habsburg lands. This chapter will explore why Galicia, particularly the city of Lemberg, was representative of the multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism that was oft-forgotten, yet nonetheless pervasive, trait of the

Habsburg Empire.

In 1924, Joseph Roth labeled the city of Lemberg as having

“kosmopolitischen Neigungen” (30), and my work is particularly inspired by how

Roth saw a cosmopolitan character in what is typically considered a wayward backwater of the k.u.k. Empire. This chapter will also examine how Galicia is created as a literary space; first by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos, whose literary precedents are then reflected in the writings of Joseph Roth after the dissolution of the Habsburg Empire. This latter analysis will be our topic for the third chapter of this dissertation.

Placing Sacher-Masoch, Franzos, and later Roth in comparison with one another is essential in understanding both the extent of Galicia’s cosmopolitanism, as well as how long this trend had been in place. What is more, these authors provide us with vital insights into the region based on several fundamental similarities: All three of the writers were born and raised in Galicia, share similar biographies, traveled extensively, and most importantly described minorities of the

Empire in their different literary endeavors. How their representations of Galicia and the ethno-linguistic minorities overlap, as well as how they are dissimilar from one another, is a central theme to the current study. By first examining works by

Sacher-Masoch and Franzos, it becomes evident that Joseph Roth was following a tradition of portraying Galicia as a hub of multiculturalism. Where he differs from these literary forerunners is that Roth defines the area of Galicia as cosmopolitan.

Before turning to the fiction that stems from Galicia, it is essential to consider the history of the area, as well as how historians have evaluated that history in their scholarship. There have been many studies that historians have published in the last ten years that highlight the complexity and uniqueness of the region of Galicia.39

Understanding this region’s multi-layered history is no easy task, especially because of the vast variety of peoples and cultures that have inhabited the area. As historian

John Czaplicka has pointed out in regards to the capital city of Lviv: “The cultural distinctions among the city’s residents strongly affect how the city has been

39 For example: Larry Wolff’s The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture (2012); Christopher Hahn and Paul Robert Magocsi’s edited volume Galicia: A Multicultured Land (2005); Alison Fleig Frank’s Oil Empire: Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia (2007); Iryna Vushko’s The Politics of Cultural Retreat: Imperial Bureaucracy in Austrian Galicia, 1772-1867 (2015); John R. Schindler’s Fall of the Double Eagle: The Battle for Galicia and the Demise of Austria-Hungary (2015); and Martin Pollack’s Galizien: Eine Reise durch die verschwundene Welt Ostgaliziens und der Bukowina (2001).

perceived and how its histories have been written” (16). He elaborates his point by drawing attention to the many different roles the capital of Galicia has played in the area of Eastern Europe:

It is a city that seemed in its myth and history an island, an outpost of

civilization, on the periphery or frontier, a place between borders, and

a defender of civilization or Christianity against some untoward force.

During certain periods of Lviv’s history all of these characterizations

are true to a degree. (16)

For the purposes of my dissertation, I have complied a historiography that attempts to explain two historical topics that Sacher-Masoch, Franzos, and Roth engaged in their fiction: Austrians in Galicia and the multiculturalism in the area.

B. Austrians in Galicia

Paul Robert Magocsi’s monograph Galicia: A Historical Survey and

Bibliographic Guide is an encyclopedic book that is most concerned with building a

Ukrainian narrative. Magocsi reaches to the past to find a history that led to the

Ukraine of today. He examines distinct phases of Galician history, and analyzes specific themes and trends within each time period.

His research illustrates that there were two waves of German colonization in

Galicia. The first was in 1241 when the Polish Kingdom wanted to have its southeastern borders strengthened with new settlers. Magocsi summarizes this period thusly:

The German colonists were welcomed for their more advanced

training, artisan, and agricultural skills […]. During the early period,

most German colonists settled in western rather than eastern Galicia,

and those that did live in the latter area became largely assimilated to

Polish culture by the sixteenth century. (Historical Survey 249)

Magocsi claims that this first wave of immigration did not have a lasting effect on

Galician history, because they largely became assimilated into the preexisting culture.

The second wave of Germans in Galicia was in 1772 when Galicia became a part of the Habsburg Empire. As a result, Emperor Joseph II brought more than

15,000 colonists in an effort to improve the economy in Galicia and to strengthen

Austrian control of the new province.40 Whereas the first group of German colonists became assimilated, this batch of Austrians in the easternmost province of the

Habsburg Empire avoided assimilation. This point of German influence in the region is most important to understanding the authors whom I discuss in the present work.

Their very presence and the fact that they all wrote their literary works in German is a direct result of this wave of colonization. From Magocsi’s analyses of the Habsburg presence in Galicia, it is evident that this secondary influx of immigrants was responsible for a cataclysmic transformation of the area.

John Czaplicka has written that the Habsburgs wanted to create a “Little

Vienna of the East” (29) and that the Habsburg Empire is synonymous with modernization in Lviv (36). Czaplicka emphasizes that modernization in Galicia

40 See page 249 in Paul Robert Magocsi’s Galicia: A Historical Survey and Bibliographic Guide (1983).

meant that the province could become an imperial administrative center for the

Empire. Describing how this specifically influenced the Galician capital, Czaplicka observes: “A new axis of power led directly to Vienna and in effect reoriented the city geographically and geoculturally” (36). This change in the city not only made the German language the language of administration (36), but also had a multidimensional ripple-effect on all aspects of daily life in Lviv. For instance,

Czplicka notes the effect on the educational system and how the subjects were morphed by the views perpetuated by the k.u.k. metropole: “The Habsburgs reformed and expanded education on all levels seeking to germanize the city as well as to create a loyal and educated elite among the subject peoples, who might help to administer the empire” (36).

Echoing Czaplicka’s analysis, Magocsi, in his article “Galicia: A European

Land” in the edited volume Galicia: A Multicultured Land, points out that the

Habsburg presence in Galicia defined a new type of political participation for its citizens:

The vast majority of the population was liberated from the

impediment of serfdom in 1848. During the second half of the

nineteenth century, the Habsburg regime created structures of

representative government at the local, provincial, and national levels.

This allowed ever larger numbers of citizens to participate in political

life. Education, cultural institutions, and publications in a variety of

languages flourished. (10)

To say that the Habsburgs changed the institutions and character of Galicia would be an understatement. Historians have made it clear that the Habsburgs gave the region the push forward into modernity.

Augmenting this view, Larry Wolff in his monograph The Idea of Galicia:

History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture, has pointed out that the cultural change in Galicia was gradual: “Galicia was first invented as an administrative unit in the eighteenth century and only then began to accumulate cultural meanings over the course of its provincial history in the context of the Habsburg Empire” (6). It is important here to pause to consider Wolff’s thesis of his book more carefully and in the context of this dissertation. Wolff claims that Galicia is less a place, but rather more of an idea; deliberately constructed – figuratively and literally – by Habsburg administrators in Vienna. Unlike most of the other historians mentioned here, Wolff only examines the period of Galicia’s history when the Habsburgs ruled. The region was born in 1772 “when the Habsburg monarchy applied that name to Vienna’s territorial portion of the partition and conceived of Galicia as a new Habsburg province” (1). Even the name of Galicia is borrowed from the Spanish province – a point that Wolff uses to corroborate his contention that Galicia is more of an idea that the Habsburgs treated in many different ways.

Wolff agrees with the consensus of the other historians discussed here that

Galicia underwent a dramatic change when the Habsburg rule began:

Most notably, the concept of supposed ‘civilization’ was applied to the

entire domain of Eastern Europe and the particular province of

Galicia, from the reign of Joseph through the reign of Franz Joseph:

Galician barbarism was to be reformed, and Galician backwardness

was to be ameliorated. (7)

Where Wolff’s argument diverges from the other historians is in his insistence upon what I understand to be Galicia’s cosmopolitanism: “Habsburg imperial rule in

Galicia, as in other provinces of the monarchy, sought the transcendence of national differences, and the provincial idea of Galicia remained fundamentally non-national”

(6). He points out that Franz Joseph would address his subjects as meine Völker to stress the plurality of the region, and claims that Austria-Hungary was “striving to transcend the nation as the exclusive territorial ideal and as exclusive marker claimant of identity” (165).

In a similar vein, Yaroslav Hrytsak in his article Lviv: A Multicultural History through the Centuries claims that the Habsburg rule had an effect that worked toward eliminating discrimination within the Galician capital:

Yet from the very beginning of Habsburg rule in Lviv, the imperial

government carried out policies that put an end to the most extreme

religious, ethnic, and social discrimination toward Ruthenians and

Jews in the former Rzeczpospolita. Both Ruthenians and Jews

reciprocated by expressing loyalty to the Habsburg rulers. (56)

Gauging the historians’ accounts presented here, the Austrian presence in

Galicia changed the region dramatically. It not only became a modern administrative center for the Empire, but also became a place where people of different nationalities and religions were brought together and lived. The Austrian influence on the region, according to these scholars, seems to have played a great role in

Galicia in not only giving it the push into modernity, but also integrating the region into the Empire.

C Multiculturalism in Galicia

The way historians have written about Galicia in regards to its inherent multiculturalism lends itself very well to understanding the region as cosmopolitan.

Christopher Hann and Paul Robert Magosci served as editors for the volume Galicia:

A Multicultured Land, and have traced the multiculturalism of Galicia, while highlighting how it affects the Ukraine today as a potential member of the European

Union. They claim that, “[l]ittle effort has been made to depict the rich multicultural and multireligious fabric of traditional Galician society” (vii). The editors hope to shed light on how the different communities of the region lived alongside of each other, more specifically focusing on the commonplace peaceful interactions between the various ethno-cultural groups (viii).

A vital element of Galicia’s multiculturalism is that it has always been diverse in terms of its ethnic makeup. As Yaroslav Hrytsak in his article “Lviv: A

Multicultural History through the Centuries” succinctly states: “There is no doubt that this trading city had a multiethnic character form the very beginning” (49).

Magocsi supports Hrytsak’s observation, and further explains how multiculturalism is inherent to the region. “International trade encouraged movement and interaction between people of different cultural backgrounds” Magocsi notes, “while [t]he ethnic diversity of Galicia’s cities was promoted from the medieval period onwards by what might be called demographic engineering on the part of the ruling regimes”

(7). Magocsi does not go into further detail, but it is evident that Galicia’s multiculturalism has always been a trademark of the region, manufactured or otherwise, and existed long before Austrian control and influence within the province.

Most of the articles that concern the topic of multiculturalism in Galicia usually contain a list of all the types of peoples that lived in the area. In the article

Galicia: A European Land, as part of the aforementioned edited volume, Magocsi is no exception: “No matter how we might define Galicia, one thing is indisputable: throughout a millennium of recorded history Galicia has been inhabited by a multiplicity of peoples – among them Ukrainians, Poles, Jews, Germans, Armenians,

Lemko-Rusyns, and more recently, Russians” (3). The list of different nationalities differs, depending obviously on which time period and ethnic group that the author is discussing. However, it is evident from these scholars that many different types of people and groups have called Galicia home.

What is important to note is how the citizens of Galicia identified less with the nation, and instead more with local groups. For example, John Czaplicka has commented: “However, in Lviv cultures intersected, melded, and contended with each other before any of their carriers became self-consciously ‘national’ or ‘ethnic’”

(14). He goes on to state that all the various groups living in Galicia “defined their communities more in terms of religion and language than by those two modern parameters of culture: ethnicity and nation” (15). While much of the existing historiography has labeled and categorized the people living in Galicia in national

terms, Czaplicka has argued that the citizens themselves more often than not have done so.

While religion was perhaps the most important marker of one’s identity, language also became an integral part of one’s membership to a certain cultural group. Czaplicka has observed that, “[a]fter religion, language represented the second most important cultural determinant in the early history of the city.” He goes on to explain that, “[a]fter the introduction of Magdeburg law, the administrative language was at first German, then Latin (of the seventeenth century), and then

Polish” (23).

Pieter Judson has written about the thorny relationship between language and belonging to a nation state, particularly in his monograph Guardians of the

Nation: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Imperial Austria (2006). He analyzes specifically the areas known as Sprachgrenzen, whose borders were formed by the census. Citizens of the Empire were asked their Umgangsprache, and borders were drawn based on their answer. Judson pointed out how this apparently easy question could cause many issues: If the Umgangssprache was supposed to be their language of everyday use, could that differ from their Muttersprache? What if someone spoke two or even more languages? What if the language of daily use was Yiddish or

Moravian, which weren’t even recognized as official languages? Would putting

German down for a language be beneficial over another language if someone spoke two? Could answers change year-to-year based on different circumstances?

Judson attributes the census to one of the reasons the nationalist fervor took such a strong ground. He argues that before the census, it was just assumed that

people of the Empire would want to learn German to “achieve upward social mobility” (15) and that the 1880 census demonstrated that the number of German speakers was actually diminishing (16). The census, questionable as it was, certainly provided people with convincing facts and figures that helped nationalist organizations to realize that the Sprachgrenzen were a concrete place to start to win people over and combat national indifference.

Obviously such a question on a census raised many issues of identity and how the state labeled their citizens. However vague the question was, it seemed to fuel the fire of the nationalists: “Whatever their reservations, however, nationalists of all stripes immediately treated this decennial census as a critical weapon in their arsenal, refusing to accept that ‘language of daily use’ measured anything other than national belonging” (Judson 14). Judson is critical of the census in how it became the source of the data that created the Sprachgrenzen.

The Sprachgrenzen became the sites of great effort by nationalist groups to battle the national indifference that was seen as a hindrance to the local nationalist effort. Judson points out that Otherness was not necessarily viewed negatively or with disdain at the Sprachgrenzen, as many nationalists would have liked to believe.

Instead Judson argues that that people living on the borders of a language group were not participating in any kind of nationalist discourse, much to the dismay of nationalist groups: “[M]y account provides a corrective to nationalist historiography, disproves the confident presumption of a nationalized rural populace, and demonstrates how that illusion was created and disseminated” (181).

Judson makes it clear that the nationalist groups undertook great efforts to instill those living on the language frontiers with a sense of national identity, but that these efforts ultimately failed. Judson does say that the groups “succeeded brilliantly in nationalizing perceptions of the rural language frontier by 1914” (5).

What was happening in the cities and centers of the Empire was not necessarily what was happening on the fringes.

As Judson has suggested, one must be cognizant of the potentially hollow relationship between language and identification with a group. Luiza Bialasiewicz, in her article “Back to Galicia Felix?” as part of Hann and Magocsi’s edited volume, points out that language as a marker of identity is volatile: “Habsburg Galicia was the epitome of a liminal community characterized by unstable belongings and identities that combined and recombined daily in an endless tangle of reconfigurations and re-representations that shifted from one conversation to the next depending on the interlocutor” (169). While other historians paint Galicia in a utopian light, Bialasiewicz complicates the history by bringing out the complexities of such a place.

In the same vein, Hrystsak claims that all the different groups of Galicia provided a breeding ground for nationalist sentiment, and how each group perhaps provoked the other: “In the specific multiethnic milieu of Galicia, one nationalism inspired and reinforced another” (55) Hrystsak observes, highlighting how the germanization of the city of Lviv was met with resistance from the Polish. Hrystsak goes on to write that the Habsburg’s influence on multiculturalism had very distinct side effects:

The last years of Austrian rule in Lviv fully revealed the ambiguous

character of the Habsburg heritage in the city. On the one hand, each

ethnic group inherited constitutional and liberal practices that still

had a positive influence in their political organizations. On the other

hand, the legacy was marred by acute national tensions that carried

the seeds of future violent conflicts. (57)

It would seem that by the time the Habsburgs took control of the region, the multiculturalism that many citizens had lived peacefully in for centuries had inspired new feelings that would eventually antagonize for an autonomous

Ukrainian state.

While many historians depict Galicia throughout time as a cosmopolitan utopia, there are others who are quick to point out the negative effects of a multicultural society. William O. McCagg Jr., in his book A History of Habsburg Jews,

1670-1918, devotes considerable attention to the region of Galicia specifically because of its particular brand of hostility towards its Jewish population. McCagg cites a surprising statistic about the region of Galicia and prewar emigration trends:

“Of the 320,000 Jews who emigrated from Austria-Hungary to the United States between 1891 and the [First World] war, 85% were from Galicia” (183). McCagg also calls attention to the strained relations between the Jewish population and the nationalist Poles living in Galicia. He notes:

Hated by both the dominant Christian nations, the Jews of Galicia

were less involved in Christian politics than elsewhere. Yet they could

never afford to expose themselves fully in a Jewish cause, as did the

Bukowina Jews. It was just too dangerous to risk the Christian anger

of the Poles. (187)

McCagg’s observations demonstrate that there was not a monolithic treatment of

Jews within the Empire, and his study makes it very clear that Galicia was one of the most hostile regions towards Jews.41

The region of Galicia and the Habsburg influence in the area are complex topics that scholars are still unpacking and understanding. The Austro-Hungarian

Empire’s presence in what is now modern-day Ukraine is a foreshadowing of tensions that have arisen in the area during the Second World War and as recently as 2013. My dissertation, however, points to authors who wrote about and convinced their readers that the multiculturalism was an important part of the area that could have potential.

D. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

In the first sections of this chapter, I provided a brief analysis of how historians have interpreted two important aspects of history that shaped Galicia:

Austrian influence in the region and multiculturalism. Two authors that were in

Galicia because of this Austrian influence and subsequently commented on this multiculturalism are Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos. By including their texts in this analysis, I am demonstrating that cosmopolitanism has its precedence in the region before Roth labeled the space of Galicia as such.

41 Another article to address the tension the Jewish population in Galicia felt is Kai Struve’s “Gentry, Jews, and Peasants: Jews as Others in the Formation of the Modern Polish Nation in Rural Galicia during the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century” in Nancy M. Wingfield’s edited volume Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict in Habsburg Central Europe (2003).

Although Sacher-Masoch and Franzos never defined this multiculturalism as cosmopolitan, the two authors add to the image of Galicia and how the space of

Galicia was constructed with an emphasis on its ethnic and linguistic plurality. In this regard, they are forerunners to Joseph Roth, but also provide contrast to his work.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch was born in Lemberg in 1836. He is most remembered for his work Venus im Pelz (1870) and for being the inspiration behind the word masochism. I, however, choose to focus on his lesser-known work that paints a portrait of Galicia. Like Roth, Sacher-Maosch was raised in the easternmost province of Austria-Hungary, and in his autobiographical book Souvenirs, Sacher-

Masoch recollects upon his childhood and Galicia: “Es bildet eine kleine Welt für sich: Um Krakau erinnert es an die skandinavischen Länder, an den Ufern des Pruth wirkt es wie ein Winkel von Italien, im Osten hat es den Charakter der Ukraine und im Westen den der Alpenländer” (32). His description of the site of his upbringing concerns itself primarily with representations of the natural beauty of the land.

Sacher-Masoch, however, makes one passing remark to the political apparatus to which the region of Galicia belonged: “Der Kaiser ist fern, aber Gott is nah” (33). This sentence stands out in the text because it is its own paragraph, giving the reader time to contemplate the implications of such a statement. Consequently, this sentence has incredible weight within the essay. Referring to the central figure of the emperor who resided in the capital city of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Sacher-

Masoch impresses upon the reader a distance and a difference between Galicia and the center of the Habsburg Empire.

Before mentioning the place where he grew up, Sacher-Masoch explains how his family represents a multi-cultural background: his mother was a Ukrainian noblewoman, while his father had Spanish and Catholic roots. He also credits his wet nurse as having a profound influence on the languages and cultures he absorbed as a child: “Durch meine Amme wurde russisch die erste Sprache, die ich beherrschte, obwohl in meinem Elternhaus vor allem polnisch, deutsch und französisch gesprochen wurde” (23). Like many hailing from this particular region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Sacher-Masoch makes it clear that he was deeply influenced by the cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity of the area.

The impact of experiencing such a unique place as a child certainly spilled over from the autobiographical into the literary realm for Sacher-Masoch. Many scholars have claimed that Sacher-Masoch’s stories about Galicia depict a utopia located at the edge of the Empire.42 Furthermore, he was the editor of the cultural journal Auf der Höhe; a journal that Barbara Hyams asserts “sought to champion tolerance in the highly charged atmosphere of Saxony” (69). Ulrich Bach agrees with the claim that Sacher-Masoch encouraged and believed in egalitarianism: “[Sacher-

Masoch] believed that the various East European peoples could preserve an equality of political status under the umbrella of the Habsburgs’ rule” (205) and that the

Slavs in Austria were a genuine and atavistic component of the Habsburg Empire

42 See Ulrich Bach’s article “Sacher-Masoch’s Utopian Peripheries”. James Cleugh, author of Sacher- Masoch biography The First Masochist claims: “Leopold’s mind instinctively rejected both the indifferent and the scornful attitude to life. He remained all his days an enthusiast, a builder of utopias” (28).

(206). Sean K. Kelly goes as far to claim that Sacher-Masoch held a cosmopolitan view of the Empire:

Sacher-Masoch was a vocal proponent of Enlightenment visions of

cosmopolitanism, no doubt partially because of his being raised in one

of the most multiethnic areas of Europe, Galicia. His fiction regularly

champions minority characters and ethnicities while persistently

criticizing the nationalist, racist, sexist, and even speciesist tendencies

that he understood as natural consequences of the human condition.

(19-20)

It seems to be a consensus among scholars that Sacher-Masoch held a cosmopolitan view of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that included minority languages and cultures that other authors were not doing at that time.

While his equal view for all sounds idyllic, scholarly biographies are quick to point out that he fell witness to a more violent period of Austrian history: the revolutions of 1848 and, in particular, the Cracow Revolution in 1846. Because his father was the Chief of Police, he was directly exposed to much of the social upheaval. Lisbeth Exner, author of a biography on Sacher-Masoch, emphasizes the great extent to which the 10-year-old Sacher-Masoch was affected by the political uprising, claiming „[d]er Galizische Aufstand wurde das zentrale Erlebnis seiner

Kindheit“ (24).

Albrecht Koschorke also points out in his work on Sacher-Masoch that Galicia had a reputation for being backwards and resistant to social change and progressive policies. His description of Galicia gives the impression of an isolated region, trying

to hold on to tradition and not knowing how to move forward: “So steht die

Verwaltungsmacht früh in dem Dilemma, die Rückständigkeit der Provinz einerseits zu beklagen, andererseits aus Furcht vor einer entfesselten Barbarei ängstlich bewahren zu müssen. Die Landbevölkerung wird in drückender Abhängigkeit gehalten“ (17). In addition to the positive aspects that living in such a place like

Galicia would expose one to, Sacher-Masoch clearly also had to deal with the tumultuous political unrest that can happen in an Empire or State when multiple cultures vie for increased autonomy.

It is also worth taking into consideration here that Sacher-Masoch lived in many different parts of the Empire throughout his life. In 1848, his family moved to

Prague because his father’s position had called him there. He went on to study in

Prague and Graz and live in many different locations within the Austro-Hungarian

Empire. Unlike Joseph Roth, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch would never live to see the end of the Habsburg rule in Eastern Europe.

Despite living in two very different time periods of the Empire, Roth’s and

Sacher-Masoch’s personal histories share too many similarities to ignore: they were both born in Galicia, both went away to study in more central parts of the Empire, both traveled extensively around the Empire, and both engaged in non-fiction reportage and fictional writing about the ethno-linguistic makeup of the Habsburg peoples.

For this discussion on Sacher-Masoch’s representation on peoples of the

Empire, his novella Der Iluj is quite revealing.43 According to the biographer Lisbeth

43 In some sources, the title of the story is Der Ilau.

Exner, the novella was published in 1877 in the periodical Salon, and was a result of

Sacher-Masoch’s interest in finding a new genre to write, as well as an newfound curiosity for the relatively recent genre of ghetto literature, founded by Leopold

Kompert in 1848 (96). Although Sacher-Masoch was not Jewish himself, Exner maintains that he most certainly had come in contact with Judaism as a child in

Galicia and in Prague.44

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Der Iluj begins with the poem “Dämon” by

Goethe, forewarning the reader about the fate of the individual: “Wie an dem Tag, der Dich der Welt verliehen, / Die Sonne stand zum Gruße der Planete, / Bist alsobald und fort und fort gediehen. / Nach dem Gesetz, wonach Du angetrete, / So mußt Du sein, Dir kannst Du nicht entfliehen” (388). By including a poem from

Goethe, Sacher-Masoch was not only elevating his simple story of Galician life to a higher, Germanic literary level, but it seems to warn the reader that no matter what the individual does, there is little control in one’s life.

The setting of the novella is quickly revealed to be the small town of Maslow, which is near the Galician capital city of Lemberg. The novella begins with a description of the landscape that harkens back to the Romantic period of German literature:

Das Sonnenlicht, das durch das dunkle Blätternetz in das Gras

niedersickerte, schmerzte fast in seiner versengenden Glut, die den

sich langsam hinwälzenden Fluß in loderndes Feuer verzauberte; das

44 “Es ist freilich unwahrscheinlich, dass Sacher-Masoch zu jüdischen Familien hatte, in Prag besuchte er hingegen oft und gern das Judenviertel. Wann er began, sich für das Judentum und die ostjüdische Lebenwelt zu interessieren, inwieweit dabei zunächst nur der Kampf um das literarische Revier Galizien eine Rolle spielten, muss offen blieben” (96).

Himmelsgewölbe, von keiner noch so kleinen Flocke überzogen, stand

groß, klar und freundlich, die Berge begrenzten den westlichen

Horizont in leuchtender Erhabenheit, der duftgrüne Horizont lag

ihnen ruhevoll zu Füßen. (389)

The novella begins with a description of the landscape and slowly zooms in on the subject of a young boy completely immersed in his studies in a room that is covered in books. It is revealed that the student is studying the Talmud. His inquiries inspire great, even frightening, thoughts about man, nature, and the limitations of knowledge. Still, the boy is inspired to become an Iluj or “ein besonders hervorragender Gelehrter, ein Wunder an Gelehrsamkeit” (432). Fascinated by nature and all its offerings, the young boy Sabathai begins to apply his systematic method of studying the Talmud to the study of nature by first examining seeds, leaves, flowers, and then later small animals. He melts metals to discover their different properties and eventually decides that studying nature is more worthy than studying the Talmud.

Seeing his son’s progress and curiosity in the natural sciences, Sabathai’s father offers to have a tutor come to teach him. At this point in the text, there is a reference to the power of acquiring a language, especially the language of political hegemony: “Der Unterricht began. Sabathai machte erstaundliche Fortschritte, insbesondere im Deutschen, das ihm als der Schlüssel zu einer neuen Welt erschien”

(398). By learning German, the boy is convinced he will have access to a new world.

Whereas many historians and biographers seem to mention the multi-lingual character of many residents in Galicia, we see as an example in this text how

learning a language has a deeper meaning. Learning a language allows one to learn new ways of thinking, opens doors to new ideas, and allows one to more fully participate in both their world and, in this case, the imperial project of the Austro-

Hungarian Empire. A second mention of language spoken is mentioned in the text with regards to Sabathai’s future wife: “[S]o war es Jamina, welche, das Deutschen und Polnischen vollkommen mächtig…” (406). However brief in passing these references may be in the text, they reveal a culture of Galicia that should not be overlooked.

As excited as Sabathai is to learn the natural sciences in greater detail and depth, the knowledge his son is acquiring scares Sabathai’s father, compelling him to promptly dismiss the tutor. As Sabathai grows older, he is soon married to Jamina

Silbermann, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish aristocrat who expected Sabathai to devote himself completely to his Talmud studies. Sabathai does not initially object to the duties and expectations of being a Talmudic scholar and husband to a Jewish aristocrat’s daughter. He moves to Lemberg as part of his new responsibilities.

Sabathai unsurprisingly becomes more interested in the natural sciences and less with fulfilling the role of Talmud scholar, which everyone expects of him. He pursues this new branch of knowledge in secret; he even smuggles a dead cow into his home in order to dissect it and learn from the process. A team, led by his father- in-law searches his study and finds forbidden books in German, Polish and French, which ultimately leads to a divorce from his wife and his departure from Lemberg.

Sacher-Masoch seems to be critical of the intolerance that Sabathai faces in Lemberg

by painting Sabathai as an innocent man in search of knowledge that others view as forbidden.

Sabathai then goes to Vienna, earns his doctorate in philosophy and returns to Lemberg two years later. In describing his experiences, Sabathai seems to have reached a new conclusion on how the State and knowledge can work against one another: “Der Staat unterstützt die Wissenschaft, die Kunst nur, solange sie seinen

Zwecken dient; sobald sie sich von derselben unabhängig zeigt, duldet er sie nur noch; widerspricht sie aber gar, wenn auch meist nur scheinbar, seinen Ansichten, sucht er sie zu vernichten” (439). Sacher-Masoch’s writing reflects the claims that

Koschorke makes in his work about Galicia being backward, despite the cosmopolitan potential.

Sabathai reluctantly takes a job lecturing for the young ladies of the town.

