Ernst Toller (1 December 1893 – 22 May 1939) was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, after which he became the head of its army. He was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Bavarian Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlin. While in prison Toller wrote several plays that gained him international renown. They were performed in London and New York City as well as in Berlin.
22 May 1939(1939-05-22) (aged 45) New York City, US
Ernst Toller during his imprisonment in the Niederschönenfeld fortress (early 1920s)
In 1933 Toller was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power. He did a lecture tour in 1936–1937 in the United States and Canada, settling in California for a while before going to New York. He joined other exiles there. He died by suicide in May 1939.
In 2000, several of his plays were published in an English translation. The most recent comprehensive biography of Toller is by Robert Ellis, "Ernst Toller and German Society. Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics" Fairleigh Dickison University Press, 2013.
Toller was born in 1893 into a Jewish family in Samotschin, Germany (now Szamocin, Poland). He was the son of Ida (Kohn) and Max Toller, a pharmacist. His parents ran a general store.[1]
At the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for the German Army. After serving for 13 months on the Western Front,[2] he suffered a complete physical and psychological collapse. His first drama, Transformation (Die Wandlung, 1919), was wrought from his wartime experiences.
Ernst Toller (center) and Max Weber (foreground, bearded) in May 1917 at the Lauensteiner Tagung
Karlheinz Martin's production of Transformation in Berlin with Fritz Kortner as the war returnee, 30 September 1919
Together with leading anarchists, such as B. Traven and Gustav Landauer, and Toller's party, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), Toller was involved in the short-lived 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic. The communists were against the founding of a communist republic at this point.[3] He served as president from 6 April to 12 April.[2] Communists agitated against Toller and his councils and sent speakers into soldiers barracks to announce that the Council Republic did not deserve to be defended.[4] He issued numerous decrees, the press was socialised, the mining industry was socialised, and the eight-hour working day made legally binding. He decreed that citizens could withdraw only 100 marks per day from the banks, and issued reassurance to the workers that these measures were directed against the major capitalists who were attempting to take money abroad. A decree was made against exorbitant rents.[5] His government members were not always well-chosen. For instance, the Foreign Affairs Deputy Dr. Franz Lipp (who had been admitted several times to psychiatric hospitals) informed Vladimir Lenin via cable that the ousted former Minister-President, Johannes Hoffmann, had fled to Bamberg and taken the key to the ministry toilet with him. On April 13, 1919 the Communist Party seized power, with Eugen Leviné as their leader.[6] In May 1919, the republic was defeated by the Freikorps.[7]
The noted authors Max Weber and Thomas Mann testified on Toller's behalf when he was tried for his part in the revolution. He was sentenced to five years in prison and served his sentence in the prisons of Stadelheim, Neuburg, Eichstätt. From February 1920 until his release, he was in the fortress of Niederschönenfeld, where he spent 149 days in solitary confinement and 24 days on hunger strike.[8]
Toller was unable to see the plays he had written in prison performed until after his release in July 1925. The most famous of his later dramas, Hoppla, We're Alive! (Hoppla, wir Leben!), directed by Erwin Piscator, premiered in Berlin in 1925. It tells of a revolutionary discharged from a mental hospital after eight years, who discovers that his former comrades have grown complacent and compromised within the system they once opposed. In despair, he kills himself.[9]
Exile, death and legacy
Two of his early plays were produced in New York in the 1930s: The Machine Wreckers (1922), whose opening night in 1937 he attended, and No More Peace, produced in 1937 by the Federal Theatre Project and presented in New York City in 1938. Their sense of immediacy was gone: the first play was related to the First World War and its aftermath, and the second an earlier period of the rise of the Nazis. Their style was outmoded for New York, and the poor reception added to Toller's discouragement.[10]
Suffering from depression, separated from his wife and struggling with financial woes (he had given all his money to Spanish Civil War refugees), Toller committed suicide on 22 May 1939.[11] He hanged himself in his room[2] at the Mayflower Hotel,[12] after laying out on his hotel desk "photos of Spanish children who had been killed by fascist bombs".[13]
The English author Robert Payne, who knew Toller in Spain and in Paris, later wrote in his diary that Toller had said shortly before his death:[14]
"If ever you read that I committed suicide, I beg you not to believe it." Payne continued: "He hanged himself with the silk cord of his nightgown in a hotel in New York two years ago. This is what the newspapers said at the time, but I continue to believe that he was murdered".
