With the Radetzky March, Joseph Roth published his first Austria novel in 1932 and had international success with it: the novel about the decline of the Danube monarchy ended in 1916 with the death of Emperor Franz Joseph I. This farewell to the k . u.k. Roth added monarchy to the Capuchin Crypt in 1938. In the form of the first-person narrative, he chose the perspective of a demoralized member...

Job was Roth's first resounding success as an author - and together with the Radetzky March, which appeared a year later, also formed the artistic highlight of his work: the little teacher Mendel Singer experienced great suffering, turned against his God and only found his way back to America at the end of his life the wondrous reunion with his son, who he believed dead, returned to his faith....

Roth's great novel established his world literary reputation: in an inimitable way he drew a careful portrait of that bygone era, which even gains amiable features from the weaknesses and mistakes of the declining monarchy, but at the same time shows the meaninglessness and rigidity of the society, which was almost entirely geared towards the military. The novel is accessible in this edition in...

The leviathan, the legendary, huge fish of the Old Testament, ultimately derived from pagan mythology, also received the supervision of the coral from God. Roth's novel of the same name revolves around the life of the small coral trader Nissen Piczenik, who in the end, after losing his business, increasingly disengages from his small village home and his faith and finally dies in the sea. The...

'The appearance of the following scenes is excluded for the time being,' Schnitzler himself wrote about his comedy. Indeed, the first edition (1903) unleashed a wave of outrage. The first performance (1920) was disrupted by controlled demonstrations; further performances were banned, two actors were reported for 'indecency'.

'Stupid boy.' Those two words, uttered by a baker, are enough to destroy Lieutenant Gustl. His honor cannot be restored because his opponent is not capable of satisfaction. With death as the only way out, Gustl wanders through the streets of Vienna. Arthur Schnitzler's novella, designed as an inner monologue, gives direct insight into the consciousness of the (anti)hero who, controlled by...

Professor Unrat torments his students, even follows them privately - right into a nightclub. There, however, he succumbs to the charms of a ding-a-ling singer, and the end of the tyrant is heralded. Heinrich Mann writes about the main character of his novel that she is 'a new expression of the phenomenon that has so often shaken me, power'. With the film The Blue Angel, in which Marlene...

A young couple and three days of happiness - the little prose idyll about the lovers Claire and Wölfchen, who try to escape the everyday life of Berlin's big city, made Kurt Tucholsky famous overnight. His first and lightest book. A wonderful summer read, not only for lovers.

'What comes after?' If life after death were to be what Kurt Tucholsky envisioned, then it wouldn't be bad at all: sitting on a cloud with a friend and contemplating life. In the 1920s he devoted himself to the hereafter, God, human errors and relationships in 20 profound and amusing stories that appeared as a column in the Weltbuehne. With an afterword by Ute Maack. Illustrated by Hannah Kolling.

War. Terrible and hateful. Ernst Graeber - an ordinary German soldier - for the first time after two years of war goes on vacation for three weeks. Three priceless weeks - time to live! He leaves to be at war again - in a city where endless bombing. In the city, where residents are afraid to breathe once again, where no one can ever be trusted with their thoughts and feelings, otherwise -...

'Arc de Triomphe' is a poignant love story against all odds, love that brings pain, but also gives endless joy. The scene is Paris on the eve of World War II. The hero is a refugee from Germany, without documents, hiding from both the French and the Nazis, a surgeon who saves human lives. The heroine is an Italian actress, surrounded by fans, quick-tempered, like all artists, beautiful and...