One of these ladies, Isabella, the daughter of a Major in the Austro-Hungarian army catches Sabathai’s eye. In his initial description of the woman, there is a decidedly political spin to his portrayal: “Sie war eine jener Erscheinungen, wie man sie nur in

Ländern findet, in denen fortwährend die mannigfaltigste Vermischung verschiedener Rassen und Volksstämme stattfindet und auch die einzelnen Stände nicht kastenmäßig gegeneinader abgeschlossen sind” (443-444). To Sabathai,

Isabella’s beauty comes from a form of hibridity. He cannot tell to which race she belongs, as she is the blend of many races. Isabella, it would seem, is a manifestation of cosmopolitanism into beauty.

Sabathai decides to convert to Catholicism in order to marry Isabella, but also hoping that he will have more freedom to study the subjects he wishes once a

Catholic. In contemplating his religious conversion, he compares changing religion to immigrating to a new land:

Für den polnischen Juden heißt seinen Glauben wechseln auswandern,

das Haus verlassen, in dem er geboren wurde, seine Geschwister,

seine Freunde, die Gräber seiner Eltern, das Volk, das seine Sprache

spricht und dessen Herz den gleichen Schlag hat, alle Erinnerungen

ausraufen wie das Graus, das die Juden beim Begräbnis, ohne

umzublicken, hinter sich streuen, und fortan in der Fremde leben

unter Fremden. (452)

Although Sabathai certainly represents an openness to ideas and a willing desire to acquire knowledge, and therefore can be seen as fundamentally cosmopolitan, it is also important to realize that there are characteristics that help us to place him within a more localized sphere. Religion is certainly one aspect of a person that creates identity and belonging to a group or place. As this quote from the text demonstrates, there are always challenges when attempting to become a member of a larger community. For Sabathai, severing ties to his religion is akin to attempting to become a part of another nation. As a true indication of his transformation, once

Sabathai converts, he calls himself Pius.

After marrying Isabella, he becomes a lecturer and is on his way to becoming a professor. However, his career plans come to a halt when the university president accuses Sabathai of deviating from the textbook, as well as atheism. Sabathai tries to defend his actions by pitting religion and science against each other: “Sind diese

Tatsachen wirklich im Widerspruch mit der Religion, dann beweist dies nicht, daß

diese Tatsachen schlecht sind, sondern daß die Religion schlecht ist, weil sie auf

Irrtümern beruht und Irrtümer stets gefährlicher als die Wahrheiten” (467). It is evident at this point in the narrative how far this former Talmudic scholar has come in his beliefs.

There is even a point in the conversation with the president where Sabathai refers to the ethnic composition of where they live that particularly speaks of the cosmopolitan character of Galicia:

In keinem Staat zeigt die Bevölkerung ein so reiches individuelles

Gepräge wie in dem unsern, und in keinem Land dieses Staates in

solchen Maß wie in dem östlichen Galizien, wo seit Jahrhunderten

Kleinrussen, Polen, Juden, Deutsche, Moskowiter, Armenier, Tataren,

Walachen, Magyaren und Zigeuner nebeneinander leben und sich

untereinander vermischen. In einem solchen Volk wird entsprechend

dem Reichtum an individuellen Organismen auch ein Reichtum an den

verschiedensten Gaben zu finden sein, und diese verschiedenartige

Befähigung der einzelnen wir aus dem Volk einen zu allem befähigten

großen Menschen, ein Universalgenie machen… (471).

Sabathai is convinced that Galicia and the atmosphere that it provides can bring people to a higher level of understanding. He sees the diversity – and more importantly, it’s long history – as a positive aspect of society that brings about great potential. What is more, Sabathai recognizes that it is only in Galicia with its multiculturalism that this genius can be created. The fact that the professor does not

believe, and even completely admonishes Sabathai’s views, are perhaps evident of those who were less in favor of a diverse population.

Sabathai is eventually demoted at the university to a professor’s assistant.

Ultimately Sabathai finds out that his wife is having an affair with a Jesuit named

Baranowski, and that they are conspiring to have Sabathai committed to an insane asylum. The revolutions of 1848 spread throughout Europe, and Sabathai’s former students barrage the insane asylum to free Sabathai. He is freed, but at the end of the narrative, he is reduced to a man who wanders the countryside, inspecting rocks, plants, and bugs. The novella comes full circle at the end, returning back to the beginning, although with a melancholic touch. Instead of being inspired by the fascinations of nature like he was at the beginning of the novella, he is instead banished to nature.

It is apparent that this text is highly critical of the peripheries of the Empire for being backward and too conservative, and to an even greater extent, critical of any labels that are too tied to ideology or notions of identity influenced by these ideologies. Indeed, Sabathai recognizes the unique relationships within the Austro-

Hungarian Empire and proclaims the following words to his students. While it is a long selection from the text, it describes much of what Sacher-Masoch criticizes about the top-down model of cosmopolitanism promoted by the center of the

Austro-Hungarian Empire. As such, it is worth quoting in its entirety:

Und das ist das Ziel, meine teuren jungen Freunde, das Ihnen

unablässig vorschweben soll, lassen Sie Ihre noch offenen

empfänglichen Herzen von keinem Glauben, keinem nationalen

Gefühl, keiner Art von Vaterlandsliebe beherrschen, denn das ist

jederzeit nur Liebe, die ebensoviel Haß und Verachtung zeugt;

entwickeln Sie Ihre Bildung, Ihre Intelligenz unbekümmert um die

traurigen, armseligen Grenzen, welche der Staat Ihrem Wissen zu

stecken sucht, und Sie werden sich mehr und mehr nicht als Juden

oder Christen, Polen, Russen oder Deutsche fühlen, sondern als

Menschen, als Brüder und jeder in seinem kleinen Kreise die großen

Ziele der Menschheit erreichen helfen, die Freiheit, die Gleichheit und

den Weltfrieden. (418)

For Sabathai, the different religions of the Empire are seen as incomplete and unsatisfactory. He desires more knowledge that is seen as dangerous in this Galician town. To acquire more of this knowledge he so desires, he has to travel to the center of the Empire, which seems to provide him with a freedom to study the texts he wishes. It is curious that this time period in Vienna is not elaborated further in the text; he simply goes and returns. While questions of how the capital is different from the more provincial towns go largely unanswered, it is nonetheless clear that

Sabathai finds at least a small ounce of freedom to study and obtain a degree in the subject of his choosing. By omitting his time in Vienna from the text, Sacher-Masoch chooses to focus on the hostility of the peripheries. This hostility, however, hinders the potentiality of what could be Galicia’s greatest strength: cosmopolitanism.

The quote from the text written above certainly promotes a cosmopolitan understanding of the diversity of the Empire. Whereas nationalist identities were actively being promoted throughout the Empire, this text disavows any kind of

greater force, be it religion or nationalism. However, Sacher-Masoch concentrates his criticism in the space of Galicia, a region that was particularly known for its anti-

Semitism and hostility towards Otherness.45

More specifically, Sacher-Masoch criticizes the institutions of the state that actively promote a national identity and a sense of belonging to a group. Sabathai goes through many religions, but is rejected by all of them for different reasons. He does not even find a place at the university for his ideas. The State is really what

Sacher-Masoch seems to criticize, arguing that the people of Galicia can offer more.

There is something special that has been cultivated from many years of cultural exchange. It is in this diversity of the people that Sacher-Masoch sees as something more and something fundamentally unique about Galicia.

E. Karl Emil Franzos

Karl Emil Franzos is perhaps lesser known than Sacher-Masoch, but has written much about his experiences in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In this section,

I will be examining two main topics: how Franzos saw the Empire as cosmopolitan, and his short story Von Wien nach Czernowitz, which was first published in his volume Aus Halb-Asien in 1846. This short story describes the journey from Vienna to the easternmost providence of Bukovina, as well as the variety of the citizens who belong to the Empire. Immensely popular when it was written, it provides a vivid

45 William O. McCagg Jr. In his book A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670-1918, McCagg devotes considerable attention to the region of Galicia specifically because of its particular brand of hostility towards its Jewish population. McCagg also calls attention to the strained relations between the Jewish population and the nationalist Poles living in Galicia. He notes: “Hated by both the dominant Christian nations, the Jews of Galicia were less involved in Christian politics than elsewhere. Yet they could never afford to expose themselves fully in a Jewish cause, as did the Bukowina Jews. It was just too dangerous to risk the Christian anger of the Poles” (187).

portrait of a region that is consonant to Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s portrayal of

Galicia.

Like Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Karl Emil Franzos was born in Galicia and had Spanish ancestry. He was born in the small town of Czortkow in either 1847 or

1848to the Bezirksarzt Heinrich Franzos and his wife Karoline. 46 The Galician diversity certainly made an impact on the young Franzos: he learned German from his father, Ruthenian from his childhood nurse, Hebrew from his Jewish tutor, and he spoke the local language of the region: Polish.47 He was Jewish, although Anna-

Dorothea Ludewig insists that his interaction with Judaism was less based on religious reasons or even tradition, but instead more on an “intellektuellen Ebene”

(10), as his family did not go to synagogue, nor did they follow the Jewish dietary requirements. Both Franzos and Roth would write significantly about their interactions and impressions of Judaism in their fiction and reportage, but both seem to be similarly distanced from the religion itself. However, when both Roth and Franzos are discussed vis-à-vis each other, scholars most often connect the two authors via their Jewishness.48 In fact, it is most often how Franzos and Roth are remembered today: as Jewish authors. However, there is more to understand by comparing these two authors beyond this perfunctory similarity.

46 Many different official documents from Franzos’s life state different birthdays. “So muss bereits sein Geburtsdaum mit Vorsicht gelesen werden: Franzos gibt den 28. Oktober 1848 als Geburtstag an, in seinen Papieren, dem Maturazeugnis, den Reisepässen und den Immatrikulationsbescheinigungen ist aber der 25. Juli 1847 eingetragen” (Ludewig Zwischen Czernowitz 32). 47 See Ludewig, Anna-Dorothea’s Biographische Notizen zu Karl Emil Franzos 48 See, for example: Journey to Oblivion: The End of the East European Yiddish and German Worlds in the Mirror of Literature by Peter Stenberg (1991), Von Franzos zu Canetti: Jüdische Autoren aus Österreich edited by Mark H. Gelber, Hans Otto Horch, and Sigurd Paul Scheichl (1996), and The ‘Jewish Question’ in German Literature 1749-1939: Emancipation and its Discontents by Ritchie Robertson (1999).

After Franzos’s father died when he was ten years old, the family moved to the nearby Crown Land of Bukovina. Whereas tensions between ethnic groups ran high in Galicia – as depicted in Sacher-Masoch’s Der Iluj – Ludewig claims that

Bukovina was a synonym for “Bildung, Kultur und Aufklärung” (Zwischen Czernowitz

10). Similarly, Amy-Diana Colin asserts that Bukovina remained “ein Symbol der immer noch – und selbst am Rande des Abgrunds – möglichen Völkerverständigung”

(55). Scholars’ assessments of the region of Bukovina appear quite different than those of Galicia. Instead of the Galician hostility, there is an air of openness to

Bukovina.

The town of Chernivtsi is likewise markedly different than Galician Lemberg: it a place that was “auf ihre deutsche Prägung aber ausgesprochen stolz” (Ludewig

10). German as a the lingua franca of the Habsburg lands goes back to the time of

Joseph II, eldest son of Maria Theresa. In his Josephisnistic ideal, the Habsburg state would be Enlightened through his many reforms. One of those reforms concerned

Joseph II’s imposition of German as the official language. He chose German because not only were the majority of the citizens German speakers, but there was an established literary tradition in German. Choosing one standard language though does not come without its difficulties. Nancy Wingfield has explained how German as the language of power had an effect over time in the corners of the Habsburg

Empire: “The German language and culture as the language and culture of the economic, political, and social élites of the Monarchy would be increasingly contested from the margins during the nineteenth century” (5). While all the authors discussed here – Sacher-Masoch, Franzos and Roth – almost exclusively

wrote in the German language, it is important to point out how all of them were polyglots.

While Wingfield’s edited volume Creating the Other: Ethnic Conflict and

Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe makes it clear that language became a point of contention within the Empire, I would argue that Franzos’s outlook had a more cosmopolitan implication. Of course, language itself is a natural obstacle to cosmopolitanism: How can people understand themselves as a part of the greater whole when they literally do not understand the others of that whole?

Instead of understanding language as a means of wielding power, it can be argued that Franzos thought of German as a requisite for promoting a greater sense of cosmopolitanism within the Empire. Franzos’s outlook on the Empire was that cultures should and could work together to transcend boundaries and create a

German-speaking Kulturstaat as opposed to a Nationalstaat for the varying peoples of the Habsburg Monarchy.49 The very implication of such a state based not on politics, but instead on common culture, is cosmopolitan in a way that is different from that demonstrated in Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s work Der Iluj. While

Sacher-Masoch criticized Galicia with his piece as being too backward and thoughtlessly tied to benighted ideologies, Franzos instead was interested in finding a common culture. 50 Still, both Franzos and Sacher-Masoch advocated a pan-

Germanism for the sake of finding a common ground for all the Monarchy’s subjects.

49 See Amy-Diana Colin’s article “Karl Emil Franzos, die Bukowina und das vereinte Europa” in the edited volume Spuren eines Europäers: Karl Emil Franzos als Mittler zwischen den Kulturen (2008). 50 Amy-Diana Colin has written: “Bemerkenswert ist Franzos’ Gedanke, ein friedliches Zusammenleben von Nationen in der Habsburgermonarchie hänge nicht von territorialen Aufteilungen ab, sondern von dem Glaube an eine Bindung zwischen nationaler Identität und

This pan-Germanist ideal is evident in Franzos’s fiction, especially in his short, but poignant piece Von Wien nach Czernowitz, in which he depicts traveling on a train from the center of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to its edge in Bukovina. It is not written in the style of a Reisebericht in that the narrator is omniscient and does not write about his own personal experiences. He instead observes everything around him.51 This is not to say that he is purely a passive observer, because his comments can be quite harsh concerning the people he sees. He pokes fun of nationalities, labels cities and qualities with names that insult, and judges the passengers’ styles and mannerisms. The narrator is aiming for a comedic effect, but he does remain somewhat distant. It is not a first-person travel account.

The text contains many clichés and stereotypes, but it does not diminish its importance when understanding contemporary views of others within the Austro-

Hungarian Empire. Franzos-biographer Carl Steiner claims that Franzos’s style is intentional, and as such, merits deeper analysis:

Franzos then was not an intellectual elitist who wrote for a small

segment of literary connoisseurs. Consequently, the majority of

sketches, stories, and essays appearing in his Halb-Asien trilogy are

not stylistic masterpieces per se, nor were they meant to sparkle in

this manner. They are, however, consistently strong and powerful

with regard to theme and message. (56)

territorialem Anspruchsrecht. Visionär ist sein Vorschlag, Völkerfreundschaften auf Zusammenarbeit und Verwirklichung gemeinsamer Projekte zu gründen” (61-62). 51 Anna de Berg has argued in her book “Nach Galizien” Entwicklung der Reiseliteratur am Beispiel der deutschsprachiger Reisebericht vom 18. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert that Karl Emil Franzos’s piece Von Wien nach Czernowitz demonstrates all of the characteristics of a “Reisebericht” in the late nineteenth century.

While this short piece of fiction is probably not in the Austrian literary canon, it is a rich reflection of the time in which it was written.

Because this is a text that describes the structures of those living within the

Empire, it can also be placed into dialogue with the themes of Orientalism that

Edward Said has elucidated. In his book Culture and Imperialism, Said has argued that literature is reflective of culture and the relationship of imperialism to it.

Indeed, fiction itself can become a tool that participates and perpetuates motifs of

Orientalism. While the short piece of fiction from Franzos might seem like it is not important because of its brevity and comedy, Edward Said would insist on the opposite: “And understanding that connection does not reduce or diminish the novel’s value as works of art: on the contrary, because of their worldliness, because of their complex affiliations with their real setting, they are more interesting and more valuable as works of art” (13). Franzos’s simple and highly entertaining reportage has much to offer when understanding the varied groups of people within the Empire. Because of the distinction he tries to make between East and West in his report, it becomes a representative piece to view through the lens of Said’s

Orientalism framework. As will become more evident, Franzos attempts to subvert the labels of East and West by poking fun at the different classifications. However, in this process there are still very specific indicators of East and West that come out in his text.

The report begins with a question: “Bitte, mein Herr, ist die asiastische

Grenze schon passiert?” (81). It is revealed that the narrator of the story is on a train with a woman, who wants to know the exact moment when the train crosses into

Asia. The train winds through a landscape that Franzos paints as less-than- picturesque: “Der Zug wand sich durch odes, odes Heideland. Zuweilen war ein abscheuliches Hüttchen zu sehen; das modrige Strohdach stand dicht über der Erde auf: eine rechte Troglodythenhöhle. Zuweilen ein Ochs vor einem Karren oder ein

Haufe halbnackter Kinder” (81). Franzos’s dreary description allows his reader to become a passenger with him on this train. The train – a feat of mechanical, Western engineering – is in stark contrast to its surroundings. Already in the first scene, there is a dichotomy of East versus West being built by the author who paints the

East as depressing and relatively primitive.

Seeing the landscape outside her, the woman exclaims: “Wir sind bereits in

Asien… Ich könnte drei körperliche Eide darauf schwören!” While she is sure they are in Asia, the narrator remarks: “Und sie began sich im Waggon einzurichten, als ob wir in Asien waren” (81). Who knows what the woman is doing to make arrangements for her new Asian setting, as Franzos does not go into detail. It is clear that inside the wagon, there has been a change in mindset because of the perceived change in physical geography. While ostensibly nothing has changed inside the train car, the woman feels compelled to adjust to her new surroundings.

The narrator then tells the reader “…Das war vor vier Jahren” (81), but has conveyed that opinions about geography are highly subjective and that geography, as well as the moods and feelings it inspires, are a central theme to the text at hand.

To make it clear that there is little consensus on geography, Franzos presents three different approaches to the subject of the border of Europe: the opinions of Russian writer Alexander Herzen, Fürst Metternich, and his own school teacher Pater

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Marzellinus. He claims that Alexander Herzen, the pro-Western Russian writer born in 1812, saw the border of Asia and Europe as “bei Eydtkuhnen stehe der Grenzpfal

Europas” (81), which is near the border of present-day Lithuania and Kaliningrad-

Oblast. Herzen’s definition of the border is overtly political, by stating that the border is as far as the military can protect it.

According to Franzos, Fürst Metternich interprets the border between East and West as the third district of Vienna. Franzos makes a joke concerning the

Austrian politician’s definition: “es war überhaupt eine Eigentümlichkeit dieses

Mannes, zu enge Schranken aufzurichten” (82). But he points out with Metternich’s definition of Asia that everything East of Vienna lies in another continent and is markedly different than the capital of the Austrian Empire.

The third opinion concerning the border belongs to the narrator’s schoolteacher. The narrator recounts an anecdote from his childhood, in which he once said in school that Moscow was in Europe. His teacher however, has a different opinion: “’In Asien!’ rief der Pater Marzellinus und applizierte mir einigen polnischen Patriotismus an jene Körperstelle, die er wahrscheinlich für dies Gefühl besonders empfänglich hielt” (82).

From these selections of Franzos’s report, it is evident that he approaches his subject of geography with humor and wit that many readers could, and still can, find amusing. The topic of boundaries and borders can be quite serious, never mind a tedious undertaking to understanding their history. However, Franzos allows for many interpretations of what the border between the East and the West can be,

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while implying that geography is more than a border. It is also a mindset, an opinion, and a set of implications of something fluid.

After describing the different approaches to the subject of the imagined border between East and West, Franzos offers his own take: “Nach meiner Ansicht laufen die Grenzen beider Weltteile sehr verwickelt ineinander” (82). Franzos uses the example of the train from Vienna to Iași, a city in present-day eastern Romania:

“Wer zum Beispiel den Eilzug von Wien nach Jassy benutzt, kommt zweimal durch halbasiatisches, zweimal durch europäisches Gebiet” (82). His view is, in one way, a cosmopolitan understanding of the borders of the Empire, in that there are no static boundaries and that many places possess qualities of both East and West.

Franzos’s explanation of how to determine whether or not one is in Half-Asia is quite simple: “Der Blick aus dem Coupéfenster genügt, höchstens auch noch das

Betreten der Bahnhofrestaurantionen und der Genuß der landesüblichen Speisen und Getränke. Ein Genuß übrigens, der meist wahrhaftig kein Genuß ist” (82). Food for Franzos becomes a marker of authenticity of a culture. For any traveler, authenticity is always sought after during a trip. Dean MacCannell in his book The

Tourist has written: “Touristic consciousness is motivated by its desire for authentic experiences, and the tourist may believe that he is moving in this direction, but often it is very difficult to know for sure if the experience is in fact authentic” (101).

Franzos never uses the word Tourist in his piece, but it is clear that for him that the restaurants at the train station are an authentic experience of culture and can indicate even whether or not the culture is European. More specifically, with every station he visits, he points out how clean the tablecloths are. If the tablecloths are

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white, it signifies that the culture is European. Even though restaurants in train stations are normally only for tourists, not for a local population, Franzos chooses the tablecloth as a signifier.

After the discussion on geography and where the border between Europe and Asia perceivably lies, there is a change in the text that brings the reader back to

Franzos’s travel report: “Nordbahnhof zu Wien. Halb 10 Uhr vormittags” (82). The journey begins and travelers begin to arrive. First to board the train is a man whom

Franzos labels the “dickes Mammut” (83) who utters only one word “Podwoloczysk”

(83), a city in Poland. Franzos first introduces the travelers by their destination, and then gives them personal histories that are not only entertaining to the reader, but are stereotypes of people from the region to where they are traveling. The “dickes

Mammut” according to Franzos is “[e]in Großgrundbesitzer aus Südrußland” (83).

He doesn’t appear to be personally familiar with anyone on the train, but instead infers their personalities and idiosyncrasies from their destination.

The next people to arrive are two colorful women: “Blaue Kleider, grüne

Mäntel, rote Hüte, gelbe Handschuhe. Oder gelbe Kleider, rote Mäntel, grüne Hüte und blaue Handschuhe. Ein Regenbogen ist gegen diese Anzüge ein monotones

Ding” (83). Their destination is the city is Itzkany in Bukovina. Franzos points out their clothes, but then also judges the cleanliness of the women: “Was dabei an

Unterröcken sichtbar wird, mag vielleicht zuletzt im Jahre des Heiles 1873 gewaschen worden sei” (83). While his observations always have a humorous tone, he does make critical judgments on one particular item that stands as a synecdoche

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for their entire culture. He implies that if one element of the culture is a particular way, it must be true for the entire culture.

The next group of travelers that Franzos describes is a family, presumably from Austria. While getting out of the carriage in which they arrive, the man complains about “das verlotterte Oesterriech” (83). When buying tickets for his family, the man complains again about “das verlotterte Oeterreich” (83). Franzos does not reveal their destination, but instead ties them to the space of Austria.

Others who board the train are mentioned: merchants who are talkative and tell

“23757 Anekdoten” (84) and a young woman.

A voice calls out the path of the train “Oderberg-Kraian-Podwoloczysk-

Itzkany” (84), warning the people to board. Once on the train, everyone is together, and the train becomes a community of travelers: “Die Passagiere werden in die

Waggons gepackt. Nirgends ist man mit Waggons sparsamer als bei diesem Eilzug.

Vielleicht geschieht es nur, um die Geselligkeit unter den Reisenden zu fördern. Wir sind ja in Europa! Und wir bleiben’s auch, wenn sich der Zug in Bewegung setzt”

(84). Traveling becomes a means of meeting others to experience other cultures, and the train is a symbol of everyone coming together.

The journey on the train forces the different people to confront preconceived notions they had of the Other within Austria. For example, the Mammut from South

Russia that Franzos mentioned at the beginning of the text comes out of his cabin, looks out the window, and comments on the surroundings: “Sehr – schöner – Stadt”

(85). A man laughs at him and corrects him, telling him it is actually a village and not a city. The Mammut asks: “So – großer – Dorf! Hier Deutsche?” (85). When he learns

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that the village actually contains Czechs, he grapples with what he’s heard about the

Czechs in Austria and how he perceives their current living conditions: “Er erinnert sich, sehr oft gehört zu haben, wie arm und unglücklich die Tschechen in

Oesterreich sind. Und nun wohnen diese Heloten in Häusern, wie sie in Südrußland kaum ein Adeliger hat. Es sind Fenster darin, wirkliche gläserne Fenster!” (85). The train forces the travelers to witness the Other, instead of just reading about others, or trusting hearsay. Through this more authentic experience of a journey, the

Russian can confirm, or in this case, refute preconceived notions of what other cultures are.

The train makes a fifteen-minute break in Přerov, a place where Franzos declares to still be Europe, based on the restaurant at the train station: “Hier sind noch die Tischtücher weiß, die Gläser rein, die Speisen genießbar” (86). As the train moves Eastward, Franzos decides that the Czech city of Bohumín is an “Eckpfeiler detuscher Cultur zu entdecken. Aber diesmal sicherlich der allerletzte” (86). Again

Franzos laments leaving Europe because the food is not as good: “Daß ein Reisender

Hunger und Durst haben könnte, auf diesen sonderbaren, unerhörten Gedanken kommen hier die Leute nicht mehr” (86).

Franzos insists that Dziedity is the border of Europe and what lies beyond is what is Halb-Asien. Franzos is aware that Galicia could be seen as part of Europe, but instead crafts an intentional argument that it is in Halb-Asien:

Manches erinnert in Galizien allerdings an Europa: z.B. das wahrhaft

kunstvoll ausgebildete System der Wechselreiterei, das nicht minder

kunstvolle Steuersystem und was solcher Cultursegnungen mehr sind.

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Aber ein Land, in dem man auf schmutzigen Tischtüchern ißt, von

anderen Dingen ganz abgesehen, kann man unmöglich zu unserem

Weltteil rechnen. (86)

Here is yet another example of Franzos poking fun at the labels of East and West. He reduces the labels down to a tablecloth at one particular restaurant. Franzos points out what belongs to Europe: the money exchange, the tax system, and particular aspects of culture. However, because the tablecloths do not meet his European standard, Galicia does not belong to Europe in Franzos’s eyes. In Galicia, Joseph Roth would go on to ask the question “Hat hier Europa aufgehört?” (24), and he provides a definitive answer: “Nein, es hat nicht aufgehört. Die Beziehung zwischen Europa und diesem gleichsam verbannten Land ist beständig und lebhaft” (24-25). Roth’s reflections pay tribute to Franzos’s negative description of Galicia, but see more cosmopolitan potential.

Franzos’s depictions of the two major cities of Galicia are less than idyllic.

The train travels on through Cracow, a city labeled “Cracovia la stincatoria” (87) and it is the first time in the piece that language and Jews are mentioned. Franzos says that everyone speaks a mixture of Polish and German, and also makes note of the

Jews in Cracow, mostly poking fun at their shrewd business ways. If restaurants are a symbol of how European a place is, Lemberg’s restaurant is depicted as the worst in the entire text. The farther East one travels in the Empire, the farther away one is from culture. “Und diese Tassen, aus denen man den Kaffee trinken muß! Man kämpft wahrhaftig mit sich selbst, bis endlich das Bedürfnis siegt, etwas Warmes in den Leib zu bekommen” (89).

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However, while the restaurant may be dirty, the clientele is markedly more diverse than all the restaurants described so far:

Da sitzen Bojaren aus der Moldau mit schwarzen verschmitzten

Gesichtern, schweren Goldringen und Uhrbehängen und mit

ungewaschenen Händen. Da sitzen feine, glatte, elegant gekleidete

Herren, die drei Brote nehmen und eines ansagen und dann vielleicht

einen Gulden Trinkgeld geben. Da sind herrliche, dunkeläugige Frauen

in schweren Seidenkleidern und schmutzigen Unterröcken.

Dazwischen zivilisierte Reisende aus Deutschland und England,

emanzipierte polnische Jude, die gern jüdische Polen sein möchten

und in der Speisekarte vor allem nach dem Schweinebraten suchen;

langbärtige ruthenische Popen in fettglänzenden Kaftanen, elegante

Hausarenoffiziere, abgeblühte Kokotten, die nach Bukarest und Jassn

gehen, um dort ‘ihr Glück zu machen’. Und sie alle essen à la carte aus

der französischen Herrenküche des jüdischen Restaurants und zahlen

ein Heidengeld dafür. (89)

All of the diverse subjects of the narrator’s gaze are participating in a commercial exchange in this scene, and consuming food, which Franzos considers an authentic marker of culture. Most notable about Franzos’s depiction is the descriptive adjectives, which demonstrate a particular attention to detail. The narrator’s gaze scans the room and describes the different types of people. The narrator also moves outside the restaurant to describe the people buzzing around the square. Even

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though the tablecloths are dirty in Galicia, there is a certain multiculturalism to the area that the narrator ascribes to the space.

Franzos dedicates the most space in his piece for his description of Galicia.

