Radetzky March
From 1930, Roth's fiction became less concerned with contemporary society, with which he had become increasingly disillusioned, and began to evoke a melancholic nostalgia for life in imperial Central Europe before 1914. He often portrayed the fate of homeless wanderers looking for a place to live, in particular Jews and former citizens of the old Austria-Hungary, who, with the downfall of the monarchy, had lost their only possible "Heimat" ("true home"). In his later works, Roth appeared to wish that the monarchy could be restored. His longing for a more tolerant past may be partly explained as a reaction against the political extremism of the time, which culminated in Germany with National Socialism. The novel "Radetzky March" (1932) and the story "The Bust of the Emperor" (1935) are typical of this late phase. In another novel, "The Emperor's Tomb" (1938), Roth describes the fate of a cousin of the hero of "Radetzky March" up to Germany's annexation of Austria in 1938.