47. To Bernard von Brentano
Marseille, 31 July 1927
Dear friend,
the news of your father’s death has just reached me. (I go to pick up my mail every ten days or so.) I never got to meet him, but even so I mourn his passing. I imagine he was one of those characters that no longer exist in Germany, a person with the aura of the Counter-Reformation, and the old Holy Roman Empire. You know how drawn I am to such people, even if most of them don’t share my politics.
I mourn his death of course not least for you, my friend, because you still needed him, and it would have been only fair if he had lived to see your literary fledging. His passing marks a turning point in your life. If you feel too alone, then accept my assurance that I am standing at your shoulder — now, and in every enterprise in which you should feel in danger or alone.
Don’t take it amiss if I tell you that such moments are necessary and even fruitful. They attach us to the beyond, it’s a little like going to church, which of course we don’t do.
Write to me through Miss Weber — but only if you want to.
Please send the enclosed letters to your brother. I don’t know his address.
Always your old
Joseph Roth
Give my regards to your mother.
48. To Benno Reifenberg
Grenoble, 17 August 1927
Dear Mr. Reifenberg,
I hope you are already off on vacation with wife and child. I am trundling across France, a wandering writer, a genuine minnesinger. I hope my novel doesn’t appear before you get back. I must see the galleys, if you write to the office, ask them to send them to the Wagner address in Paris.
My new novel is wonderful. (Keep it under your hat: I’m ashamed to tell anyone else.) I couldn’t after all muster the strength or the brazenness to write a novel in episodes for the Illustrierte. All I’ve done is written one called
Zipper and His Father.1
I’m looking forward to reading it to you! It’s so wonderful when you pay close attention, and are open and engaged!
I’ll be done in 12 days.
When are you back?
I met Dr. Simon in Marseille. Very happy. He looks like a stripling — or a stripeling — in his striped summer suit.
Kisses to Jan, and both Maryla’s hands.
Have a lovely time.
Don’t forget your old
Joseph Roth, and read the last two volumes of Flaubert’s correspondence.
1. Zipper and His Father (Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1928).
49. To Stefan Zweig
Glion near Montreux, 8 September 1927
Dear esteemed Mr. Zweig,1
I’ve been in debt to you for an unconscionably long time. You sent me kind words on my Jewish book.2 I thank you for them.
I don’t agree with you when you say the Jews don’t believe in an afterlife. But that’s a debate that would take an awful lot of time and space.
I’m thinking of bringing out an ampler version of the book in the course of the next few years. Perhaps I can combine some of the research with my reporting work for the FZ.
In the autumn I’m bringing out my next book (a novel, or rather, a sort of novel)3 with Kurt Wolff. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to have a copy sent to you.
With sincerest thanks and regards
Joseph Roth
1. Zweig: Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), privately wealthy writer, translator, collector, patron. In touch with most of the leading personalities of the time — from Rilke to Freud, see his autobiography, The World of Yesterday—and probably the best-selling international writer of his day.
2. my Jewish book: The Wandering Jews, 1927.
3. a sort of noveclass="underline" Flight Without End (Munich: Kurt Wolff Verlag, 1927) was subtitled “a report.” It marked the height — the beginning and end, really — of JR’s flirtation with the so-called Neue Sachlichkeit, or “New Objectivity.”
50. To Félix Bertaux1
Hotel Foyot, Paris2
16 September 1927
I am just back from vacation for 2 days, and am deeply sorry I don’t have a moment to see you before my departure. I have to go back to Germany — already, and contrary to the wishes I told you of on the occasion of our last time together. The silver lining is the fact that I will be able to meet your son3 in Berlin — and as I am looking forward very much to showing him something that other people might not be able to tell him about, I would ask you to let me know his address in Berlin, and how long he will be there; either via the FZ, the Kurt Wolff Verlag, or my wife, who will probably be here for some time yet.
My regards to your wife.
Yours truly,
Joseph Roth
My wife will either be staying here or at 23 rue de Tournon. Her address is mine too.
1. Félix Bertaux (1881–1948), leading French Germanist and critic, friend of the Mann brothers Thomas and Heinrich, author of the standard work on German literature between 1880 and 1927, Panorama de la littérature allemande contemporaine (Paris, 1928).
2. Hotel Foyot: JR’s favored residence in Paris or pretty well anywhere. See the elegy he wrote for it in 1938, “Rest while Watching the Demolition, in Report from a Parisian Paradise.
3. son: Pierre Bertaux (1907–1986), a Germanist like his father, specializing in Hölderlin.
51. To Bernard von Brentano
Frankfurt am Main
20 September 1927
My dear Brentano,
thank you for your troubling letter. Still, part of me thinks it can’t be as bad as you say, at least from what I hear from dear good Mr. Reifenberg. I know he is such an inveterate optimist, he often distorts things the other way. But there’s no call for you to become nervous. Human relationships with newspapers are just impossible. For every decent, confident, self-willed individual there comes a time he must break. As far as I’m concerned, I’m hoping to be able to give up journalism as my principal occupation fairly soon. If you’re smart about it, you’ll be able to yourself in 2–3 years. You have the talent.
I don’t think you can present yourself to Ullstein, unless invited to. Would you like me to recommend you to Katz?1 I’ll write you the warmest note of which I’m capable. He is not without influence, he’s the man who wrote those great travel pieces and started the Grüne Post2 (or was it Welt). I don’t understand why you continually want to move in Jewish circles. If you gave the least indication you wanted to, you’d be the big chief at the DAZ.3 They are deficient in temperament, and could use men with a line to intellect. The people there would be more grateful than Jews, they are freer and more receptive. The concept of the reactionary has moved again — for now. Have you not noticed that? If you only wanted to, you would have all the necessary requisites to be an important figure—over there. Whereas if you stay here, all you have to look forward to are a couple more years of inadequate pay or poor job or scheming Jews. There you would be the smart Jew—and your own man on top of that. Do you think freedom or intellect can be found with the Reichsbanner?4 I’d a thousand times rather Hindenburg than Koch5—more honest, stronger, freer.
I’m bored, had to dash off a miserable article for someone else about a wretched trade fair. Hope to be back in Berlin soon, and write 2 or 3 articles. Then it’s Russia again — in the spring. Since my Russian pieces were not up to my usual standard, I have to revise them continually. (But keep that to yourself.) Write to