While he does not outwardly praise it for its diversity, he is certainly pointing it out and in intimate detail. Later on, Roth would go on to write similar descriptions of the region, but his would have a more laudatory quality, as will be pointed out in the third chapter of this dissertation. However, Franzos is early to point out that there are unique qualities about Galicia that are markedly different from the rest of the

Empire.

At the end of his travel report, the train pulls into Czernowitz, where Franzos claims Europe starts to begin again: “Wer da einfährt, dem ist seltsam zumute: er ist plötzlich wieder im Westen, wo Bildung, Gesittung und weißes Tischzeug zu finden sind” (91). Franzos writes that there is a great difference between the two regions of

Galicia and Bukovina, a point that Ludewig highlighted as well. Then Franzos closes with his belief of German as a unifying, civilizing entity for the Empire: “Der deutsche Geist, dieser gütigste und mächtigste Zauberer unter der Sonne, er – und er allein! – hat dies blühende Stücklein Europa hingestellt, mitten in die halb- asiastische Culturwüste! Ihm sei Preis und Dank!” (91).

F. Conclusion

In both Der Iluj and Von Wien nach Czernowitz, the reader gets an impression of the Empire and the people that live within its borders. Both stories present the many cultures, as well as problems and issues that arise from the cultural exchanges

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and interactions of those cultures. Both Franzos and Sacher-Masoch criticize Galicia:

Sacher-Masoch as being too backward, and Franzos for being dirty. However, both point out that Galicia’s diversity make it unique within the Austro-Hungarian

Empire.

Cosmopolitanism is a theme that is woven into both of these pieces of fiction.

For Franzos, the cosmopolitanism in his text is shown in how he portrays all of the people of Empire. He is not hostile or aggressive in his judgment of other cultures, but instead uses humor to point out cultural idiosyncrasies and stereotypes. While many scholars point out the tension of the time period, Franzos’s report indicates that all of the people belong to the same state, but have their differences. Traveling is a means of confronting those differences and stereotypes. For Sacher-Masoch, his cosmopolitan vision for Galicia could bring about great potential, but the people of the area do not accept this cosmopolitanism. Sacher-Masoch’s protagonist Sabathai is ultimately punished for believing in the cosmopolitanism of Galicia.

While I argue that both Franzos and Sacher-Masoch present cosmopolitan depictions of Galicia, it is important to note that they were living in a time when the cosmopolitan vision for Austria-Hungary was coming from the center of the Empire, in imperial projects, for example, like the Kronprinzenwerk. I do not think that the authors necessarily believe in the cosmopolitan project of the Habsburg Empire, and as such, provide depth and contrast to Joseph Roth’s texts about Galicia.

Joseph Roth would later also go on to write about Galicia and its diversity, but in a much different tone. His Galicia is cosmopolitan, but in a nostalgic way for the lost Empire. This text, along with Sacher-Masoch’s, write Galicia as place where

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many different kinds of people live together. Their pieces and depictions of Galicia are reflected in the later work of Joseph Roth. Together, they create an image of

Galicia that requires intimate knowledge, but a distance achieved by moving throughout the Empire. In these two literary pieces, Franzos and Sacher-Masoch demonstrate themselves to be literary forerunners to Joseph Roth in the ways they depict their homeland.

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Chapter 3

Traveling with Roth: France, Galicia, and to the Edge of the Former Empire

Ich fahre niemals mehr in die “Fremde.” Welcher Begriff aus einer Zeit der Postkutsche! Ich fahre höchstens ins “Neue.”

– Roth, Die weißen Städte

A. Introduction

One of the largest components of Roth’s oeuvre is his collection of texts written as a journalist for several newspapers in Europe. The time between the end of World War I and his nascent work as a journalist has been not well-documented.

Biographer Wilhelm von Sternburg has claimed that Roth was eager to turn away from his Galician home, as it was no longer part of Austria, and head towards the center of the former Empire: “Doch sein Blick ist unabhängig von den politisch- militärischen Ereignissen in Galizien nach Westen gerichtet. Er will die

Vergangenheit abschütteln, sich im österreichisch-deutschen Kulturraum etablieren,

Karriere machen, Geld verdienen” (190).52 His first place of significant employment was with the daily newspaper Der Neue Tag that began in March 1919.53 Roth penned approximately 140 articles for the newspaper before it folded after a year

(von Sternburg 194).

52 According to Wilhelm von Sternburg, much of the confusion or murkiness about the time in Roth’s life is due to the fact that he had trouble securing the proper national documentation. Von Sternburg writes: “Der Besitz von amtlichen Papieren wird in den 20er- und 30er- Jahren für Millionen Menschen zu einer Frage des Überlebens. […] Roth behandelt dieses Thema schon sehr früh in seinen journalistischen und essayistischen Arbeiten. Den Schwierigkeiten der Juden, sich die notwendigen Papiere zu besorgen, gilt sein besonderes Augenmark” (193). 53 Ingeborg Sültemeyer’s volume Das Frühwerk Joseph Roths 1915-1926: Studien und Texte (1976) concerns itself primarily with the development of Roth’s socialism during his time at Der Neue Tag.

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The period following World War I was influential on Roth’s style. In this climate, the newspapers desired to turn away from much of the propaganda they had been purporting during the war, and instead focused on independent voices

(von Sternburg 197). Roth biographer Wilhelm von Sternburg writes of the influence of this time on Roth: “Die linke und doch tolerante Haltung des Blattes wird den Journalisten Roth formen” (197).

While Roth very rarely discussed his own past, there is a letter from 1930 that remains as a de facto autobiography, in that it stands as one of the few instances of Roth’s introspection of his own life. In this letter to Gustav Kiepenheuer, his publisher, Roth described his own journey from soldier to journalist: “Drei

Wochen marschierte ich. Dann fuhr ich auf Umwegen, zehn Tage lang, von

Podwoloczysk nach Budapest, von hier nach Wien, wo ich, aus Mangel an Geld, für

Zeitungen zu schreiben begann. Man druckte meine Dummheiten. Ich lebte davon.

Ich wurde Schriftsteller” (Briefe 167). Roth seems to be quite casual in his description of how he came to his career of writer and journalist, which is consequently reflected in the fact that he is predominately remembered as a writer of fiction. I propose, however, to take a closer look at Joseph Roth’s articles written during the time of his early career as a journalist and demonstrate that there are connections between this time period of his life and career to his Galician heritage.

In this chapter, I will investigate the selection of his feuilletons that demonstrate his cosmopolitanism and relationship to space. More specifically, it is pertinent to create a connection between his feuilletons written about France, and those written about his travels back to Galicia. I argue that they should be seen as

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pieces of travel writing that not only describe his perspective of a place at a certain time – in the typical feuilleton style, which will be discussed – but also that his travel writing concurrently subverts the very foundation of the genre.

Die weißen Städte, a collection of short texts about his travels in southern

France, was written in 1925, but published posthumously.54 The pieces written for this small collection provide an excellent example of Roth’s views of travel and the thoughts that travel inspires. At first glance, Die weißen Städte is a portrait of Roth’s impressions of traveling in cities like Lyon, Marseilles, and Arles in his own version of the feuilleton form. However, below the surface, and perhaps more importantly,

Roth also presents a theory of travel, and suggests how travel can shape one’s worldview. In this collection of essays, Roth also presents to his reader a cosmopolitan view that combines place, history, and travel. During a time when tourism was a bourgeoning industry, Die weißen Städte do not read as if they are attempting to lure journeyers, nor participating in the commercialization of the experience of travel. Instead, these vignettes read as a more personal account of his travels, versus pieces written deliberately for a wider audience.

The feuilleton is typically focused on personal perspectives, and while Roth falls in line with typical feuilleton writing in this regard, he also alters the genre.

Understanding the nuances of this genre is vital because the feuilleton was a popular way to understanding culture. What is more, considering how Roth

54 There is an indication, in a letter to his publisher Benno Reifenburg on 18. August 1925, that Roth wanted his essays to be published in book form: “Ich habe Material für ein schönes Buch mit dem Titel: ‘Die weißen Städte’ für den Buchverlag. Ich weiß aber nicht, ob der Verlag noch Bücher drucken wird, in denen solche Töne rauschen, wie in meinen Dingen. Ja, ich sehe, daß die Luft in Dtschld. sehr dick geworden ist” (Briefe 55).

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manipulates this genre, we gain insight into how Roth’s cosmopolitan view evolved, and how these views are ultimately reflected in his fictional works.

The second part of this chapter concentrates on the two articles “Galizien und Polen / Reise durch Galizien – Leute und Gegend” and “Lemberg, die Stadt.”

Both of these feuilletons were written on assignment for the Frankfurter Zeitung in late 1924, and were republished in the edited volume Joseph Roth auf Reisen in

2011.55 If in Die weißen Städte a theory of travel is revealed, these two articles connect Roth’s writing on travel and the periphery. Indeed, Roth creates an impression of Galicia for a wider audience, and illustrates how the space belongs to

Europe because of its Habsburg past.

In convincing his readership of Galicia’s position as a vital part of Europe, there are many facets to the space that correspond and extend the image of Galicia written previously by Sacher-Masoch and Franzos. Roth reflects upon the space of the former Empire in these two essays, and how contemporary Galicia corresponded to and changed from times past. The works of all three authors exhibit the area’s cosmopolitanism as an essential characteristic to the space and a direct result of the Habsburg influence.

Before turning to the Roth’s works themselves, it is important to provide the theoretical framework that informs my readings of these often-overlooked texts.

The first theory that will be discussed is how cosmopolitanism relates to travel. In my fourth chapter, I will argue that one should conceptualize Joseph Roth as a

55 The article “Lemberg, die Stadt” was also recently published in the edited volume by Jan Bürger Reisen in die Ukraine und nach Russland (2015). The feuilleton “Galizien und Polen / Reise durch Galizien – Leute und Gegend” was published in Michael Hofmann’s translation The Hotel Years as “Journey through Galicia: People and Place” (2015).

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cosmopolitan writer, thus helping his work and Roth himself transcend more localized labels, such as Austrian, Jewish, or merely nostaligic. As we will see, this cosmopolitanism that is present in his writing is fundamentally influenced by his travels, and serves to help Roth develop a distinct perspective, steeped in literary tradition, that blends travel with cosmopolitan leanings.

The second central concept lies in the literary form of the feuilleton. It was a popular style of writing at the time Roth was reporting for the Frankfurter

Allgemeine Zeitung, but it is a specific way of writing that attempts an encapsulation of the culture of a place, as well the writer’s reaction to it. Roth had his own thoughts on the genre and its function. Consequently, it is necessary to understand

Roth’s intpretation of this genre because it shows a deeper connection between

Roth and how his relationship to space manifested in his texts, both fictional and journalistic.

At its core, this chapter will explore Roth’s travels in a broad sense by analyzing his travel essays on France, and placing in dialogue comparable themes found in the two specific articles he wrote about his impressions traveling in post-

World War I Galicia. Even though these pieces were written approximately nine months apart, these texts emphasize Roth’s experience as a traveler, as well as his adeptness in understanding and relating to place. Die weißen Städte and his articles for Die Frankfurter Zeitung, attempt to ponder the question of Eastern Europe’s position vis-à-vis Western Europe, as well as the cultural, social, and political repercussions of attempting to locate an answer. This chapter teases out the connections between Roth’s journalistic texts, as well as establishes a link between

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Roth and his Galician forebearers that wrote about the region’s idiosyncrasies before him. Roth follows in their footsteps, yet his understanding of Galicia is far more complicated and layered because of the history the region had endured by the time he was writing. The space of this particular periphery of Austria-Hungary, and its position within the former Habsburg Empire, evokes complex characterizations from Joseph Roth that must be understood in its own context and history.

B. Travel, Cosmopolitanism, and the Feuilleton

One of the arguments central to this dissertation is that travel is a vital component to adopting a cosmopolitan understanding of the world. Ulf Hannerz has argued that the very definition of a cosmopolitan is one who travels and has a worldly outlook (237). Elaborating on his view, Hannerz notes:

…[C]osmopolitanism in a stricter sense includes a stance toward

diversity itself, toward a coexistence of cultures in the individual

experience. A more genuine cosmopolitanism is first of all an

orientation, a willingness to engage with the Other. It is an intellectual

and aesthetic stance of openness toward divergent cultural

experiences, a search for contrasts rather than uniformity. (239)

Daniel Hiebert has likewise pointed out that travel is essential to a cosmopolitan outlook when he defines cosmopolitanism as a “capacity to interact across cultural lines.” Hiebert even equates “cosmopolitanism with cultural

‘outreach’” (212). While Roth does not convey in travels on these terms – he does not present himself as a cultural ambassador, for example – he is certainly

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concerned with an emotional response to the encounters that travel initiates. Roth, instead of a traveler that concentrates on difference, concentrates on shared experiences within the cultural differences, thus further exhibiting his cosmopolitanism.

Tim Youngs has theorized three reasons as to how the time after 1900 shaped travel writing: people’s changing sense of speed with new travel technologies, intellectual movements that had “radically influenced ideas of the self”

(68), and the “politics of ‘race’ and decolonization” that “challenge[d] colonial stereotypes through the revision or reversal of colonial-era journeys” (68). Travel allowed Roth to negotiate what Youngs labels “ideas of the self” (68), a theory that

Jon Hughes investigated with his work Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth’s Writing in the 1920s (2006). However, Youngs’s other two characterizations of travel during this time are also equally applicable to Roth and his writing. Roth was traveling in the interwar period, a period that Paul Fussell has claimed was unique for writing about the experience of travel: “A convention of the travel books of the 20’s and 30’s is for the traveler to pay his respects to the

Great War by implicitly recalling that time when travel was impossible, or when

‘going abroad’ was a murderous parody of the real thing” (13). As with his contemporaries, the Great War was an experience and memory that Roth confronted during his travels.

Although Jon Hughes has already interpreted Roth’s journeying as a modern endeavor, I would like to reiterate how the relationship between travel and

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modernism is tightly bound. Deal MacCannell, author of the seminal text The Tourist

(1999), has noted this relationship:

Modernity transcends older social boundaries, appearing first in

urban industrial centers and spreading rapidly to undeveloped areas.

There is no other complex of reflexive behaviors and ideas that

follows the development so quickly as tourism and sightseeing. With

the possible exceptions of existentialism and science fiction, there is

no other widespread movement universally regarded as essentially

modern. (15)

MacCannell spends considerable attention on theorizing the role of the tourist and the significance of leisure activity. While I do not label Roth as necessarily undertaking the act of travel for purely pleasure, MacCannell’s label of what constitutes a tourist certainly applies to Roth:

The touristic critique of tourism is based on a desire to go beyond the

other “mere” tourists to a more profound appreciation of society and

culture, and it is by no means limited to intellectual statements. All

tourists desire this deeper involvement with society and culture to

some degree; it is a basic component of their motivation to travel. (10)

For Roth, the desire to engage on a deeper niveau would appear to be for journalistic value. Yet, Roth also added his own interpretation to the genre of the feuilleton.

The feuilleton literary form is borrowed from the French and is still used by

German newspapers, such as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, today. Almut

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Todorow has provided a definition of the feuilleton that demonstrates how the form fits into newspaper reportage:

Im Feuilleton findet eine kurzzeitige, auf effektive Vermittlung der

gesellschaftlichen Alltagspraxis gerichtete Kommunikation ihren

Platz, aber auch komplexe Anliegen der Gesellschaft wie ihre

Traditionen und Wandlungsprozesse, ihre Machtverhältnisse,

Erfahrungen, Moden und Ideologien werden hier erörtert. […] Das

Feuilleton vermittelt damit einen eigenen Zugang zur sprachlichen

Formierung von Realitätsvorstellungen, zur Schlagwort- und

Toposbildung im publizistischen Diskurs. (143)

In a similar vein, Katia Dianina writes that the feuilleton is important for the entertainment value it provides the reader in its reporting of recent events, while concurrently serving as a “guide to popular culture and a forum for public opinion”

(188).

There is also a connection between travel and the feuilleton as experiences of modernity. For example, Paul Reitter has written: “Journalism too had its modernist moments. Indeed, some of the most searching modernist criticism in Germany and

Austria found expression in the feuilleton, or cultural journalism” (1). Reitter, however, is quick to point out that the feuilleton was a genre that not all appreciated: “Critics accused feuilleton writers of attenuating and commodifying

Kultur” (5). If the content of the feuilleton was not enough with which to find fault,

Carl Schorske has criticized the flowery writing style of the typical feuilleton: “In the

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feuilleton writer’s style, the adjectives engulfed the nouns, the personal tint virtually obliterated the object of discourse” (9).

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the feuilleton was dominated by a

Jewish discourse, a theme that has been richly explored in Hildegard Kernmayer’s monograph Judentum im Wiener Feuilleton: Exemplarische Untersuchungen zum literarästhetischen und politischen Diskurs der Moderne (1998).56 The fact that Roth was not included in the group of writers Kernmayer investigates is telling, and he is similarly only mentioned superficially in Martin Mauthner’s monograph German

Writers in French Exile, 1933-1940. Roth’s feuilletons stand out from the rest of the authors participating in this genre, a point that supports the overarching idea that

Roth was subverting the genre of travel writing and the form of the feuilleton.

Perhaps the most acerbic criticism of the genre of the feuilleton, especially those about the experience of travel, came from Karl Kraus. His essay “Heine und die

Folgen” appeared first as a pamphlet in 1910, and later in his magazine Die Fackel in

1911. Krauss traced the feuilleton to Heinrich Heine: “Ohne Heine kein Feuilleton.

Das ist die Franzosenkrankheit, die er uns eingeschleppt hat. Wie liecht wird man krank in Paris! Wie lockert sich die Moral des deutschen Sprachgefühls!” (19-20).

Furthermore, Krauss views the feuilleton as antithetical to literature:

Man kann heute Feuilletons schreiben, ohne zu den Champs Elysées

mit der eigenen Nase gerochen zu haben. Der große

56 Roth is a noticeable omission from her list of authors that she investigates, but she seems to be more focused on authors that stayed in Vienna and did not write feuilletons about travel. Instead she looks at texts from Moritz Gottlieb Saphir, Ferdinand Kurnberger, Sigmund Schlesinger, Friedrich Schlogl, Karl Landsteiner, Betty Paoli, Daniel Spitzer, Ludwig Speidel, and Theodor Herzl.

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sprachschwindlerische Trick, der sich in Deutschland viel besser lohnt

als die größte sprachschöpferische Leistung, wirkt fort durch die

Zeitungsgeschlechter und schafft aller Welt, welcher Lektüre ein

Zeitvertrieb ist, den angenehmsten Vorwand, der Literatur

auszuweichen. (30-32)

Scholar Paul Reitter demonstrates that this essay was “[u]npopular in its own day”

(24), but has “become a privileged object of scholarly opprobrium in ours” (24), and that many scholars have analyzed Krauss’s essay with regard to its anti-Semitic implications.

Roth, however, offered a defense of the feuilleton form. In a letter to the

Frankfurter Zeitung’s feuilleton editor Benno Reifenburg on April 22, 1926, Roth compares himself to another feuilletonist and in doing so, provides a definition for how he understood the form and its social impact:

Muß ich also dafür büßen, daß ein Feuilletonist sich entschließt, ein

Politiker zu werden? Man kann Feuilletons nicht mit der linken Hand

schreiben. Man darf nicht nebenbei Feuilletons schreiben. Es ist eine

arge Unterschätzung des ganzen Fachs. Das Feuilleton ist für die

Zeitung ebenso wichtig, wie die Politik und für den Leser noch

wichtiger. Die moderne Zeitung wird gerade von allem andern, nur

nicht von der Politik, geformt werden. Die moderne Zeitung braucht

den Reporter nötiger, als den Leitartikler. Ich bin nicht eine Zugabe,

nicht eine Mehlspeise, sondern eine Hauptmahlzeit. […] Mich liest man

mit Intresse. Nicht die Berichte über das Parlament. Nicht die

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Leitartikel, nicht die Telegramme. Aber der Vertag glaubt, der Roth ist

ein nebensächlicher Plauderer, den sich eine große Zeitung gerade

noch leisten kann. Es ist sachlich falsch. Ich mache keine ‘witzigen

Glossen’. Ich zeichne das Gesicht der Zeit. (Briefe 87)57

Roth had a critical opinion on his role as a feuilletonist and it is clearly, and wittily, articulated in the passage presented above. Roth takes his mission to reflect the time seriously, and while it can be merely overlooked as fluff to complement the supposedly more serious articles that a newspaper publishes, one can readily see that Roth’s writings not only demonstrate the time he was writing, but also that they reflect the space as well. As such, they should be regarded as pieces of travel writing.

In France, Roth’s letters indicate that he was personally happy. 58 And although his letters also specify the difficulties he had managing his finances, they also demonstrate Roth’s happiness in having found a foil to Germany. 59 The

Frankfurter Zeitung, in turn, seemed to have been pleased with Roth’s work. In a letter written from his feuilleton editor Benno Reifenberg to Roth in 1930: “Wenn

57 Emphasis is in the original. 58 For example, in a letter to Benno Reifenberg from Lyon and dated 25 July 1925, Roth claimed: “Herrlich ist ein so abgebrauchtes Wort, wenn Sie hier wären, würden Sie begreifen, daß ich es anwenden muß” (Briefe 53). 59 Roth penned in a letter from Marseille on August 22, 1925 to friend and fellow writer Bernard von Brentano: “Morgen beginnt hier der Sozialistenkongreß. Ich habe mehrere Bekannte aus Berlin und Wien gesprochen. Furchtbar diese Menschen in dieser Umgebung. Diese ewige starke Sonne kehrt ihren innersten Dreck zu oberst. Sie sind hier eingefallen, wie vor tausend Jahren die Langobarden. Mit Schillerkragen! Mit Aktentaschen! Mit Regenschirmen! Mit dicken Frauen auf Plattfüßen! Sie gehn ohne Hüte! Sie schwitzen. Sie stinken. Sie trinken Bier. Sie reden lauter, als die vielen Orientalen, die hier im alten Hafenviertel eine betäubenden Lärm vollführen. Alle Sozialdemokraten sehen deutsch aus. Sogar die litauischen. Denn in Deutschland ist der Typus zu Hause: redlich, fleißig, Biertrinkend, die Ordnung der Welt verbessernd. Ein Demokrat und sozial. ‘Gerecht!’ Hoffnung auf Evolution. Alles deutsch” (Briefe 57). Klaus Westermann has noted: “Zuvor berichtete er [Roth] mehrere Wochen lang als Auslandskorrespondent des Feuilletons aus der französischen Hauptstadt. Diese Zeit ließ ihn Distanz zu den Ereignissen und Mißständen in Deutschland gewinnen, aus der er neue Hoffnung für sich und seine Arbeit schöpfen konnte” (48).

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die Frankfurter Zeitung wieder mit Ihnen zusammen arbeitet, so könnte das nur geschehen unter der Voraussetzung, daß man wieder das Monopol auf Ihre gesamte journalistische Tätigkeit gewinnt. Wir können und dürfen nicht einen Joseph Roth mit anderen Blättern teilen” (Briefe 162).

C. Packing His Suitcase: Roth’s Travel Beginnings

Roth was born on the fringe of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the city of

Brody. Verena Dohrn has pointed to how Brody was a typical small town in Galicia:

“Galizische Provinzstädte, Grenzstädte, Festungsstädte. Jüdische Städte. Brody war eine von ihnen. Nach Lemberg und Krakau war Brody mit seinen vierundzwanzigtausend Einwohnern (mehr als achtzig Prozent Juden) 1872 die drittgrößte Stadt in Galizien” (90).60 Roth’s studies however took him to places beyond his small hometown. He first studied in the nearby town of Lemberg for one semester, and then moved to Vienna to continue his education in philosophy and

German literature. 61 , 62 Sidney Rosenfeld has pointed out that this shift from

Lemberg to Vienna provided Roth with a chance to alter the perception of his identity:

60 Börries K. Kuzmany’s 2011 monograph Brody: Eine galizische Grenzstadt im langen 19. Jahrhundert is a rich source of information about the city and its history. Kuzmany focuses on how the city is distinctive within the Austo-Hungarian Monarchy because of a large percentage of its denizens were Jewish. Joseph Roth also describes a depiction of his birth city, although it remains unnamed, in Juden auf Wanderschaft (1927). 61 Sidney Rosenfeld has interpreted Roth studying German literature as a measure of assimilation from Galician outsider to Viennese insider: Roth’s “decision to study German literature, enshrined since early Romanticism as the treasure store of the German national heritage, linked him as could no other pursuit with the cultural world to which he aspired” (9). 62 “Lemberg ist nur eine kurze Zwischenstation. Schon im Spätsommer 1913 finden wir den Studenten Roth in der Habsburg-Metropole Wien” (von Sternberg 126).

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Roth’s masquerade, or game of identity, began in prewar Vienna,

when the fledgling university student assumed the demeanor of a

dandy, complete with monocle, in an effort to disguise his humble

Galician beginnings. In Vienna, too, he affected the melody and

cadences of Viennese speech in order to mute his pronounced Galician

accent. (5)

From what Rosenfeld asserts, Roth was aware of his status as an outsider to the capital, and von Sternburg concurs: “Roths Wiener Jahre sind gekennzeichnet von dem Versuch, sich mit doppeltem Eifer im deutsch-österreichischen Kulturraum zu assimilieren. Aber gerade das Verhalten der alteingesessenen Wiener Juden gegenüber den Neuankömmlingen aus dem Osten bewirkt bei ihm allmählich ein

Umdenken. Er bliebt in dieser Frage gespalten” (136). However, Roth did not spend much time in Vienna, as he quit his studies to enlist in the army, and during the course of the First World War was deployed to the Eastern Front.63

Roth first started to work for the Frankfurter Zeitung in 1923 in Berlin, and later moved to Paris in 1925 to work as a feuilleton correspondent for the newspaper.64 Until he quit in 1929, Roth traveled to the Soviet Union, Albania,

Poland, and Italy for the paper to write travel reports.65 The time period between

63 Von Sternburg writes of Roth’s decision to enlist: “Die Entscheidung Soldat zu werden, beruht in der biographischen Realität wohl nicht zuletzt auf Roths Wunsch, auch in der Frage von Krieg und Frieden nicht als Außenseiter zu gelten” (161). 64 For a good resource on the Frankfurter Zeitung during the time Roth was working for them, see Helmut Stalder’s work Siegfried Kracauer: Das Journalistische Werk in der ‘Frankfurter Zeitung’ 1921- 1933 (2003). 65 This timeline is according to Sindey Rosenfeld in his book Understanding Joseph Roth (2001). I am borrowing the term “travel reports” from him, although others might call his texts from this time period by other terms. Wilhelm von Sternburg, in his biography of Roth, labels his texts “Reportage- Reisen” (544).

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1923 and 1929 was extremely influential to Roth’s personal and professional development. It was during this period that his influential friendship with Stefan

Zweig began, his wife’s health had begun to fail, and he published the novels Das

Spinnennetz (1923), Hotel Savoy (1924), Die Rebellion (1924), Die Flucht ohne Ende

(1927), Zipper und sein Vater (1928), and Rechts und Links (1929).

After embarking on a career in journalism in 1918, Roth never seemed to have any intention of settling down and planting roots. As biographer Wilhelm von

Sternburg writes:

Sein Zuhause werden die Hotels, Cafés, und Bars in Europas

Metropolen oder in den kümmerlichen Provinzstädten Frankreichs,

Polens, Russlands, Albaniens und Italiens, in denen er sich über

Wochen während seiner Recherchereisen und dann als aus

Deutschland Vertriebener aufhält. (20)

Von Sternburg even labels Roth’s existence as a “Heimatslosigkeit” (21), referring to the duality of meaning within the word: a transitory, nomadic life, as well as a life without a country. Roth was a traveler.

After having cemented his reputation in Vienna, his journalistic career took him on assignment around Europe. The bulk of these journalistic texts have been overlooked in scholarship in favor of his fiction that has secured its place in the canon of Austrian literature.66 When looking at Roth’s career as a writer, his works

66 Jon Hughes has written of this trend in Roth scholarship: “Given the two phases [of Roth’s work] Kesten refers to, the emphasis has tended to be upon the second phase. The reception of Roth’s later works has been dominated above all by that of Radetzkymarsch. In early Roth scholarship it received considerably more attention than Roth’s other works, above all at the cost of the works of the 1920s” (Modernity 6).

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of journalism, however, were the bread and butter of his profession, as well as how he secured most of his stable income, especially early on in his career.67 Through the occupation of journalism, Roth was able to travel and support his nomadic lifestyle. 68 Roth even claimed: ““Ich bin ein Hotelbürger, ein Hotelpatriot”

(Wartesaal, 33), demonstrating the rootless existence that his job encouraged.

D. Roth’s Travels in France

One of the best examples of Roth’s writings as a traveler is his short book

Die weißen Städte, published posthumously, but completed in 1925 after having traveled in France. After its introduction, Die weißen Städte is divided into nine chapters. Each chapter is dedicated to a specific city, except for the last, which is simply called “Die Menschen.” Roth begins in the city of Lyon and travels south, traveling on to Vienne, Tournon, Avignon, Les Baux, Nîmes, Arles, Tarascon,

Beaucaire, ending finally in Marseille. The chapters consist primarily of descriptions of place and Roth’s observations on different topics, such as industry, architecture, transportation, religion, vegetation, and literature.

