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Original Title:	Die Kapuzinergruft
ISBN:	1585673277 (ISBN13: 9781585673278)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	Von Trotta Family
Setting:	Vienna(Austria)
Literary Awards:	PEN Translation Prize Nominee for Michael Hofmann (2014)

The Emperor's Tomb (Von Trotta Family)

Joseph Roth

Paperback | Pages: 157 pages

Rating: 3.88 | 1944 Users | 173 Reviews

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Title	:	The Emperor's Tomb (Von Trotta Family)
Author	:	Joseph Roth
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Special Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 157 pages
Published	:	September 1st 2002 by Harry N. Abrams (first published 1938)
Categories	:	Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. European Literature. German Literature. Classics

Description Conducive To Books The Emperor's Tomb (Von Trotta Family)

Translator Michael Hofmann’s excellent introduction to The Emperor's Tomb tells the reader immediately that this was the last of Roth’s works and the last he saw in print (1939) when his life had fallen into chaos and desolation.

He analyses its relationship to the its predecessor, The Radetzky March (1932) which also featured the Trotta family and which is often read as an analogy of the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire and which, he says, conveys a whole forgotten world. T

The Emperor’s Tomb is quite different in style and structure, and not so much a sequel as a round-the corner continuation, a series of fragments of the life of Franz Ferdinand Trotta, second cousin of The Radetzky March Trotta’s, from just before World War I (1913) to just before World War II (1938).

Roth’s writing here is spare, sparking like a firecracker, vividly creating images of events and emotions that normally carry grey-brown colours in my mind, but here carry colours like angular stained-glass shards. Some are dark, yes, but many shine brilliantly.

This helps create a tone of insouciance, even as Franz Ferdinand reels from disaster to disaster, prompted by emotional surges rather than rational thinking. I don't know enough about the Bildungsroman tradition to try to match this life story to the tradition, but it almost seems like an inversion of it. The young Trotta goes through the stages of studenthood, love, marriage, military engagement, and return from war – but he is ineffectual at every turn as his life disintegrates and he is left with nothing.

I found this extract from Bruford useful and interesting, and have pasted in an extract from Alan Massie’s Scotsman review because I liked it.

The German Tradition of Self-Cultivation: 'Bildung' from Humboldt to Thomas Mann by W.H. Bruford Quoted in Lobstergirl’s review https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...

In a typical 'Bildungsroman' we are shown the development of an intelligent and open-minded young man in a complex, modern society without generally accepted values; he gradually comes to decide, through the influence of friends, teachers and chance acquaintances as well as the ripening of his own intellectual and perhaps artistic capacities and interests as his experience in these fields grows, what is best in life for him and how he intends to pursue it. We see him learning to deal with the common problems of personal and social relationships, acquiring a point of view in practical matters and above all a 'Weltanschauung', a lay religion or general philosophy of life, or perhaps one after another. Adventurous episodes may be introduced by the author to maintain interest, but in general there is enough variety if the hero meets well contrasted friends in different social milieux, and of course falls in love with more than one kind of girl, some appealing to his senses and some to his mind. The novel usually ends when he has attained to some degree of maturity, and what he does with his life later is not revealed to us. There is often a large autobiographical element in such novels, so the favourite hero is a writer or artist, not a man of action. (p. 29-30.) (less)
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Alan Massie in The Scotsman https://www.scotsman.com/arts-and-cul...

Anyone who knows anything about the last years of [Roth’s] life – exiled, impoverished, alcoholic – will find it remarkable that he was able to complete a novel, and will be astonished that it is so good. Michael Hofmann, his devoted and expert translator, who has done so much to establish Roth’s reputation as one of the greatest European writers of the first half of the 20th century, finds “something astringent and shorthand and weathered about it”: astringent because it is a bitter-sweet lament for the Mitteleuropa of the Habsburg Empire, destroyed by way of “the special idiocy of nationalists”; shorthand because of the brevity of scenes and episodes and the rapidity with which Roth moves from one setting to another, one mood to its opposite; weathered because it is the work of a man who has seen too much and endured too much.

