- Person
- Joseph Roth
- Lived
- 1894–1939
- Field
- Novelist & journalist
- From
- Austrian
The story
Joseph Roth had loved Paris since the 1920s, when the Frankfurter Zeitung sent him there as its arts correspondent and he wrote admiring reports about French life. When Hitler came to power in January 1933, Roth, a prominent liberal Jewish journalist, left Berlin almost immediately. By February he was already living in Paris. The We Refugees Archive says he practically fled home to the city.
Exile cost him a great deal. As a Jew he could no longer publish in the Frankfurter Zeitung, the paper that had made his name, and his books could no longer be sold in Germany. In a letter to Stefan Zweig that month he wrote that their literary and material existence had been wrecked. He lived mostly in hotels, and the Café Le Tournon became his main base, where he gathered his circle of friends around him.
Despite his own hardships, Roth did not turn inward. According to the We Refugees Archive, he continued his commitment against National Socialism in Paris and was involved in aiding refugees, for example through the Entraide Autrichienne, an Austrian relief organisation. He kept close ties with fellow exiles, among them Stefan Zweig, Ernst Toller, Egon Erwin Kisch, Soma Morgenstern and Irmgard Keun, and he wrote for exile publications in France and Austria.
His own books were published during these years by publishers in the Netherlands, allowing his voice to keep reaching German-language readers outside the Reich. Among them were Tarabas (1934), Confession of a Murderer (1936), Weights and Measures (1937) and The Emperor's Tomb (1938).
Roth's generosity is all the more striking because he himself was poor and unwell. The Neue Deutsche Biographie notes that in his last years he depended on support from wealthy friends such as Zweig and from exile aid organisations. He died on 27 May 1939 in the Hôpital Necker, a hospital for the poor in Paris, a few days after hearing of Ernst Toller's death. His work for others in the exile community is a reminder that solidarity among refugees often came from people who had very little to give.
Why it matters
Roth's work for fellow refugees showed solidarity with others driven from their homes, even while he himself was struggling in exile.
About Joseph Roth
Galician-born novelist and star reporter whose Radetzky March and Job mourned the lost Habsburg world and the Jewish life of the East, written from exile and despair.
More about Joseph Roth
- Almost all of Joseph Roth's novels were filmedNearly all of Joseph Roth's novels were adapted for film or television, including Ermanno Olmi's The Legend of the Holy Drinker.
- Joseph Roth's Radetzky March told an empire's fallJoseph Roth's 1932 novel Radetzky March traced the decline of Austria-Hungary through one family and went through five printings in a few months.
- Joseph Roth wrote against fascism from exileJoseph Roth warned against fascism in Germany and Italy in the 1920s and, after 1933, wrote fiercely anti-fascist articles from exile in Paris.
- Joseph Roth's novel Job portrayed a simple Jewish manJoseph Roth’s 1930 novel Job, about Mendel Singer’s search for God, made him famous as a novelist and was filmed in Hollywood in 1936.
- Joseph Roth preserved the vanished world of Eastern JewsGermany's national biography calls Joseph Roth one of the most important portrayers of Eastern European Jewish life, a world later largely destroyed.
Sources
- Joseph Roth's grim prophecy in mid-February 1933, Paris We Refugees Archive
- Joseph Roth Lebendiges Museum Online, Deutsches Historisches Museum
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.