In 1920, Joseph Roth, the most renowned German correspondent of his age, arrived in Berlin, the capital of the Weimar Republic. He produced a series of impressionistic and political writings that influenced an entire generation of writers, including Thomas Mann and the young Christopher Isherwood. Translated and collected here, these pieces record the violent social and political paroxysms that constantly threatened to undo the fragile democracy that was the Weimar Republic. Roth, like no other German writer of his time, ventured beyond Berlin's offical veneer to the heart of the city, chronicling the lives of its forgotten inhabitants - the war cripples, the Jewish immigrants, the criminals, the bathhouse denizens and the nameless dead who filled the morgues - as well as more whimsical aspects of the city - the public parks and the burgeoning entertainment industry. Warning early on of the threat posed by the Nazis, Roth evoked a landscape of moral bankruptcy and debauched beauty, creating in the process a memorable portrait of a city.
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Amazon Review
Few modern cities have quite so much history ingrained in their streets and buildings as Berlin. What I Saw: Reports from Berlin, 1920-33, an edition of the newspaper journalism of the novelist, Joseph Roth (best-known for his historical epic, The Radetzky March) captures perfectly both the exciting cosmopolitanism and the sinister cruelty of the city in the early years of the Weimar republic. No other European city quite so encapsulated the dislocation wrought by the first world war: refugees from eastern Europe, the homeless poor and the unclaimed dead, together with the usual flotsam and jetsam of the metropolis: late-night drinkers, carriers and messengers. Nor did any other post-war capital experiment with and advance modern culture quite as boldly as the German one: film, architecture, literary reviews, electric street transport, shopping, velodromes and amusement parks. In short, punchy pieces Roth describes this strange world of frenetic urban life with humour and compassion. He is very much of the "I Am a Camera" school of reporting, which English writers such as Isherwood and Cockburn were later to perfect. The bulk of the journalism comes from the first half of the 1920s and readers expecting an account of the rise of the Nazis should look elsewhere. Although Roth is aware of the new strident anti-Semitic tone to German nationalism, he does not dwell on it until he goes into exile in 1933. This book celebrates a world that was lost, rather than foretells the nightmare to come. --Miles Taylor
Review
'A search for an English speaking equivalent to Roth leads to none other than George Orwell…It is a privilege to see an artist at work' -- Irish Times
'His acute, morbid observations, finely translated, form the core of this collection of Roth's writings from the Weimar Republic' -- The Sunday Telegraph
'Largely thanks to Michael Hofmann’s new translations, British readers have come to know the German Jewish writer Joseph Roth as the author of fine novels' -- The Independent
'Philosophical, challenging and often fantastical pieces of writing...Roth was the poet of Berlin streetlife in the 1920s' -- Evening Standard
'Slivers of Berlin life during the Weimar Republic catch a city juddering with a sense of its own modernity...The tone is tender and caustic all at once' -- Observer
'His acute, morbid observations, finely translated, form the core of this collection of Roth's writings from the Weimar Republic' -- The Sunday Telegraph
'Largely thanks to Michael Hofmann’s new translations, British readers have come to know the German Jewish writer Joseph Roth as the author of fine novels' -- The Independent
'Philosophical, challenging and often fantastical pieces of writing...Roth was the poet of Berlin streetlife in the 1920s' -- Evening Standard
'Slivers of Berlin life during the Weimar Republic catch a city juddering with a sense of its own modernity...The tone is tender and caustic all at once' -- Observer
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