67 In the introduction to Joseph Roth’s What I Saw: Reports from Berlin 1920-1933, Michael Hofmann has observed: “When he was a star writer for the Frankfurter Zeitung, earning one deutsche mark per line (he never sold himself short!), he still thought of himself as an ‘orchestra member’” (15). Hartmut Scheible compared Joseph Roth to Walter Benjamin and their work for the Frankfurter Zeitung: “Beide Autoren schreiben mehr oder weniger regelmäßig für die Frankfurter Zeitung, beide sind von ausgeprägtem Selbstbewußtsein erfüllt; während jedoch Benjamins Arbeiten vorerst nur einem kleinen Kreise Auserwählter ein Begriff sind, ist Joseph Roth bereits ein berühmter, hoch angesehener Schriftsteller, der für seine Artikel Honorare erzielt wie kein anderer Autor in den Jahren der Weimarer Republik” (307). Stefan H. Kaszynski has noted: “Wenn man allerdings dieses publizistische Schrifttum im Kontext der intellektuellen Biographie des galizischen Schriftstellers auswertet, dann wird es sehr bald klar, daß die Journalistik für den Dichter Roth hauptsächlich ein Brotberuf war, eine Beschäftigung, mit der er für seinen Lebensunterhalt sorgte” (63). 68 Wilhelm von Sternburg claims: “In diesem ersten Journalistenjahr in Wien entwickelt sich allerdings auch Roths Boheme-Existenz, die er bis zu seinem Tode beibehalten wird und deren Schattenseite sein künftiges Leben mitbestimmt” (205).

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Many scholars have pointed out that Roth felt more at home in France than he did in post-World War I Germany or Austria.69 Jon Hughes has interpreted

Die weißen Städte as Roth’s “attempt to translate his feelings about France into a sustained piece of prose” (Re-assessing 126), and claims that the pieces are a “love poem to France, […] one that ultimately, perhaps, reveals more about the poet than about the object of his veneration” (Re-assessing 141).

Die weißen Städte has been analyzed by only a handful of scholars. In his book Facing Modernity: Fragmentation, Culture and Identity in Joseph Roth’s Writing in the 1920s (2006), Jon Hughes has situated these travel reports vis-à-vis theories of modernity, and argues that they are indicative of an identity formation. “What is important to stress,” Hughes contends, “however, is that Roth’s text does not aim simply to demonize Germany in favour of a utopian France; rather, it presents a subtle, if unresolved, examination of the difficulties of identity formation in the contemporary world” (13). Hartmut Scheible wrote in his article “Joseph Roths

Reise durch Geschichte und Revolution: das Europa der Nachkriegszeit –

Deutschland, Frankreich, Sowjetunion” a comparison of Roth’s travels and how each journey influenced the next with regard to Roth’s political development. Katharina

Ochse has taken a different view, and demonstrated how Roth’s underlying interests

69 Jon Hughes has written: “From the outset, Roth viewed France as an antithesis to Germany, and indeed as the epitome of European culture. The contact he perceived between German and French people is well illustrated in that first letter, in which he expresses glee at being treated differently from the Germans he knows in Paris. Roth is not suggesting that his Austrian origins explain this; rather he would like to believe that it is a spiritual kinship with the French and their outlook on life which allows them to recognize in him one of their own” (126). Whereas Hughes has romanticized Roth’s presence in France, Andrew Barker has presented his choice of France as more simple binary: “Joseph Roth and Ernst Weiss were two such émigrés who, like Heinrich Heine a century beforehand, travelled to France in the hope that it would provide a refuge from Germany’s rottenness” (146).

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in Catholicism were starting to gain a foothold in these texts in her book Joseph

Roths Auseinandersetzung mit dem Antisemitismus (1996).

In Hughes’s chapter on Die weißen Städte, he delineates five qualities that makes Roth’s narrator of the short vignettes a traveler. Hughes observes about

Roth’s style of travel writing:

It is possible, […] to view Die weißen Städte almost as a case study in

Roth’s employment of first-person narrators in his early fictional

work, for it is a text, as we have seen, in which the narrator does

nothing but travel, reacts strongly to his perceptions of landscape,

observes and interacts with local people, but remains fundamentally

alone. By reading this text alongside the others narrated in the first

person it is possible to construct a typology of the narrator-traveller.

(47)

While Hughes has certainly initiated the scholarly conversation on the intersection of Roth and travel, I argue that Roth’s travels are also related to his writings on Galicia and cosmopolitanism. Roth’s narrator in Die weißen Städte is actively engaging with traditional conventions of travel writing, while also manipulating the genre to create his own version of the feuilleton and his own interpretation of post-World War I Europe. In Die weißen Städte, Roth demonstrates the qualities that make him a transnational author, which will be discussed in futher detail. By being transnational, Roth was relating to space in a way that was ahead of his time. Roth has been tied to place in academic scholarship in many ways, as will be discussed in the final chapter on Radetzkymarsch. Yet, the significance of Roth’s

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travel is only beginning to come to the forefront of scholarly inqury.70 Especially considering that Roth was writing in a time when the act of travel was undergoing massive changes, there is much more to connect to Roth in regard to travel and the experience thereof.

E. Traveling to the White Cities

Die weißen Städte sheds light on how Roth was not only exemplary of his time, but also how he brought a unique view to the act and experience of travel. The first line of the text would have the reader believe that the narrator is Roth: “Ich wurde eines Tages Journalist aus Verzweiflung über die volkommene Unfähigkeit aller Berufe, mich auszufüllen” (65). As Hughes has pointed out, the reader cannot immediately assume that it is Roth who is the narrator, because it was written as a book and not a diary, but nonetheless reads like a personal account.71

After a short introduction, Roth’s text soon moves to accentuating the experience of traveling to foreign lands, while also making it evident that the essence of journeying has changed. It is apparent from the onset that Roth is writing in a time that was in flux, as the scholars Tim Youngs, Paul Fussell, and

70 See, for example, Joseph Roth auf Reisen (2011), Reisen in die Ukraine und nach Russland (2015), and The Hotel Years (2015). 71 As Hughes explains: “Die weißen Städte, the short book inspired by his travels in the south of France in 1925, was not published in Roth’s lifetime, and contrary to the assumptions of Hermann Kesten and David Bronsen it is not, at least straightforwardly, a work of journalism or autobiography. This latter point is, I shall argue, crucial, for it has been missed by so many scholars who continue to cite Die weißen Städte as if it were Roth’s private diary. Nonetheless, the text can and should be read as a very personal response to the towns of southern France, inspired not so much by the area itself but by a symbolic set of antitheses informed by his understanding of northern Europe in general, and urban Germany in particular” (Modernity 13).

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Dean MacCannell have demonstrated. Roth articulates the experience of travel in a period when time was moving more quickly than it had in the past. Roth writes:

Ich glaube nicht, daß wir mit der Sicherheit eines für alle Fälle

ausgerüsteten Touristen wandern dürfen. Die Fahrpläne stimmen

nicht, die Führer berichten falsche Tatsachen. Alle Reisebücher sind

von einem stupiden Geist diktiert, der nicht an die Veränderlichkeit

der Welt glaubt. Innerhalb einer Sekunde aber ist jedes Ding durch

tausend Gesichter verwandelt, entstellt, unkenntlich geworden. (66-

67).

Roth’s writing reflects the inadequacy of language to encompass experience, which reflects the earlier themes of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s text Ein Brief (1902).

In this essay, Hofmannsthal’s narrator Lord Chandos is experiencing a crisis of language and states “…nämlich weil die Sprache, in welcher nicht nur zu schreiben, sondern auch zu denken mir vielleicht gegeben wäre, weder die lateinische noch die englische noch die italienische und spanische ist, sondern eine Sprache, von deren

Worten mir auch nicht eines bekannt ist…” (138). Roth, however, extends this crisis of language to the experience of travel. In doing so, he captures the same spirit of

Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos in that all the old paradigms that exist to describe an experience are inadequate. This is one instance where the reader can understand how Roth subverts the genre of travel writing, because he argues that by the time anyone has the words to describe the experience of travel, the entire experience has already changed. In writing about travel, Roth is simultaneously unraveling the words he had already knit together.

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Roth was writing during a unique time of Austrian history: the time between the end of the First World War and the annexation of the First Republic by the Nazi

Germany. This time period has been labeled an orphan state by Andrew Barker, referring to not only the immense change, but also the lack of continuity with the time periods before and after.72 Roth’s writing certainly reflects Barker’s analysis of the time, while also speaking to the experience of traveling. Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s classic study The Railway Journey: The Industrialization of Time and Space in the 19th

Century has labeled this shift that Roth stuggles to describe as an “annihilation of space and time” (33). Because technology allowed travelers to cover more distance and in less time than ever before, the entire categories of time and space had taken on new meaning. Schivelbusch elaborates on this assertion:

The notion that the railroad annihilated space and time was not

related to that expansion of space that resulted from the

incorporation of new spaces into the transport network. What was

experienced as being annihilated was the traditional space-time

continuum which characterized the old transport technology.

Organically embedded in nature as it was, that technology, in its

mimetic relationship to the space traversed, permitted the traveler to

perceive that space as a living entity. (36)

72 Barker writes: “In 1878 Richard Wagner published an essay posing the deceptively simple question ‘Was ist deutsch?” (What is German?). It was a question whose complex, ultimately murderous, ramifications reverberated through much of the twentieth century. It was indisputably a pivotal question at the inception of the small and vulnerable Austrian republic, born out of the rubble of a great empire, that originally elected to name itself ‘Deutsch-Österreich.’ The often overlooked literary reflections of what transpired there in those two short decades before the ‘German Question’ was seemingly put to rest by Hitler’s annexation of the First Austrian Republic into the ‘Thousand Year Reich’ have formed the stuff of this book” (175).

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Roth’s travels depicted in Die weißen Stätde correspond to Schivelbusch’s interpretation of how technology affected a new perspective on the physical and emotional experience of travel. Roth describes the ebbs and flows associated with space, and the futility of capturing that space and within the limits of the written word. Roth recognizes this challenge and presents this observation as a caveat to his piece. With that being said, he does insist that he has a valid perspective to his travels: “Ich kann nur erzählen, was in mir vorging und wie ich es erlebte” (67).

Roth does not claim to be creating a master narrative when he travels to a place, but instead he advocates for more personal participation and observation. Roth’s narrative voice in Die weißen Städte captures the fluctuating time in which it was written, while simultaneously being completely aware of the shortcoming of written language, and attempting to encapsulate a space in a single written text.

The issue of time and place pervades Die weißen Städte. For example, in his section on Tournon, Roth reiterates how place has little significance to his identity and belonging, but time is a greater factor: “Ich kann in fremden Ländern zu Hause und heimisch sein, aber nicht in fremden Zeiten. Unsere wahre Heimat ist die

Gegenwart. Das Jahrhundert ist unser Vaterland. Unsere Stammesgenossen und

Landsleute sind unsere Zeitgenossen” (90). This passage once more establishes

Roth’s disavowal of any kind of national force that groups people together. Travel to what is foreign is what prompts these kinds of responses.

The first part of Die weißen Städte is dedicated to justifying the purpose of the narrator’s journey. The narrator claims he traveled to the white cities “zu erfahren, wie es hinter dem Zaun aussieht, der uns umgibt” (67), and immediately

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creates a spatial and cultural difference between Germany and France. The narrator makes no secret that he prefers his existence in France as opposed to Germany: “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” (68).

As Jon Hughes and Andrew Barker have pointed out, Roth was often preoccupied with the task of describing cultural differences between Germany, where he felt as if he was not at home, and France, where he felt as if he were.73 At this time period, many authors, artists, and intellectuals were fleeing Germany, where the political and economic situation was volatile. A concordant voice to consider with Roth’s is that of Walter Benjamin, who like Roth, took to a nomadic lifestyle. As Beatrice Hanssen has written: “Benjamin crisscrossed Europe, visiting numerous cities and places about which he dispatched literary postcards,

Denkbilder, thought-images, full of moving physiognomical details about the urban topographies of cities such as Berlin, Paris, Moscow, Naples or Marseilles” (1).

Hanssen continues her analysis by pointing out how Benjamin theorized that alienation is a signpost of the modernity he and Joseph Roth found themselves to be a part of:

[A]s an early draft of The Arcades Project indicates, Benjamin decried

modernity’s alienation as a collective state of no longer being heimish

or at home. Seeking to remedy this condition of homelessness, he

73 Andrew Barker wrote about Jospeh Roth in France: “Joseph Roth and Ernst Weiss were two such emigrés [sic] who, like Heinrich Heine a century beforehand, travelled to France in the hope it would provide a refuge from Germany’s rottenness” (146).

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charted the changed urban habitat required of the new historical

subjects – a motley group which included flâneurs, surrealist artists

and energized political crowds, whose new politicized gaze and

activism were to be at home in cafés, movie theaters or even arcades.

(2)

Roth’s existence very much mirrors what Hanssen describes as Benjamin’s experience during this time. Ingeborg von Sültemeyer-von Lips has claimed

Die weißen Städte are when Roth’s own exile began, much like Benjamin’s. I disagree with her assessment, only because there is a more encapsulating label for Roth in

France: transnational. This is particularly the case because he was engaging in critique and commentary through the travel report and feuilleton. Roth thus embodies a transnational writer if we use the definition that Daniel Hiebert has identified: “By transnationalism, I refer to individuals who experience, and are attached to, two or more places simultaneously” (211).74 The editors of the volume

Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and

Nationalism Reconsidered (1992) provide further depth to this definition: “We suggest that transnational lives of contemporary migrants call into question the bounded conceptualizations of race, class, ethnicity, and nationalism which pervade both social science and popular thinking” (x). For Roth, his transnational qualities

74 The volume Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and Nationalism Reconsidered edited by Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc-Szanton was born out of a conference held in 1990 that “brought together a group of researchers who had found in their own field work evidence of a new pattern of migration and who had each been trying to grapple with the implications of what they were seeing all around them,” (ix). The editors of the volume write: “We called this immigrant experience ‘transnationalism’ to emphasize the emergence of a social process in which migrants establish social fields that cross geographic, cultural, and political borders” (ix).

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are evident in Die weißen Städte in that he is not only identifying with France, but also comparing it to Germany, a place he also understands.

As we can see, Die weißen Städte engages with France on these levels: political, racial, class, and national. While the qualities of transnational writing would come later to the scholarly fore, Roth demonstrated in these pieces the effects and consequences of writing beyond national boundaries. Compounding matters, his ability to attach to more than one place simultaneously becomes even more complicated during his return to Galicia, as shall be later discussed. What happens to the transnational writer that returns home to the place he was so eager to disassociate from? This question will be considered in this chapter when looking at

Roth’s journalistic pieces on Galicia.

F. Cosmopolitanism and The White Cities

Roth’s journalistic writings reveal his cosmopolitan character and how the experience of travel heightens such tendencies. There are many different manifestations of the theory of cosmopolitanism, and one of them is seeing oneself as a citizen of the world. As Ulrich Beck has so clearly explained:

The cosmopolitan gaze opens wide and focuses – stimulated by the

post-modern mix of boundaries between cultures and identities,

accelerated by the dynamics of capital and consumption, empowered

by capitalism undermining national borders, excited by the global

audience of transnational social movements and guided and

encouraged by the evidence of worldwide communication (often just

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another word for misunderstanding) on central themes such as

science, law, art, fashion, entertainment, and, not least politics. (61)

Roth’s essay Die weißen Städte – whether it is he who is the narrator or not – embodies these qualities Beck delineates, and even to a greater degree when he travels to Galicia. He is a character in this piece who travels to a foreign country, recognizes cultural differences, and yet still feels more at home in the foreign place than in his place of origin. In France, Roth’s narrator claims: “Ich sehe in den Straßen und in der Gesellschaft genauso aus wie zu Hause. Ja, ich bin draußen zu Hause. Ich kenne die süße Freiheit, nichts mehr darzustellen als mich selbst” (68).

To contrast his experience in France, Roth describes this process in Germany:

“Denn ich muß auch, wenn ich keinen Typus, keine Gattung, kein Geschlecht, keine

Nation, keinen Stamm, keine Rasse repräsentiere, dennoch etwas zu repräsentieren suchen” (68). In contrasting the two places, Roth writes: “Es ist das Kennzeichen der engen Welt, daß sie das Undefinierbare verdächtigt. Es ist das Kennzeichen der weiten, daß sie mich gewähren läßt” (68). The narrator does not present an identity tied to any national cause, a noticeable omission during this time of increased nationalist fervor in Europe.75 Roth’s narrator is instead concerned about getting to the roots of why he feels the way he does about the place he is in.

The first explanation for Roth’s cosmopolitan attitude in these vignettes is certainly ascribed to what he calls a lack of childhood: “Denn unwiederbringlich

75 E.J. Hobsbawm has written: “However, even if we confine ourselves to Europe and its environs, we find plenty of movements in 1914 that had existed hardly or not at all in 1870…” (105-106). Later, he writes of post World War I Europe: “The logical implication of trying to create a continent neatly divided into coherent territorial states each inhabited by a separate ethnically and linguistically homogeneous population, was the mass expulsion or extermination of minorities” (133).

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weit lag die Kindheit hinter mir, durch einen Weltbrand getrennt, durch eine brennende Welt. […] Ich fuhr mit der Skepsis in dieses Land, welche die Folge eines

Lebens ohne Kindheit ist” (69). Childhood then becomes the site of the creation of one’s national identity.76 Thus, those who survived the breakdown of the Austro-

Hungarian Empire like Joseph Roth serve as early examples of the more modern themes of alienation, diaspora, and crises of national identity.

The second explanation Roth provides for his cosmopolitan outlook is the lasting effects of war on a people and a place. The First World War was one of the reasons Roth’s narrator mentions as a reason for lacking a childhood, but Roth gives the impression that the war itself created a fissure based more on generational shifts than cultural explanations. Roth shifts to greater, supra-national generational issues: “Alle Menschen meiner Generation sind in diesem Sinne ‘skeptisch.’ Und während uns die Älteren Tag für Tag mit ihrer Mahnung zu ‘Aufbau’ und

‘Positivsein’ in den Ohren liegen, lächeln wir das wissende Lächeln derjenigen, die

Ursache, Werkzeug und Opfer einer großartigen Zerstörung gewesen sind” (69-70).

At this point in his travel narrative, Roth makes a case for the younger generation who has seen more carnage than the older generation, comparing World War I to the Punic Wars of Rome and Carthage.

76 The theme of childhood as crucial to the formation of one’s identity is a topic often explored in literature today, especially with authors writing about themes of immigration and migration. For example, Japanese-German writer Yoko Tawada has echoed Roth’s sentiment, albeit in a more playful way in her essay “Von der Muttersprache zur Sprachmutter”: “Wenn man eine neue Sprachmuttter hat, kann man eine zweite Kindheit erleben” (13). Tawada is reflecting on her experiences in Germany from the perspective of a Japanese native, complicated by the implications of writing in a language that is not the language of one’s childhood. Writing in the 2000’s, Tawada’s musings on language and culture hearken back to Roth’s understanding of himself vis-à-vis a foreign culture. While the theme of childhood identity and language is certainly explored in connection with more modern dilemmas and situations, Roth’s writings here in Die weißen Städte are a precursor to writers like Yoko Tawada.

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Moving away from discussions of France or cultural idiosyncrasies, Roth uses the pronoun wir in his discussion of war to emphasize the collective experience of the younger generations: “Wir sind die Söhne” (70). The collective pronoun marks a striking shift in the text, and deviates from a typical feuilleton style. Roth focuses on the effects of war that do not seem to have any foundation in national cause. Roth’s experience of war ties him to a greater whole that experienced the First World War together. He does not distinguish between national identities, but instead focuses on commonality that this experience gave all men, regardless of what uniform they wore. Roth emphasizes the totality of how the war changed life:

In einer einzigen Minute, die uns vom Tode trennte, brachen wir mit

der ganzen Tradition, mit der Sprache, der Wissenschaft, der

Literatur, der Kunst: mit dem ganzen Kulturbewußtsein. In einer

einzigen Minute wußten wir mehr von der Wahrheit als alle

Wahrheitssucher der Welt. (70)

Roth’s writing at this part of the piece is somewhat enigmatic, as he speaks in the abstract without citing specific examples. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that travel sparks these thoughts about the lasting effects of war. This should not come as surprising, as some of the first travel Roth undertook was to the Eastern Front as a soldier during the First World War.

As previously mentioned, Roth saw war as a collective experience that tied him to other peoples of Europe who endured the same events as he did. His outlook presented in these pages demonstrates a type of cosmopolitanism because of his blindness to national difference, and the ability to see himself as a part of a larger

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whole. While Roth sees war as a collective experience, war has also been discussed as the great obstacle to cosmopolitanism. The most notable essay on the subject is

Immanuel Kant’s “To Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch” (1795). Kant’s writings on the subject encourage a moral outlook on the function of politics. In this essay, Kant presents such maxims as not allowing a state to be inherited, abolishing all standing armies, and not interfering with neighbor states on any issues of contention. Most importantly, Kant argues that peace must be aspired to and not just seen as the absence of war:

The state of peace among men living in close proximity is not the

natural state (status naturalis); instead, the natural state is a one of

war, which does not just consist in open hostilities, but also in the

constant and enduring threat of them. The state of peace must

therefore be established… (117-118)

While it might seem anachronistic to bring Kant into the discussion of Roth’s text, Roth mentions the German past with reference to war:

Und uns, die wir geradezu unmittelbar vom Studium des

Dreißigjährigen Krieges weg in den Weltkrieg gezogen wurden, ist es

heute, als hätte in Deutschland der Dreißigjährige Krieg noch nicht

aufgehört. Wir können nicht glauben, daß irgendwo noch die

Kontinuität des Friedens vorhanden ist und die große und mächtige

Kulturtradition des antiken und mittelalterlichen Europas lebendig.

(70)

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Roth makes reference to the tradition of war in Europe in his writing, and refers to the Thirty Year’s War, with which Kant would have been familiar. Roth adds the final thought: “Das wird mehr als ein Dreißigjähriger Krieg sein” (71), demonstrating his prescient glance into the near future of Germany and the rest of

Europe affected by the Nazi rise to power. Roth’s assessment of war, however, diverts from Kant’s in that he is still able to find the collective experience of it. Roth both contradicts and affirms the cosmopolitanism in the act of war: it creates national divides, but allows for generational solidarity that can transcend such divides. His ability to see past this point is indicative of his cosmopolitan character.

At the conclusion of his introduction to his collection of travel vignettes, Roth makes it clear to the reader why he labels the south of France as the white cities:

Und weiße breite Straßen, die seit Jahrhunderten Sonne getrunken

haben und widerstrahlen, führen zu den weißen Städten mit den

flachen Dächern, die so eben sind, als wollten sie zeigen, daß hier

nicht einmal die Höhe gefährlich werden kann und daß man niemals,

niemals hinunterfällt in schwarze Tiefen. (72)

Roth ends his introduction by reiterating the juxtaposition of the north and the south. Nietzsche pondered this difference in his essay “Peoples and Fatherlands” as a part of Beyond Good and Evil, and also favors a disavowal of nationalism:

We ‘good Europeans’ – we, too, know hours when we permit

ourselves some hearty fatherlandishness, a plop and relapse into old

loves and narrownesses – […] hours of national agitations, patriotic

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palpitations, and various other sorts of archaizing sentimental

inundations. (174)

Considering Nietzsche’s disdain of anti-Semitism and assertion that Jews “are beyond any doubt the strongest, toughest, and purest race now living in Europe”

(187), Joseph Roth could be considered one of these good Europeans that Nietzsche describes. Roth travels without ties to a national identity and seeks to find commonalities.

Traveling on to Avignon, Roth writes of the typical things one would find in a travel narrative: descriptions of architecture, weather, woodlands, and religion. At the end of this section, Roth becomes a true cosmopolitan by expressing his beliefs on race, essential characteristics of people, as well as the result of what is happening in Europe at the time of his writing:

Welch eine lächerliche Furcht der Nationen, und sogar der europäisch

gesinnten unter den Nationen, diese und jene ‘Eigenart’ könnte

verlorengehn und aus der farbigen Menschheit ein grauer Brei

werden! Aber Menschen sind keine Farben, und die Welt ist keine

Palette! Je mehr Mischung, desto mehr Eigenart! Ich werde diese

schöne Welt nicht erleben, in der jeder einzelne das Ganze

repräsentieren wird, aber ich fühle diese Zukunft schon heute, wenn

ich auf dem ‘Platz der Turmuhr’ in Avignon sitze und alle Rassen der

Erde im Gesicht eines Polizisten, eines Bettlers, eines Kellners

leuchten sehe. Das ist die höchste Stufe der “Humanität.” (106-107)

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Roth sees equality on more than one level: the first being of race, and the second economic class. He advocates this cosmopolitan position, but also suggests that this characteristic is unique to France. Roth does not make outright comparisons to

German or Austrian culture, but by pointing it out as a noticeable feature of the place he is, he suggests that it is an aspect distinctive to the new place.

Roth ends his essays on his experiences in France, not with a final word about the place to which one travels, but the place whence one came: “Hier findet man eine Kindheit, seine eigene und die Kindheit Europas. Nirgends wird man so leicht heimisch. Und selbst wer das Land verläßt, nimmt das Beste mit, das eine

Heimat mitgeben kann: das Heimweh” (140).

In a letter written to friend and editor Benno Reifenberg on August 30, 1925,

Roth pitches the book project of Die weißen Städte:

Denken Sie, bitte, an die Bücher der Romantik. Abstrahieren Sie davon

die Utensilien und Requisiten der Romantiker, die sprachlichen und

die der Weltanschauung. Setzen Sie dafür die Requisiten der

modernen Ironie und der Sachlichkeit ein. Dann haben Sie das Buch,

das ich schreiben will, kann und beinahe muß. Es ist ein Reisebuch

durch die Seele des Schreibers, wie durch das Land, das er durchfährt.

(Briefe 62)

In this same letter to his editor, he describes the volatility in Germany, as well as his personal reasons for not being able to return. He also mentions the tensions in

Austria and how the mood there had changed before the rise of facism: “Ich bin sehr verzweifelt. Ich kann nicht einmal mehr nach Wien fahren, seitdem die

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sozialistischen Juden einen solchen Anschlußlärm machen. […] Mit dem Anschluß wird noch einmal eine Kultur begraben. Alle Europäer müßten gegen den Anschluß sein” (56). It is clearly evident in this letter that Roth was facing tough times politically, personally, financially, and professionally when writing Die weißen

Städte. He still was successful in his endeavor to capture a place in an atypical way that reads against many travel narratives. He grapples with the experience of travel, and presents his cosmopolitan worldview in that he appreciates national difference, and sees collective experience as an avenue for identification, rather than based on national identity. Roth was a traveler, and Die weißen Städte serves as an overt example of Roth’s unique approach to the act of journeying, and demonstrates how his literary voice was shaped by travel.

G. Back to Galicia and Re-assessing the Myth

In the first section of this chapter, I delineated how Roth created a theory of travel and displayed his cosmopolitan character in Die weißen Städte. What follows will be a discussion on the two journalistic pieces “Galizien und Polen / Reise durch

Galizien” and “Lemberg, die Stadt,” which were published in the Frankfurter Zeitung on November 20, 1924 and November 22, 1924, respectively. These essays speak to

Galicia’s position within Europe, how much of the former Empire is retained, and directly correspond to the earlier depictions of the region by Sacher-Masoch and

Franzos. In these essays, Roth appears somewhat nostalgic in looking for traces of the lost Monarchy, but he also presents a vision of Galicia for the future. Lastly, he grapples with the question of what belongs to Europe and why. Roth does not

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present his travels to Galicia as a sentimental journey home, but always remains a journalist aware of his broader audience.

Stefan H. Kaszyński has written about Roth’s propensity for observation of space and how it is then translated to the wider public:

Roth war ein brillanter Feuilletonist, aber kein besonderer Analytiker,

dazu fehlten ihm anscheinend Zeit und Geduld für die notwendigen

Recherchen, er war vielmehr ein talentierter Beobachter, ein Künstler

mit dem Blick für das Wesentliche, einer, der auch in ganz kurzen

Texten stets bemüht war, das atmosphärische der geschilderten

Ereignisse, die Stimmung der Orte und Menschen festzuhalten und

ästhetisch in Text umzusetzen. (64)

These two short pieces about Galicia demonstrate what Kaszyński details.

Considering the time in Galicia and the changes that had taken place, Roth’s voice carries authority in attempting to gain a deeper understanding of the space of

Galicia in a post-Habsburg-Empire Europe.

More specifically to his writing on Galicia, Ulrich E. Bach has noted that

Roth’s writing about this peripherial space navigates a unique road: “Roth’s writings mediate historial truths about the empire’s marginal communities through fiction.

