Ernst Toller

The German playwright Ernst Toller (1893-1939) was one of the best-known of the dramatists of the expressionist school.

Ernst Toller was born on Dec. 1, 1893, at Samotschin near Bromberg, the son of a businessman. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, and Grenoble. In 1914 he volunteered for war service, but the experience of the trenches changed his life. Released from the army after a breakdown, Toller then gravitated toward the left in Bavaria and in 1917 was sentenced to imprisonment for pacifist views and activities. During this incarceration he composed his first play, Die Wandlung (1919; Transfiguration).

Transfiguration is an exemplary work of the expressionist theater. The title points to that transformation of heart and soul which is the theme of many expressionist plays. The drama proceeds in a series of stages (Stationen) and depicts a man's "way." It intermingles scenes portraying external events with others displaying the activity of the subconscious mind. The horrors of war transform the hero from a patriotic volunteer to a revolutionary fighter for humanity.

In 1918 Toller became a member of the Central Committee of the Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Councils in Bavaria. In 1919 he was jailed for 5 years for his part in the abortive Eisner coup. During this imprisonment Toller composed his two other best-known plays, Masse Mensch (1920; Mass and Man) and Die Maschinenstürmer (1922; The Machine-wreckers). These works express the disillusionment of the frustrated revolutionary. The former is cast in the abstract expressionist mold, the characters being representative types, the Woman, the Husband, and so on.

The Woman represents the humane idealist who longs for change but abhors violence; and her antagonist, the Nameless One, regards violence as necessary and subordinates the individual ruthlessly to the supposed welfare of the masses. The Machine-wreckers is a more realistic play based on the Luddite disturbances in England in 1815; here again the hero is a social idealist destroyed by the hate of those he wishes to save.

Of Toller's further plays the most notable is Hinkemann (1922), an interesting treatment of the returning soldier motif. Toller moves away from avant-garde technique and abstract characters both here and in Hoppla, wir leben! (1927; Such Is Life), a sarcastic depiction of the Roaring Twenties. Of his prose works, all essays, Briefe aus dem Gefängnis (1936) deserves mention. His later dramas Feuer aus den Kesseln (1930) and Die blonde Göttin (1932) are of less interest.

The tragedy of Toller's themes reflects the disillusionment of his life. He left Germany in 1933 and committed suicide in New York on May 22, 1939.

Further Reading

Toller's autobiography is I Was a German (1933; trans. 1934). A full-length treatment of Toller in English is William A. Willebrand, Ernst Toller and His Ideology (1945). John M. Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics (1968), gives a comprehensive bibliography. A useful short account can be found in Hugh F. Garten, Modern German Drama (1959), which also provides background material, as does Richard Samuel and R. Hinton Thomas, Expressionism in German Life, Literature and the Theatre, 1910-24 (1939).

Additional Sources

Dove, Richard, He was a German: a biography of Ernst Toller, London: Libris, 1990.

Toller, Ernst, I was a German: the autobiography of a revolutionary, New York: Paragon House, 1991. □

Toller, Ernst (1893–1939), German poet and dramatist, one of the best and most mature exponents of Expressionism. His first play, Die Wandlung (Transfiguration, 1919), written during his imprisonment as a pacifist after being invalided out of the trenches in 1916, is a plea for tolerance and the abolition of war. It was followed by Masse-Mensch (1920) and Die Maschinenstürmer (1922). The latter, as The Machine Wreckers, in a translation by Ashley Dukes, was seen in London in 1923. It is less Expressionist in technique than Masse-Mensch, which as Man and the Masses was produced in New York in 1924 by Lee Simonson for the Theatre Guild, and also less pessimistic, since Toller, in the person of his hero Jim Cobbett, foresees the day when the rebellious workers will be an organized and stable body of intelligent men. But Toller's later plays, of which Hoppla, wir leben! (1927), first produced by Piscator, was staged in London in 1929 as Hoppla!, became progressively less hopeful as he watched the decline of freedom in Germany, and in 1933 he left for England and the USA, where he committed suicide on hearing of the outbreak of the Second World War. Among Toller's other plays were Wunder in Amerika (on Mary Baker Eddy) and Feuer aus den Kesseln (on a naval mutiny in 1917), both first produced in 1930. The former, as Miracle in America, was seen in London in 1934, the latter, as Draw the Fires!, in 1935. Die blinde Göttin (1932), on a miscarriage of justice, was translated in 1953 as Blind Man's Buff.

Ernst Toller , 1893-1939, German dramatist and poet of the expressionist school. He was imprisoned (1919-24) for participating in the Communist Bavarian revolution. In 1932 he left Germany, and in 1936 he went to New York City, where he later committed suicide. His plays of social protest include Die Wandlung (1919, tr. Transfiguration, 1935); Masse Mensch (1920, tr. Man and the Masses, 1924); Die Maschinen-stürmer (1922, tr. The Machine-Wreckers, 1923), based on the Luddite riots in England; Hinkeman (1924, tr. Brokenbow, 1926); and Pastor Hall (tr. 1939), about Martin Niemoeller. Schwalbenbuch [swallow book] (1923), a collection of lyric verse, and Briefe aus dem Gefängnis [letters from prison] (1935), an account of his imprisonment, appeared together in English translation as Look Through the Bars (1937).

Bibliography: See his autobiography, Eine Jugend in Deutschland (1933, tr. I Was a German, 1934); study by J. M. Spalek (1968).