On the End of the World

By Joseph Roth

A powerful collection written on the eve of the destruction of Europe by the Second World War, by the great Joseph Roth

Having fled to Paris in January 1933, on the very day Hitler seized power in Germany, Joseph Roth wrote a series of articles in that 'hour before the end of the world', that he foresaw was coming and which would see the full horror of Hitler's barbarism, the Second World War and most crucially for Roth, the final irreversible destruction of a pan European consciousness.

Incisive and ironic, the writing evokes Roth's bitterness, frustration and morbid despair at the coming annihilation of the free world while displaying his great nostalgia for the Hapsburg Empire into which he was born and his ingrained fear of nationalism in any form.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Sep 24, 2019
• ISBN: 9781782274902

Joseph Roth

Joseph Roth (1894-1939) nació en Brody, un pueblo situado hoy en Ucrania, que por entonces pertenecía a la Galitzia Oriental, provincia del viejo Imperio austrohúngaro. El escritor, hijo de una mujer judía cuyo marido desapareció antes de que él naciera, vio desmoronarse la milenaria corona de los Habsburgo y cantó el dolor por «la patria perdida» en narraciones como Fuga sin fin, La cripta de los Capuchinos o las magníficas novelas Job y La Marcha Radetzky. En El busto del emperador describió el desarraigo de quienes vieron desmembrarse aquella Europa cosmopolita bajo el odio de la guerra.  En su lápida quedaron reflejadas su procedencia y profesión: «Escritor austriaco muerto  en París».

Reviews for On the End of the World

[josephcamilleri-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What use are my words against the guns, the loudspeakers, the murderers, the deranged ministers, the clueless diplomats, the stupid interviewers and journalists who interpret the voice of this world of Babel, muddied anyhow, via the drums of Nuremberg?

In sad resignation

Your Joseph Roth

These despairing words were published in Parisian journal Das Neue Tage-Buch on the 17th October, 1934. By that time, novelist Joseph Roth had been living in Paris for nearly twenty months, having left Berlin for good on the 30th January, 1933, the same day that Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany. In the years leading up to his death in May 1939, Roth battled depression, alcoholism and poverty whilst working some of his best-known novels. He also wrote several incendiary articles denouncing the rise of Nazism and the demise of European culture, which were published mainly in the Pariser Tageszeitung and Das NeueTagebuch, German language newspapers meant for the exiled community.

The present collection, edited and translated by Will Stone for Pushkin Press brings together a selection of such essays but, very aptly, starts with an earlier article from March 1924 in which Roth compares Hitler’s trial following the unsuccessful beer hall putsch to a “carnival night”. As Roth perspicaciously notes, these so-called judicial proceedings actually worked in Hitler’s favour by giving him a platform for his racist ideas.

In his later essays, Roth becomes more extreme in his attacks not only on Hitler and his entourage, but also on the other European powers, particularly Britain and France, who seemed blind to what was actually happening in Germany. Roth draws a link between the regime’s disregard for “culture” and the heinous crimes of the regime: “it is not by some fortuitous coincidence that you see them burning books at the exact same moment as they mistreat the Jews: these are merely two separate manifestations of the nation’s spiritual state. It is no less symbolic that the control of the Fine Arts has been placed in the hands of the Minister of Propaganda!”

Initially, it seems that Roth had hopes that Austria could act as a bulwark to Hitler, preserving Mitteleuropean culture and values without descending into Nazi hell. Following the Anschluss however, even this hope is shattered.

In most of the articles, Roth sounds like a crazed Old Testament prophet, pulling no punches and sparing no one whom he deems guilty of colluding with the Nazis or not standing up to them. At times, his rants seem hyperbolic. Except that we have the benefit of hindsight, and we know that his dire warnings were, alas, spot-on. This is, of course, a very sobering thought. Because if Roth, a down-and-out author eking out an existence in a Paris hotel, could perceive that the “end of the world” was nigh, surely those who could have opposed Hitler and did not, could not claim that they could not predict where the Nazi train would lead.

Some of the articles provide a respite from Roth’s more aggressive essays. “Rest while viewing the demolition” is a particularly moving piece. Roth watches the destruction of the Foyot, the hotel where he lived since his exile, from a bistro opposite the site. He engages in banter with the demolition men but his heart is heavy: “Now I sit opposite the empty space, listening to the hours pass. You lose one homeland, then another, I say to myself. Here I sit, with my vagabond’s staff. My feet are sore, my heart is weary, my eyes are dry. Misery crouches beside me, ever gentler and ever greater; pain drops by, becoming great and beneficent, horror blasts its way in, but doesn’t scare me anymore. And that’s the most inconsolable thing of all”.

This collection is a stern warning that the Nazi tragedy did not happen overnight, and that the writing on the wall was there for all to see. In this regard, the endnotes and the timeline aligning Roth’s final years with the rise of Hitler and the events leading to World War II is particularly helpful in providing a context to this eye-opening read.

3.5*