Joseph Roth: A Life in Letters

ABOUT THE JOSEPH ROTH ARCHIVES

AT THE LEO BAECK INSTITUTE

Since its founding in 1955, the Leo Baeck Institute (www.lbi.org) in New York has become the premier research library and archive devoted exclusively to documenting the history of German-speaking Jewry. Its role in preserving the literary legacy of Joseph Roth is particularly noteworthy and not surprising, since one of the first directors of LBI was Fred Grubel, a cousin of Joseph Roth. It was through this connection that LBI archives became the repository for a large number of his manuscripts and notes, including fragments of his novels from the 1920s and 1930s:

The manuscripts Der blinde Spiegel (The Blind Mirror), Büste des Kaisers (The Bust of the Emperor), the historical essay Clemenceau (Clemenceau), Die Hundert Tage (The Ballad of the Hundred Days), and an unfinished novel called Trotzki Roman, published after the Second World War as Der stumme Prophet (The Silent Prophet), are complete or close to completeness. The manuscript Die Hundert Tage (The Ballad of the Hundred Days) contains 220 pages in Joseph Roth’s own handwriting and 898 pages of the typewritten manuscript with his own corrections. The manuscript under the title Trotzki Roman, alternatively known also as Roman eines jungen Revolutionärs, can also be found here.

In addition, there are substantial portions of other works, such as Clemenceau, Legende von Trinker Andreas / Legende vom heiligen Trinker, and Kapuzinergruft. These texts are partly in Joseph Roth’s handwriting, partly carbon copies of his own handwriting, and partly typewritten with his own corrections.

Aside from the manuscripts of novels and longer works, there are articles, essays, and shorter pieces written between 1915 and the end of his life in 1939, newspaper articles published between 1926 and 1939, and a number of critical reviews of his works. The LBI Roth collections also contain correspondence and documents concerning his estate and rights to his works (compiled by his cousin Fred Grubel) as well as materials regarding scholarly works about Joseph Roth, academic conferences, and exhibits.

The photographs for Joseph Roth have all been provided from the Leo Baeck Institute archives.