Lincoln Snyder

Lincoln Snyder

December 18, 2024

The Second Death: Chojnicki’s Prophecies and the End of Austria

“Joseph Roth, der Verfasser des Romans ‘Radetzkymarsch,’ gibt in seinem neuen Roman ‘Die Kapuzinergruft’ eine Fortsetzung seines ersten österreichischen Romans. So wie er im ‘Radetzkymarsch’ den Untergang der alten österr. ungar. (sic) Monarchie geschildert hatte, gibt er in der ‘Kapuzinergruft’ ein erschütterndes Bild von dem Untergang des letzten österreichischen Rechtes (sic). Joseph Roth erzählt an der Hand privater Schicksale den schrecklichen Niedergang des letzten Winkels mitteleuropäischer Freiheit; die Verschlingung Oesterreichs durch Preußen. ‘Die Kapuzinergruft’ ist der aktuellste Roman dieser Zeit.”

• Joseph Roths Vorschlag für den Verlagsprospekt, aus einem Brief an den Verlag De Gemeenschap, 5. August 1938 (von Sternburg, S. 476).

In the shadow of Heldenplatz and only months before his own death, Joseph Roth found himself in the unenviable position of eulogizing Austria for a second time in as many decades; he chose to do so by returning to the world and the devices of his most successful. When Roth wrote Radetzkymarsch, it had been over a decade since the collapse and dismemberment of Austria-Hungary; in composing Die Kapuzinergruft as the Anschluss was taking place, setting his new story in the same universe gave him the opportunity to compare and contrast themes, and to do so using a favorite mouthpiece. In the first volume, Count Chojnicki served both as a protagonist and as a plot device, a prophet who helped advance the story and reflect the author’s views; in Die Kapuzinergruft, we encounter two Chojnickis who serve in similar roles – and through their new prophecies, we see how much the world, and the author’s views of it, had changed.

In this essay, I will offer background on Die Kapuzinergruft and consider what Roth’s return to familiar characters (and their Doppelgangers) allows him to achieve in this particular novel. I will then look at the Brothers Chojnicki and consider the major themes, both prophetic and analytical, they raise in Die Kapuzinergruft, contrasting them with Josef Chojnicki’s statement and roles from Radetzkymarsch. The themes I will consider include in which they speak to the center and periphery; the parable of the chestnut roaster; and Austria’s second death, as a state and as a religion. Both books deal with the death of Austria, and the Chojnickis offer the eulogies; it is only with Austria’s second death that we gain full perspective on the meaning of the first.

Background

When Roth wrote the advertising copy quoted above in August 1938, it had been less than five months since the Anschluss; Roth’s Paris exile was permanent; and he had less than a year to live. In Radetzkymarsch, Count Chojnicki had prophesied death – of Austria, of the emperor, of the Trottas and himself – but he was only partially right. The Empire died, but Roth lived long enough to experience the death of Austria’s First Republic as well. By bringing Trottas and Chojnickis forward into a new work, one that carried its narrative to the eve of the Anschluss, Roth was able to explore both what was lost with Austria’s first death, and what would be lost with its second.

At the end of Radetzkymarsch, Roth had killed off the Trottas and Graf Chojnicki had been consigned to Steinhof, which did not bode well for a sequel; nonetheless, the novel came together quickly. Roth started Die Kapuzinergruft in 1937 under the working title of “Ein Mann Sucht sein Vaterland” (Tonkin, p. 168)¹. Like many Austrians, Roth saw the Anschluss coming; famously, he made an amateurish attempt in February 1938 to meet with Austrian chancellor Schuschnigg in the hopes of steering him toward a Habsburg restoration instead of a German annexation (Pim, p. 421-423). When that failed, he chose to deal with the issue with his pen – he asked his publisher to pause work on his nearly-finished Die Geschichte der 1002. Nacht so that he could complete and release the novella that became Die Kapuzinergruft. Published in December 1938, it would prove to be his last (Pim, p. 424).

