Reflexionen des Zeitgeschehens in Joseph Roths Radetzkymarsch (1932) und Die Kapuzinergruft (1938)

Readers familiar with Joseph Roth's 1932 generational novel Radetzkymarsch might be puzzled by the title of this chapter – “Reflections of Current Events” – because this well-known chronicle of the demise of a family and a monarchy ends in 1914. Its ‘sequel’ Die Kapuzinergruft ends with a depiction of the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich that occurred contemporaneously with its writing in 1938, but it is not a generational novel. In both texts, however, Roth explores the history and fate of a fictional family – the von Trottas – as a means to understand his own time: 1930s Austria. In the historical generational novel Radetzkymarsch and in the retrospective first-person narrative Die Kapuzinergruft Roth looks to the past to uncover the roots of contemporary problems. The territory, form of government, and ethnic composition of Austria might have changed radically in 1918, but the ethnolinguistic – and increasingly biological – German nationalism is revealed in these novels to be a legacy of structures and patterns of behaviour that have been passed down through generations.