Poster for the Federal Theatre Project production of No More Peace in Cincinnati, Ohio (1937)
Transfiguration (Die Wandlung) (1919)
Masses Man (Masse Mensch) (1921)
The Machine Wreckers (Die Maschinenstürmer) (1922)
Hinkemann (org. Der deutsche Hinkemann), Uraufführung (19 September 1923) Produced under titles of The Red Laugh and Bloody Laughter (US). Issued in England by the Nonesuch Press in 1926 under the title Brokenbrow with a translation by Vera Mendel.
Mary Baker Eddy (1930), play in five acts, with Hermann Kesten
After exile:
Eine Jugend in Deutschland (A Youth in Germany) (1933), autobiography, Amsterdam
I Was a German: The Autobiography of a Revolutionary (1934), New York: Paragon
Nie Wieder Friede! (No More Peace) (1935)[10] First published and produced in English, as he was living in London, but it was written originally in German.
Briefe aus dem Gefängnis (1935) (Letters from Prison), Amsterdam
Letters from Prison: Including Poems and a New Version of 'The Swallow Book' (1936), London
In 2000, Alan Pearlman published his translation into English of several of Toller's plays.[15] The literary rights to the works of Ernst Toller were the property of the novelist Katharine Weber until the copyright expired on 31 December 2009. His works have now entered the public domain.
Influence
The English dramatist Torben Betts has reworked Hinkemann; his play Broken was produced in the UK in 2011.
Paul Schrader's 2017 film First Reformed centers on a troubled, although Protestant, character named for Toller.
A poem of Miklos Radnoti (Radnóti Miklós) Hungarian poet, writer and translator was published as "Thursday" (Hungarian title: Csütörtök) on 26 May 1939.[16]
References
^Ossar, M.; Paul Avrich Collection (Library of Congress) (1980). Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller: The Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom. State University of New York Press. p. 2. ISBN978-0-87395-393-1. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
^ abcErnst Toller. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 17 February 2012.
^Jeffrey S. Gaab (2006). Munich: Hofbräuhaus & History. Peter Lang. p. 58. ISBN9780820486062.
^Reed, Susan (12 April 2019). "Poets in Power: the 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic". The British Library. Retrieved 30 December 2021.
^Dove, Richard (1990). He Was a German: A Biography of Ernst Toller. London: Libris. ISBN1870352858.
^Pearlman, Alan Raphael, ed. and trans. 2000. Plays One: Transformation, Masses Man, Hoppla, We're Alive!. By Ernst Toller. Absolute Classics series. London: Oberon. ISBN1-84002-195-0. pp. 17, 31
^ abPeter Bauland, The Hooded Eagle: Modern German Drama on the New York Stage, Syracuse University Press, 1968, pp. 112-114
^Ossar, M.; Paul Avrich Collection (Library of Congress) (1980). Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller: The Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom. State University of New York Press. p. 8. ISBN978-0-87395-393-1. Retrieved 6 September 2020.
^Fisher, Oscar (August 1939). "The Suicide of Ernst Toller". New International, Vol. 5, No. 8. Retrieved 22 April 2009.
^Robert Payne, "Diary entry for May 23, 1942", Forever China (Chungking Diaries), New York: Dodd, Mead, 1945
^Pearlman, Alan Raphael, ed. and trans. 2000. Plays One: Transformation, Masses Man, Hoppla, We're Alive!. By Ernst Toller. Absolute Classics series. London: Oberon. ISBN1-84002-195-0
^"Irodalmi antológia :: Radnóti Miklós: Thursday (Csütörtök Angol nyelven)". Magyarul Bábelben (in Hungarian). Retrieved 6 September 2020.
