Joseph Roth- a Life in Letters

by Michael Hofmann

  All for now, and for today.

  Happy New Year

  Sincerely your

  Joseph Roth

  1. JR means the Neue Freie Presse, a Vienna paper.

  234. To Klaus Mann

  Paris 6e

  33 rue de Tournon

  28 December 1933

  Dear Klaus Mann,

  I hear to my consternation from Mr. Landshoff that you and other acquaintances of mine are of the opinion that people have been collecting money for me in Switzerland. Unfortunately, this is not the case. I want you to know that this is not the case. Not because I would be ashamed; but because it would be harmful in the event of there one day actually being a collection. People would say, “oh, they’re always collecting for him.” I would be very grateful to you, therefore, if you could inform all persons within earshot, and write to Miss Schwarzenbach1 and Mr. Schickele, that it is not true. Will you do so? Whether you do or not, I look to you, please, to reply.

  Furthermore, I am sending you a novella by Isaac Grünberg, whom you know from the Deux Magots. I am surprised myself: it’s a good novella. And the man’s name is Isaac. In the emigration that seems even more appropriate. Even in the Second Reich, we should all have been called Isaac.

  Furthermore: Prince Hohenlohe (to balance out the Isaacs) would like to know when his contribution is to appear. He is very poorly.

  If you should have happened to let fall something in front of Erika Mann2 and your parents about any “collection for me,” then kindly let them too know that that was a misunderstanding.

  To you and all others a good New Year! It just occurs to me that it was three years ago today that I had the pleasure of meeting you for the very first time. It was in the Hotel Foyot. There was a lady present too, with a dog.

  Yours sincerely

  Joseph Roth

  1. Miss Schwarzenbach: Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908–1942), writer, journalist, socialite, and friend of Erika Mann’s. Coming from a Swiss industrialist family, she supported Die Sammlung financially.

  2. Erika Mann (1905–1969), eldest child of Thomas Mann, actor, writer, reporter. Was briefly married to the Nazi actor Gustav Gründgens, and later, in a(nother) marriage of convenience, to W. H. Auden. Ran the famous anti-Fascist Peppermill cabaret in Zurich from 1933 to 1936; was later an English war correspondent, and edited the letters of her father, and the works of her brother Klaus.

  235. To René Schickele

  Monday [end of 1933 or early 1934]

  Dear esteemed Mr. René Schickele,

  how can you think I might be angry with you? What a peculiar notion. If every debate would lead to such serious consequences, where would that get us? Once everything has been said, my heart harbors nothing, therefore I tend always to say everything. I hold nothing back. If I’d been angry with you, then I would have said, I’m angry with you. Therefore, I have nothing to say on your sticking up for Reifenberg that I would not have said to you previously. Otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything. I’m not stupid enough just to be “angry” with someone.

  “Mess spirit” I took to be the splendid training of young officers (at least in Austria) to respond to an insult with an insult back, and to prefer death to disgrace. That is a clear human quality. Only God or his holy saints are allowed to suffer an insult without immediately punishing it, God because He is exalted, and the saint because his life is worth nothing in his eyes anyway. And I am not a saint.

