Right and left

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Right and left is a novel by Joseph Roth , published in 1929 by Gustav Kiepenheuer in Berlin. During his emergence from late 1927 to early 1929 the author calls the text a " period novel " about the "baby boomers" and the " Rathenau killer". In an obituary for the author in 1939 , Kesten singled out this work as a “highly topical Berlin novel”.

Captain Nikolai Brandeis, the son of a Ukrainian Jew and a Protestant pastor's daughter, deserted from the Red Army , made his way to Berlin and skillfully rose to head a corporate empire with almost six thousand subordinates. He is just as disappointed by his youngest director, the feeble Paul Bernheim, as he is by his pathetically confused brother Theodor, whom he has sponsored as a journalist.

characters

  • Mrs. Bernheim
    • Paul Bernheim, her son
    • Theodor Bernheim, her son
  • Friedrich Theodor Emmanuel Nikolai Brandeis

action

When the war broke out, Paul Bernheim broke off his studies in Oxford . He is allowed to ride with the Dragoons , but is ordered as a supply officer behind the front. Deeply disappointed, he turns into a bitter war opponent. In the third year of the war he gave up his pleasant service and volunteered as a lieutenant in the infantry on the Eastern Front . Paul is wounded. When he leaves the hospital, the war is over and the soldiers revolt. Paul continues to wear his officers' badges and is bloodied by soldiers. He wants to have a conservative and patriotic career.

The younger brother Theodor despises him as a loser in the war; says Paul in the face: "We will not lose another war". "A swastika " is sewn onto Theodor's jacket sleeve . “In his opinion, the Volksgenossen think far too little of Germany.” His mother's Jewish origins bothers him. Anti-Semitic and ethnically minded, he has to flee abroad. Immediately before fleeing, Theodor demands money from his brother. Paul gives nothing, but his new business friend Nikolai Brandeis pays. Brandeis' business ascent is unstoppable. The management level of his employees occupies key positions in the Stahlhelm and in the Reichsbanner . Brandeis' business trips mostly take him to Eastern Europe or the Balkans . He brings the enchanting Lydia Markovna with him from Belgrade . He bought the 22-year-old Ukrainian émigré from Kiev from an actor there. He locks up the beauty in his Berlin home.

When Paul's company went downhill, he got to know Miss Irmgard Enders, co-heir of a chemical company, in Brandeis' circles. Luck never ends: Brandeis hires Paul as director. Paul's mother, the widow Frau Bernheim, very stingy since the war, warns the son of the impending money marriage.

Theodor can return home after an amnesty. The mother sends him out of the house. He's going to Berlin and is just getting ready for Paul's wedding. Brandeis also supports Theodor. The homecomer becomes a newspaper editor in one of Brandeis' papers and finds striking formulations for his creations that come from folkish thoughts, from Marxism and from Stirner .

Paul finds his wife Irmgard boring, brittle and rough-boned. That's why he falls in love with Lydia; considers the commoner to be a Caucasian princess . Lydia is "tender" and "pliable". But the lonely young woman can just as little warm up to Paul as she does to Brandeis and travels to her theater company. Brandeis is also disgusted with Berlin and leaves. Irmgard wants to tell Paul that she is pregnant.

Right and left

While Brandeis and Paul are " conservative ", Theodor is "extremely radical ".

Quotes

  • All fanaticism is cruel .
  • The newspapers are slaves to the banks .
  • Tears are the only weapon of the defenseless .

shape

Sometimes the text requires a tolerant reader. So leaves z. B. the narrator surprisingly and completely unmotivated his past tense , only to fall back into it immediately.

words and phrases

  • have the unconditional honesty of a rock
  • the expanse blew before him

Self-testimony

  • Joseph Roth writes in The Literary World of November 22, 1929 in his self-review :
    • My novel, Right and Left, denies the existence of characters .
    • He [the novel] has no ending

reception

  • The novel "ends in the years of consolidation around 1925". The world economic crisis is still far. In the mid-1920s, almost anything was still possible. The citizen could be conservative and revolutionary in one person; could stand both right and left.
  • Wilhelm Emanuel Süskind observed an optimistic narrative tone. In terms of composure and confidence, there is a lack of the mild irony that is usual with Roth.

literature

source

  • Fritz Hackert (Ed.): Joseph Roth Works 4. Novels and Stories 1916 - 1929 . P. 609 to 722: Right and left. Novel 1929 . With an afterword by the editor. Frankfurt am Main 1994. 1086 pages, ISBN 3-7632-2988-4

Secondary literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ from Roth's letters to Félix Bertaux and Stefan Zweig , quoted in Sternburg, p. 360 above
  2. ^ Kesten, quoted in Sternburg, p. 363 below
  3. ↑ Hackert p. 739
  4. ↑ Hackert p. 626
  5. ↑ Hackert p. 660
  6. ↑ Hackert p. 754
  7. ↑ Hackert p. 749, second paragraph
  8. ↑ Hackert p. 655
  9. ↑ Hackert p. 771
  10. ↑ Steierwald p. 89
  11. ↑ Steierwald p. 158
  12. ↑ Kiesel pp. 560-561
  13. ↑ Kiesel, p. 561 below