The novella opens with the lines, “Wir heißen Trotta. Unser Geschlecht stammt aus Sipolje in Slowenien” (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. 1). In the setting he chose for Die Kapuzinergruft, Roth was no longer worldbuilding – instead, he returned to the world of Radetzkymarsch. The protagonist is indeed a Trotta, but not any of the ones we met in Radetzkymarsch; Franz Ferdinand Trotta is the grandson of the brother of the Hero of Solferino, and therefore a cousin of Carl Joseph.

The cast of characters was familiar to readers of his earlier fiction, but Roth made some important decisions that make the novella distinct. Franz Ferdinand Trotta narrates the novel in the first person, and though a distinct character, he serves as a proxy for Carl Joseph in many respects. Like Carl Joseph, he also served in the Austrian military before the Great War, and he re-enlists when the war starts. The novel places both Franz Ferdinand and Carl Joseph Trotta at the Battle of Krasne-Busk, Galicia, in 1914 (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Chapters I and XX); Franz Ferdinand is taken POW, while Carl Joseph falls. Furthermore, other characters from Roth’s oeuvre appear, either in person or by proxy. Baranowicz, the Siberian Pole from Die Flucht ohne Ende (Roth, Flucht ohne Ende, Ch. I), hosts and then expels Trotta and his friends du (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. XXII). ring their time as prisoners of war in deep Russia. There is also an episode featuring a servant named Jacques whose death is a major plot device (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. XVIII).

What does incorporating so many familiar characters in this novella allow Roth to achieve? Rather than simply serving as cheap recycling, the incorporation of figures from works past allows the reader to see how much the world had changed. Radetzkymarsch was about the fall of the Empire; Die Kapuzinergruft is about the final failure of the Austrian republic with its absorption into the Reich. The retcons allow us to see the protagonists deal with the consequences of the march of history, and it also highlights the author’s shifting views – as we see expressed in the prophecies of the Chojnickis.

When we last saw Count Chojnicki, he had summoned Bezirkshauptmann von Trotta to Steinhof to tell him that Emperor Franz Josef would soon die, a prophecy that carried the novel through to its denouement, with von Trotta dying the same day that Franz Joseph was laid to rest in the Kapuzinergruft. Though he pursued his own interests and not just those of the Kaiser, Chojnicki represented a supernational presence operating above the fray of the national disputes of the day.

Franz Ferdinand Trotta is close friends with another Chojnicki Chojnicki, a member of his social circle of nobles who socialize at Viennese coffee houses. The reader learns that this Chojnicki is the younger brother of Count Josef Chojnicki from Radetzkymarsch. The original Chojnicki is alive and an active character in Die Kapuzinergruft, but remains languishing in Steinhof. (We never learn the newly-introduced Count Chojnicki’s first name, so I will refer to the characters as the Elder Chojnicki for the character from Radetzkymarsch, and the Younger Chojnicki for the one introduced in Die Kapuzinergruft).

1. Center and Periphery

In Radetzkymarsch, the Elder Chojnicki bemoans rising nationalism and its effect on unity under the crown. ‘Die Zeit will uns nicht mehr! Diese Zeit will sich erst selbststaendige Nationalstaaten schaffen! Man glaubt nicht mehr an Gott. Die neue Religion ist der Nationalismus…’ (Roth, Radetzkymarsch Ch. 11). The relationship of center and periphery ran throughout Radetzkymarsch, with characters and settings from the crownlands populating the narrative. Most of the novel’s protagonists are people on the periphery in one form or another – Slovenes, Jews, Bohemians, Hungarians, Ruthenians, and Galician Poles. In leaning into their relationship with the Crown, these characters form the backbone of the institutions of the Kaiser; the Kaiser himself, also a protagonist, offers them his protection – and a shared identity in him. Per the Elder Chojnicki, it is a commitment to national identity that destroys this faith. Over the course of the 19th and into the 20th century, nations on the periphery increasingly demanded self-determination, and, following the collapse of the Double Monarchy, they received it.