  Nor am I a judge. But where would it get us, if we drew different, sensitive, wavering lines between good and bad, depending on the state of our sympathies for the parties?1 If, 30 years ago, someone who claimed to be a man of honor had said that he would allow himself in this instance to be spat at, because he and his family had to live, well, he would have been despised for it. Since when is it the case that a writer can say: I must lie, so that my wife can continue to live and wear hats? And since when is it the custom to approve of that? Since when is honor cheapened beyond life, and the lie a ready means to save life? Above all, let us avoid making appeals to Christianity here, at an instant when to do so makes one an associate of the Antichrist. I am a feeble man, but the one thing that God has given me to help me comport myself in His image is the ability to identify evil. After I have identified evil, which is to say Germany, I have no choice but to hate His editorialists, the editorialists of the Antichrist—and, if possible, to try and root them out. Yes, in that respect, and in all humility, I am a gladius dei. I say so without conceit. A proper Christian, a true Christian, a dime-a-dozen Christian has the duty to fight with pitch and sulfur against hell and its minions. Grace is with God alone. I am too humble to grant forgiveness to the Antichrist and his minions, who have become his minions to save their skins. It’s not for you, my dear René Schickele, to say: good deeds last forever. No man is lost before the moment of his death. To do so is to arrogate to yourself the role of God. You speak in the manner of Christ, when all you are is a mortal writer of books. Your job is to distinguish good from evil, following earthly measures. You may forgive and you may love. You are even instructed to do so. But you may not move the absolute line between good and evil because it suits you. A vile act is a vile act—there’s no more to be said about it. To lie in order to keep your family safe is a vile act. If you take the fact that you are no “judge” to its logical conclusion, you would have to say: hm, I don’t actually know what’s vile and what isn’t. And you do know—how can you deny it? You don’t commit any such acts yourself? Or at least not consciously?

  In fact what you say resembles the heathenism to which you are opposed. Be careful not to support barbarian heathenism with your Christian indulgence. Leave the Church’s errors out of it. It’s not for us to criticize the Church. Least of all when we know the Vatican less well than Reifenberg, whom you allow to get away with almost as much as you accuse the Church of. You cannot in one breath pardon an editorialist or editor of the Antichrist—only God may do that—and attack the politics of the Church, which is certainly less familiar to you than those of the FZ. That way lies Protestantism. Perhaps you are—a Protestant. I don’t know your declared religion. You’ve always struck me as “Catholic” in the old sense of “inclusive.” As you know. So why do you fight it?

  Anyway, there is no “anger” between you and me. I have the habit of speaking my mind. Embarrassing, I know. But I will speak it only in front of people I like and am fond of, as I like and am fond of you and your wife. Otherwise I keep silent.

  Yours sincerely

  Joseph Roth

  1. sympathies for the parties: JR’s tremendous tirade against all ethical relativism. It reminds me a little in its rigor of the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert’s poem “A Knocker” with its “yes—yes / no—no.”

  236. To Klaus Mann

  Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e

  33 rue de Tournon

  12 January 1934

  Dear Mr. Klaus Mann,

  I have a bone to pick with you—several, in fact—and I want to do it right away.

  In the latest issue of Die Sammlung, you print a rather long (and rather clever) essay by Golo Mann1 on Ernst Jünger.2 I find that extremely tactless. There is, so to speak, a politics of the literary emigration. Let’s not even get into the question of the importance or otherwise of Jünger. Even given that he has some—though in my view, he’s a fool, and a barbarian, and a muddlehead—one would either have to ignore him altogether, or have done with him in a couple of dismissive sentences. A magazine—in these times—isn’t there to serve the book business. You showed that you understood that in your clever book review. Have we left Germany just to alert the world beyond to “interesting” new literary products of the barbarian heathens? Is that what we’re for? And another thing: your magazine addresses itself to emigrants, to writers, to tastemakers for a wider public, to people who are absolutely opposed to Jünger and ever
ything he stands for. You don’t just alienate such people—you offend them. Because each one of them has his own conceit, and he will ask himself: hm, why not six pages on me?—(I need hardly tell you that I am not among these people.) So you make yourself enemies, quite needlessly.

  Another thing: you take George3 for a great poet. I take him for a great con artist. It’s not the time—whatever one thinks of George—to show respect to a guy, a great guy if you like, who has landed us in some of this shit we’re in, some of the loftier or deeper parts of it. Factually, too, it is not true to say that George wanted to die far away from Germany. He was very keen on life, and very keen on death, period. Not far from the “hurly-burly”—which I can understand. But in the hurly-burly of clouds, because he preferred clouds to people. Goebbels and Sieburg are among his disciples. Your disciples say something about the kind of person you are.