That is to say, Roth’s fiction is neither a backward-oriented utopia nor an insipid portrait of Eastern Europe as a place of despotism and social injustice” (9). Bach claims that Roth “convey[s] the history of the empire’s marginal communities in a mythical way” (9), but does not go into detail about what he means with the word myth. It is salient to note that he uses the word myth, and while Bach connects his

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assertations to Roth’s Radetzkymarsch and Kapuzinergruft, I also maintain that

Roth’s writings on Galicia while he was in Galicia are perhaps more revealing than the fiction for which he is most remembered.

Roth was traveling at a time when Galicia was at a crossroads: Eastern Galicia had formally been given to Poland in March 1923, and in 1924, the Habsburg influence would have still been felt. Industrially, the region suffered from a declining oil industry, which scholar Alison Fleig Frank has traced in her book Oil Empire:

Visions of Prosperity in Austrian Galicia.77 She writes: “By 1923, no one could deny that the history of the Austrian oil industry in Galicia had come to a close” (237), although there were still high hopes of oil being the means to resuscitate Poland’s economy. Anna de Berg has similarly written on this point in Galician history in her book “Nach Galizien”: Entwicklung der Reiseliteratur am Beispiel der deutschsprachigen Reiseberichte vom 18. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert and claims that

1918 was a turning point in the literature about Galicia: “Das Jahr 1918 bedeutete das Ende der historischen Periode, aber auch den Anfang eines Mythos” (9).

De Berg uses the word Mythos, which is a word linked often with Galicia and should be examined further. Myth and Austrian space are most often associated with Claudio Magris’s 1963 tome Il mito absburgico nella letteratura austriaca moderna, which was translated into German in 1966 as Der habsburgische Mythos in der modernen österreichischen Literatur. This myth, invented and supported by

Austrian authors presents “das alte habsburgische Österreich als eine glückliche und harmonische Zeit, als geordnetes und märchenhaftes Mitteleuropa dar, in dem

77 Frank says: “Thanks to its Galician oil fields, Austria-Hungary was the third-largest oil-producing region in the world in 1909, accounting for 5 percent of world production” (4).

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die Zeit nicht so schnell verging und in dem man es nicht so eilig hatte, Dinge und

Empfindungen des Gestern zu vergessen” (7). Magris looks at a handful of Austrian writers that establish, perpetuate, and reinvent the Habsburg myth: Franz

Grillparzer, Aldabert Stifter, Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, among others. Magris groups Roth with authors Franz Werfel, Stefan Zweig, and

Robert Musil as authors who remember and revitalize the Habsburg myth in their post-Habsburg texts. Before further investigating how Roth writes about the

Habsburg myth, Magris praises his work:

Als geborener Schriftsteller von sicherem Schreibinstinkt, wie nur

wenige andere modern Autoren, entzieht sich Roth jeder bequemen

Klassifizierung und Schulzugehörigkeit; scharfe, ironische

Beobachtungsgabe der Wirklichkeit und episches Pathos leben in ihm

als natürliche und komplementäre Gaben nebeneinander und fügen

sich in seinem Werk reibungslos zusammen. (255-256)

Magris also argues that Roth’s writing could be antithetical to the process of mythologizing in that Roth’s writing avoids the sentimental and instead focuses on the facts: “Schon in diesem Roman [Hotel Savoy] zeigt sich die Größe des Autors: er ist der Beschreiber, der sich nie dem Billigen oder Sentimentalen hingibt, nie ein

Wort zuviel gebraucht und die eigene dichterische Intuition nur durch die trockene

Objektivität geschilderten Tatsachen sprechen läßt” (256-257). While Magris is discussing Roth’s fictional works, I argue that this quality of Roth’s writing carries over into the realm of the feuilleton and whether or not Roth participated – or resisted – a mythologizing of Galician space needs to be also examined.

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A recent trend in scholarship has understood the writings about Habsburg

Galicia in mythic terms. Magris’s definition of the Empire and the ideal for which it has been remembered has been further appropriated to the space of Galicia. Luiza

Bialasiewicz has explained the Galician myth in her article “Back to Galicia Felix?”

(2005). She writes:

In the decades after 1867 Galicia was granted more privileges than

any other province in the Austrian half of the Habsburg Dual

Monarchy. This helps to explain the allure of that period, which in

myth became an Arcadian space in which, at the peripheries of the

empire, could be found the felicitous coexistence of a whole host of

peoples, cultures, languages, and faiths. Galicia, in this representation,

is a microcosm of multilingual, multicultural Habsburg co-existence.

(166)

If the myth of the Habsburgs is one of idealized security, happiness, and order, the

Galician counterpart is one that idealizes the cosmopolitanism of the periphery.

Another central component to the myth of Galicia, according to Bialasiewicz, is the nostalgia the myth creates: “As in the imperial myth, Galicia’s imaginary also came to symbolize a ‘being beyond history,’ a being subsumed under an ideal and idyllic chronotype of tam I kiedyś (there, once upon a time) and in opposition to the determinate ‘here and now’”(166). Bialasiewicz is a geographer by trade and is most concerned with how the space of Europe has been imagined and how the boundaries of Europe have been reimagined by “appealing to the iconography of a liminal space of multinational coexistence in what was once the Austro-Hungarian

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Empire” (162). Bialasiewicz does not analyze Joseph Roth in her article, but his feuilletons on Galicia are an ideal case study for this sublimation that Bialasiewicz describes. While Joseph Roth does appeal to the time period of the multinational state, there are other ways in which he shapes Galician myth.

Before discussing these feuilletons, I also wish to point out two recent museum exhibitions that are making the topic of Galician myth relevant. This myth that Bialasiewicz analyses has had a renewed audience: an exhibit entitled “Mit

Galicji / The Myth of Galicia” was displayed at the International Cultural Centre in

Krakow from October 2014 until March 2015. The exhibit then moved to the Wien

Museum in Vienna with the title Mythos Galizien and was exhibited there until the

end of August in 2015. The

collection shown at both locations

displayed over 600 objects, which

included maps, photos, and

paintings that explain the

“emerging mythology of a region

that was taken by the Austro-

Hungarian Empire from Poland

after the first partition of Poland in

1772, and lasted until 1918 when

the Habsburg empire’s fate was

sealed” (“Austrian invention”).

While de Berg states above that Figure 1: Poster from Polish exhibition (2014-2015)

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1918 was the year that Galicia changed from place to mythos, Bialasiewicz understands that turning point to be before World War I.78

Jacek Purchla, the Director of the International Cultural Center in Krakow, wrote an article for the Wien Museum catalog of the exhibit entitled “Ein Galizien nach Galizien: Über den einzigartigen Mythos von einem ‘verschwundenen

Königreich’” (2015), and his assessment of the Galician myth is borrowed from the definition established by Magris: “Das Galizien-Gedächtnis wurde und wird von

Mythen geprägt, eine Identifizierung mit Galizien erfolgt heute hauptsächlich über

Figure 2: Poster from Austrian exhibition (2015)

78 Bialasiewicz writes: “Galicia represented the last expression of a multinational cosmos enjoyed by all before the chaos of the two world wars and before the imposition of categorical choices” (166).

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Nostalgie und eine Idealisierung der Vergangenheit” (49). He further explains how

Galician myth has been bifurcated to remember two very different time periods in

Galician history:

Historikerinnen und Historiker vertreten in ihren Interpretationen

geteilte Meinungen aus zwei gegensätzlichen Perspektiven: der

arkadische Mythos – Galicia felix -, “das verschwundene Königreich”

und das mythische Land einerseits, andererseits Galizien als “Halb-

Asien”, ein Symbol des Elends und sozial-ethnischer Konflikte,

schließlich die Hölle der blutigen Kämpfe an der Ostfront und ein

monströser Friedhof des Ersten und Zweiten Weltkriegs. (49)

Purchla is quick to point out that the exhibit – and by extension, our popular memory of Galicia – displays only the first part of the myth of Galicia and not the latter definition of how Galicia can be remembered.

Most pertinent to this chapter, Purchla makes a strong claim about how

Joseph Roth contributes to the myth of Galicia: “Der Erste, der emsig Galizien als

‘verlorenes Paradies’ zum Mythos stilisierte, war nach 1918 Joseph Roth. Dieser jüdische Schriftsteller aus Brody, der wahren Peripherie der Monarchie, beschrieb das Schicksal seines Galizien als das eines einzigartigen Ortes der Koexistenz von

Nationen und Kulturen” (52). Purchla traces the origin of the myth of Galicia to

Joseph Roth, but does not give any textual evidence to support his claim. Purchla’s claim that the mythologizing process began with Joseph Roth can be seen most closely in the two feuilletons “Galizien und Polen / Reise durch Galizien” and

“Lemberg, die Stadt.”

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One of the themes that Roth engages with in these pieces is how Europe has already begun to fissure into East and West blocs, specifically how Eastern Europe differs from its Western counterpart. Within Europe, labels of East and West most often bring back memories of the countries that were located in front of, and behind, the Iron Curtain. Larry Wolff in his book Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of

Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment has shown that the shift from the

North/South axis to the East/West differentiation happened during the eighteenth century. Wolff states: “The Enlightenment had to invent Western Europe and

Eastern Europe together, as complementary concepts, defining each other by opposition and adjacency” (5). Wolff’s analysis of the idea of East and West Europe relies heavily on Edward Said’s Orientalism in that the geographical distinction is largely a construction, can be historically traced, and involves power networks of subjugation and dominance. Wolff suggests that there is an Orientalism within

Europe, and Roth’s articles on Galicia certainly confirm Wolff’s thesis.

Roth acknowledges the West/East divide within Europe in the very first sentence of his article “Galizien und Polen/Reise durch Galizien”: “Das Land hat in

Westeuropa einen üblen Ruf” (19). Historian Anna Reid has recounted this time period in Galicia to which Roth was referring. In her book Borderland: A Journey through the History of Ukraine, Reid describes the state of Galicia and the response of the citizens to the poor conditions: “The escape route for many was emigration. In the twenty-five years before the First World War more than 2 million Ukrainian and

Polish peasants left Galicia, including an extraordinary 400,000 people, or almost 5 per cent of the province’s population, in 1913 alone” (74). Reid attributes this

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massive emigration to the poverty of the area: “Like Ireland, Galicia was a byword for rural poverty. In the 1880s it was calculated that of all the ex-Polish territories,

Galicia had the highest birth and death rates and the lowest life expectancy. The average Galician ate less than half the food of the average Englishman, yet paid twice as much of his income in taxes” (73-74).

Roth goes on to elaborate on exactly what Western Europe associates with the region of Galicia: “Der wohlfeile und faule Witz des zivilisierten Hochmuts bringt es in eine abgeschmackte Verbindung mit Ungeziefer, Unrat, Unredlichkeit” (19).

Considering the genre of the feuilleton and Roth’s personal take on how the feuilleton should be written, this introduction is not participating in the second part of the myth that Jacek Purchla describes. Roth paints the grim realities of a place and confronts these negative stereotypes to his readership. He goes on to write: “Es ist schwer zu leben. Galizien hat mehr als acht Millionen Einwohner zu ernähren. Die

Erde ist reich, die Bewohner sind arm. Sie sind Bauern, Händler, kleine Handwerker,

Beamte, Soldaten, Offiziere, Kaufleute, Bankmenschen, Gutsbesitzer. Zu viele

Händler, zuviel Beamte, zuviel Soldaten, zuviel Offiziere gibt es” (20). Roth does not give the reader a positive impression of the space of Galicia, nor does it participate in the myth of a cosmopolitan society at the onset of the article. While Roth paints a grim picture, by mentioning that the earth is rich, he concurrently acknowledges the untapped potentional of the space.

Like his essays in Die weißen Städte, Roth describes the significance of the

Galician land in the context of European history: “Dennoch ist Galizien, das große

Schlachtfeld des großen Krieges, noch lange nicht rehabilitiert. Auch für diejenigen

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nicht, die Schlachtfelder für Felder der Ehre halten. Obwohl westeuropäische Leiber in galizischer Erde zerfallen, um sie zu düngen” (19).79 Roth immediately establishes that he is aware of how others, particularly West Europeans, are critical of Galicia, but also maintains that the space of Galicia has played an important role in recent history for Austria-Hungary, as well as the rest of Europe. His statements about

Galicia’s role in World War I correspond to Purchla’s statements about the Galician myth. Roth elevates the space of Galicia to give it more historical weight, akin to more widely-known Western Front counterparts. Additionally, Roth’s use of the dichotomy of East and West corresponds to Franzos and his complication of these concepts when they refer to the space of Galicia. Roth is establishing the Great War as an integral part to the myth of Galicia. What arises from these pieces is that the space of Galicia has a complicated history, but it is a history that is a vital part of the

Empire and of Europe.

In contrast, Roth claims that none of the essential elements have changed since the time of the ruling monarchy: “So war’s, als der Kaiser Franz Joseph regierte, und so ist es heute. Es sind andere Uniformen, andere Adler, andere

Abzeichnen. Aber die wesentlichen Dinge ändern sich nicht” (21). On the one hand,

Roth is labeling Galicia as unchanged and thus resisting change and modernization.

However, on the other hand, he is romanticizing the space for still preserving its

79 In the monograph The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914-1918, Holger Herwig describes the effects of World War I in Galicia: “The Ministry of the Interior at Vienna reported widespread devastation and destruction by the initial wave of ‘undisciplined, robber-like Cossacks’ who had ‘plundered, robbed, killed, and committed innumerable acts of terror’ against the indigenous population, of whom 500,000 had fled westward. More than 2703 square miles of arable land from Brody to Cracow had been ravaged and lay fallow. Seven million farmers were ruined financially and millions of agrarian labourers reduced to beggars. Hundreds of thousands of cattle had been slaughtered by the Russians. Shell craters and abandoned trenches scarred the landscape. […] Pogroms had devastated Galicia’s Jewish population of 650,000” (131).

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Habsburg character. Even though borders, governments, and official names had changed, the lost Austro-Hungarian Empire had defined Galicia’s future. Larry Wolff, in his book The Idea of Galicia: History and Fantasy in Habsburg Political Culture, has interpreted this passage by relating the space of Galicia to Roth’s identity: “Roth had been born Galician himself, and still identified with Galicia: the essential things do not change” (389). Roth does not present himself as a nostalgic tour guide, longing for his home or childhood. He does not editorialize his experience with memories, and it never comes across in the text that he has a personal connection to the space of Galicia.80 Rather, I argue that Roth attempts to find the positive aspects of a culture viewed with disdain, and is also looking for how the Habsburg past became a part of Galicia’s future. In this moment, Roth presents a Galicia that is inextricably linked to its Habsburg past, while also showing how Galicia is its own unique geopolitical space in which Habsburg culture is preserved. In doing so, he does contribute to the Galician myth and how it has been defined vis-à-vis its Habsburg past.

However, there are still elements of Roth’s visit that marks Galicia as different from Western Europe. But the way he writes about these supposedly negative aspects of the city, there is a certain charm to his description. Roth makes these objects that normally are considered ugly appear oddly beautiful: “In der

80 Anna de Berg has also written about how Roth remains a detached journalist, even though he was returning home: “Trotz einer gewissen Nostalgie in der Beschreibung der alten galizischen Heimat können die Feuilletons von Joseph Roth keinesweges sentimental genannt werden; ihre Überzeugungskraft liegt in der nüchternen Erzählweise eines Fremden, der einen Bericht über das bereiste Land erstattet. Obwohl Roth in die Heimat zurückkehrt, bleibt sein Blick eher frei von Gefühlen – die Erinnerungen sind nicht privat, sondern kollektiv, sie rufen ein Bild von dem großen Schlachtfeld hervor und von einer Welt, die einst harmonisch zu sein schien und did nun ein Symbol der Welt von Gestern geworden ist” (98).

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Ferne leuchtet der Schlamm wie schmutziges Silber. Man könnte die Straßen in der

Nacht für trübe Flüsse halten, in denen sich Himmel, Mond, und Sterne tausendfältig und verzerrt spiegeln wie in einem sehr schmutzigen Kristall” (22-23). Roth highlights the charm of Galicia, while also focusing on the negative aspects of the region that the readers expect him to write. Roth could also be reflecting what has become known as the “Mythos des galizischen Elends,” (Zamorski 96) about which

Krzysztof Zamorski has written: “Dieses 'Elend' klebte - scheinbar untrennbar - bereits in der österreichischen Epoche an Galizien. […] Heute können wir uns darüber den Kopf zerbrechen, wie es dazu kam, dass dies der dominanteste der galizischen Mythen ist” (96). Although Roth highlights the supposed backwardness of Galicia, he nonetheless makes these negative characteristics of the space seem beautiful.

Still, Roth tries to articulate what is different about his experience in Galicia than Western Europe: “Die galizische Kleinstadt aber ist ohne Behagen. Sie wandelt ihren Spießer selbst in eine Rarität. Sie fördert die Entwicklung zur Seltsamkeit. In den galizischen Kleinstädten hastet die Tobsucht der großen Weltstädte. Es ist

Bewegung ohne sichtbaren Zweck und aus geheimnisvoller Ursache“ (24). Roth makes an outright comparison to other European towns, although something about

Galicia is different. He even asks himself – or his reader – “Hat hier Europa aufgehört?” (24), and he quickly provides an answer: “Nein es hat nicht aufgehört.

Die Beziehung zwischen Europa und diesem gleichsam verbannten Land ist beständig und lebhaft” (24-25). Roth has to ask this question because of established and imaginary boundaries that existed, and still persist today, between Eastern and

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Western Europe. As stated above, Larry West has traced the conception of Eastern

Europe back to the Enlightenment. Alex Drace-Francis has elaborated on Wolff’s work:

The first usage of the term [Eastern Europe] in a book title appears to

be by the Swedish linguist Johann Erich Thunman, in his

Untersuchungen über die Geschichte der östlichen europäischen Völker

[…] (1774). But it has also been shown fairly clearly that many east

Europeans participated in the elaboration both of the concept and the

image of an undifferentiated, ‘barbarous’ space. The actual

terminology, however, did not really become current until the

nineteenth century, and was rarely institutionalized until the

twentieth. (5)81

As demonstrated in the very first sentence of his feuilleton, Joseph Roth was aware of this East/West dichotomy. Indeed, as I demonstrated at the beginning of this chapter, Roth felt the distain for his Galician heritage during his time in Vienna.

When Franzos posed the question at the beginning of his piece Von Wien nach

Czernowtiz “Bitte, mein Herr, ist die asiatische Grenze schon passiert?” (81), Roth provides a definitive answer: no, Galicia is still part of Europe. His reason for including Galicia in the European realm is the fact that he sees literature from

England and France in the bookstores there. For him, Western European culture has reached Galicia through the act of reading: “Ein Kulturwind trägt Samen in die

81 Additionally the scholarly anthology Creating The Other: Ethnic Conflict and Nationalism in Habsburg Central Europe (2003) relies heavily on the imagined boundaries between east and west within Austria, although the concept is never overtly discussed.

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polnische Erde” (25).82 Anna de Berg has labeled this piece by Roth as a “etwas nostalgische Skizze” (96), but I disagree. While there are moments of Roth searching for traces of the Habsburg presence, it is ultimately what pushes Galicia forward and into the future. The Habsburg past connects Galicia to Europe and facilitates participation in a larger European project.

At the end of the piece, Roth points out that the hardship that Galicia has had to endure, especially compared with the rest of Europe: “Es war kein Land. Es war

Etappe oder Front. Aber es hat eine eigene Lust, eigene Lieder, eigene Menschen und einen eigenen Glanz; den traurigen Glanz der Geschmähten” (25). In this short newspaper article, Roth makes a strong case for Galicia, and its position vis-à-vis

Europe, and requests from his readership to appreciate the quirks and beauty of the former part of the Empire. At the very least, Roth calls for people to recognize the history Galicia has seen, and how important that history is for the rest of Europe.83

While the first feuilleton focuses on more general characteristics of Galicia, the second “Lemberg, die Stadt” is more resitricted to the specific city of Lemberg.

Written two days after Roth’s account on Galicia, Roth becomes even more laudatory of its significance to the former Empire. Even though Roth labels the act of trying to encapsulate the experience of a city to the written word a “große

Vermessenheit” (25), Roth presents a portrait of a city that seems to have been forgotten by the rest of Europe.

82 Roth also makes it clear that he again prefers the French culture over the German culture: “Der Kontakt mit Frankreich ist der stärkste. Über Deutschland, das im toten Raum zu liegen scheint, sprühen Funken herüber und zurück” (25). 83 Admittedly, there is not much scholarship about this time period in German or English. Paul Robert Magosci’s Galicia: A Historical Survey and Bibliographic Guide (1983) has many suggestions of where to begin for secondary sources on this topic.

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Roth, like Sacher-Masoch and Franzos, comments on the multiculturalism of the city: “Man hörte Russisch, Polnish, Rumänisch, Deutsch und Juddisch. Es war wie eine kleine Filiale der großen Welt” (27). He tells of different people whom he came to know, including the story of a teacher wanting to learn about a German professor who turned mercury into gold. Roth remarks: “Er wird wieder zwei Jahre warten, bis jemand aus Deutschland kommt” (27), giving the impression that Germans, or anyone, rarely ever comes to Galicia.

Roth then turns to the political when he discusses the ramifications of multiculturalism:

Nationale und sprachliche Einheitlichkeit kann eine Stärke sein,

nationale und sprachliche Vielfältigkeit ist es immer. In diesem Sinn

ist Lemberg eine Bereicherung des polnischen Staates. Es ist ein

bunter Fleck im Osten Europas, dort, wo es noch lange nicht anfängt,

bunt zu werden. Die Stadt ist ein bunter Fleck: rot-weiß, blau-gelb und

ein bißchen schwarz-gelb. Ich wüßte nicht, wem das schaden könnte.

(28)

The last line of this passage is telling; by saying that he doesn’t know who could ever be harmed by such diversity, he implies that there are voices that say that multiethnic plurality is to be avoided. By the time Roth had published these pieces in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Habsburg multinational coexistence had been replaced by the model of the nation state that attempted to draw boundaries based on the borders between different ethnic and language groups. This passage does show how Roth participated in the myth of Galicia by focusing on the positive

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aspects of a cosmopolitan society and how this kind of society was to be still found in Galicia.

Roth’s sentiments can be traced to today even, for example, in Luiza

Bialasiewicz’s work, especially in her article “Another Europe: remembering

Habsburg Galicja” (2003). She investigates Polish-Ukrainian borderlands and argues that the region is “the centre of an extensive historical border-space of multinational – and fully European – coexistence” (23) that harkens back to

Habsburg Galicia. There is clearly more to be uncovered about this space, and Roth was an early observer of the area’s cosmopolitan tendencies.

Sacher-Masoch and Franzos present this cosmopolitan characteristic in their texts, but Roth overtly states it. While Sacher-Masoch uses the words untereinander vermischen to describe the interaction of the different nationalities in Galicia, Roth actually uses the word cosmopolitan in his description of the city: “Die Stadt demokratisiert, vereinfacht, vermenschlicht, und es scheint, daß diese Eigenschaften mit ihren kosmopolitischen Neigungen zusammenhängt” (30). Roth does refer to the impact of the Habsburg Empire on the city and how it has affected the multicultural composition of the area, but Galicia’s cosmopolitanism is still a unique characteristic of the space that remained over two hundred years after the

Habsburg’s first presence in the area.

H. Conclusion

This cosmopolitanism that Roth speaks of is far more complicated than the ethnic diversity that is presented in Sacher-Masoch’s or Franzos’s writings. In his

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two short articles on the place of his homeland, Roth shows how Galicia’s multiculturalism was formed by the Habsburgs, but also insists that this multiethnic character is a part of the new Europe. He is urging his readers to consider the notion that cosmopolitanism is not just part of the Dual Monarchy, but that it exists in post-World War I Europe. In both of these pieces I have discussed – Die weißen

Städte and the feuilletons of the Frankfurter Zeitung – Roth presents several layers of cosmopolitanism that shape not only his relationship to space, but also how it is presented in literary texts. I have shown how Roth avoided rooting himself to one space, but also how though travel, he developed his cosmopolitan understanding of post-war Europe.

In 1924, when these articles were written, Roth was traveling for his job as a journalist and attempting making sense of a radically different reality than with which he had grown up. These writings on Galicia and the themes therein can further be traced in his fictional works like Hotel Savoy (1924) and Die

Kapuzinergruft (1938), among others. One can see through these writings how he develops a cosmopolitan worldview that is more complex than the nostalgia for the dissolved Habsburg Monarchy for which Roth is most often known. Most importantly, the word cosmopolitan was not an arbitrary choice that Roth was using to describe Galicia. I have demonstrated in this chapter that there is a literary tradition founded in the experience of being from Galicia and writing on the Galician character. It is evident that these three authors discussed in this dissertation grappled with how to present the cosmopolitanism of the Habsburg Empire, and more specifically Galicia. These authors were from Galicia and had the unique

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vantage point of writing about the space of their home after having experienced other stretches of the Habsburg Monarchy’s lands. While Sacher-Masoch and

Franzos use the ethnic diversity to demonstrate hardship in Galicia, it is evident that

Roth sees the multiculturalism of Galicia in a positive light and is a quality that enhances the edge of the former empire.

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Chapter 4

Reading the Periphery in Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch

A. Introduction

In his essay Narrative and Social Space, Edward Said gave the example of the

British novel to argue that the novelistic form up to the mid-twentieth century supported the inherent imperialism of the British Empire. Said claimed: “The novel is an incorporative, quasi-encyclopedic cultural form. Packed into it are both a highly regulated plot mechanism and an entire system of social reference that depends on the existing institutions of bourgeois society, their authority and power”

(71). Said cited Jane Austen, Rudyard Kipling, Joseph Conrad, among others, to demonstrate that the British masterworks of the nineteenth and early twentieth century all were written with the backdrop of an empire, and that their fiction and representations of different peoples of the empire reinforced the metropole’s power. Said calls the reader to “read the great canonical texts, and perhaps also the entire archive of modern and pre-modern European and American culture, with an effort to draw out, extend, give emphasis and voice to what is silent or marginally present or ideologically represented … in such works” (66). As such, the quick allusions to empire, minor characters, and the listing of far-away places that seem at first glance innocuous, merit extra examination to understand the novel’s representation of a given empire and its peoples.

While Joseph Roth certainly wrote in and about a different kind of empire, much of Said’s observations apply equally to Roth’s novel Radetzkymarsch (1932).

Scholars have debated the function of Roth’s most canonical work and whether it

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serves as either a eulogy for the Habsburg Empire or an excogitation for its downfall, which will be discussed further in this chapter. It is not my intention to participate in this debate over which category Roth’s novel belongs, but instead to underscore how Roth conveys the space of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that is inclusive, even a celebration of, the periphery and its inherent qualities that make it

Austrian.84 When reading the novel, the reader is given the impression of how vast and diverse the Habsburg Empire was, but at its core, the novel depicts what it means to be Austrian and that this definition insists on including the periphery.

While Said was primarily interested in the hegemonic relationship between the metropole and periphery in the British imperial context, I will demonstrate the nuance inherent in Austria-Hungary’s land-based Empire in Joseph Roth’s most canonical work.

This chapter will have two main sections that situate Roth’s most enduring and successful novel against its depiction of the periphery, as well as a discussion of how the space of Galicia is presented. This chapter is particularly inspired by

Claudio Magris when he stated in his influential study Der habsburgische Mythos in der österreichen Literatur about Roth’s Radetzkymarsch: “Die Dimension des

Kaiserreichs, die Roth vermittelt, ist typisch slawisch-föderalistischer, peripherer

Art. Sein Reich ist das Reich der Kronländer, der fernen Provinzen an der russischen

Grenze und der slawisch-jüdischen Welt Galiziens und der Bukowina” (260). Magris

84 Roxane Riegler’s monograph Das Verborgene sichtbar machen: Ethnische Minderheiten in der österreichischen Literatur der neunziger Jahre (2010) analyses recent Austrian literature and its depiction of Roma, Sinti, and Jewish minorities. While her analysis concerns itself with more recent historical events, such as the Third Reich and the fall of the Iron Curtain, I argue that Roth is essentially making a similar move in his literature: making what is not seen visible.

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mentions this in passing in his discussion of how Joseph Roth remembers the late

Habsburg period. However, Magris brings the idea of space and periphery to the forefront, as well as the ethnolinguistic minorities of the Empire. I agree with Magris that Radetzkymarsch is a novel that demonstrates a version of the Empire that is

Slavic and Jewish and will reveal the inherent cosmopolitanism of the novel that incorporates themes of minority-ness, periphery, travel, and Austrian history.

The first section of this chapter is a discussion of the minor hints and clues within the novel that demonstrate how the periphery is an essential part of Austria.

Central to my argument is the symbol of the painting in the novel. The painting of the elder Trotta who elevated the family to nobility, serves as a constant reminder of not only the family’s devotion to Franz Joseph and Empire, but also to the fact that the family comes from the periphery. I argue that this painting is a symbol of cosmopolitanism within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Its significance to the plot and to the novel is considerable and has not been viewed critically.