The Younger Chojnicki offers a more nuanced view in Die Kapuzinergruft; it is not the national states on the periphery, but rather the German Austrians themselves, who are to blame, as illustrated by a passage in Chapter V. The periphery, argues the Younger Chojnicki, is more Austrian than Austria itself: “Das Wesen Österreichs ist nicht Zentrum, sondern Peripherie. Österreich ist nicht in den Alpen zu finden, Gemsen gibt es dort und Edelweiß und Enzian, aber kaum eine Ahnung von einem Doppeladler. Die österreichische Substanz wird genährt und immer wieder aufgefüllt von den Kronländern« (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. V). Though the former crownlands may have lost their faith in their shared identity as subjects, Die Kapuzinergruft argues that the German Austrians have lost faith in Austria itself.

»An allem seid ihr schuld, ihr, ihr«, er suchte nach einem Ausdruck, »ihr Gelichter«, fiel ihm endlich ein, »ihr habt mit euren leichtfertigen Kaffeehauswitzen den Staat zerstört. Mein Xandl (the Elder Chojnicki – ed.) hat’s immer prophezeit. Ihr habt nicht sehen wollen, daß diese Alpentrottel und die Sudetenböhmen, diese kretinischen Nibelungen, unsere Nationalitäten so lange beleidigt und geschändet haben, bis sie anfingen, die Monarchie zu hassen und zu verraten. Nicht unsere Tschechen, nicht unsere Serben, nicht unsere Polen, nicht unsere Ruthenen haben verraten, sondern nur unsere Deutschen, das Staatsvolk.« (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. V).

This is a major shift from Radetzkymarsch. It is not the periphery, but rather the “kretinische Nibelungen,” who are responsible for the second death. Under the Habsburgs, they had enjoyed a privileged position in the center even though people from the periphery constituted the “real Austria”; at Heldenplatz, they relegated themselves to the periphery of another nation’s empire. As noted earlier, Roth was motivated to tell this story; as Heady notes, “the Anschluss played an important role in its publication history: the novel was completed in a hurry so that it could appear as a literary response to this event” (Heady, 23-24). Though other Austrian literary works of the interwar era deal with the relationship between periphery and center, or are written by authors from the periphery, Die Kapuzinergruft is distinctive in its portrayal of Austria’s decision to become the periphery of someone else’s center.²

2. Autarky, Chestnuts, and Economic Decline

»Dies ist nur ein Maronibrater«, sagte Chojnicki, »aber sehn Sie her: es ist ein geradezu symbolischer Beruf. Symbolisch für die alte Monarchie. Dieser Herr hat seine Kastanien überall verkauft, in der halben europäischen Welt, kann man sagen. Überall, wo immer man seine gebratenen Maroni gegessen hat, war Österreich, regierte Franz Joseph. Jetzt gibt’s keine Maroni mehr ohne Visum. Welch eine Welt! Ich pfeif auf eure Pension. Ich gehe nach Steinhof, zu meinem Bruder!« (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. XXX).

One of Die Kapuzinergruft’s protagonists, Trotta’s cousin Joseph Branco, is a humble Slovene from Sipolje who made his living before the war in the chestnut trade, selling them across the Dual Monarchy; the imposition of borders brings his business to a halt. Chojnicki’s parable of the Maronibrater is representative enough of the consequences of the decline of trade in Europe that University of Chicago historian Tara Zahra opened a formal lecture entitled “Against the World: The Collapse of Empire and the Deglobalization of Interwar Austria” with the quote above. Zahra points out that, following World War I, “Europe now had thirty-eight economic units instead of twenty-six, twenty-seven different currencies instead of fifteen, and customs frontiers that extended an additional six to seven thousand kilometers” (Zahra p. 2); indeed, the collapse of borderless trade under the Habsburgs represented a “microcosm of the global economy’s implosion” (Zahra p. 3).

