The Radetzky March

Joseph Roth’s 1932 historical novel, Radetzky March, was written in the author’s native German, published to enormous acclaim, and quickly translated into many languages, including English. Universally recognized as "one of the greatest German-language writers of the twentieth century,” as J. M. Coetzee put it in an article in The New York Times Review of Books, Roth suffered greatly as Hitler and the Nazis came to power in the 1930s. He was forced to flee the country both because of his Jewish heritage and because he was an intellectual, a liberal journalist, and a prominent writer.

In Radetzky March, Roth satirizes the decline and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the last dregs of which are exemplified in the several generations of the Trotta family chronicled by the novel. We watch as the Trottas go from the height of their professional soldier roots to an eventual downfall. Filled with Roth’s signature wit, the novel diagrams the comedy of unintended consequences, as well-intentioned actions lead ultimately to disaster. The novel’s ironic title comes from a composition by composer Johann Strauss Sr., a march written to honor the nineteenth-century Austrian Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky von Radetz – music that marks the heyday of the empire that now is falling.

The novel opens on June 24, 1859, during the Battle of Solferino, a climactic encounter during the Second War of Italian Independence when France and a newly unified Italy fought against the Austrian Empire. The real-life Emperor, Franz Joseph I, comes under sniper fire. Just in time, the eventual patriarch of the Trotta family, Infantry Lieutenant Trotta bravely saves the ruler’s life by pulling him down off his horse.



The well-meaning, though not particularly wise Emperor rewards Trotta’s actions by ennobling him to the rank of Baron. Although this is ostensibly a mark of huge favor, the young man finds his life turned upside down by his new social rank. Everyone from his old life now treats him as a man of high quality, deferring to him despite the fact that Trotta doesn’t act any differently. Even his own father can’t seem to see his son as anything other than a social superior, bowing and scraping as though to a nobleman acquaintance.

Baron Trotta is forced to leave his old life behind to make his way into the aristocratic circles where he ostensibly belongs. There, of course, born nobles treat him as a Johnny-come-lately pariah, and he never quite ends up fitting in. Meanwhile, the fond but most foolish Emperor Franz Joseph thinks he has done Trotta a great favor and continues giving titles as rewards to his other subjects.

Baron Trotta marries and has a son. When the boy goes to school, the Baron is appalled to see that the national school system is teaching a false and historically revisionist version of the way Trotta had rescued the Emperor during the battle. For one thing, the textbook describes Trotta as a much higher status cavalry soldier rather than what he really was: infantry.



However, when the Baron asks the Emperor to fix this, the Emperor decides to just excise the whole incident from the history book altogether. He worries that changing it to the truth would cause a decline in patriotism. This decision echoes down the generations of the Trotta family, who now think of themselves as born aristocrats and see no value in the old military legend.

Frustrated, the Baron decides on a bureaucratic career for his son rather than a military one. The second Baron Trotta becomes a district administrator in accordance with his father’s wishes, but never really understands why his father didn’t want him to join the military.

When the third Baron Trotta comes of age, the second Baron Trotta eagerly sends his son to become an officer in the cavalry, assuming that he will be echoing the footsteps of his famous, Emperor-saving grandfather.



However, the third Baron Trotta treats his position and rank as an excuse to travel through the Austro-Hungarian Empire as a wastrel. Because the duties of an officer during peacetime are scant, his is time is spent on wine, women, song, gambling, and dueling. Eventually, a particularly dishonorable and fatal duel forces the third Baron Trotta to resign his elite Uhlan cavalry commission and instead enter the less prestigious Jager infantry unit: he has reversed his grandfather’s legend.

The Jagers are sent to put down a workers revolt, and the third Baron Trotta is horrified at the brutality he has been forced to enact. During the first days of WWI, he loses his life in a small skirmish. Two years later, Emperor Franz Joseph and the second Baron Trotta die within days of each other. At his funeral, the mourners discuss the fact that the fate of the Trottas was tied to the fate of the Empire.