- Person
- Joseph Roth
- Lived
- 1894–1939
- Field
- Novelist & journalist
- From
- Austrian
The story
Joseph Roth died in poverty in Paris in 1939, but his stories went on to reach audiences he could never have imagined. Germany's Neue Deutsche Biographie notes that his novels were his great popular successes and that almost all of them were filmed. It adds that his equally large body of journalism should not be overlooked, since in both forms he wrote vivid, intense portraits marked by historical and social precision.
The adaptations began in his own lifetime with the Hollywood film Sins of Man (1936), based on his novel Job and starring Jean Hersholt. After the war, German and Austrian television and cinema rediscovered him. Wolfgang Staudte filmed Rebellion for television in 1962, and versions of The Legend of the Holy Drinker (1963) and Radetzky March (1965) soon followed.
The long series continued over the next three decades. It included Confession of a Murderer (1969), The String of Pearls (1969), Trotta (1971), based on The Emperor's Tomb, and Weights and Measures (1971), directed by Bernhard Wicki with Helmut Qualtinger. Television versions of Job (1978), Tarabas (1981) and Flight without End (1985) were directed by Michael Kehlmann. Wicki returned to Roth in 1989 with The Spider's Web, starring Ulrich Mühe, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Klaus Maria Brandauer.
In 1988 the Italian director Ermanno Olmi adapted Roth's last novella, The Legend of the Holy Drinker, with Rutger Hauer as a vagrant trying to regain his dignity and repay a debt. Michael Haneke filmed Rebellion for television in 1993, and Axel Corti's 1994 miniseries of Radetzky March starred Max von Sydow and Charlotte Rampling.
These films and series kept Roth's stories before audiences for decades after his death. In the twenty-first century, new English translations of Radetzky March and of his journalism from Berlin and Paris brought a fresh revival of interest. On screen and on the page, his stories of soldiers, wanderers, Jews of the borderlands and people who had lost their homeland continue to speak to audiences living through upheaval of their own.
Why it matters
Screen adaptations carried Roth's humane stories of exile, loss and dignity to millions of viewers across Europe and beyond.
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
- 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 helped fellow refugees in ParisIn exile in Paris after 1933, Joseph Roth helped aid refugees, including through the Entraide Autrichienne, while writing against Nazism.
- 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 Wikipedia
- Roth, Moses Joseph Neue Deutsche Biographie
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