As Austria-Hungary spun apart, the rump state of Deutsch-Österreich was not prepared to move forward independently; in Zahra’s words, “the consensus was that Austria could not feed itself” (Zahra, p. 3). The newly formed nation-states in Mitteleuropa all made a push for autarky during the interwar period, and Austria was not unique; though some Austrian economists like Ludwig von Mises argued for continued economic integration and trade, “Van Mises was in the minority in the 1930s” (Zahra p. 7). The push for economic independence invariably failed, and ironically, the consequence of that failure was Austria moving closer to economic integration with Germany. Zahra notes that “autarky was never realistic. And when attempts at internal colonization failed to sustain them, Austrians eventually returned to the solution that they had demanded in 1918: Anschluss… The ideal of “Blood and Soil” was formed in opposition to Jewish cosmopolitanism, migration, liberal internationalism, and the global economy…. The Nazis promoted an ideal of Grossraumwirtschaft, or a large regional economy” (Zahra, p. 8).

The novella incorporates many of the economic challenges of interwar Austria. The Trottas lose their money on war bonds; characters lose more money on currency speculation; the Trottas invest in an art business that goes broke; they hypothecate their home to cover the losses. As their fortune dwindles, they take on boarders, including Chojnicki – most of whom pay seldomly or not at all (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. XXXII). Chojnicki identifies the problem, but he offers no solutions, and like many of the other characters in the novel (and in Radetzkymarsch), he is slow to adapt. In Radetzkymarsch, the protagonists die; in Die Kapuzinergruft, they allow the world around them to fade away until the world fades away around FFT until he finds himself on the eve of Anschluss, alone and unable to adapt.

3. A Second Death – Austria as Religion

›Österreich ist kein Staat, keine Heimat, keine Nation. Es ist eine Religion. Die Klerikalen und klerikalen Trottel, die jetzt regieren, machen eine sogenannte Nation aus uns; aus uns, die wir eine Übernation sind, die einzige Übernation, die in der Welt existiert hat. Mein Bruder‹, sagte mein Bruder zu mir, und er legte mir die Hand auf die Schulter, ›wir sind Polen, höre ich. Wir waren es immer. Warum sollten wir nicht? Und wir sind Österreicher: Warum wollten wir keine sein? Aber es gibt eine spezielle Trottelei der Ideologen. Die Sozialdemokraten haben verkündet, daß Österreich ein Bestandteil der deutschen Republik sei; wie sie überhaupt die widerwärtigen Entdecker der sogenannten Nationalitäten sind. Die christlichen Alpentrottel folgen den Sozialdemokraten. Auf den Bergen wohnt die Dummheit, sage ich, Josef Chojnicki.‹ (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. XXXII).

The death of Austria figures in both works. As we saw above, in Radetzkymarsch, the Elder Chojnicki blames the rise of nationalism for the subversion of the old Austrian religion, linking the decline of Austria to God himself abandoning the Kaiser. The Chojnickis both represent the old faith of being peoples and subjects: Wir sind Polen, wir sind Österreicher. The quote above represents a retcon, as the Elder Chojnicki had previously blamed the drive for national self-determination for the collapse; now, he lays the blame at the feet of the German Austrians and “Christliche Alpentrottel,” who view the German Reich as their new source of identity, or at least salvation³. In his madness, the Elder Chojnicki positions himself as the guardian of the crown. »Von nun ab, seitdem ich hier wohne, ist es die Haupt- und Residenzstadt von Österreich. Ich bewahre hier die Krone. Ich bin dazu ermächtigt. (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. XXXII).

This is a major shift from Radetzymarsch, wherein the Elder Chojnicki had prophesied his own death. One consistent argument about the Chojnickis in the secondary literature is that they serve as a mouthpiece for Roth himself.⁴ As a declared agent of the Habsburgs, Roth’s interest in his assessment of death of Austria as a religion “extends well beyond the diagnosis of a failure of belief; he wants to know why people stopped believing in “Österreich” and turned to nationalism. His conclusion is that Österreich was only a myth” (Tonkin S. 128). Roth’s attempts to serve as an agent of the crown went nowhere; neither did the Elder Chojnicki’s. Franz Joseph was an active character in Radezkymarsch, and though he is also a presence in this novel, Roth does not go so far as to resurrect him. If anything, his tomb represents not just a first, but also a second, death.

Die Kapuzinergruft is filled with imagery related to death; In his work “The Legacy of the Baroque in the Novels of Joseph Roth,” John Heath notes that the novel applies the Baroque Memento Mori funeral motif throughout the novel, as well as the Baroque motif of “candles burning toward their end” (Heath 330). In Radetzkymarsch, we see lovers and eros associated with death; in Die Kapuzinergruft, death locks arms with dissipation.

