Joseph Roth

On the 70th anniversary of Joseph Roth's death, this volume examines the current relevance of his work. His works and opinions were regarded as being overly oriented towards the past; his leanings towards the monarchy were mocked, his call to supranational thinking interpreted as a simple response to contemporary events. He was read chiefly as the narrator of the vanished Habsburg empire or of the vanished Eastern European Jewry. Today, at a time that Europe is uniting, one gains a different picture: it no longer seems strange that he regarded ideological commitments as an excessively tight corset and viewed himself as a bridge between East and West. The elements of supranationality and interculturality in his work and life can now be acknowledged.