Within this section, I will present a close reading of several passages in the novel that demonstrate the importance of the setting of Austria-Hungary, and how from this setting, its inherent cosmopolitanism is revealed. As will be shown in the fourth chapter of this dissertation in which I discuss Roth’s mastery of travel writing, Radetzkymarsch is no exception in demonstrating this propensity of Roth’s writing style and strengths. As in other works of fiction – such as Hotel Savoy, Das

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falsche Gewicht, Die Büste des Kaisers, Erdbeeren – the space of Austria-Hungary, and more specifically Galicia, plays a crucial, yet under examined, role.85

The second section of this chapter deviates somewhat from the first in that it is a discussion of one of the minor characters from the novel, Max Demant. He is the only character to hail from Galicia and thus, I argue, representative of broader characteristics of the place. He is the character that demonstrates the cost of this cosmopolitanism. While Roth seems to paint a rosy portrait of the Empire and its leader, he also demonstrates that there were consequences to the experiment of cosmopolitanism in the case of Austria-Hungary. A closer reading of the character of

Max Demant is necessary in order to fully understand the nuanced meanings of cosmopolitanism, and its relationship to the metropole and peripheral relationship in the Habsburg Empire. As highlighted at the beginning of this chapter, Said encourages readers to take minor characters into consideration to further contextualize the novel and the complex world in which it takes place. Digging below the surface to fully understand the character of Max Demant achieves this goal.

What emerges from this chapter is an analysis of a closer reading of Roth’s most famous novel that highlights how important, diverse, and vital the peripheries are to Austria’s history, as well as how depictions of the empire can continue to shape a collective memory of Austria’s multiethnic past. Roth includes the periphery

85 Some of the other scholarly works that have examined the intersection of Roth and the space are: Roman S. Struc’s “Die slawische Welt im Werke Joseph Roths’” (1975), Otto Forst de Battaglia’s “Joseph Roth: Wanderer zwischen drei Welten” (1975), Sidney Rosenfeld’s “Joseph Roth and Austria: A Search for Identity” (1986), Egon Schwarz’s “Joseph Roth und die österreichische Literatur” (1975), Richard Millington’s “Dissent in the Nation of Nobles: The Polishness of Joseph Roth’s ‘The Bust of the Emperor,’ Johann Georg Lughofer’s “‘Österreich ist nicht in den Alpen zu finden’: The Representation and Function of the Alps in the Work of Joseph Roth” (2010).

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through the four generations of the Trotta family that hail from Slovenia. The first

Trotta generation is an unnamed Slovenian peasant. The second generation is

Joseph Trotta, an infantry lieutenant in the k.u.k Army that saves the life of Franz

Joseph and as a result becomes a member of the aristocracy. After having forbidden his son to join the army, the third generation Franz is a district administrator in a

Moravian town. The forth, and final, generation represented by Carl Joseph von

Trotta is a cavalry officer who eventually dies at the onset of World War I while carrying water up to his fellow troops. Roth describes two aspects about the Trotta family that makes them elementally Austrian: their allegiance to Austria-Hungary – particularly to the figurehead Franz Joseph – as well as Austria’s own history mirrored in their family’s destiny. The fact then that they stem from Slovenia would therefore suggest that the definition of what belongs to Austria without question includes ethnolinguistic minority groups.

While the narrative ostensibly focuses on the decline of a family, these descriptions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire within his novel are too great to casually overlook as a mere setting. The novel depicts how citizens lived and identified with the ruling power, as well as the hardships marginalized groups endured. As such, Roth’s novel offers a rich portrait of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that warrants further analysis.

What must also be kept in mind is that Roth was writing Radetzkymarsch under completely different circumstances than the mentioned in the Said essay quoted above. These writers were supporting the power of a contemporary empire, while Roth was writing about an empire that had disintegrated. Radetzkymarsch

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was written between 1930 and 1932, while Roth was traveling around Europe and burdened by financial difficulties.86 This novel was not written to reinforce an empire’s power, but instead takes on a different task: explaining, or even legitimizing, a past empire’s grasp on Austria-Hungary. Radetzkymarsch explores the power of empire through the depiction of the vast and varied spaces of Austria-

Hungary that all belonged to the same crown. In this way, Roth depicts the cosmopolitan composition of the kaiserlich und königreich Dual Monarchy in his most famous contribution to the literary canon.

B. Radetzkymarsch and the Scholarly Debates

The premier critical debate centers on as whether or not to read

Radetzymarsch as a novel about the past or about the time it was written. Ursula

Reidel-Schrewe sums up how the novel is usually interpreted and the critical concepts that are most often associated with Radetzymarsch:

Es besteht die Tendenz, dieses Werk als einen historischen, nämlich

retrospektiven Roman zu bewerten, der dem poetischen Realismus

des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts nahesteht. Nostalgie, Weltschmerz,

Verherrlichung der Vergangenheit, Bekenntnis zur Monarchie,

Mythologisierung der Geschichte und Verknüpfung von Werk und

Biographie des ostjüdischen Österreichers sind die auf die

Vergangenheit ausgerichteten Konstanten in der Rezeption dieses

Roman. (59)

86 According to Michael Hofmann, in the Introduction to the book Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters (2011).

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While it is straightforward to interpret this novel as a romanticization, or at the very least a depiction, of the Habsburg past, many newer debates assert instead that Radetzkymarsch can alternatively be read to understand Roth’s views of the events happening in 1930’s Europe. Kati Tonkin has argued that Roth utilized literature as a means of interpreting his own life and times: "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 both novels he looks back to the Habsburg Empire in an effort to understand the roots of contemporary problems" (111). Similarly, John Heath has written that

“Radetzkymarsch is symptomatic of its author’s lamenting the loss of order in post- war confusion, and in 1938 he saw another catastrophe looming” (337).

Whether Roth composed his opus as a eulogy or an attempt at an explanation, the trend in scholarship is to read Radetzkymarsch as indicative of

Roth’s conservative, monarchist, and nostalgic phase that occurred later on in his life. For instance, Sidney Rosenfeld asserted that “The Radetzky March may be regarded as [Roth’s] declaration of faith as an Austrian” (45). The fact that earlier in his career he worked under the pseudonym der rote Roth and that his earlier literary texts such as Das Spinnennetz (1923), Hotel Savoy (1924), and Die Rebellion

(1924) have little to do with his later ones thematically and politically, explains how critics have been puzzled about how to read these vastly different texts vis-à-vis one another.87 This view of Roth’s work in contrast to his own political views does not

87 Kati Tonkin argues that this “dualistic assessment of Roth’s writing” (1) can be traced back to Roth’s friend and fellow writer Hermann Kesten, who published a collection of Roth’s works in 1956.

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even take into consideration how Roth clearly explored different aspects of his

Jewish heritage in the texts Hiob (1930) and Juden auf Wanderschaft (1927). The tendency by scholars and critics has been to group Roth’s texts together based on their thematic content and then label him as either an Austrian, Jewish, or Socialist author.

Scholars have often concentrated on specific time periods and corresponding works, in the process connecting them to Roth’s own life.88 Within this milieu, there are some excellent scholarly works that present a biographical view of Roth’s literary texts. Rudolf Koester’s Joseph Roth (1982) draws parallels from Roth’s life to his major works, while Wolf R. Marchand’s monograph Joseph Roth und völkisch- nationalistische Wertbegriffe: Untersuchungen zur politisch-weltanschaulichen

Entwicklung Roths und ihrer Auswirkung auf sein Werk (1974) delineates a narrative that explains Roth’s political development. Wolfgang Müller-Funk’s study Joseph

Roth (1989) situates Roth’s work against a cultural and historical context, and Ilse

Josepha Lazaroms’s monograph The Grace of Misery: Joseph Roth and the Politics of

Exile, 1919-1939 (2013) uses five of Roth’s literary works to demonstrate different facets of Roth’s experience in exile. All of these volumes, as well as many other articles and studies, connect Roth’s work with his own life, thus giving the impression that Roth’s work cannot stand independently from an analysis of the

Furthermore, Tonkin cites the influential study by Ingeborg Sültemeyer that focused on Roth’s early works and supports Kesten’s paradigm by labeling Roth’s early works as leftist. 88 Martha Wörsching writes: “Over the years, many critics have analysed Roth’s work in the context of its time, as the product of a period of dramatic historical, socio-political and economic transformation in Europe between the two World Wars; they have focused on his political of literary themes and tried to explain his conspicuous political conversion from socialist and pacifist to Austrian monarchist” (118).

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time in which it was written.89 Their analyses largely support my own in that there is a consensus that Roth was a master at depicting the realities of the time he was describing. However, I disagree with these interpretations in that the actual content of his work is somewhat overlooked in favor of readings that connect his work to his life.

In attempting to situate Radetzkymarsch against Roth’s own oeuvre and the time period in which it was written, scholars often seek to locate turning points within Roth’s thought and political affiliations.90 Roth is either read as an Austrian,

Jewish, or leftist author, but never all three labels in the same breath. As Kati Tonkin has pointed out, many scholars tend to rely on Roth’s biography to locate any given political turning point. “While most critics do not attempt to reconcile the two generally recognized phases of Roth’s work,” Tonkin observes, “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” (3). As a result, much of Roth’s work is read vis-à-vis his life and events that he was going through. Kati Tonkin’s work breaks from this dualistic paradigm by instead finding links between Roth’s early

89 Some articles that explore Roth’s literature in this biographical way include: Friedrich Abendroth’s “Reichs- und Bundesvolk: Das zweifache Zeugnis des Joseph Roth” (1975), David Bronsen’s “The Jew in Search of a Fatherland: The Relationship of Joseph Roth to the Habsburg Monarchy” (1979), Otto Forst de Battaglia’s “Joseph Roth: Wanderer zwischen drei Welten” (1975), Sidney Rosenfeld’s “Joseph Roth and Austria: A Search for Identity” (1986). 90 For an excellent discussion of the timeline of these turning points, see Kati Tonkin’s monograph, pages 2-3. She says, for example, “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” (2). She lists David Bronsen, C.E. Williams, Wolf Marchand, and Claudio Magris are examples of scholars who have made such implications.

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novels to his later ones. The thread that binds his works together is, in her words, the idea that Roth “experiments with different forms [of literature] 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,” (4).

Unsurprisingly, more traditional analyses tend to privilege certain time periods of Roth’s career over others. Friedrich Abendroth has criticized this kind of scholarship and writes of what is at stake when the work of Joseph Roth is compartmentalized:

Wer in Roth nur den katholisierenden Legitimisten sieht, als den er

sich selbst zu geben liebte, wer sein Oeuvre nur als wort- und

pastellfarben-mächtige Beschwörung des idealen “alten Österreich”

betrachtet, der muß über alle jene deutlich “linken”, ja offen

revolutionären Partien seines Werkes entweder verlegen

hinweglesen, oder er muß sie nicht weiter “ernst nehmen”. Wer

umgekehrt in Roth nur den zweifellos überlegen aus der eigenen

Sozialexistenz heraustretenden, für die demokratischen Ideale der

Zukunft entflammten Literaten sieht, solchergestalt also auch seine

Romane aus dem alten Österreich als Dokumente erschütternd-

fragender Anklage gegen ein untergangsreifes “System” betrachtet,

der muß allen jenen Zeugnissen monarchistischer Loyalität und

religiöser Geschichtsehrfurcht ebenso betreten-achselzuckend

gegenüberstehen wie vielleicht einst Kisch der Schwarz-gelben

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Schleife seines Weggefährten beim Grabgang. Die Hälften ergeben

keine Deutung des Ganzen. (88)

I tend to agree with Abendroth and instead seek an analysis that not only takes into consideration the time and place about which the literary piece was written, but also avoid the common characterizations that have become the norm with Roth scholarship. In particular, I address two main points about Radetzkymarsch that have heretofore gone relatively unnoticed within secondary scholarship: the symbolic significance of the painting of the Hero of Solferino and the depiction of

Galicia in the novel. These two aspects of the novel support the larger goals of this dissertation in that there is more to be learned about Galicia from Roth’s most lasting contribution to the literary canon and that the novel demonstrates further the importance of the periphery to Roth’s definition of Austria.

C. “Österreich ist nicht in den Alpen zu finden…” – Roth’s definition and depiction of Austria

While Roth hailed from Galicia and traveled extensively around the Empire and Europe, he claimed that he was forever a citizen of the Dual Monarchy. “The most powerful experience of my life was the war and the end of my fatherland,” he one proclaimed, “the only one I have ever had: the Dual Monarchy of Austria-

Hungary. To this date I am a patriotic Austrian and love what is left of my homeland as a sort of relic” (Hofmann, ed. 221). While this statement was a reflection of more personal feelings towards the k.u.k Empire, this nostalgic attitude toward his homeland and its varied peripheries was apparent in his literary work Die

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Kapuzinergruft. In this work, he likewise claimed that the idea, space, and memory of Austria is nurtured by more than what most expect. In Die Kapuzinergruft, Roth expounded: “Österreich ist nicht in den Alpen zu finden, Gemsen gibt es dort und

Edelweiß und Enzian, aber kaum eine Ahnung von einem Doppeladler. Die

österreichische Substanz wird genährt und immer wieder aufgefüllt von den

Kronländern” (17).

Roth’s own relationship with Austria-Hungary, having been a citizen from the periphery, not only was asserted in his personal correspondence, but in his literary texts. As demonstrated in the quote from Die Kapuzinergruft, Roth is aware of the tension between the periphery and the center, and writes to dispel any inclination that the Crown Lands are subordinate in Austrian culture and history. In Die

Kapuzinergruft, he insists on understanding the Empire through a cosmopolitan lens: Austria is not a place for a single dominant culture and language, but instead should be viewed with an appreciation for its multiethnic composition and history.

As such, Radetzkymarsch as a novel that depicts a more complete portrait of

Austria-Hungary, and one should place high value in its verisimilitude. Not every scholar necessarily agrees with the assessment that a reader of today can understand an aspect about the time it described. As Kati Tonkin points out,

“[s]cholars routinely employ the expression ‘rückwärts gewandete Utopie,’ or similar formulation to express the same idea” (6). Perhaps more precisely, she – and many others – contends that Roth creates his own version of the Habsburg time in order to escape the travails of the present. For example, Sidney Rosenfeld, author of

Understanding Joseph Roth, observes of Radetzkymarsch: “Critically but lovingly, in

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his novel he resurrected this world as a utopian vision of what might have been had the faith in Old Austria’s constitutive ideal been stronger than the forces that led to its dissolution” (53). In a similar vein, Bernd M. Kraske has asserted that Roth’s desire to write Radetzkymarsch stemmed from the desire to turn back time and recall the past:

Denke niemand, Joseph Roth hätte in seinem Innersten an die

Möglichkeit einer Restauration geglaubt. Zu genau wußte er um die

Unaufhaltsamkeit der Zeit, um zu meinen, daß man die Uhr, immer

und immer wieder, zurückdrehen könnte. Doch er holte ein

Wunschbild aus der Vergangenheit hervor, um darin einzutauchen

und in ihm zu verschwinden. (44)

One of the most influential Roth scholars, David Bronsen, echoes Kraske in his article “The Jew in Search of a Fatherland: The Relationship of Joseph Roth to the

Habsburg Monarchy” (1979). “Living in the past fired his imagination; [Joseph Roth] had entered an imaginary world of his own making, which took hold of his senses in a way that dull reality could not” (59). Even in Martha Wörsching’s seminal article

“Misogyny and the Myth of Masculinity in Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch,” she employs the term “backward-looking utopia” to describe Roth’s depiction of women: “Roth’s ‘backward-looking utopia’ […] turns out to be a placed inhabited by men only, being ‘cleansed’ of women” (119).

What these scholars imply in their interpretations is that Joseph Roth’s

Radetzkymarsch is merely an invented world that did not exist and was written for the author’s nostalgic purposes. This trend in Roth scholarship is refuted by Kati

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Tonkin, who uses György Lukács’s guidelines for determining the characteristics of the historical novel:

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.

(9)

Kati Tonkin’s analysis and use of Lukács’s influential work not only expounds upon the Edward Said passages from the beginning on this chapter in that within the novel’s minor characters details about the time are to be found, but that it concurrently buttresses my own contention that Joseph Roth’s novel has something to teach readers about multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism within Austria during the time he was writing and the time he was depicting.

The trend for authors during the post-World War I period was to turn to the past for literary inspiration. Irmgard Keun, a lover of Joseph Roth later in his life, once wrote: “Kesten has a novel about Philip II, Roth has one about the Dual

Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, Zweig is writing one on Erasmus of Rotterdam,

Thomas Mann on ‘Lotte in Weimar’, Heinrich Mann on Henri IV, Feuchtwanger on

Nero…Who is writing the great book about now?” (quot. in Hofmann Afterword

190). Not only was this a German-speaking phenomenon, but looking to the past for literature takes on a more complicated dimension in the case of Austria. Claudio

Magris, author of the influential and notable study Der habsburgische Mythos in der

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österreichischen Literatur (1966), made the claim that authors living after the collapse of the Habsburg monarchy had the tendency to idealize the time of the k.u.k

Empire. He writes:

…für die österreichischen Schriftsteller […] stellte sich – und stellt sich

mitunter noch heute – das alte habsburgische Österreich als eine

glückliche und harmonische Zeit, als geordnetes und märchenhaftes

Mitteleuropa dar, in dem die Zeit nicht so schnell verging und in dem

man es nicht so eilig hatte, Dinge und Empfindungen des Gestern zu

vergessen. (7)

From this characterization of Austrian authors writing about the past, Magris could easily claim that Roth fits within his paradigm. Yet Magris notes that there is a characteristic to Roth’s writing that helps Roth to stand out against other authors

Magris presents as supporting the Habsburg myth:

In den Romanen von Joseph Roth, dem galizischen, aus dem Weltkrieg

heimgekehrten Juden, findet die Nachkriegssage ihre genaueste und

erschütterndste Darstellung. Genau und erschütternd: in der Tat

schwankt die Kunst dieses Schriftstellers zwischen einer feinen,

sachlichen Beobachtung der Wirklichkeit und der warmen, leisen

menschlichen Anteilnahme an den erzählten Dingen, die sie mit

mitfühlender Pietät und einem ständigen dichterischen Pulsschlag

umgibt. (255)

Although Magris has written an erudite study on how authors idealized and thereby, to some degree, falsified a period of Austrian history, he also claimed that Roth’s

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depiction of the time of the Empire resists the more typical glorification of the past.

With specific attention paid to Radetzkymarsch, Magris states:

So ist auch der Radetzkymarsch keine leere Verherrlichung einer

verlorenen Zeit, mag er auch scheinbar einer heimwehkranken

Zugehörigkeit zum habsburgischen System entspringen und mag der

Dichter auch zur gleichen Zeit legitimistische Artikel schreiben,

sondern ganz einfach ein Roman, der jene Welt begriffen hat. (259)

Joseph Roth’s novel depicts the past, but avoids an overt romanticization of the time period. Instead, my view expands upon that of Magris’s in that within

Radetzkymarsch lies truths of Austria under Habsburg rule, and as such, can be read today as a novel that depicts a historical perspective with a high level of verisimilitude.

Adolf D. Klarmann, who has pointed out that even though Radetzkymarsch is meant to depict the downfall of Austria-Hungary, the novel simultaneously focuses on a microcosm that functions as a synecdoche of sorts for the entire Empire:

Zum andern hat aber das sich hier entrollende Österreichbild Joseph

Roths mit der Reichs- und Residenzhauptstadt Wien nur wenig, und

das nur peripher, zu tun; es spiegelt sich in den Existenzen der in die

Provinz des weiten apostolischen Kaiserreiches verschlagenen

Beamten, Offiziere und gewöhnlichen Soldaten sowie in dem

chthonischen Sondercharakter des Landes wider, in dem der

Vertreter des großösterreichischen Systems als Fremdkörper wohl

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geduldet, vielleicht bewundert und beneidet sogar, keinesfalls jedoch

in sein Provinzleben einverleibt lebt. (153)

For Roth, according to Klarmann, the Empire is found in the nooks and crannies outside of the metropolis. Indeed, he would agree with Magris’s assessment that

Roth’s Austria is “das Reich der Kronländer” (260).

As I have demonstrated, scholarly literature has debated how Roth’s canonical work Radetzkymarsch should be read vis-à-vis the author’s own personal experiences and inclinations, but it is the consensus that Roth’s tome is a valuable contribution, especially for readers today, to gain insight on how people from the periphery experienced the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

D. Place and Radetzkymarsch

In his masterwork, Roth provides ample examples of how Austrian space is defined, both ethnically and geospatially. Roth takes up the theme of ethnic difference within the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the very first lines of

Radetzkymarsch: “Die Trottas waren ein junges Geschlecht. Ihr Ahnherr hatte nach der Schlacht bei Solferino den Adel bekommen. Er war Slowene. Sipolje – der Name des Dorfes, aus dem er stammte – wurde sein Adelsprädikat” (5). Within this opening statement, the reader is introduced to the three important elements of the novel: war, the family Trotta, and the family’s Slovenian heritage. The first mention of nationality is in the third sentence of the novel, but it does not yet provide a link to a uniquely Austrian identity that incorporates both the supranational Austria and the multiculturalism of the Empire. However, the narrator quickly establishes the

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Trotta lineage and their ties to the space of Austria by relaying the family’s noble history. The setting is the Battle of Solferino, the battle that took place on June 24,

1859 between France and Austria during the Wars of Italian Unification. As Roth retells the infamous Austrian defeat, he creates the fictional character of Joseph

Trotta and inserts him as a lowly soldier into the actual history of Austria.

The question of why Roth, having written his whole career about his own personal experiences, would make the choice to stem from Slovenia, and not from, for example, a place with which he was more familiar, is a salient one.91 Especially considering that Roth is reported to have claimed: “Der Leutnant Trotta, der bin ich”

(qtd. in Tonkin 167), it is important to ask why the novel’s protagonists hail from a

Slavic part of the Empire. Kati Tonkin has offered an analysis as to why Joseph Roth would identify with the Trottas: “each has an assimilated Habsburg identity that is three generations old, and each is estranged from the traditions of his forebears”

(167).

The fact that both Roth and Trotta stemmed from families that gradually assimilated is one explanation. Klaus Zelewitz, author of the article “Beim Lesen von

Roths Romanen Radetzkymarsch und Die Kapuzinergruft. Warum sind die Trottas

Slowenen?” (1993) takes more factors into consideration, and directly compares the

Slavic experience of belonging to Empire to the Jewish experience:

Ungleich interessanter aber zeigt sich eine andere Möglichkeit, das

Slowenentum der Trottas zu begreifen, nämlich als politisch

91 In the edited volume Joseph Roth auf Reisen, there is no report of Roth writing from Slovenia, although there are two reports for the Frankfurter Zeitung from 1927 when Roth was writing of his travel experiences in Sarajevo and Beograd.

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motivierte und pädagogisch verpackte Botschaft: So verstanden sind

die Trottas zugleich Slowenen wie die Slawen der Monarchie oder

ihre Juden; oder anders ausgedrückt: Alle Völker der Monarchie außer

den Deutschen und Ungarn und vielleicht den Italienern. (102-103)

Despite the fact that Roth’s Hiob – the novel in which Roth explores his Jewishness – had been published two years before Radetzymarsch, Zelewitz cites the interwar period with the rising power of the National Socialists as the primary reason Roth did not write the Trotta lineage as a Jewish one. Zelewitz though convincingly makes the connection between Jews and ethnic Slavs of the monarchy: “Dafür konnte Roth in einem österreichischen Szenario historisch an Slowenen (Karriere-

)möglichkeiten demonstrieren, die Juden durch Diskriminierung versagt waren”

(104). Zelewitz also points out that Slovenes were part of the Cisleithanian, therefore Austrian part, of the Empire and that the Slovenes made up the largest non-German speaking minority (104).

Zelewitz provides a historical reasoning for why Roth chose for his family to hail from Slovenia and supports his analysis with details from Roth’s experience as a minority. I don’t disagree with Zelewitz, but I find it important to emphasize how

Roth’s blurs the established boundaries that exist between class, nationality, as well as ideological and geopolitical borders. In these very first sentences, Roth establishes a family that comes from the more eastern parts of the Empire and earns their way to the aristocracy.

As scholar Larry Wolff has shown, the division of East and West within

Europe emerged from a conventional division of North and South. Wolff marks the

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eighteenth century, specifically the Enlightenment, as the point when the concept and connotation of Eastern Europe was developed.92 Wolff demonstrates that the cultural construct of Eastern Europe had long been developed and utilized by

Westerners as “its complement, within the same continent, in shadowed lands of backwardness, even barbarism” (4). As such, Roth was fully entrenched in these discussions of east and west, especially because he was a citizen of a country that harbored both geographical divides.93 By allowing his protagonists to be from the eastern part of the empire and allowing them to achieve nobility, Roth blurs these boundaries and conflates standard notions of the east and west dichotomy, as well as class lines. The reason, I contend, that the Trottas are from Slovenia, is because

Radetzkymarsch is a novel that demonstrates how ethnolinguistic minorities were an integral component of Austria’s history. Consequently, they are memorialized within the pages of Radetzkymarsch. As I will later uncover, Roth includes other ethnic groups in his novel, which corroborates the view that Roth was intentionally charted the space of Austria to include its multiculturalism.

The fourth sentence of the novel specifies exactly which village from which the family hails: “Sipolje – der Name des Dorfes, aus dem er stammte – wurde sein

Adelsprädikat” (5). Sipolje is a fictional town, a fact that further supports my assertion that Roth was attempting to include all ethnolinguistic minorities within

92 Wolff cites Voltaire as the origin of dividing Europe into East and West. He writes: “Voltaire emphasized Russia’s position on two continents, Europe and Asia. […] In 1731 Voltaire was already toying with alternatives to the conventional division of Europe into north and south” (90). 93 Robert Lemon, in his monograph Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle (2011), teases out notions of Orientalism within Habsburg culture and how the authors Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Robert Müsil, and Franz Kafka portrayed and utilized Oriental themes in their work to promote self-critique.

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the Empire’s borders. Theoretically speaking, had the Trottas hailed from Roth’s own hometown Brody, or somewhere else similar, Roth would have limited the novel to a specific ethnic group. However, by elevating the hometown to the fictional realm, it creates a category with which more people can identify, and more importantly, imagine the Empire.

Zoran Konstantinovic has written that the fictitious location of Sipolje is a part of Roth’s desire to eulogize the time period:

Joseph Roth begnügt sich [Sipolje] zudem auch nicht mit der Fiktivität

einer solchen Ortsbezeichnung, sondern er entterritorialisiert sie im

Laufe seines Diskurses immer mehr, offensichtlich um sie literarische

derart desto besser als geistige Zufluchtstätte, als intensiven

symbolischen Ausdruck einer rückwärts gewandeten Utopie nutzen

zu können. (181)

Instead of understanding Sipolje as a means to express the backwards-looking utopia, one can rather use the fictional location as a way to express the multiethnic character of Austria-Hungary. Not to mention, the fact that Sipolje is fictive allows for the future readers of Radetzymarsch to ascribe their own meanings to the town and the people that come from there. Lastly, in a place where the language of the town’s name is highly politicized – whether it is Lemberg, Lviv, or Lvov, for example

– Roth was making the choice not to politicize the name by choosing a known town.

The town of Sipolje is a choice Roth made to not only support the multiethnic character of the Empire, but to simultaneously avoid any kind of prior affiliation that would be loaded with political meaning and history.

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The town of Sipolje is added to the Trotta name through an act of heroism brought on by a moment of chance. Joseph Trotta, the second generation of Trottas, realizes that the Kaiser is in danger when the Kaiser holds up his binoculars; a signal to any enemy that he is an important figure within the army, and thus a high-profile potential target.94 When Trotta assesses the situation, he has a particularly visceral reaction that seems to signify his sense of loyalty and duty to the Austro-Hungarian crown, as if loyalty to the crown were a biological impulse: “Trotte 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” (6). His reaction is indicative of both his love of his homeland, as well as how he understands the position of the Kaiser within the world and his importance for Austria-Hungary. He is, according to the soldier Trotta, above everything. His pride, rooted in the cosmopolitan power of the Kaiser, compels him to act on his instinct. In doing so, he saves the Kaiser from a fatal gunshot and instead takes it himself.

Notable about these initial pages of the novel is that the first important characteristic about Trotta is that he is a Slovene and that the second is that the novel is about a family’s relationship to Austria. This connection is one of the first plot lines to be established, and it has an enduring effect within the plot.

Furthermore, the loyalty of the Trotta family is established within the first scenes of the novel. One of the ways the family becomes a part of the Empire, and indeed actively participates in it, is through their sense of loyalty to the Kaiser. This

94 I read Radetzymarsch as a story of four generations, while many scholars claim it traces the three generations. This point will be discussed later in the chapter.

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opportunity to convey an immediate connection between the Trotta family and

Franz Joseph is based largely upon chance and the opportunity that Trotta seized.

