I say “kind” of autopsy because nowhere does Roth contemplate geopolitical causes for the Empire’s collapse.
The Radetzky March is a kind of autopsy of that Empire’s decline and fall. Joseph Roth was a self-described conservative, a Jew who, late in life, converted to Catholicism, though I read somewhere that his conversion was more of an attempt to regain the lost Empire that he loved than an act of true religion.
The elder, the founder of the young dynasty, exists mostly as a portrait hanging on the wall, which functions as a sort of family icon. Most of the novel has to do with the two von Trotta men raised in nobility. His son, Carl Joseph, enters the cavalry as an officer. The junior von Trotta hero-worships the Kaiser and everything about the Empire. His only son, Franz von Trotta, on orders from his father, foregoes a military career, and becomes a civil servant, a highly respected position in the Empire. Sure, the historians are exaggerating, but it’s a noble lie, one designed to bolster the patriotism of the young. The Kaiser doesn’t understand his objection. When he discovers that official Austrian school textbooks embellish the act of the “Hero of Solferino,” the baron requests an audience with the Kaiser, and personally protests the dishonesty. Even his elderly father treats him differently. Baron von Trotta, who comes from Slovenian peasant stock, is uncomfortable as a nobleman. The grateful monarch awards Trotta the highest Imperial honors, and ennobles him. In the opening scene, the young Austrian Kaiser Franz Joseph, who was the last European monarch to lead his troops in battle, is saved from an enemy sniper by the quick thinking of Lieutenant Joseph Trotta, an infantry lieutenant. Whenever the characters hear it, they are filled with warm, patriotic nostalgia. In the novel, it symbolizes the glory days of the fading Empire. The musical piece titled “The Radetzky March” (you’ve heard it) was composed in 1848 by Johann Strauss the elder, to celebrate a military victory by Field Marshal Radetzky.
The story begins at the 1859 Battle of Solferino, a turning point in the Empire’s history its loss at Solferino marks the beginning of the Empire’s decline, completed by its destruction in World War I. What follows is a sketch of initial impressions. This is one I’ll be thinking about for a long time. The book has left me with so many thoughts, not all of them coherent. I’ll try to write about it below without spoilers. To be precise, it’s through the eyes of three von Trotta men, all of them military officers. The novel examines the slow decay and final collapse of the Austro-Hungarian empire through the eyes of three generations of the von Trotta family. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I finished Joseph Roth’s novel TheRadetzky Marchyesterday.
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