"What I Saw" by Jospeh Roth is a collection of essays published in various newspapers and magazines dating from 1920-1933. Roth in some respects anticipates writers like Tom Wolfe. His metier is the feuilleton, "a part of a newspaper or magazine devoted to fiction, criticism, or light journalism". At his peak Roth was compensated at the rate of one deutsche mark per line.

Roth's essays reflect his gifts as an accomplished novelist, a penetrating critic and a writer with a point of view that is illustrated by the portraits drawn from his experiences of everyday life in Berlin during the Weimar era. He is unsparing in his criticism of Berlin's architecture, construction projects, cafe society, its bourgeoisie and bohemians, its traffic mess and other facets of life in day to day Berlin.

His more interesting articles describe the life of the Jewish diaspora residing in Berlin, not so much the well to do assimilated Jews but those whose life is contained within the Jewish quarter. Also, his articles on the down and out in Berlin are reminiscent of George Orwell's later account "Down and Out in Paris and London." But the best essays in the collection are the tribute to the assassinated foreign minister, Walter Rathenau, A Visit to the Rathenau Museum (1924). Rathenau was gunned down by extreme nationalists who had marked him for assassination after signing the Treaty of Rapallo in which Germany dropped all claims to Russian territory gained by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk when the Bolsheviks exited World War I. The detail that I enjoyed most in that essay was a conversation with an East Prussian, one Hermann Merkel, a lifetime servant who was employed by the state as a caretaker of Rathenau's home and possessions. Roth asks Merkel if he ever reads any of the books in Rathenau's vast personal library. Merkel replies, "Yes, I don't understand everything in them. But I think to myself: even if a man doesn't understand everything - at least reading won't make him any more stupid". Well said.

The final essay, The Auto-da-Fe of the Mind, is a bitter refection on the fate of the works of distinguished Jewish writers to German culture as the Nazi book burners consigned their works to the flames. He reaches the melancholy conclusion that the triumph of Nazism represents a capitulation of the European mind. "It is capitulating out of weakness, out of sloth, out of apathy, out of lack of imagination (it will be the task of some future generation to establish the reasons for this disgraceful capitulation).

The depths of Roth's pessimism is summed up in the next paragraph, "Now, as the smoke of our burned books rises into the sky, we German writers of Jewish descent must acknowledge above all that we have been defeated. Let us, who were fighting on the front line, under the banner of the European mind, let us fulfill the noblest duty of the defeated warrior: Let us concede our defeat."

These reflections are not of mere historical interest. In our day as in the Germany of the 1930s there is an assault on Western civilization being conducted from the institutions that used to be most responsible for its preservation and transmission. It is our responsibility to resist this assault so as not be in the position of conceding our defeat and trusting that future generations will study the reasons for it and recover what has been lost.

Roth is an impressive thinker and literary stylist. This collection of his journalism is well worth your time. Even i you don't understand or appreciate every essay, reading it won't make you more stupid. ( )

A collection of Roth's journalism, published in Berlin in the twenties. The last article, written in Paris in 1933, tells the world of the fate of Jewish writers in Nazi Germany.

Roth gathers impressions as he wanders the streets of Berlin, in and out of cafes, and nightclubs, the Riechstag and a shelter for the homeless. He writes with wit and passion. A brilliant record of Berlin during the Weimar Republic. ( )

Over a couple of months I have read this uneven collection of newspaper articles by Joseph Roth, famous to me as the author of The Radetsky March. The articles are mainly from the Frankfurter Zeitung about Berlin in the 1920's. These are not political, but more about everyday events or, better, random musings.
The book starts with some articles about Jews - refugees from the East (Poland, Hungary and many from Russian POW camps following WWI) and their area in Berlin, including an article about a model miniature rebuilding of the Temple of Solomon.
There are then a series of articles on various locations or events in Berlin that have caught Roth's attention - night dives (cafes etc), the homeless refugees, the steam baths, the police morgue, the traffic system, new buildings and the pleasure industry.
These sometimes soar, such as the article on skyscrapers:
"It is impossible for the proximity of clouds to have no effect on human beings. The view out of the window, taking in the full boundlessness of the horizon, works on both heart and soul. The lungs take in the air of heaven. Clouds wander past the brows of mortal man as previously only around the brows of Olympians."
and
"Oh— and already you hear that the first skyscraper in Berlin is to contain a great entertainment palace, with cinemas, dance hall, bar, Negro bands, vaudeville, jazz. Because human nature will not deny its weaknesses, even where it is seemingly in the process of overcoming them. And if it were possible for us to build a “planet scraper” and to construct settlements on Mars, the expeditions of scientists and engineers would be accompanied by a delegation of bartenders. I have a shining vision of a bar in the clouds. It’s raining champagne cocktails."
Sometimes the effect is far more prosaic, but still enlightening of a different time.

The final, longer essay written in 1933 and published in Paris after Roth's "voluntary" exile when the Nazis came to power is about the Nazi rise to power. This is a powerful essay and although it is easy to be clever with hindsight, this was wise at the time. The article opens:
"Very few observers anywhere in the world seem to have understood what the Third Reich’s burning of books, the expulsion of Jewish writers, and all its other crazy assaults on the intellect actually mean. The technical apotheosis of the barbarians, the terrible march of the mechanized orangutans, armed with hand grenades, poison gas, ammonia, and nitroglycerine, with gas masks and airplanes, the return of the spiritual (if not the actual) descendants of the Cimbri and Teutoni— all this means far more than the threatened and terrorized world seems to realize: It must be understood. Let me say it loud and clear: The European mind is capitulating. It is capitulating out of weakness, out of sloth, out of apathy, out of lack of imagination (it will be the task of some future generation to establish the reasons for this disgraceful capitulation)."

Overall it is a powerful collection and, through the overall impression of the times it portrays, is more than the sum of its uneven parts. ( )

A fascinating portrait of Berlin between the wars. Witty and ironic snapshots of city life, politics and the arts all lent a hint of sadness by the foreshadowing of what is to come. ( )

Joseph Roth is best-known today as the author of the The Radetzky March (Works of Joseph Roth), but his day job was as a journalist. This book is a collection of columns he wrote as he observed daily life in Berlin. (The correct term for them is "feuilleton").

The titles of the book's parts give a good indication of Roth's topics in the 34 selections published here for the first time in English; for example, the Jewish Quarter, Displaced Persons, Bourgeoisie and Bohemians, and Berlin's Pleasure Industry. While Roth mentions Hitler, Goebbels, and the Nazis occasionally, only the final chapter, Auto-da-Fe of the Mind, is devoted entirely to the subject.

One thing I should make clear, Roth's book is NOT an exploration of the growing power of the Nazis. Given that Berliners came late to Nazism, this is perhaps not that surprising, but it came as a disappointment to me. (The subtitle's reference to 1920-1933 is a bit misleading. Only the final chapter was written in 1933 and the latest prior publication date for any other chapter was 1929.)

Roth did not much like Berlin and his descriptions provide a counterbalance to the numerous views of Berlin's heyday in the 1920's. The book is indispensable to anyone with a great interest in Berlin, especially in the inter-war period, but otherwise of limited interest to most readers - unless you just enjoy a good and well-written feuilleton without regard to the subject matter. ( )