Writing the Edge of Empire: Joseph Roth's Galicia
Open Access
- Author:
- McInteer, Nicole Lea
- Graduate Program:
- German
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 10, 2016
- Committee Members:
- Dr. Daniel Purdy, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Dr. Daniel Purdy, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Dr. Thomas Beebee, Committee Member
Dr. Richard Page, Committee Member
Dr. Sophie De Schaepdrijver, Outside Member
Dr. Bettina Brandt, Special Member - Keywords:
- Joseph Roth
Austro-Hungarian Empire
Galicia
cosmopolitanism
Austrian literature - Abstract:
- In 1924, Joseph Roth traveled to his birthplace of Galicia on assignment as a feuilletonist for the Frankfurter Zeitung. While traveling in the city of Lemberg, Roth claimed that the city had kosmopolitische Neigungen. This dissertation connects theories of cosmopolitanism to Roth’s writing, specifically his feuilletons that he wrote in France and Galicia, as well as his literary masterpiece Radetzskymarsch. Moreover, this work argues that Roth’s cosmopolitanism can be connected with his Galician roots. Joseph Roth, along with Galician authors Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and Karl Emil Franzos, constructed a literary space for Galicia that established a tradition of writing from the periphery. This project focuses on the region of Galicia – part of modern day Ukraine – and on the authors who most ambitiously monumentalized it as an essential part of Austria. Additionally, this dissertation contextualizes the space of Galicia by reading the Galician volume of the Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild. Commissioned in 1884 by the Crown Prince Rudolf, thus often called the Kronprinzenwerk, the project was intended to foster a sense of collective patriotism by celebrating the diversity of the Crown Lands. The relationship between the center and periphery is an essential theme for this work, and Die österreichisch-ungarische Monarchie in Wort und Bild is an excellent example of these tensions at play. This dissertation demonstrates simultaneously how complicated and how much potential a multinational project can be. Nationalist causes that worked against the multiethnic Austro-Hungarian Empire are most often cited as the primary cause of its downfall, but this dissertation complicates this narrative by pointing to Galicia, where multiculturalism – to a degree – existed and thrived for decades. Roth sees this multiculturalism as cosmopolitanism in Lemberg, which has its roots in the other works examined here: Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Der Iluj demonstrates the potentiality of Galicia’s cosmopolitanism; Franzos’s Von Wien nach Czernowitz wittily examines topics like boundaries, stereotypes, and national identity; and the Kronprinzenwerk demonstrates how cosmopolitanism was a construction by the center for the periphery of Galicia. All of these sources provide a rich context for understanding how Joseph Roth envisioned Galicia in his fiction and reportage.