Dove, Richard (1990). He was a German: A Biography of Ernst Toller. Libris, London. ISBN1-870352-85-8.
Fuld, Werner; Ostermaier(Hrsg.), Albert (1996). Die Göttin und ihr Sozialist: Gristiane Grauthoff - ihr Leben mit Ernst Toller. Weidle Verlag, Bonn. ISBN3-931135-18-7.
Ossar, Michael (1980). Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller: The Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom. State University of New York Press, Albany. ISBN0873953932.
Mauthner, Martin (2007). German Writers in French Exile, 1933-1940. London. ISBN978-0853035411.
Ellis, Robert; Toller and, Ernst; German Society (2013). Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics, 1914-1939. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.
Further reading
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ernst Toller.
Ellis, Robert (10 June 2013). Ernst Toller and German Society: Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics, 1914–1939. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN9781611476361. ...it is Toller the social critic rather than Toller the dramatist with which this book is concerned, his ideas, his visions for Germany and Europe as transmitted in his works of fiction and prose. (Ebook)
"The Society: About us". Ernst-Toller-Gesellschaft e.V. Neuburg an der Donau. (Ernst Toller Society)
ernst, toller, december, 1893, 1939, german, author, playwright, left, wing, politician, revolutionary, known, expressionist, plays, served, 1919, days, president, short, lived, bavarian, soviet, republic, after, which, became, head, army, imprisoned, five, ye. Ernst Toller 1 December 1893 22 May 1939 was a German author playwright left wing politician and revolutionary known for his Expressionist plays He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short lived Bavarian Soviet Republic after which he became the head of its army He was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Bavarian Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlin While in prison Toller wrote several plays that gained him international renown They were performed in London and New York City as well as in Berlin Ernst TollerPresident of the Bavarian Soviet RepublicIn office 6 April 1919 12 April 1919Preceded byOffice establishedSucceeded byEugen LevinePersonal detailsBorn 1893 12 01 1 December 1893Samotschin Posen GermanyDied22 May 1939 1939 05 22 aged 45 New York City USErnst Toller during his imprisonment in the Niederschonenfeld fortress early 1920s In 1933 Toller was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power He did a lecture tour in 1936 1937 in the United States and Canada settling in California for a while before going to New York He joined other exiles there He died by suicide in May 1939 In 2000 several of his plays were published in an English translation The most recent comprehensive biography of Toller is by Robert Ellis Ernst Toller and German Society Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics Fairleigh Dickison University Press 2013 Contents 1 Life and career 2 Exile death and legacy 3 Works 4 Influence 5 References 6 Sources 7 Further readingLife and career EditToller was born in 1893 into a Jewish family in Samotschin Germany now Szamocin Poland He was the son of Ida Kohn and Max Toller a pharmacist His parents ran a general store 1 At the outbreak of World War I he volunteered for the German Army After serving for 13 months on the Western Front 2 he suffered a complete physical and psychological collapse His first drama Transformation Die Wandlung 1919 was wrought from his wartime experiences Ernst Toller center and Max Weber foreground bearded in May 1917 at the Lauensteiner Tagung Karlheinz Martin s production of Transformation in Berlin with Fritz Kortner as the war returnee 30 September 1919 Together with leading anarchists such as B Traven and Gustav Landauer and Toller s party the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany USPD Toller was involved in the short lived 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic The communists were against the founding of a communist republic at this point 3 He served as president from 6 April to 12 April 2 Communists agitated against Toller and his councils and sent speakers into soldiers barracks to announce that the Council Republic did not deserve to