Roth immediately constructs the space of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the opening lines of his tome: it is evident that Trotta is fighting in a specific battle,

Franz Joseph is mentioned by name, and the reader knows Trotta’s nationality. As much as the setting seems evident, Roth begins to weave a tale that includes the entirety of the Empire. For example, Trotta receives an honor for his heroic deed, and the narration is full of simple references to the immense Empire: “Als er in seine südungarische Garnison zurückkehrte, besaß er den Rang eines Hauptmanns, die höchste aller Auszeichnungen: den Maria-Theresien-Orden und den Adel” (7). While

Roth is simply narrating that Trotta has received great recognition for his sacrifice, he simultaneously paints a geographical space of Austria-Hungary, in the process linking Trotta to a distinctly Habsburg past. In this one sentence, he mentions that

Trotta had to return to Hungary, thereby mentioning more, vast spaces within the

Empire. As for referencing the historical legacy of Austria, the Order of Maria

Theresa was a medal awarded to those who had undertaken especially valorous acts in service to the Monarch. These sentences might easily be read over in passing.

However, they exemplify Roth’s narration and furnish his readership with clues about the primacy of the Empire, its power, and its legacy.

After Captain Joseph Trotta von Sipolje earns his military honor, he travels to visit his father in Laxenburg. His father was a Rechnungsunteroffizier and then a

Gendarmeriewachtmeister for the army, but retired as a military invalid to be a groundskeeper at the Castle of Laxenburg in Lower Austria. The claim that

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Radetzkymarsch is a tale of three generations is incorrect, as the narrative clearly includes four generations of Trotta men. The father of the Hero of Solferino is an important, although somewhat unappreciated in secondary scholarship, because he becomes the link to the family’s Slovenian past. For example, it becomes evident, through the character of Joseph’s father, how the family had assimilated into

Austrian culture:

Vor fünf Jahren noch hatte er zu seinem Sohn slowenisch gesprochen,

obwohl der Junge nur ein paar Worte verstand und nicht ein einziges

selbst hervorbrachte. 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. (11)

As the narration about the father attests, the family’s sense of belonging to the

Empire has evolved over the years. They became more assimilated into the power structures of the Empire, as both men are speaking German. The narrator makes a point to emphasize their language and the choice that citizens made daily concerning their Umgangssprache.95 This is a choice that many had to make in the multi-lingual space of the Habsburg Empire and a choice that affects one’s identity, sense of nationality, and an altered belonging to the Empire. As scholars have shown, language is a highly politicized part of a citizen’s culture in the kaiserliche

95 A more detailed discussion of one’s Umgangsprache is offered in chapter two.

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und königliche Dual Monarchy. 96 Likewise, Joseph Roth describes in his

Radetzkymarsch through his characters, how language was an essential part of the everyday lives of citizens.

By claiming that Radetzkymarsch is about three generations of Trottas, most scholarship has practically ignored the family’s Slovenian heritage. When the eldest

Trotta dies, the Captain claimed that “es gab keine andere sichtbare Beziehung mehr zwischen beiden – losgelöst war der Hauptmann Trotta von dem langen Zug seiner bäuerlichen slawischen Vorfahren. Ein neues Geschlecht brach mit ihm an,” (11).

One can interpret this of beginning of a new dynasty as referring primarily to the class and military designations that had come with Trotta’s heroic act. Additionally, one can see how Roth is indicating the power of the Empire to create and alter families, identities, and heritage.

Previously, Capitan Trotta makes a remark about the distance between himself and his father and the reasons for its existence: “Es ist tatsächlich aus! dachte der Hauptmann Trotta. Getrennt von ihm war der Vater durch einen schweren Berg militärischer Grade” (11). Trotta thus notices the break between generations because of the military honors he has received, and not, for example, because of ethnic differences brought about by assimilation. After he takes his son

Franz to the eldest Trotta’s funeral, he does not speak much to his son, but only to say “Vergiß ihn nicht, den Großvater!” (21). Despite having earlier told his son, “Er war nur ein Gendarmeriewachtmeister” (20), Trotta feels it necessary to impose

96 I am referring particularly here to Pieter Judson’s monograph Guardians of the Naiton: Activists on the Language Frontiers of Austria (2007) and Tara Zahra’s monograph Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900-1948 (2011).

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upon his son the importance of generations and from where one hails. This point becomes particularly salient with the discussion of the paining in the next section.

Even in the Baron Trotta’s old age, Roth ascribes his Slovenian heritage on him: “Er wurde ein kleiner slowenischer Bauer” (18) and then repeats this sentence again: “Er war ein kleiner, alter, slowenischer Bauer, der Baron Trotta” (19).

Although we are informed that “ein neues Geschlecht brach mit ihm an” (11), it becomes apparent that the ennobled Trotta becomes exactly like his own father. The

Hero of Solferino is not the first generation of the Trotta family, but the second. By including the first generation of the Hero of Solferino’s father, the novel becomes more about the periphery of the k.u.k. monarchy.

E. The Painting and how it Represents the Space of Austria

It is in this first chapter where Roth not only establishes the setting of the novel, but also creates an important symbol for the investigation of minority cultures within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The years go by quickly, and Captain

Trotta marries his colonel’s niece and they have a son Franz together. While reading his son’s history books, he discovers that he has become the unwilling subject of one of the stories that is taught to schoolchildren “Franz Joseph der Erste in der Schlacht bei Solferino” (13). The story grossly distorts the details of the battle, painting

Joseph Trotta as more heroic than what was actually true.

Disgusted by the lies, he writes the Kulturs- und Unterrichtsminister to have the tale removed from the schoolbooks. It is eventually granted, but only after a meeting with the Kaiser, who tries to dissuade Trotta from his insistence that the

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story be removed. Instead of acquiescing to the Kaiser’s request, Trotta goes back to his garrison and asks to be discharged from the army. However, the Kaiser still has a hand in his fate:

Er wurde als Major entlassen. Er übersiedelte nach Böhmen, auf das

kleine Gut seines Schwiegervaters. Die kaiserliche Gnade verließ ihn

nicht. Ein paar Wochen später erhielt er die Mitteilung, daß der Kaiser

geruht habe, dem Sohn seines Lebensretters für Studienzwecke aus

der Privatschatulle fünftausend Gulden anzuweisen. Gleichzeitig

erfolgte die Erhebung Trottas in den Freiherrnstand. (17)

Again, not only does the narration support the view that Roth is essentially mapping the Empire with the mention of Bohemia, but with this passage we see the trope of the benevolent Kaiser, who promotes educational systems that further remove families from their origins and assimilate them into the Empire. Even when Trotta tries to remove himself from the history that would write him into the nation, the

Kaiser responds with a generous gift to the Trotta family.

Despite his refusal to participate in the literature that serves as propaganda for Austria, he becomes immortalized through a painting. Still in the first chapter, the Captain’s son Franz grows up and goes off to boarding school in Vienna, symbolizing the cultural and educational center of the Empire, and in a way, opposed to the army: “Er gab seinen Jungen in ein Pensionat nach Wien und verfügte, daß der Sohn niemals aktiver Soldat werden dürfte” (21). Through the

Kaiser’s generous sum, the Captain is able to send his son to obtain an education in

Vienna. This act of going to school in Vienna demonstrates not only a further

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participation in the Austrian imperial project, but also the family’s shift from periphery to center, thus removing them from a greater extent to their Slovenian heritage.

It is in this boarding school that Franz meets a painter and asks his father if he can come home with him to meet his family. While Captain Trotta thinks that

Franz’s friend is painting a landscape, he actually has a different subject matter in mind: “Der Gast malte zwar draußen, aber keineswegs die Landschaft. Er porträtierte den Baron Trotta aus dem Gedächtnis. Jeden Tag am Tisch lernte er die

Züge seines Hausherrn auswendig” (23). There really is no reason for the portrait – it is not as if Franz arranged it for a particular occasion – but it is nonetheless painted.

When the elder Trotta is presented with his own portrait, his reaction is overwhelmingly positive, and he is obviously flattered by being the subject of such an artwork:

Er studierte es bedächtig und lächeld. Er drehte es um, als suchte er

auf der Rückseite noch weitere Einzelheiten, die auf der vorderen

Fläche ausgelassen sein mochten, hielt es gegen das Fenster, denn

weit vor die Augen, betrachtete sich im Spiegel, verglich sich mit dem

Porträt und sagte schließlich: ‘Wo soll es hängen?’ Es war seit vielen

Jahren seine erste Freude. (23)

Although Trotta refused to become a part of Austria’s history by allowing the embellished story to be a part of the nation-building myth to be included in schoolbooks, the painting becomes instead a way for his legacy to be remembered.

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For his family, at the very least, they can remember their hero of Solferino and his valorous act.

The painting also inspires the Baron to reflect upon his life and face certain realities: “Er hatte erst des Bildes bedurft, um sein frühes Alter und seine große

Einsamkeit zu erfahren, aus der bemalten Leinwand strömten ihm entgegen, die

Einsamkeit und das Alter. War es immer so? fragte er sich” (23). The painting seemed to motivate the Baron to act differently. Whereas he was always described as a strict, unrelenting father figure, the painting brings about change to his personality: “Er wurde milde in Haus und Hof, streichelte manchmal ein Pferd, lächelte den Kühen zu, trank häufiger als bisher einen Schnaps und schrieb eines

Tages seinem Sohn einen kurzen Brief außerhalb der üblichen Termine” (24). He is described as a happier individual, and one who appreciates the world around him more.

At this stage in the book, the painting seems to function more like a mirror that brings the Captain to a deeper understanding about his life. The painting will have many different functions at different points at the novel, but the initial rendering of Captain Joseph von Trotta und Sipolje is overwhelmingly positive, and it gives the family a concrete indication of their heritage and lineage. The painting is a symbol of how the family has become more Austrian through military service and education.

Franz Freiherrn von Trotta und Sipolje quickly grows up to become a

Bezirkshauptmann and has a son named Carl Joseph, who goes to school at the

Kavalleriekadettenschule in Moravia. Once again, geographical references mark an

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occasion for Roth to map the Empire for the reader. However, this time Roth is moving away from the center, which supports the idea about how intertwined periphery and center were. While one may be tempted to read this family’s story as a linear narrative of assimilation, Roth continuously emphasizes the nuance inherent in such a process.

While Franz was denied a career in the military by his father, the District

Captain encourages his own son to become a soldier. The relationship between the third and fourth Trotta generations is just as tenuous and formal as the generation before. For example, the father and son often have conversations that sound more like an oral exam: “Der Alte prüfte heute lediglich Literatur. Er sprach sich ausführlich über die Bedeutung Grillparzers aus und empfahl dem Sohn als ‘leichte

Lektüre’ für Ferientage Adalbert Stifter und Ferdinand von Saar” (31). In demonstrating how his well-crafted characters interact, Roth again intertwines the culture of Austria by mentioning its literature and three authors that are part of an

Austrian canon. As discussed previously, literature plays a crucial role in the construction of a collective cultural identity within the nation. In this example,

Joseph Roth is not only promoting the literature of Austria, but is perhaps also giving the reader a clue that his own literature is a worthy portrayal of Austrian culture.

Even though his family has a particular connection to the Austrian Monarch,

Franz Joseph, the youngest Trotta also feels a strong sense of loyalty to the Kaiser:

Er fühlte sich ein wenig den Habsburgern verwandt, deren Macht sein

Vater hier repräsentierte und verteidigte und für die er einmal selbst

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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 anderen den Kaiser,

der gütig war und groß, erhaben und gerecht, unendlich fern und sehr

nahe und den Offizieren der Armee besonders zugetan. (31-32)

Even in describing Carl Joseph’s devotion to the Kaiser, the narrator uses spatial terms of fern and sehr nahe to describe the Monarch’s presence in Austria-Hungary.

Again devotion to Franz Joseph is stressed to indicate a belonging to a greater force that united the many different peoples of Austria-Hungary. As much as Roth is buttressing the myth of the benevolent Franz Joseph, he is concurrently perpetuating a cosmopolitan view of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at large.

The painting reappears in the novel, but this time from the eyes of Carl

Joseph, for whom the painting becomes a tangible link between Carl Joseph von

Trotta and his grandfather, the Hero of Solferino. He admits to inspecting the painting when the house is quiet, attempting to read the details for hidden secrets:

“Manchmal, an stillen Nachmittagen […], stieg Carl Joseph 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” (42). In trying to find out secrets that the painting might possess, he reads the painting as if he is reading a book, paying attention to the closest details to gain some kind of knowledge from the piece of artwork. However, his attempts seem to fail him: “Jedes

Jahr in den Sommerferien fanden die stummen Unterhaltungen des Enkels mit dem

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Großvater statt. Nichts verriet der Tote. Nichts erfuhr der Junge” (43). Roth here describes a synesthesia of sorts, as the young Trotta experiences the painting. While art usually demands the act of viewing, Trotta instead tries to speak with the painting. However engaged his senses are in trying to understand the painting, it still reveals nothing to settle its sense of mystery.

Although Trotta seems to think the painting is lacking in clarifying his questions, the painting’s power lies in its existence above language. In this vein, the painting then becomes a display of the cosmopolitanism of the Empire, precisely because it transcends time, geographic space, and even language. It becomes an example of how different cultures and generations can understand one another. And while generations prove themselves to be different from one another, the painting and Franz’s desire to understand it demonstrates the links that tie the generations to one another. Roth’s depiction of the artwork suggests that all peoples of the

Empire are connected, with no regard for geographic location or roots that tie people to certain parts of the nation. The painting is a tangible connection for Trotta to his history, and to his nation. Had the painting been instead a diary or a collection of letters, Carl Joseph would have been restricted to this access. Language is a natural barrier to cosmopolitanism, and it is overcome at this point in the novel through the painting.

The painting represents cosmopolitanism in that it ties generations together that have been severed by ethnic difference and assimilation into a different culture.

This kind of cosmopolitanism has been discussed by Martha C. Nussbaum in her article “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” (1994). She particularly gives much

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attention to the definition of the concept of cosmopolitanism by the Stoics and traces how that definition can be applied to more modern times:

The Stoics stress that to be a citizen of the world one does not need to

give up local identifications, which can be a source of great richness in

life. They suggest that we think of ourselves as not devoid of local

affiliations, but as surrounded by a series of concentric circles. The

first one encircles the self, the next takes in the immediate family, then

follows the extended family, then in order, neighbors or local groups,

fellow city-dwellers, and fellow countrymen – and we can easily add

to this list groupings based on ethnic, linguistic, historical,

professional, gender, or sexual identities. Outside all these circles is

the largest one, humanity as a whole. (158)

The painting, therefore, represents comparable concentric circles and demonstrate Carl Joseph’s understanding of himself, family, and country. Ursula

Reidel-Schrewe has argued that the painting of the grandfather represents a breakdown: “Das Bild des Kaisers und das Porträt des Großvaters, des Helden von

Solferino, sind Symbole für die Zersetzung der Bindung an die Gegenwart, die aus der Spaltung von Wirklichkeit und Wahrheit resultiert” (61). However, as we can see, the painting instead represents the multiple connections of people, family, and time periods. Indeed, Hansjürgen Böning, author of Joseph Roths “Radetzymarsch”:

Thematik – Struktur – Sprache supports this view. He notes that the portrait of the grandfather is “als eine Verkörperung der inneren Bindungen der Personen” (64).

He explains this point in more detail:

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Besonders durch das Porträt des Helden von Solferino verbindet der

Autor die Personen auf vielfältige Weise: Moser als den Maler mit der

Familie Trotta, alle drei Trottas mit dem Kaiser durch die

physiognomische Ähnlichkeit, den Bezirkshauptmann und seinen

Sohn durch die beiden gemeinsame Art, das Bild zu betrachten, und

dadurch, daß es für sie zu einem Kraftquell und zu einem Mahnmal

der Pflicht wird, den Bezirkshauptmann und Jacques durch den

gemeinsamen Wunsch, im Sterben das Bild noch einmal sehen zu

wollen, wodurch zugleich auch Jacques auf den Helden von Solferino

ausgerichtet wird. (64)

I agree with Böning’s assessment about the painting of the Hero of Solferino, but would contend that the painting is indicative of a larger cosmopolitan network, of which Carl Joseph is at the center. Consider the subsequent mention of the portrait in the novel after Carl Joseph tries to locate meaning within its brushstrokes. The painting is evoked by Carl Joseph when serving in the military and is conjured from memory due to specific reasons:

Die Leute sangen Lieder in einer unbekannten Sprache, in einer

slawischen Sprache. Die alten Bauern von Sipolje hätten sie wohl

verstanden! Der Großvater Carl Josephs noch hätte sie vielleicht

verstanden! Sein rätselhaftes Bildnis verdämmerte unter dem Suffit

des Herrenzimmers. An dieses Bildnis klammerte sich die Erinnerung

Carl Josephs, als an das einzige und letzte Zeichen, das ihm die

unbekannte, lange Reihe seiner Vorfahren vermacht hatte. Ihr

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Nachkomme war er. Seitdem er zum Regiment eingerückt war, fühlte

er sich als der Enkel seines Großvaters, nicht als der Sohn seines

Vaters; ja, der Sohn seines merkwürdigen Großvaters war er. (75)

The language that is foreign to Carl Joseph is what triggers the memory of the painting and his grandfather. It is in this passage that these concentric circles of identification, belonging, and cosmopolitanism are so clearly illustrated. Carl Joseph is serving in the army, therefore the larger project of the nation, hears a foreign language that reminds him of his family lineage, and then pictures the painting of his grandfather which reminds him of more immediate familial connections. The painting is a symbol for Carl Joseph that conflates the foreign and the familiar parts of his own identification.

This painting of his grandfather stands as a souvenir of his family’s past, especially vis-à-vis the nation because it was a painting of the man who saved the

Kaiser’s life. Considering the only other portrait to be mentioned in the text is one of

Kaiser Franz Joseph, it puts the men on comparable planes within the novel. At the point in the narration when Carl Joseph sees the portrait of the Kaiser, he is at a brothel with his new acquaintance Max Demant, who will be further discussed in the next section of this chapter. Carl Joseph sees a picture of Kaiser Franz Joseph in the brothel and is overwhelmed with the thought of the Kaiser’s portrait in such a degrading place: “In einem bronzenen, von Fliegen betupften Rahmen stand der

Allerhöchste Kriegsherr, in Verkleinerung, das bekannte, allgegenwärtige Porträt

Seiner Majestät, im blütenweißen Gewande, mit blutroter Schärpe und goldenem

Vlies. Es muß etwas geschehen, dachte der Leutnant schnell und kindisch. Es muß

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etwas geschehen!” (93). He takes the painting from the frame, folds it up, and puts it in his pocket. Once again, the grandfather is mentioned: “Auch der Großvater hat ihn gerettet, dachte Doktor Demant” (94).

Scholar Krzysztof Lipinski has read this moment as indicative of the difference in the generations of Trotta men: “Die Romanfiguren bewegen sich in zwei Sphären, einer tatsächlichen und einer mythischen” (103), because Carl Joseph views his innocuous act as heroic. The portrait is obviously reminiscent of his own grandfather. Lipinski states: “Wie ein roter Faden zieht sich durch den ganzen

Roman das Motiv der Verwechslung. Während der Audienz ist es fast unmöglich zu sagen, wer wer ist; der Kaiser und der Bezirkshauptmann ähneln einander wie zwei

Brüder, sie sind auch das Produkt derselben Beamtensphäre” (105). However, I want to take his analysis one step further and assert that these paintings are representative of the concentric circles that Martha Nussbaum presented. They are important symbols to the novel and the theme of multiculturalism, history, assimilation, and cosmopolitanism within the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The painting forces Carl Joseph to reflect on his background and country, thereby recognizing the many different elements that have an effect on his own construction of identity.

F. The Cost of Cosmopolitanism – Max Demant

Edward Said argues that the novelistic form is highly regulated and a product of societal construction: “The capacity to represent, portray, characterize, and depict is not easily available to just any member of just any society; more over,

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the ‘what’ and ‘how’ in the representation of ‘things,’ while allowing for considerable individual freedom, are circumscribed and socially regulated” (80). One can readily apply this logic to Radetzkymarsch and those fringe characters that might now occupy central roles, yet still speak volumes about contemporary society. One such character in Joseph Roth’s most famous novel is Max Demant, a Jew serving in the army with Carl Joseph. Even though he occupies only a minor role in the narrative, his character leaves a considerable impression about how Jews were treated in

Austria-Hungary. Considering Joseph Roth was born and raised as Jewish, the character of Demant becomes even more revealing to the societal norms of the time.

Above all, considering Demant’s fate, he represents how there are always exceptions to those included in the project of cosmopolitanism. In Max Demant’s case, he is a prime example of Georg Simmel’s the Stranger, which excludes him from the mainstream cultures of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The role of Dr. Max Demant in Joseph Roth’s canonical work Radetzkymarsch is rather underwhelming. He appears in a mere three chapters of the book, but is a character that makes a substantial emotional impact on the narrative’s protagonist

Carl Joseph von Trotta. From their first meeting, they are kindred spirits, in that they are not like the rest of the soldiers: “Die waren beide vom ganzen Regiment geschieden. Und sie kannten sich kaum eine halbe Stunde” (91). However their friendship would be cut short: Demant is ultimately killed in a duel, stemming from an incident that materialized in part because of Trotta. Although the reader only bears witness to their friendship for a short amount of time, Demant’s presence resonates through the entire novel in the memories of Carl Joseph von Trotta.

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Demant is the only mentioned character in Joseph Roth’s Radetzkymarsch to be of Jewish heritage. There are a few other references to Jews peppered throughout the novel, but this work does not overtly engage with the experience of being Jewish in pre-World War I Austria-Hungary. The many juxtapositions and paradoxes surrounding his character help to bring meaning to Joseph Roth’s depiction of Jews, and yet also seem to criticize the project of cosmopolitanism.

In his first conversation with Carl Joseph von Trotta, Max Demant explains his heritage and reveals that he is Jewish: “‘Mein Großvater war ein Schankwirt; ein jüdischer Schankwirt in Galizien. Galizien, kennen Sie das?’” (90). The narrator’s first thought after realizing that Demant was Jewish was to refer to stereotypes and jokes about Jews, which reveals the narrator’s deeply ingrained negative perception of Jews and their roles within society: “(Ein Jude war der Doktor Demant. Alle

Anekdoten enthielten jüdische Regimentsärzte. Zwei Juden hatte es auch in der

Kadettenschule gegeben. Sie waren dann zur Infanterie gekommen.)” (90). Prior to this scene, the only reference to Jews is a scene in which the Trottas – father and son

– attend the Wagner opera and the Kapellmeister “genoss und erzählte jüdische

Witze mit pfiffigem Behagen” (37). When Carl Joseph becomes acquainted with Max

Demant, Jews have only been for him the butt of jokes, but not necessarily an Other which is viewed with suspicion.

Demant’s roots stretch from the region of Galicia, distant from where they are stationed in Moravia. The distinction between the Western Jew and the Eastern

Jew is at play here, but it is more significant because of the specific location that

Roth provides. In his book A History of Habsburg Jews, 1670-1918, William O. McCagg

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Jr, McCagg devotes considerable attention to the region of Galicia specifically because of its particular brand of hostility towards its Jewish population. McCagg cites a surprising statistic about the region of Galicia and prewar emigration trends:

“Of the 320,000 Jews who emigrated from Austria-Hungary to the United States between 1891 and the [First World W]ar, 85% were from Galicia” (185). McCagg also calls attention to the strained relations between the Jewish population and the nationalist Poles living in Galicia. He notes: “Hated by both the dominant Christian nations, the Jews of Galicia were less involved in Christian politics than elsewhere.

Yet they could never afford to expose themselves fully in a Jewish cause, as did the

Bukowina Jews. It was just too dangerous to risk the Christian anger of the Poles”

(187). McCagg’s observations demonstrate that there was not a monolithic treatment of Jews within the Empire. There were regions where Jews were more and less accepted. His study makes it very clear that Galicia was one of the most hostile regions towards Jews. The fact that Max Demant’s family is from there demonstrates his position of an outsider, but an outsider that was viewed with a particular sense of aggression.

Roth further illustrates the idea of Demant as an outsider. At the time of meeting Carl Joseph von Trotta, the Jewish doctor even lives “außeralb der Stadt, an ihrem Südrande” (94), showing not only an ideological distancing from the others of the regiment, but that this distance is also marked spatially. Demant can further be viewed as an outsider because of his profession as a soldier, as previously noted by the narrator. But understanding the role of Jews in the medical profession during this time highlights this status as outsider. Demant’s professional rise was what he

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describes as a “Karriere mit Widerhaken” (95). The narrator emphasizes Demant’s struggle to become a physician, finally abandoning his lofty ambitions and becoming an army doctor, the one place where he would be accepted as both Jew and physician: “Wenn mir das Schicksal günstig gewesen wäre, hätte ich Assistent des großen Wiener Chirurgen und wahrscheinlich Professor werden können” (95). It is implied that his career of snags is rooted in his Jewishness.

A curious connection to Demant’s professional struggle is that of fin-de-siècle prejudices towards Jews who chose to practice medicine. Sander Gilman writes in his book The Case of Sigmund Freud: Medicine and Identity at the Fin De Siècle that there was an understood cultural construction of the Jew as a disease (26).

Consequently, this prevailing attitude made it difficult to view the Jewish doctor as one who is capable of curing disease. Gilman explains this paradox:

We find Jewish biological and medical scientists of the late nineteenth

century forced to deal with what is for them the unstated central

epistemological problem of late nineteenth-century biological science:

how one could be the potential subject of a scientific study at the same

time that one had the role of the observer; how one could be the

potential patient at the same moment one was supposed to be the

physician. (43)

Gilman’s observations of the “neutral physician” (42) and the Jew as disease help to clarify Demant’s ambiguous position within the medical community. Roth emphasizes Demant’s struggle, but Gilman’s study underscores why such a struggle would exist in the first place.

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Demant is not only marginalized by his career as a physician, but also within the army. When Trotta realizes that Demant is a Jew, the narrator is quick to point out that there had been only two other Jews in military school and both had gone on to join the infantry. As opposed to the cavalry, the infantry is not marked by an element of prestige. The narrator implies that not only were Jews a minority within the army, but one not usually held in high regard. Indeed, Demant’s character is used to illustrate the inferior status of Jews within the army: “Seinem Alter wie seiner Dienstzeit nach hätte er Stabsarzt sein müssen. Niemand wusste, warum er es noch nicht war. Vielleicht wusste er selbst es nicht” (94). Could his Jewishness be the reason that his professional life had not progressed in the way that it could have?

To answer this question, another one must be posed: What exactly then was the position of Jews in the military? It is first fitting to discuss position of the Jews within the realm of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It should be evident that Austria-

Hungary encompassed a variety of peoples, languages and religions; to be exact, eleven nationalities were officially recognized by the Habsburg government

(Rozenblit 18). Although Jews were a minority of the population, they did not have the same autonomy or recognition as other groups within Austria-Hungary. Marsha

L. Rozenblit, from her book Reconstructing a National Identity: The Jews of Habsburg

Austria During World War I, succinctly explains the status of the Jews:

Thus Austrian authorities did not count the Jews as a Volksstamm, a

nationality, according to article 19 of the constitution. They also did

not accord Yiddish the status of a language, a Volkssprache, because

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not all Jews in Austria spoke it. Instead Habsburg authorities (like all

other Western governments) regarded the Jews solely as adherents of

a particular religious confession: Judaism. (19)

Rozenblit claims that the First World War was, therefore, seen by Jews as an opportunity to prove their loyalty to the Habsburg crown (39). But Dr. Max Demant does not seem to view his service to the military as a way to prove his assimilation; if anything, his joining the army appears to be a last resort for a career.

Another statistic to keep in mind is how well minorities – Jewish or not – were represented in the various echelons of the Austro-Hungarian army. Military

Historian Holger H. Herwig provides a statistic that shows how the military in 1914 lacked the diversity that the Empire represented. For example, “[t]he Habsburg officer corps was compromised of about three-quarters of Germans – specifically, 76 per cent of the total officer corps and 57 per cent of reserve officers as well as 68 per cent of War Ministry staff” (14). His substantial analysis of the First World War in

Germany and Austria-Hungary does not list specific statistics pertaining to Jews in the army, but through the aforementioned statistics, it is clear that Austrian

Germans comprised the largest group of the Habsburg military force.

The observations of historian John Keegan help to provide a comparison for

Jewish contribution in the war. In his survey of World War I, Keegan claims that

Italy was the only country that encouraged military participation by the Jews:

“Patriotic, professional and well-educated – the King of Savoy’s army was the only one in Europe in which Jews enlisted freely and rose to high rank – the northern officers knew their business and had a mission to teach it to others” (227). These

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few statistics confirm that Max Demant’s ethnic group was not necessarily well represented in the military.

Although the outbreak of World War I only happens at the conclusion of the novel, well after Dr. Max Demant is killed in a duel, Roth’s portrayal of Jews in the military was grounded in contemporary reality. The infamous Dreyfus Affair that caused reverberations throughout Europe only compounded the marginalization of

Jews in the military, and perhaps more importantly, within society. The novel mentions Demant’s struggle with only a passing remark. Demant’s “Leben mit

Widerhaken” (95) and efforts to assimilate are much greater when all these historical forces are taken in to consideration.

