Summary of The Emperor’s Tomb
“The Emperor’s Tomb” tells the story of Franz Ferdinand Trotta, a distant cousin of the ‘Hero of Solferino’ from Roth’s earlier masterpiece “The Radetzky March”. The novel follows Trotta through the turbulent years before, during, and after the First World War. When his Slovenian cousin Joseph Branco visits him in Vienna, the two travel to Zlotogrod in Galicia to see their friend, the Jewish coachman Manes Reisiger. With the outbreak of war, Trotta impulsively marries Elisabeth Kovacs — a young woman he barely knows — before setting off to the Eastern Front with Branco and Reisiger to fight the Russians. Captured and sent to Siberia, Trotta returns home years later to a city and a life irrevocably changed. Struggling to reconnect with his wife and burdened by financial worries and the collapse of the world he once knew, he drifts through Vienna in search of meaning and direction in life.
Reasons to read The Emperor’s Tomb
Joseph Roth regarded “The Emperor’s Tomb” as a continuation of “The Radetzky March”, tracing the decline of the Trotta family and the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire into the interwar years. The novel’s most compelling passages capture Trotta’s return to Vienna in 1918 — a city coming to terms with the loss of its empire and new social, political, and sexual mores. Other notable works by Joseph Roth include “The Spider’s Web“, “Hotel Savoy“, and “The Hundred Days“.
Setting: Austria (Vienna), Ukraine, Russia
Novel set in Austria: Primarily Vienna — the title refers to the Capuchin Crypt on the Neuer Markt, where the Habsburg emperors are buried, and symbolically stands for the burial of the old Austro-Hungarian world. The novel is more firmly set in Vienna than most of Roth’s other books, including “The Radetzky March”. Other settings of this novel include the fictional Galician town of Zlotogrod (in present-day Ukraine, near Zolochiv) and Siberia (Russia).
Original title: Die Kapuzinergruft
Year of publication: 1938
Nr of pages: 128
