Joseph Roth - Habsburg Empire

Habsburg Empire

Born to a Jewish family, Roth grew up in Brody, a small town near Lemberg in East Galicia, part of the easternmost reaches of what was then Austro-Hungarian empire. Jewish culture played an important role in the life of the town, which had one of the biggest Jewish populations in Europe. Roth grew up with his mother and her relatives; he never saw his father, who disappeared before he was born.

After high school, Joseph Roth moved to Lviv to begin his university studies in 1913 before transferring to the University of Vienna in 1914 to study philosophy and German literature. In 1916, Roth quit his university course and volunteered to serve in the Imperial Habsburg army fighting on the Eastern Front in the First World War, "though possibly only as an army journalist or censor." This experience had a major and long-lasting influence on his life. So, too, did the collapse of the Habsburg Empire in 1918, which marked the beginning of a pronounced sense of 'homelessness' that was to feature regularly in his work. "My strongest experience was the War and the destruction of my fatherland, the only one I ever had, the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary."