The Representation of Jews and of Anti‐Semitism in Joseph Roth's Early Journalism

Within the vast range of topics covered by Joseph Roth in his early journalism, portrayals of Jews and of anti‐Semitism are not especially prominent. However, they repay analysis as examples of how a writer, without revealing his own Jewish origins, chooses to represent such subjects. Whether reporting on currency speculators in Vienna, an orthodox Jewish community in Hungary, or poor Jewish refugees from the East in Berlin, Roth adopts similar strategies. Initially seeming to confirm widespread prejudices about ‘Ostjuden’, he eventually contrives to subvert them. Portraits of assimilated, middle‐class Jews are less frequent in Roth's work, but articles on Walter Rathenau and the financier Louis Hagen provide an interesting contrast in content, whilst also containing more complex political sub‐texts. Where anti‐Semitism is concerned, Roth proves to be a prescient critic of right‐wing ‘völkisch’ movements operating under the sign of the swastika. Here his main weapon is irony; his major strategy one of turning the anti‐Semites’ arguments back on themselves, thus reducing them to the absurd. Roth's campaign against anti‐Semitism is not, however, motivated by any merely partisan Jewish concern. Rather, as scathing articles on other forms of racial prejudice indicate, it is evidence of a consistent cosmopolitanism on his part.