…The novel ends with the Anschluss, the Nazi takeover of Austria, welcomed by so many Viennese, and with Trotta, this utterly superfluous man, leaving the empty café, in the company of the café dog, which he never liked, and craving admission to the Kapuzinergruft “where my Emperors lie buried in stone sarcophagi”.
It sounds sad; it is sad. It sounds depressing; it is not depressing. This is first because each scene is so vividly written. Roth was always a master of the revealing detail, which is less to paint a picture than to evoke a mood. It is also because, in spite of the prevailing atmosphere of melancholy, dissolution, evanescence, and doom, Roth could never quite prevent high spirits from breaking in, and the book is often very funny.
In his introduction, itself a model of its kind, Michael Hofmann suggests that in the last chapters, Trotta, the fictional narrator, is replaced by Roth speaking in his own voice: “the ending is naked self-portraiture” where you find “an atmosphere of terminal dereliction and hopelessness”. I am sure this is right, but it is at the same time also wrong, because this is not the impression that is left on the reader – not this reader anyway. Trotta can say “I had no more interest in the world“, but Roth evokes, creates, his own world so magically, that, amidst the sympathy one feels for his sad predicament, there is a murmur, or glow, of happiness. Art is redemptive and offers consolation.


I’m delighted that I managed to read this before the end of 2019 – it’s been on my must-read list for 2019 and I’ve just made it!

Rating Based On Books The Emperor's Tomb (Von Trotta Family)

Ratings: 3.88 From 1944 Users | 173 Reviews

Critique Based On Books The Emperor's Tomb (Von Trotta Family)

This novel about World War I destroying a Austrian family and a way of life reminded me of another book I read last year about the same topic, THE HARE WITH AMBER EYES. The difference is that HARE, non-fiction, is like looking at the destruction of a way of life through a telescope, covering the decline of five generations of of the Ephrussi family , one of the richest Jewish families in Austria. On the other hand, THE EMPERORS TOMB is a magnifying glass, a novel that looks at one familys

(I read the orginal text in German, my third lagnuage) A delight to read with a light, modern language, and quite frequently a beautiful, mild self-deprecating humor. Bonus: I learned a few austricisms sprinkled throughout the book. The story - of course - nostalgic, yearning back to a world that the antagonist believes was better. To a modern reader, there is a direct link to the nostalgia of the 2010's among Western countries. Was life really that great in the 1950's and 1960's? Probably not.

a worthy successor to The Radetzky March!

a short novella, continuation of The Radetzky March, which I will now have to reread. The style is terse and ironic, and sad.

This book surprised me, as I'm not typically interested in World War I history or politics. The narrative, however, is incredible.The narrator, Von Trotta, has a very apt perspective on Austro-Hungarian post-war situation, and much of the book is essentially a narrative foreshadowing of the upcoming 2nd World War. Everything in the book seems to be afloat in one kind of desolation or another. Trotta's wife grows to hate him, and all of the people revolving around him are either bogged down with

Follow-on to the Radetzky March. Here's a quote. I think he's talking about conservatives vs. liberals:"I believe my observations have always led me to find that the so-called realist moves about the world with a closed mind, ringed as it were with concrete and cement, and that the so-called romantic is like an unfenced garden in and out of which truth can wander at will." Or more the literary:"I walked along Mariahilferstrasse. A gritty sleet was falling - bastard to snow and wretched brother

(Iread this without reading the Radetsky March prior.)I think I gained a newfound appreciation for this book in the final fifty pages. When Trotta returns from the war, Roth writes each scene exquisitely so that you can sense the immense displacement felt in Vienna at the time. You are able to get some sense of those who are getting on, those who are steuggling to adapt and those who have to change each and every day, sometimes for gain, sometimes for loss, to keep up with the times. Roth seems