  It’s a good thing that Die Sammlung isn’t too “long-term” in its orientation. But if you continue to edit it outside with that “objectivity” that you did for us inside Germany, then you will soon find yourself hated.

  I wanted to warn you of that danger.

  Yours sincerely

  Joseph Roth

  1. Golo Mann (1909–1994), second son of Thomas Mann, historian and biographer.

  2. Ernst Jünger (1895–1998), essayist, militarist, diarist. Fought in World War I, 1919–1923 in the Reichswehr, from 1941 to 1944 and his dismissal in the German occupying army in Paris.

  3. George: Stefan George (1868–1933), cultish poet and translator. He resisted Goebbels’s overtures to him in 1933, and died—this is at issue here between KM and JR—on Swiss soil.

  237. To Stefan Zweig

  Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e

  33 rue de Tournon

  14 January 1934

  Dear friend,

  this is my belated answer to yours of the 27th last. I beg your pardon.

  I cannot reply to you, not to what you wrote me.

  I no longer understand what happened. Don’t you understand what I tell you in the simplest terms?

  You have gone to the trouble to write to me by hand. At one and the same time, you simplify and complicate the things I tell you.

  The simplest things—I should like to say—but I’m afraid I can’t.

  There’s no question of “drinking out of despair” or “Russification.” I would be stupid to be doing that. Please understand, I don’t lose my clarity for a moment.

  No, I don’t want to go on either. Forgive me. I can’t. Writing only makes it worse.

  I am perfectly sober.

  I embrace you

  your J.R.

  238. To Klaus Mann

  Hotel Foyot

  Paris, 16 January 1934

  To the editorial board of the Sammlung,

  Querido Verlag,

  Amsterdam, Keizersgracht 33

  Dear Mr. Klaus Mann,

  thank you for yours of the 14th. When you refer to the Communists— “radical émigrés,” as you are pleased to call them—who tell you it’s your duty to portray the most interesting minds on the other side, that (at least to me) constitutes no defense. For me the Communist minds among the Germans—the Germans, NB—are just like the National Socialists. Apart from that, I think you’re making a mistake when you suppose Jünger has any influence in Germany. With all that one might say about him from my point of view, he remains sufficiently decent as a human being for the people in Germany to be profoundly suspicious of him. So he’s not at all as “interesting” in current political terms as the Communists suppose. In every other respect, be it as an author, or “thinker” or anything else you want to call him, he’s a bonehead. All right, perhaps there is a difference within the Third Reich between his personal decency and the absolute indecency (personal as well) of the Third Reich: but for me and many others, standing outside, there is a straightforward equation between Jünger and Goebbels. If out of woolly-mindedness or boneheadedness or stupidity he has supported or prepared the ground for the bestial ideology of National Socialism—and apart from that remained a decent human being—it’s completely ridiculous, in an émigré journal, a journal of his direct or indirect victims, to give him six pages of space, even if it finally comes down against him.

  This isn’t the time or place for a proper discussion of the case of Stefan George. Perhaps we’ll talk about it together sometime.

  I understand of course how you “intended” it to come across.

  Overall, if advice from me is acceptable and useful to you: your personal “literariness” (George is just one example) may turn out to be utterly detrimental to the magazine you are bringing out. To attempt to put it at its briefest: you will not manage to be fair to all of those for whom the magazine is intended.

  As far as my own contribution is concerned, I won’t have it ready for another 3–4 weeks. There are a couple of chapters in my new book that would be suitable for separate publication. What do you offer in the way of royalties, and how much could I expect for 5 or 6 pages?

  Yours sincerely

  Joseph Roth

  239. To Stefan Zweig

  Paris, 20 January 1934

  To Dr. Stefan Zweig, Salzburg, Kapuzinerberg 5

  Dear esteemed friend,

  forgive the typed letter, and dictation. I just wanted to thank you quickly for your kind letter. I hear terrible news from Austria. In spite of that, I continue to believe in its independence. I’ll write you in a week. Mr. de Lange is due here, and I’m impatient to see him—you’ll understand. Give my best regards to Mrs. Zweig. I can’t force myself to make the corrections. Querido has sold the serial rights to my book1 to an émigré newspaper for a tiny sum of money, which has only increased my reluctance to going through the book and making changes. Please write.

