Romantic Reception and Exile Experience. On the Representation of Identity Crisis and Heteronomy in Joseph Roth's Confession of a Murderer, told in one Night

Abstract

The following article discusses the perception of the exile in Joseph Roth's novel Beichte eines Murders, erzahft in einer Nacht published in 1936. Based on the references to E.T.A. Hoffmann's Die Elixiere des Teufels, which not only concern formal and textual aspects, but also the key problems of both texts, the study wants to show, how Roth deals with the issues of personal identity and heteronomy under the living conditions of exile. Roth combines the typical romantic motive of the Doppelganger with matters of pass-affairs, which were crucial for the emigrants in the 1930th and 40th. Simultaneously the author expresses the feelings of many emigrants, that their life and fate were determined by obscure political processes and that they were at the mercy of an arbitrary and uncanny bureaucracy.