The Younger Chojnicki’s motivations for staying in Vienna are ambiguous. He has his relationship to Poland: he still should have his land; he has a wife there; he has lost his title in Austria. In Radetzkymarsch, the Elder Chojnicki seems immune to party politics and operates like a magnate, which he was; he even referred to the emperor by first name and avoided participating in parliamentary politics. The Younger Chojnicki, on the other hand, is happy to criticize Dolfuss and is not above the politics of the day; even a putsch does not deter him: “Die Schüsse knallten durch die nächtliche Stadt, und Chojnicki erzählte uns beim Abendessen, daß die Regierung auf die Arbeiter schieße. – »Dieser Dollfuß«, so sagte Chojnicki, »will das Proletariat umbringen. Gott strafe mich nicht: ich kann ihn nicht leiden. Es liegt in seiner Natur, sich selbst zu begraben. Das hat die Welt noch nicht gesehen!…«” (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. XXXIII). The Younger Chojnicki cannot escape Vienna any more than the Elder Chojnicki can escape Steinhof.

The Chojnickis have thus moved from being powerhouses on the periphery to leaning into their monarchical identity. This might say something about Roth’s evolution. It might also actually earn them both the “reactionary” label foisted upon both Chojnicki and Roth in other analyses⁵; the Elder Chojnicki of 1914 seems too far above the fray to be a reactionary, but now we see that creep into the Chojnickis of the 1930s. In his final appearance, Roth relates that “Chojnicki begann jetzt, unverständliches Zeug zu reden” (Roth, Kapuzinergruft, Ch. XXXII). he no longer recognizes Trotta. Like Chojnicki, Roth’s wife had been in Steinhof for her schizophrenia; in 1940, Nazi functionaries deemed her incurable and ended her life (Pim, p. 447). It follows that the same fate would befall Count Chojnicki.

Chojnicki’s memorable prophecy from the first novel – “wir sind alle tot” – remains unfulfilled in the second. The failure of his mental health is a form of death of self; so is the slow loss of influence. The last chapters of the book have a dreamlike quality as Trotta sees his world dissipate; friends fade, his mother dies, his wife leaves him for Hollywood, and he sends his child, his hope for the future, to friends in Paris. Trotta is the last guest at his cafe on the eve of Anschluss; the only visitor to the Kapuzinergruft to see his Kaiser, who offers him no answers; and plaintive in his final question, “Wohin soll ich, ich jetzt, ein Trotta?” (Roth, Kapuzinergruft,Ch. XXXIV).

If Austria is a religion, then In Roth’s novels, we recognize the sanctified through a fast death: Demant, Carl Joseph, the Bezirkshauptmann, and Franz Joseph himself. Other characters are resurrected only to be put through a slow death, just like the Austrian Republic itself; Die Kapuzinergruft is about their, and Roth’s, purgatory.

Roth wrote during a period of instability and loss; his literary response was to create a universe and people it with characters whose fictional lives let the reader see the depth of change in the real world. Die Kapuzinergruft and the short story Die Legende vom Heiligen Trinker were Roth’s final works published before his death on May 27, 1939. In the latter work, Roth made a plea for a peaceful death, one that he was not to receive. Unlike Franz Ferdinand, he did not passively accept Austria’s fate, but still fell to another form of dissipation. But where was he to go, a Trotta? And what more prophecies was he to have, he, a Chojnicki?

Works Cited

Note regarding Roth’s novels: For the purposes of citation for this paper, I accessed Joseph Roth’s original novels on the Project Gutenberg website. Due to the lack of pagination, I instead cite the chapter when quoting from his novels in the text above.

Fewster, J. C. (2007). “es ist eine lüge!” Habsburg Potemkin villages in Joseph Roth’s radetzkymarsch. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 43(3), 318–336. https://doi.org/10.3138/seminar.43.3.318

Heath, J. (2004). The Legacy of the Baroque in the Novels of Joseph Roth. Forum for Modern Language Studies, 40(3), 329–338. https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/40.3.329

Keel, D., Kampa, D., & Roth, J. (2010). Joseph Roth: Leben und Werk. Diogenes.