be defended 4 He issued numerous decrees the press was socialised the mining industry was socialised and the eight hour working day made legally binding He decreed that citizens could withdraw only 100 marks per day from the banks and issued reassurance to the workers that these measures were directed against the major capitalists who were attempting to take money abroad A decree was made against exorbitant rents 5 His government members were not always well chosen For instance the Foreign Affairs Deputy Dr Franz Lipp who had been admitted several times to psychiatric hospitals informed Vladimir Lenin via cable that the ousted former Minister President Johannes Hoffmann had fled to Bamberg and taken the key to the ministry toilet with him On April 13 1919 the Communist Party seized power with Eugen Levine as their leader 6 In May 1919 the republic was defeated by the Freikorps 7 The noted authors Max Weber and Thomas Mann testified on Toller s behalf when he was tried for his part in the revolution He was sentenced to five years in prison and served his sentence in the prisons of Stadelheim Neuburg Eichstatt From February 1920 until his release he was in the fortress of Niederschonenfeld where he spent 149 days in solitary confinement and 24 days on hunger strike 8 Toller was unable to see the plays he had written in prison performed until after his release in July 1925 The most famous of his later dramas Hoppla We re Alive Hoppla wir Leben directed by Erwin Piscator premiered in Berlin in 1925 It tells of a revolutionary discharged from a mental hospital after eight years who discovers that his former comrades have grown complacent and compromised within the system they once opposed In despair he kills himself 9 Exile death and legacy EditTwo of his early plays were produced in New York in the 1930s The Machine Wreckers 1922 whose opening night in 1937 he attended and No More Peace produced in 1937 by the Federal Theatre Project and presented in New York City in 1938 Their sense of immediacy was gone the first play was related to the First World War and its aftermath and the second an earlier period of the rise of the Nazis Their style was outmoded for New York and the poor reception added to Toller s discouragement 10 Suffering from depression separated from his wife and struggling with financial woes he had given all his money to Spanish Civil War refugees Toller committed suicide on 22 May 1939 11 He hanged himself in his room 2 at the Mayflower Hotel 12 after laying out on his hotel desk photos of Spanish children who had been killed by fascist bombs 13 The English author Robert Payne who knew Toller in Spain and in Paris later wrote in his diary that Toller had said shortly before his death 14 If ever you read that I committed suicide I beg you not to believe it Payne continued He hanged himself with the silk cord of his nightgown in a hotel in New York two years ago This is what the newspapers said at the time but I continue to believe that he was murdered W H Auden s poem In Memory of Ernst Toller was published in Another Time 1940 Works Edit Poster for the Federal Theatre Project production of No More Peace in Cincinnati Ohio 1937 Transfiguration Die Wandlung 1919 Masses Man Masse Mensch 1921 The Machine Wreckers Die Maschinensturmer 1922 Hinkemann org Der deutsche Hinkemann Urauffuhrung 19 September 1923 Produced under titles of The Red Laugh and Bloody Laughter US Issued in England by the Nonesuch Press in 1926 under the title Brokenbrow with a translation by Vera Mendel Hoppla We re Alive Hoppla wir leben 1927 Feuer aus den Kesseln 1930 Mary Baker Eddy 1930 play in five acts with Hermann KestenAfter exile Eine Jugend in Deutschland A Youth in Germany 1933 autobiography Amsterdam I Was a German The Autobiography of a Revolutionary 1934 New York Paragon Nie Wieder Friede No More Peace 1935 10 First published and produced in English as he was living in London but it was written originally in German Briefe aus dem Gefangnis 1935 Letters from Prison Amsterdam Letters from Prison Including Poems and a New Version of The Swallow Book 1936 LondonIn 2000 Alan Pearlman published his translation into English of several of Toller s plays 15 The literary rights to the works of Ernst Toller were the property of the novelist Katharine Weber until the copyright