author
Eugen Roth
1895–1976
Best known for witty, warm-hearted poems about everyday human weaknesses, this Munich-born writer turned small observations into memorable humor. His work made him one of the most widely read German-language poets of the 20th century.
1 Audiobook
Die Dinge, die unendlich uns umkreisen
by Eugen Roth
About the author
Born in Munich in 1895, Eugen Roth was the son of writer and journalist Hermann Roth. He served as a volunteer in the First World War and was severely wounded, then went on to study history, art history, and philosophy, earning a doctorate in 1922.
He worked as an editor for the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten before building a wide readership with poems that mixed lightness, irony, and sympathy. His 1935 volume Ein Mensch became his best-known success, and later collections helped make him one of the most popular German-language lyric poets of his time.
Roth spent most of his life closely tied to Munich, the city where he was born and where he died in 1976. Readers still return to his verse for its gentle humor and its clear-eyed understanding of how people think, stumble, and carry on.