The novels of Joseph Roth (1894–1939) capture with equal mastery the Galician shtetl, the aristocratic Austrian family, and war-torn Siberia. In addition to his many works of fiction, Roth produced a mass of journalistic writings, many of which have been newly translated into English by Michael Hoffman in a collection titled The Hotel Years. In his review, Frederic Raphael comments on Roth’s uncanny ability to see what was in store for Europe:
Roth was the first novelist to mention Adolf Hitler’s name in print, as far back as 1923. The view from the street, if not yet the gutter, allowed him to see it all coming. . . . [He possessed] a two-eyed vision of the collapse of what he called, in “Germany in Winter” (1923), “the regulating consciousness.” His realization that common decency was no longer a reliable social adhesive was first prompted by the sight, in the west end of Berlin, of
two high-school kids . . . arm in arm, like a pair of drunks, and singing:
“Down, down, down with the Jewish republic. Filthy Yids! Filthy Yids!”
And passersby got out of their way. No one stopped to slap their faces. Not out of political indignation. But because in any other country the irritation of a kid bothering the street with his half-baked politics would have provoked someone to a pedagogic measure. In Germany the convictions of high-school boys are respected. That’s how law-abiding people are in Berlin.
The piece, like many of those collected in The Hotel Years, appeared in the Frankfurter-Zeitung. Ten years later, its editorial board sang from the same hymn sheet as the wanton students. In the interim, Roth’s reportage, even on mundane occasions, carried the menace of the writing on the wall.
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