expired on 31 December 2009 His works have now entered the public domain Influence EditThe English dramatist Torben Betts has reworked Hinkemann his play Broken was produced in the UK in 2011 Toller was a central character in the Miles Franklin Award winning novel All That I Am by Anna Funder Paul Schrader s 2017 film First Reformed centers on a troubled although Protestant character named for Toller A poem of Miklos Radnoti Radnoti Miklos Hungarian poet writer and translator was published as Thursday Hungarian title Csutortok on 26 May 1939 16 References Edit Ossar M Paul Avrich Collection Library of Congress 1980 Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller The Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom State University of New York Press p 2 ISBN 978 0 87395 393 1 Retrieved 6 September 2020 a b c Ernst Toller Encyclopaedia Britannica Retrieved 17 February 2012 Volker Weidermann Dreamers p 141 Volker Weidermann Dreamers p 150 Volker Weidermann Dreamers p 152 Jeffrey S Gaab 2006 Munich Hofbrauhaus amp History Peter Lang p 58 ISBN 9780820486062 Reed Susan 12 April 2019 Poets in Power the 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic The British Library Retrieved 30 December 2021 Dove Richard 1990 He Was a German A Biography of Ernst Toller London Libris ISBN 1870352858 Pearlman Alan Raphael ed and trans 2000 Plays One Transformation Masses Man Hoppla We re Alive By Ernst Toller Absolute Classics series London Oberon ISBN 1 84002 195 0 pp 17 31 a b Peter Bauland The Hooded Eagle Modern German Drama on the New York Stage Syracuse University Press 1968 pp 112 114 Ossar M Paul Avrich Collection Library of Congress 1980 Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller The Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom State University of New York Press p 8 ISBN 978 0 87395 393 1 Retrieved 6 September 2020 Fisher Oscar August 1939 The Suicide of Ernst Toller New International Vol 5 No 8 Retrieved 22 April 2009 Jean Michel Palmier Weimar in Exile pg 360 Robert Payne Diary entry for May 23 1942 Forever China Chungking Diaries New York Dodd Mead 1945 Pearlman Alan Raphael ed and trans 2000 Plays One Transformation Masses Man Hoppla We re Alive By Ernst Toller Absolute Classics series London Oberon ISBN 1 84002 195 0 Irodalmi antologia Radnoti Miklos Thursday Csutortok Angol nyelven Magyarul Babelben in Hungarian Retrieved 6 September 2020 Sources EditTankred Dorst 1968 Toller suhrkamp ed Suhrkamp Verlag ISBN 3 518 10294 X Dove Richard 1990 He was a German A Biography of Ernst Toller Libris London ISBN 1 870352 85 8 Fuld Werner Ostermaier Hrsg Albert 1996 Die Gottin und ihr Sozialist Gristiane Grauthoff ihr Leben mit Ernst Toller Weidle Verlag Bonn ISBN 3 931135 18 7 Ossar Michael 1980 Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller The Realm of Necessity and the Realm of Freedom State University of New York Press Albany ISBN 0873953932 Mauthner Martin 2007 German Writers in French Exile 1933 1940 London ISBN 978 0853035411 Ellis Robert Toller and Ernst German Society 2013 Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics 1914 1939 Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Further reading Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ernst Toller Ellis Robert 10 June 2013 Ernst Toller and German Society Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics 1914 1939 Fairleigh Dickinson University Press ISBN 9781611476361 it is Toller the social critic rather than Toller the dramatist with which this book is concerned his ideas his visions for Germany and Europe as transmitted in his works of fiction and prose Ebook The Society About us Ernst Toller Gesellschaft e V Neuburg an der Donau Ernst Toller Society Henry Toller Collectionat the Harry Ransom Center Collection Ernst Toller papers Archives at Yale MS 498 Archive for the Ernst Toller Category Red Yucca 18 December 2010 Works by Ernst Toller at Faded Page Canada Online version of Eine Jugend in Deutschland Ernst Toller Universitatsbibliothek der FU Berlin archived link containing many links to other sites and works about Toller Ernst Toller at Find a Grave Newspaper clippings about Ernst Toller in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Ernst Toller amp oldid 1124108909, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
