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Alfred Döblin and Joseph Roth wrote their texts about Poland and Polish Jews at the same time (1924-1927). Th e article not only compares their works, but also documents that Roth might have felt called upon by Döblin to write essays Th e Wandering Jews. He was indebted to Döblin for giving him the courage to publicly admit his East-Jewish roots and was inspired by his subjective, personal narrative. In several passages he refers to Journey in Poland and enters into dialogue with Döblin.

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This article demonstrates that in some contemporary German‐language novels Polish motifs serve as a foil for the negative projection of cultural self‐images. The image of Poles is stereotypical because it contains a high degree of generalisation and embodies world views – such as nationalism, anti‐Semitism, anti‐Romanyism, fundamentalism – which contradict the ideal self of being tolerant and open‐minded. The fictionalisation of historical and contemporary events in the works examined serves to demonise Poland, which, from the perspective of postcolonial theory, can be read as a mixture of legacy and modified continuation of the German colonial discourse on Poland.

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