Roth, Joseph

Joseph Roth was born in Brody in Galicia, then part of the Habsburg Monarchy, now Ukraine, on September 26, 1894 in the family of Maria (Miriam) Roth née Grübel and Nahum Roth. He attended Baron-Hirsch Jewish public school and the German grammar school ( Kronprinz-Rudolf-Gymnasium ) in Brody from 1905 to 1913. After graduation, he started German studies and philosophy at the University of Lemberg (Lwów, now L'viv, Ukraine), but after one semester he transferred to the University of Vienna. Joseph Roth did not finish his studies, for he together with his friend Józef Wittlin volunteered in the Army in 1916. He was sent as a one-year volunteer ( Einjährig-Freiwilliger ) to the Eastern front. Joseph Roth was always proud of his military service.

In 1918 Joseph Roth returned to Vienna, where he started his journalistic career. He began writing for the left-leaning Der neue Tag and Arbeiter-Zeitung, but soon moved to Berlin where he worked for several newspapers, such as the Neue Berliner Zeitung, Berliner Börsen-Courier, and Vorwärts . In 1922 he married Friederike Reichler. He gradually became one of the best-paid German journalists. In 1923 he started working as a Berlin correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung . Joseph Roth wrote in all kinds of journalistic genres - reports, essays, opinions, book and theatre reviews, and serialized travelogues - from his trips to Germany, the Soviet Union, France, Italy and the Balkans. Besides the Frankfurter Zeitung, Joseph Roth contributed to many more newspapers, among them the Prager Tagblatt that published one of his earliest literary attempts during the First World War.

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