Jönsson, G. (2022, December 2). The life of Joseph Roth, broken sage of the 20th century – Washington examiner. Washington Examiner. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/magazine-life-arts/1583439/the-life-of-joseph-roth-broken-sage-of-the-20th-century/

Lughofer, J. G. (2009). Im Prisma: Joseph Roths Romane. Edition Art Science.

Pim, K. (2022). Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth. Granta.

Rosenfeld, S. (2001). Understanding Joseph Roth. University of South Carolina Press.

Roth, J. (1927). Die Flucht ohne Ende: Ein Bericht. Wolff. Retrieved from: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/roth/fluchten/index.html

Roth, J. (1938). Die Kapuzinergruft. De Gemenschap. Retrieved from: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/roth/kapuzine/index.html

Roth, J. (1939). Die Legende vom heiligen Trinker. De Gemenschap. Retrieved from: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/roth/erzaehlg/chap006.html

Roth, J. (1932). Radetzkymarsch. Kiepenhauer Verlag. Retrieved from: https://www.projekt-gutenberg.org/roth/radetzky/index.html

Sternburg, W. von. (2009). Joseph Roth: Eine Biographie. Kiepenheuer & Witsch.

Tonkin, K. (2008). Joseph Roth’s March into History: From the Early Novels to Radetzkymarsch and die Kapuzinergruft (studies in German literature, Linguistics and culture). Camden House.

Zahra, T. (2021). Against the world: The Collapse of Empire and the Deglobalization of Interwar Austria. Austrian History Yearbook, 52, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0067237821000047

1 Heady notes further: “The importance of Roth’s nostalgic mindset is strongly suggested by two of the work’s early titles – “der Mann ohne Pass oder ein Mensch sucht Oesterreich,” and “Ein Mann sucht Oesterreich,” and by his deployment of a first-person narrator” (Heady, p. 28).

2 Mass denial of that sentiment became part of the Austrian mythos, and one that later authors would have to unpack; see Bernhard’s Heldenplatz.

3 “Zwar bedenkt Roth beide Großparteien der Ersten Republik mit Spott, aber seine Haltung zur Sozialdemokratie ist besonders eigenartig. Dass er gerade diese Partei als Entdecker des Nationalismus brandmarkt, ist etwas verwunderlich angesichts der internationalistischen Haltung der österreichischen Sozialdemokratie. Dass die Sozialdemokraten 1918 fuer den Anschluss an die deutsche Republik eintraten, hat weniger mit nationalen Gefuehlen zu tun, als mit der Berfuerchtung, dass in dem stark agrarischen, wenig industrialisierten Oesterreich die Arbeiterbewegung nich and die Macht gelangen konnte.” (Lughofer, p. 433).

4 “Moreover… Count Chojnicki and his brother joseph’s nostalgic rhetoric strongly resembles that of Roth.. They are all depicted with a mixture of nostalgia and implied criticism…” (Heady, p. 25). Though further exploration goes beyond the scope of this essay, several secondary authors speculate on Roth’s autobiographical relationship with Chojnicki. One citation by Heady is representative: “Given the undeniable sympathy between Roth and Chojnicki, it is noteworthy that Chojnicki’s affection for his Habsburg homeland – like that of Trotta – is accompanied by irrationality, distorted perceptions, and moral weakness” (Heady, p. 34). Also: “Some critics contend that Roth styled Chojnicki… on himself, thus implying that the reader may take Chojnicki’s words as indicative of Roth’s own views. Conversely, these critics also tend to project the views Roth expressed in his journalism of the 1930s onto the fictional character, reading more into the count’s words than can be justified by the text” (Tonkin, p. 128).

5 “with a changing world, the reactionary Polish Chojnicki also neglects his duties as an imperial steward…” (Fewster, 2007). Aalso: “Despairing of liberal democracy in the face of fascism, Roth moved toward outright reactionary politics” (Joensson).