chronicles the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire via the story of three generations of the Trotta family, devoted subjects of the Empire originating from Slovenia, in the western parts of the Slav domain, while Joseph Roth himself was born in its easternmost reaches, in the East Galicia . Jewish culture played an important role in his life. Roth grew up with his mother and her relatives; he never saw his father, who had drunk himself to death before he was born. (The same fate befalls Roth, at the age of 44).
The Trottas live in Moravia, in the centre between these regions...
In 1916, Roth volunteered to serve in the Imperial Habsburg army , fighting on the Eastern Front. This experience had a major and long-lasting influence on his life (as reflected in this novel). So, too, did the collapse of the Habsburg Empire , which marked the beginning of a deep sense of "homelessness" that was to feature regularly in his work. As he wrote: "My strongest experience was the War and the destruction of my fatherland, the only one I ever had, the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.“ This nostalgia is palpable throughout his writing, despite the many critical observations, veiled in bitter-sweet humour. It is a novel of the ironies inherent in the well-intentioned actions that lead to the decline and fall of a family and an empire; the merry-making and frivolous Austrians do not remark the wind of change (comp. with Stefan Zweig, who was a friend of Joseph Roth).
In his later works, Roth appeared to wish that the monarchy could be restored. His longing for a more tolerant past may be partly explained as a reaction against the nationalism of the time, which culminated in Nazism .
He often portrayed the fate of homeless wanderers looking for a place to live, in particular Jews and former citizens of the old Austria-Hungary, who, with the downfall of the monarchy, had lost their only possible Heimat ("true home").
The title - from the Radetzky March , (1848), by Johann Strauss Sr. , which honours the Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz (1766–1858). It is a symbolic musical composition heard at critical narrative junctures of the Trotta family history.
The time – several levels: the times of the Baron (memories) and the present, the life of Karl Josef, flow into each other, sometimes confusingly. The emperor lives in yet another time, foreseeing the end of the Empire.
The genre - Radetzkymarsch is an early example of a story that features the recurring participation of a historical figure, in this case the Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria .
The historical background - In 1859, the Austrian Empire was fighting the 2nd War of Italian Independence , against Napoleon III of France and the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .
During the Battle of Solferino , the well-intentioned, but blundering Emperor Franz Joseph I is almost killed…and Roth´s story follows from here…
The novel is included in Der Kanon of the most important German-language literary novels and Mario Vargas Llosa ranked The Radetzky March as the best political novel ever written.
The group´s appreciation on the whole was very positive; even if we did no learn anything really new, the book was enjoyed for itself as a brilliant piece of writing, special notion was awarded to the poetic and atmosphere-generating descriptions of nature, almost poems in their own right.
Blanka
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