  Yours sincerely

  Joseph Roth

  1. my book: Tarabas.

  240. To Stefan Zweig

  Joseph Roth

  Hotel Foyot, Paris 6e

  33 rue de Tournon

  28 January 1934

  My dear friend,

  It’s sweet of you to send me Mondadori’s1 letter. I do beg you to forgive me for continuing to bother you, on top of everything else. I sent the letter on to Querido right away. You see, my dear friend, I’m not always the one to blame for the frittering away of my strength and books. (Don’t sigh with relief just yet.) I have some pretty bad news here.

  Sincerely,

  your old [Joseph Roth]

  1. Mondadori: Alberto Mondadori, celebrated publisher in Milan.

  241. René Schickele to Joseph Roth

  Sanary-sur-Mer (Var)

  “Le Chêne”

  28 January 1934

  Dear Joseph Roth,

  it seems to me you could hardly have paid my book1 a greater compliment than allowing it to eclipse your long and great rage. In a bid to retain your renewed friendship, for such time as the delights of Widow Bosca may have lost some of their freshness, I would like to seize this opportunity to make my position clear, and it is certainly no accident that you are the designated recipient of my clarification.

  I don’t like to think back to the telegram. Particularly with reference to Klaus Mann, who was left exposed by it. I was working at the time, and in the all-consuming, volcanic manner of my working, I am at times not fully aware of what I am doing (which isn’t intended as an excuse, but may partly explain my folly in disregarding Annette Kolb’s and Meier-Graefe’s warnings concerning the Sammlung). For, while Klaus Mann may not have behaved absolutely correctly when, without asking me, he put my name on a list of contributors to a magazine that was not in line with my own views, even so I should not have snubbed him. The fact that it was a snub only dawned on me later, just like the other matter, that the “use” the Fischer Verlag reserve
d the right to make of the telegram “in an extreme emergency” might have as a consequence its publication. I’m sure I will have an early opportunity to make it up to Kl.M., and I will certainly take it. I say that in the knowledge that you don’t especially like Kl.M. I, for my part, do. I have a strong liking for him.

  Now the telegram.

  In my form of words, I went further than Thomas Mann (which I would ask you to note!), who merely stated a fact, namely that when he had given his consent, he had had a different notion of the character of the Sammlung. The telegram was not addressed to any “Ministry” but to the S. Fischer Verlag, to which, surely rightly, I felt obligated in many ways. (Here the prehistory. After a protracted exchange of letters, Professor Saenger2 came to see us, and told us in some considerable detail about the state of the Fischer family, and of the publishing firm. Among many other things, not all of them strictly necessary, he told me that Fischer was physically threatened. He said old Sami,3 to whom I am utterly devoted, would rather be clubbed to death than leave Germany. He spoke for many hours over the course of two full days. He himself made such a pitiable impression that his appearance was more eloquent than all his words. Whether I did right or not, I gave the statement. I felt obliged to give it, and in exactly the form in which the publisher wanted it given. Other factors were involved, too. (1) we were of the view4 that whoever among us could still appear in Germany should do so, as long as it was done decently, every non-approved, non-gleichgeschaltet word mattered more than all the bluster that no one in Germany would ever get to hear anyway. (2) I was resolved not to go political, because I know that the politically engaged émigré is forced onto one or other extreme of the debate, and winds up either with the CP or else with the (French) Nationalists. (3) If Fischer had dropped me, I would have found myself penniless. This last point is important enough on its own, because I have no aptitude for financial rescue plans where my own person is involved. I suppose I could have gone to Meier-Graefe, who is a close personal friend, and who has some savings, and he wouldn’t have turned me down. I mention this, so that point (3) doesn’t get more weight than it should have.)