Through these layers of assimilation, first as a Jewish doctor, than as a Jewish solder, Max Demant presents himself as quite different than Carl Joseph, who has been able to piggyback off of his grandfather’s legacy. However, the two men form a remarkably strong bond, a fact that the narrator attributes to how they both feel a tangible link to the generations before them: "Sie waren Enkel, sie waren beide

Enkel" (108). For Demant, it was his father that broke with tradition by not inheriting his father’s tavern: “Die Schenke, von Urvätern her vermacht, musste den

Töchtern und den Schwiegersöhnen überlassen bleiben; während die männlichen

Nachkommen bis in die fernste Zukunft Beamte, Gebildete, Angestellte und

Dummköpfe zu bleiben bestimmt waren” (96).

Sidney Rosenfeld has suggested that both Demant and Trotta share the characteristic that they both cannot fulfill the legacy that has been prescribed for them (52). There are, however, more characteristics that bind the two men. Most

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predominately, they both share a history in which the family has become slowly assimilated into the dominant German culture of Austria. Not only do both grandsons hold relatively prestigious positions within the military, but both clearly have become assimilated through the German language they both speak.

Assimilation is an important concept when understanding Jews and to the degree that they kept themselves separate or blended in with the other peoples within the Empire. William McCagg claims that urban Jews were much more likely to assimilate: “By 1900 most of the rich Viennese Jews were hiding from publicity, refusing (as Rothshild had earlier) to hold community office. Many of the older and more prestigious families had converted; some were going so far as to change their names to obliterate the Jewish memory” (196). What Roth points out in

Radetzkymarsch through the similarities between Carl Joseph and Max Demant is that assimilation was a process not only necessary or inevitable for Jews. This was also important for all minorities who were on the fringes of the Empire.

The legacy of their fathers, and more importantly their grandfathers, is often mentioned in the text. The fathers are particularly similar in their upmost loyalty to the Kaiser Franz Joseph. The narrator reports on Demant’s father and his allegiance to the crown: “An Kaisers Geburtstag zieh der Postoffiziant Demant seine

Beamtenuniform an, mit Krappenhut und Degen. An diesem Tage spielt er nicht

Tarock. Jedes Jahr an Kaisers Geburtstag nimmt er ich vor, ein neues, schuldenfreies

Leben zu beginnen” (97). Demant’s father dies on the day after the Kaiser’s birthday and the elder Franz Trotta actually dies on the same day as the Kaiser, demonstrating again that the loyalty to the imperial crown is grounded in the body

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as a biological reality. Both families, the Demants and the Trottas, no matter where they come from or which religion they practice, are loyal to Kaiser Franz Joseph.

Demant and Carl Joseph are presented as kindred spirits, however, elementally Demant is still a Jew, and therefore can never fully assimilate. A useful way to understand this phenomenon is through the lens of Georg Simmel’s essay

“The Stranger.” Written in 1908, the time roughly when Radetzkymarsch takes place,

Simmel theorized that the stranger is already assimilated within a certain group, but there is a certain quality that is unique to him. Simmel claims that Jews are the living example of the stranger because of their lack of a homeland, but still maintained fully embedded positions within society. Simmel also instructs us that the stranger embodies a sense of what is familiar and what is foreign:

The stranger is close to us insofar as we feel between him and

ourselves similarities of nationality or social position, of occupation or

of general human nature. He is far from us insofar as these similarities

extend beyond him and us, and connect us only because they connect

a great many people. (147)

Demant fits this description of the stranger quite well. In this case, Demant is already a member of the army, has a medical degree, speaks German fluently and is only revealed to be a Jew when he offers the information. The narrator makes no mention of physical characteristics that would mark him as different from the rest of the regiment. Additionally, Demant and Carl Joseph are similar because of their ethnic backgrounds and strong ties to past generations. Demant is a Jew and therefore a stranger in the Simmellian sense, but Simmel’s definition can also be

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extrapolated to include those from the periphery in Austria-Hungary. Someone from the periphery is not necessarily a foreigner, but is still not native to the interior.

Simmel’s definition applies then to both Demant and Trotta, which perhaps explains their kinship, as incidentally how they ultimately fail as soldiers and bearers of their respective lineages.

Demant’s status of a stranger does not have much impact on his friendship with Carl Joseph, but it is unfortunately one of the reasons for his death. Carl Joseph innocently accompanies Demant’s wife home one night, an event that provokes

Rittmeister Graf Tattenbach to drunkenly accuse Carl Joseph of having an affair with

Demant’s wife. Kati Tonkin notes that Demant only challenges Tattenbach to a duel because of an anti-Semitic slur and not after having accused his wife of having an affair (150). The duel is motivated by Tattenbach’s negative recognition of Demant’s status as a stranger. Tonkin also makes the point that the anti-Semitic slur that

Tattenbach uses wasn’t considered abnormal: “[N]either Tattinger’s listeners nor the onlookers at the club express any disapproval of Tattenbach’s behavior” (150).

Right before the duel is about to take place, Dr. Demant does something that seems very strange: “In diesem Augenblick nahm der Regimentsarzt Doktor Demant umständlich, wie er immer gewohnt war, die Brille ab und legte sie sorgfältig auf einen breiten Baumstumpf. Merkwürdigerweise sah er dennoch vor sich deutlich seinen Weg, den angewiesenen Platz, die Distanz zwischen sich und dem Grafen

Tatenbach und diesen selbst” (133-134). Moments before he dies, it occurs to him that he should search out a specialist to discuss this apparent cure to his myopia.

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Even in Demant’s death, Roth was referring to a wider discourse about Jews and their particularities. Sander Gilman writes, “[b]eing a Jew is indelible” (43), in reference to the unique physical and physiognomic features that Jews were thought to possess. While most know of the stereotype of a Jewish nose, Gilman pays particular attention to the Jewish eyes: “The Jewish eye appears different and sees the world differently” (49). Indeed the first time the reader is introduced to Max

Demant, his eyes are hidden behind glasses covered with fog. He is blind on two levels: he has to wear glasses and his glasses don’t allow him to see in this initial appearance, but instead actually blind him. Demant, perhaps aware of his status as a stranger, is too timid to wipe off his glasses in order to enter the room of those who have labeled him as such. He is blind and accepts his state, even when it would be very easy to change it.

Gilman makes an astute connection between the Jewish ability to see and the notion of Jewishness being inherently a disease: “[B]lindness [was] necessary for fin-de-siècle Jews to function within a world of high culture that presents them as the source of disease and contagion” (42). Although Demant is blind when Carl

Joseph is introduced to his future friend, it is necessary for the doctor because it would be impossible to function in the society if he were able to fully see. It is only because he is blind that he is able to assimilate to such an extent.

In his death, he is able to finally see; he no longer needs the assistance of glasses. With this action, Roth is transcending this trope of blindness. Gilman reports that the gaze of the Jew was viewed as flawed: “The gaze of the non-Jew seeing the Jew is immediately translated into action; the gaze of the Jew becomes

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the functional equivalent of the damaged language, the Mauscheln, of the Jew” (44).

Demant’s simple action of taking off his glasses suddenly frees him from this stereotype of Jews and is able of seeing his opponent in the duel clearly. The paradox of Demant’s action – removing one’s glasses in order to see – reveals again how Joseph Roth was working within a historical framework that demonstrates attitudes towards Jews at the time.

The last mention of Demant in the text is an official announcement of his death: “Am Nachmittag verlassen die dienstführenden Unteroffiziere vor der

Mannschaft den befahl, in dem der Oberst Kovacs mitteilte, dass der Rittmeister

Graf Tattenbach und der Regimentsarzt Doktor Demant für die Ehre des Regiments den Soldatentod gefunden hatten” (135). Roth allows his token Jewish character something that he does not allow Trotta: an honorable death as a soldier.

Dueling also had a significant meaning during this time, according to George

Mosse: “The duel was fought for the sake of male honor, and the concept of honor was to last, associated with courage of the sangfroid needed to defend it” (18).

Mosse goes on to explain that “to be worthy of dueling meant being given the same social status as the adversary,” (19). As a result, Jews were often excluded from the duel in order to further marginalize them. By allowing Max Demant to die in a duel, he is not only attributing a strong sense of masculinity to his Jewish character, but also elevating him to a social status that was perhaps in reality would not actually be granted to him.

As opposed to the pomp and circumstance of Demant’s death, Roth portrays

Trotta’s death as almost pathetic: “So einfach und zur Behandlung in Lesebüchern

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für die kaiser- und königlichen österreichischen Volks- und Bürgerschulen ungeeignet war das Ende des Enkels des Helden von Solferino. Der Leutnant Trotta starb nich mit der Waffe, sondern mit zwei Wassereimern in der Hand” (391). The narrator describes the protagonist's death with a sense of pity; his legacy has prepared him for an honorable death in the army, but alas, he is unable to continue the tradition set forth by the Hero of Solferino. Trotta meets the same fate as Max

Demant - a premature death - but Trotta's is stripped of honor.

This discussion of the character of Max Demant demonstrates not only how

Roth portrayed Galicia and its cultural diversity, but the pitfalls of the place. As shown in previous chapters the Kronprinzenwerk displays Galicia as a multicultural idyll, Roth instead depicts the fearfulness of Otherness and prejudice that can occur at nodes where differences meet. It is evident that Dr. Demant’s death is perhaps indicative of how cosmopolitanism in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was ultimately a failed experiment, but one that nonetheless created a vital community at the periphery that needs to be better understood as a part of Austria.

G. Conclusion

Later on in the novel, District Captain Franz and Carl Joseph are wandering around Vienna, shopping at all the posh districts. They happen to run into Moser, who the reader finally learns is the name of boy who had painted the portrait of the

Hero of Solferino. He is described as a vagrant drunk who peddles his paintings at

Kaffeehäuser in the city. Moser is recognized by Trotta and gulps down shot of slivovitz, which is yet another reference to the Eastern-ness of the Empire. It

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becomes obvious to Carl Joseph, who is startled by his father’s intimacy with such a societal reject, that even though Moser has not achieved his potential, his father still cares a great deal about the derelict, even to the point where Carl Joseph witnesses his father supporting him with one of many monthly financial payments.

Moser makes one last appearance towards the end of the novel, when Herr

District Captain Trotta is back in his boyhood home, contemplating how “die Welt war nicht mehr die alte Welt. Sie ging unter” (283). Moser visits the old man to ask him for money. Although Trotta sends the painter away rather quickly, his visit inspires Trotta to once again try to read the painting:

Hier entzündete er alle vorhandenen Lichter, die Stehlampe in der

Ecke und die Hängelampe am Suffit und stellte sich vor dem Porträt

des Helden von Solferino auf. Das Angesicht seines Vaters konnte er

nicht deutlich sehen. Das Gemälde zerfiel in hundert kleine, ölige

Lichtflecke und Tupfen, der Mund war ein blaßroter Strich und die

Augen zwei schwarze Kohlensplitter. Der Bezirkshauptmann stieg auf

einen Sessel (seit seiner Knabenzeit war er nicht auf einem Sessel

gestanden), reckte sich, stellte sich auf die Zehenspitzen, hielt den

Zwicker vor die Augen und konnte gerade noch die Unterschrift

Mosers in der Ecke rechts auf dem Porträt lesen. (294)

The changing times and the realization thereof again are intertwined with mention of the painting and its significance to the past, present, and future. The painting, just like the Trotta family and Austria-Hungary, does not stand the test of time. Whereas the painting previously delighted the Trotta subject for capturing his essence, the

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painting at the end of the novel is described as having disintegrated, just like the

Trotta family and the Empire. The painting at the end is mentioned as “ölige

Lichtflecke und Tupfen” and that the features of the subject’s face were turned into abstract “blaßroter Strich” and “schwarze Kohlensplitter.” Whereas the painting was described in a more realist style at the beginning of the novel, by the end, the painting is described as a work of impressionism. What is more, the viewer of the painting and the description thereof likewise reflect disintegration of this cosmopolitan ideal. The painting did not change, but rather how it was seen in its historical context. Just as Demant’s issues with his own vision revealed clues to his position in society, the painting shows that the Habsburg Empire had changed for the youngest Trotta. The description of the painting and how it has changed over time furthermore ties the family and the novel spatially to Austria-Hungary. The cosmopolitan promise of the Habsburg Empire died with World War I just as much as the Trottas and the Empire did.

The second part of this chapter has shown how Roth added a dimension to the periphery through the character of Dr. Max Demant. Through Demant, Roth was able to show the limits of Austria-Hungary’s cosmopolitan project, and likewise how not all could assimilate. The character’s constant struggle and ultimate failure are indicative of how the cosmopolitanism of Austria-Hungary was eventually a failed project. Roth’s depiction of Galicia corresponds to the earlier works written by

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos in that multiculturalism was a quality inherent to the space of Galicia, but that with this cacophony of diverse ethnicities and religions, there were also prejudices and hostilities brewing.

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Scholars have debated why Radetzkymarsch was written – to grapple with current events and to investigate their origins, or to nostalgically look back at an

Empire that Joseph Roth viewed as his lost Heimat. Roth’s Radetzkymarsch has proven itself to be unique to the Austrian canon, because it presents the Empire in its immense entirety and demonstrates how people belonging to the space of

Austria-Hungary constantly negotiated their identities and sense of belonging.

Roth’s tome presents the peripheries as an essential part of the Empire, but does not romanticize their qualities. Instead, he insists that the peripheries are a unique and somewhat forgotten space of the former Habsburg Monarchy that deserved to be eulogized with the rest of their Empire.

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Conclusion

Can a place be inherently cosmopolitan? Or is it the people? Or is it the interaction of place and populace? Or is it merely in the imagination of the observer?

When Joseph Roth claimed that the city of Lemberg had kosmopolitische Neigungen,

I was inspired by his remark to investigate what he could have meant, and how he either contradicted or corresponded with what had been said before him about the area. Is Galicia cosmopolitan? Sacher-Masoch said that the area had great potential because of the area’s history of cultural, linguistic, and religious amalgamations.

Sacher-Masoch’s Der Iluj painted a picture of a place that was cosmopolitan, but whose citizens did not recognize it as such, nor did they see it for its positive qualities.

As Ulrich Beck has shown, cosmopolitanism is not always met with with welcome, and that not belonging to a specific state can also be met with suspicion, discomfort, and being labeled as an outsider. In the case of Sacher-Masoch, the reader is left with this impression: cosmopolitanism was something negative and the character of Sabathai is punished for his cosmopolitan tendencies. Sacher-

Masoch demonstrates a Galicia that had been nourished by the Habsburg Empire, but ultimately, the cosmopolitanism was imposed by Vienna, and therefore not embraced by the characters in the novel.

Karl Emil Franzos speaks of the ethnic plurality of Galicia and takes a humorous tone to discuss serious issues that have become topics of great scholarship: Where do borders begin and end? How do borders affect our mindset

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about how we comprehend the space around us? How do places become imbued with meaning that leads us to stereotypes? And lastly, how does the act of travel complicate or simplify these ideas? Franzos’s piece is short and witty, and full of humor and thought that make the reader ponder such questions. Franzos, like

Sacher-Masoch, does not seem to understand Galicia as particularly cosmopolitan, but he still points out many characteristics that make Galicia unique and distinctly pluralistic.

After Franzos’s and Sacher-Mosoch’s narratives were published in 1876 and

1877 respectively, the Kronprinzenwerk’s Galician volume was published in 1898.

Scholars have heretofore seen Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und

Bild as an entire 24-volume tome. I have instead chosen to analyze just the Galician volume, while also taking into consideration the intention of such a project. This project is cosmopolitan in its very nature in that it wanted to appreciate the vast diversity of peoples living in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Scholars have reevaluated the intention of the volume vis-à-vis the outcome following the First

World War to demonstrate that the volume might have caused more essentialization than intended. Even then, the fact that members of the Empire did not want to be described in such a proscriptive way demonstrates how cosmopolitan the Empire actually was. Like the works of Pieter Judson and Tara Zahra have shown, citizens of the Empire often identified with more than one language, culture, or place, and did so simultaneously. The Kronprinzenwerk did attempt to locate differences, then label and categorize the different people of the Empire, and for that reason, deserves

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criticism. But it was also an attempt to discover the people of the Empire in how multifaceted they were.

The Kronprinzenwerk demonstrates how cosmopolitanism was an attitude cultivated by the metropole, which reflects the top-down model of cosmopolitanism that was depicted by Sacher-Masoch and Franzos. The city of Vienna actively encouraged a cosmopolitan attitude, but the citizens did not necessarily subscribe to this view. In the end, the Kronprinzenwerk is an important early example of ethnography. As such, it needs to be appreciated more in its detail rather than just focusing on the immensity and breadth of such a project. Scholars lose much by only paying attention to the project as a whole, instead of reading closely the individual volumes. There is more work to be done in this regard, and more can be teased out of the Kronprinzenwerk that reflects how the Habsburgs viewed and ruled their

Empire.

Joseph Roth’s writing on Galicia is certainly more layered and nuanced than the earlier depictions by Sacher-Masoch and Franzos because of the massive changes that had happened in Galicia since the time Franzos and Sacher-Masoch were writing. Some scholars have claimed Roth to be nostalgic in remembering the lost Habsburg Empire, while others claim that he is a realist author that depicted how life was in the k.u.k Monarchie. Some critics insist he is critical of the Empire, as evidenced by his pen name der rote Roth, while other scholars claim Roth is elegiac in novels like Radetzkymarsch. Understanding all of his phases and trying to connect them has continued to intrigue scholars of Roth’s texts.

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It is in Roth’s description of Galicia, however, that all of his different literary identities can be reconciled. In my argument of understanding the space of Galicia as cosmopolitan, he can be all of these things. He can be the good Crown Land subject that subscribes to the idealistic nature of Galicia purported by the powers in Vienna, but he can also be critical of these labels. He labeled the city of Lemberg as having kosmopolitischen Neigungen, which corresponds to the description intended by the

Kronprinzenwerk. Is Joseph Roth just subscribing to this cosmopolitan ideal that the

Kronprinzenwek set forth? Perhaps. But he was writing in a time period when the

Habsburgs no longer had control of the area. In this way, he was possibly being nostalgic about the myth of Galicia. His writing reads though as if he is convincing his readership of an importance to the place that should be taken seriously. He obviously sees the value of the Habsburg legacy in Galicia, but also argues for Galicia to be seen for the positive qualities it possesses.

Galicia had a very negative reputation at the time Roth was writing: failed industry, rampant poverty, as well as ethnic and religious tension. As Roth mentions in his 1925 article for Die Frankfurter Zeitung: “Das Land hat in Westeuropa einen

üblen Ruf” (19), and he names a handful of characteristics that people associate with

Galicia: “Ungeziefer, Unrat, Unredlichkeit” (19). Roth is simultaneously promoting the Habsburg cosmopolitanism, while also arguing for Galicia’s position in Europe independent of Habsburg rule. Critics routinely use the phrase rückwärts gewandte

Utopie – backward-facing utopia – to describe Roth’s relationship to the reduced

Habsburg presence. In his account of Galicia, however, Roth looks to the past to understand the cosmopolitanism of the region, but argues for its position in Europe

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going forward. Roth does not just look to the past for the sake of nostalgia, but also advocates for Galicia’s future because of its Habsburg past. In this way, Roth can be both nostalgic and realist. As a result, the two literary identities for Roth are not mutually exclusive.

Galicia should be seen in this positive light, especially considering how I have argued that Roth’s most famous novel Radetzskymarsch has a nuance about the periphery and its vitality to the Empire. The periphery is not only there to sustain the Empire and build on its power. The periphery is a meaningful, constructed space that also participates in the Empire. The periphery is an essential part of the empire, and Roth insists on this view in his most canonical work. When Radetzskymarsch was published, Roth remarked “Der Leutnant Trotta, der bin ich,” which is an interesting choice when considering that the character of Max Demant hailed from

Galicia. Max Demant’s character shares with the reader the negative reputation that

Galicia held within Europe. Perhaps Roth was distancing himself from his Galician heritage, as he did as a young student in Vienna. However, by identifying with the youngest Trotta, Roth shows that the periphery is an essential asset to the center, and that even the seemingly marginal characters can still be loyal participants in the greater project of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

As Ulrich E. Bach has pointed out with regard to Roth’s works

Radetzkymarsch and Kapuzinergruft: “Roth engages allegorically with history; he does not merely yearn for a paradise lost, but delivers a critique of contemporary culture in his writings” (9). I agree wholeheartedly with Bach in that scholars have more work to do in understanding how Roth’s literary trajectory fits together, and

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this dissertation is a step in this direction that Bach asserts. There is also more work to be done in understanding how Roth’s literary texts can be reconciled with his journalistic pieces. Roth’s legacy has definitely favored his literary texts, but I think there is more to glean by reading his different literary genres more in conjunction with each other. My dissertation has included his feuilletons, his most canonical works, some of his travel writings, as well as letters that he wrote along the way. In this regard, my dissertation is unique because it takes all of Roth’s forms of texts seriously and attempts at finding an overarching narrative throughout.

I have explored Roth’s strengths as a travel writer, and I think there is more to be done to see him as such. As I have shown in the third chapter of this work, he takes himself seriously in such a role, but he also takes the task of being a travel writer with a grain of salt. In his feuilleton “Galizien und Polen / Reise durch

Galizien,” he seems to take a direct jab at the style of Franzos’s travel writing: “Ich möchte gerne die bequeme Art jener Berichterstattung vermeiden, die durch das

Kupeefenster blickt und die zurückliegenden Impressionen mit hurtiger

Genugtuung notiert” (21). But he follows that sentence quickly with: “Aber ich kann es nicht” (21). Roth is an aware traveler that tries to focus his gaze to make larger connections with people who are different, which is one of the definitions of cosmopolitanism that I have outlined in this dissertation.

There are other works by Roth that could have been easily discussed in this dissertation that relate to themes of cosmopolitanism, boundaries, and the importance of the periphery. In particular, Hotel Savoy (1924), Die Büste des Kaisers

(1934), and Das falsche Gewicht (1937) come to mind. Hotel Savoy is about a hotel

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located in a liminal space between Russia and Europe, and it is where the protagonist Gabriel stays while returning home after several years of being a prisoner of war in Siberia. In this hotel are veterans on their homeward bound journeys, wealthy aristocrats, and dancers who dream of a better life. This liminal space that brings people together, all on the backdrop of the effects and imminence of war, can certainly be connected to themes outlined in this dissertation.

The other two aforementioned works also take place specifically in Galicia.

Die Büste des Kaisers tells the story of Franz Xaver Morstin who cannot come to terms with how his homeland of the Habsburg Empire was becoming a part of

Poland after the war. He is disdainful of new nationalist forces and sees himself as beyond nationality. When ordered to remove his bust of the Kaiser, he decides to have a burial for it. This novella obviously remains as part of Roth’s more conservative work in support of the Empire. It fits well with the work I have done because it complicates conceptions of nationality, as well as demonstrates how the periphery supported the center. Count Morstin sees himself first and foremost as a subject in service to Franz Joseph, and while I have not discussed much about the ruler and figurehead of the Dual Monarchy, there could be more scholarly discussions that include more nuanced discussions of the ruling powers of Austria-

Hungary.

On the other hand, the bleak novel Das falsche Gewicht concerns the travails of Anselm Eibenschütz, who works as an inspector of weights and measures. He is honest in a place that does not value integrity, and Galicia is painted as a place where bribery, smuggling, and criminality thrive. His wife cheats on him with a

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young office scribe, and he becomes enamored with a gypsy woman. A cholera epidemic breaks out, and many of the townspeople are killed, including

Eibenschütz’s wife. He begins to drink heavily – mirroring Roth’s own downfall in

Paris – and is eventually killed.

Obviously this novel does not conform to the other works by Roth that portray Galicia as a type of idyllic, cosmopolitan space. In fact, it confirms the üblen

Ruf of which Roth wrote in his feuilleton on Galicia. While it does not connect to themes that I have elucidated from Roth’s work, there are still connections to be made that tie Roth further to the space of Galicia.

Additionally, one of the ways that I did not look at Roth vis-à-vis his cosmopolitanism is in his Jewish identity. Texts such as Juden auf Wanderschaft or

Hiob could also be connected to cosmopolitanism, as Jews are often seen in this cosmopolitanism that leaves them without a state and as nomadic wanderers.

Especially the former text by Roth could have more to say about cosmopolitanism and his Jewishness. Instead, I have chosen to deemphasize Roth’s Jewish identity and favor his Austrian identity. There is plenty of material there though for future scholarship.

I would be remiss if I did not also mention that my dissertation focuses on source material that is in either German or English. I believe that there is great value in understanding how Galicia has been analyzed and understood though these sources. However, in doing so, I realize also that I am reading sources that directly have to do with the language of power and administration in the area of Galicia.

German was also the language of education, and it is telling that the two languages

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in which the Kronprinzenwerk was published were German and Hungarian. Roth is a part of this tradition, but there is more work to be done with the space of Galicia that includes more than the language of power and administration.

My work has demonstrated how complicated and how much potential a multinational project can be. As I demonstrated with historical scholarship on the end of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, nationalist causes that worked against the multiethnic Empire are most often cited as the primary cause of its downfall. I have complicated that narrative by pointing to Galicia, where multiculturalism – to a degree – existed and thrived for decades. Multiculturalism is a topic that still dominates many conversations today. Because of its multiethnic past, Austria has a unique vantage point to these discussions. In 2010, Turkish ambassador in Vienna,

Kadri Ecvet Tezcan, was critical of Austrians and what he perceived to be their xenophobia. His experience has shown him that the Austrians, particularly the

Viennese, are not welcoming to other cultures: “Außer im Urlaub interessieren sich die Österreicher nicht für andere Kulturen” (Die Presse). He even claimed that

Austria should be more welcoming to other cultures because of their past:

“Österreich war ein Imperium mit verschiedenen ethnischen Gruppen. Es sollte gewohnt sein, mit Ausländern zu leben” (Die Presse). Tezcan’s comments were made three years after politician Jörg Haider was at the height of his popularity in

2007. Seeing himself as reviving far-right politics within Austria, Haider took a strong anti-immigration stance and was gaining support at the time of his death.97

Even though he was a polarizing figure, his legacy and ideas live on through the

97 See article “Joerg Haider’s Troubled Legacy” from October 11, 2008 from Time magazine.

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revived right-wing politics of Austria. Tezcan’s comments were also printed roughly one month after Angela Merkel infamously claimed that multiculturalism had failed in Germany.

More recently, Austria has seen the rise of politician Nortbert Hofer, who belongs to the right-wing Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, of which Jörg Haider was also a member. He was narrowly defeated by Alexander Van der Bellen in an election on May 22, 2016. However, in July, it was determined that there could have been fraud involved in the election, and that the election must be held again. As I write this, the new elections are expected to take place in September or October in

2016.98

While Galicia ceased to exist long before these events have taken place in

Austria, I maintain that there is a link between the time Joseph Roth was writing and the current day. Joseph Roth was a cosmopolitan, a true citizen of the world. He saw these qualities in Galicia, and he saw these kosmopolitischen Neigungen in Austria.

Right now, with the rise and popularity of politicians like Hofer, this cosmopolitanism is being minimized in favor of more exclusionary practices. It becomes then all the more important to look to the past to writers like Joseph Roth,

Karl Emil Franzos, and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch to understand how their depictions of Austria illustrated a place that was multiethnic, religiously and linguistically pluralistic, while also being Austrian. Their visions of who belonged to

Austrian space could perhaps provide us with a greater appreciation of difference

98 See the article from July 1, 2016 “Austrian presidential election result overturned and must be held again” from The Guardian.

223

and acknowledgement that while cosmopolitanism is not always convenient, it is certainly worth pursuing.

224

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245 CURRICULUM VITAE

EDUCATION

PhD The Pennsylvania State University, 2016 Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Adviser: Dr. Daniel Purdy BA Wake Forest University, Cum Laude, 2006 Major: German Minors: International Studies and Education

Exchange Student at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, 2011-2012 Exchange Student at Freie Universität Berlin, 2004-2005

PROFESSIONAL POSITIONS

Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC Associate Dean of Admissions Feb 2015 – present Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC Visiting Lecturer Aug 2014 – June 2015 The Pennsylvania State University World Campus Online Online Lecturer Aug 2014 – present Salem College Winston-Salem, NC Visiting Lecturer Aug 2015 – Dec 2015 Wake Forest University Winston-Salem, NC Visiting Lecturer Aug 2013 – Dec 2013 The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA Graduate Assistant Aug 2007 – May 2013

FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS German-American Fulbright Commission & German Academic Exchange Service participant in Summer Academy in Leipzig for US-American Faculty in German, Summer 2015 Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst Travel Grant for Women in German Conference, Fall 2013 The Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs and the Federal Ministry for Science and Research of the Republic of Austria Travel Grant, Fall 2013 Austrian Studies Association Travel Grant, Spring 2013 Austrian Cultural Forum Travel Grant, Spring 2011 Walter Edwin Thompson & Dr. Regina Block Thompson Fellowship, The Pennsylvania State University, 2007-2014 Fulbright/Austrian-American Educational Commission Teaching Assistantship, Bruck an der Leitha, Austria, 2006-2007 Berlin Exchange Scholarship, Wake Forest University, 2004-2005