Ernst Toller

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ernst Toller (around 1923)

Ernst Toller (born December 1, 1893 in Samotschin , Posen Province ; died May 22, 1939 in New York City , New York ) was a German writer and playwright , politician and left-wing socialist revolutionary.

As a temporary chairman of the Bavarian USPD and protagonist of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic , he was arrested after the crackdown in June 1919 and a month later to five years imprisonment convicted. He narrowly escaped the death penalty.

During his imprisonment and even more afterwards, he became known as one of the leading representatives of literary expressionism in the Weimar Republic , especially with his dramas .

In 1933 he first emigrated to Switzerland . After the National Socialists came to power in the German Reich, Toller was formally expatriated from Germany due to his Jewish origins and political stance . His works were on the list of "burned books" defamed as "un-German" in May 1933 under the Nazi dictatorship. After several stops in exile (apart from short-term lecture tours in various countries, especially Switzerland and England), he came to the USA in 1937. The pacifist and political moralist Ernst Toller resigned himself to the successes of fascist movements , which he had already warned about in the 1920s, and was personally disappointed. He began suffering from relapsing depression and passed away by suicide in 1939 in the United States at the age of 45 .

Toller's most successful works include the dramas Masse Mensch and Hinkemann as well as the autobiographical publication Eine Jugend in Deutschland . With the cycle of poems Das Schwalbenbuch he became known as a poet .

Life

Origin, childhood and youth

Toller was the youngest son of the grain wholesaler Mendel Toller and his wife Ida, née Cohn. Ida ran the family-owned grocery store. The family belonged to the relatively wealthy bourgeois Jewish circles in Samotschin, but also suffered from the anti-Semitism of the time. This caused the father to change his first name to Max.

From the age of seven, Ernst attended a private school for boys in his home town. Around 1905 he became so ill that he had to interrupt school for about a year. In 1906 Toller was able to switch to the Royal High School in Bromberg and lived there as boarder with various families. In retrospect, Toller later wrote that it was an institution that raised the students in militarism. The Prussian school system was narrow-minded and authoritarian , militaristic, nationalistic and arch-conservative values ​​were conveyed. That aroused Toller's disagreement. He studied modern literature that was banned at his school.

His first literary attempts also fall during this time. His participation in the drama group of his school sparked the desire to become an actor. After successfully completing school and supported by a small scholarship, Toller was able to enroll at the “Foreigners University” in Grenoble in February 1914 . At the beginning of the First World War , he immediately returned to Germany. After his father died in 1911, his mother continued the family business and was even able to expand. At the beginning of the war, the Toller company was given responsibility for supplying the city of Bochum with potatoes; Almost the entire city council of Bochum traveled to Samotschin to conclude the contract.

First World War

With effect from August 9, 1914, Toller joined the 1st Kgl as a war volunteer . Bay. Foot Artillery Regiment in Munich. At the beginning of 1915 he was stationed in Germersheim ; later he was transferred to Strasbourg . He volunteered for the front and fought at Verdun . Soon he was honored for his bravery and promoted to sergeant . During this time he wrote his first poems against the war.

In May 1916, Toller suffered a complete mental and physical breakdown.

Ernst Toller (3rd from right) in a group discussion with Max Weber (central person in the middle of the picture), photograph May 1917 at the Lauensteiner conference

After initial treatments in sanatoriums in Strasbourg and Ebenhausen, he was transferred to the "convalescent unit" of his regiment in Mainz . Since his condition improved only very slowly, Toller was no longer assessed as fit for use in the war in January 1917, so that he was allowed to study at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich .

Toller began to study law and philosophy , but was soon accepted into his circle by the literary scholar Artur Kutscher . Here he made the acquaintance of Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others . In May 1917 he was invited by the publisher Eugen Diederichs to a meeting at Lauenstein Castle (Franconian Forest) ( Lauensteiner conference ). Through Diederichs, Toller came into contact with Max Weber , who invited him to Heidelberg University . From 1917/18 Ernst Toller studied at the University of Heidelberg , where he met Margarete Pinner (married Turnowsky-Pinner ), who also spent a guest semester there with her friends Käthe Markus and Elli Harnisch.

Toller met Kurt Eisner , who chaired the discussion, Felix Fechenbach , Oskar Maria Graf, as a participant in the weekly discussion rounds of a heterogeneous group of left-wing opponents of the war in the “Zum golden Anker” inn in Munich , to which more than 100 people came at the end of 1917 and Erich Mühsam . In this round he approached the pacifist Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD), which had split off from the SPD a few months earlier out of opposition to the truce policy , and joined it.

November Revolution and the Munich Soviet Republic

His war experience brought about a pacifist and revolutionary - socialist attitude in Toller . In January 1918, after participating in the munitions workers' strike, he was imprisoned in Munich and shortly afterwards he was forcibly committed to psychiatry. After the end of the war he took part in the November Revolution in Bavaria, which led to the overthrow of the Wittelsbach dynasty and the establishment of the Free State or Republic of Bavaria under the provisional Prime Minister of Kurt Eisner (USPD).

In the state elections at the end of January 1919 , the USPD suffered a heavy defeat. Shortly before his planned resignation, Kurt Eisner was shot dead on February 21, 1919 by a völkisch anti-Semite from the Thule Society . The murder sparked great outrage among the Munich workers. The conflict between the supporters of a parliamentary-pluralistic republic and those of a socialist-orientated Soviet republic escalated, the Bavarian state parliament and the central council of the Bavarian republic discussed the legitimation for a new government.

On his flight from Munich to the Councils Congress in Berlin on March 4, 1919, his plane got caught in a storm near Leipzig, whereupon the pilot lost his orientation and had to make an emergency landing in Cronheim (Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen district). The biplane overturned and lay on its back. Toller and his pilot Franz Gallenmüller from the 1st Royal Bavarian Aviation Battalion Oberschleißheim were uninjured.

After Kurt Eisner's death, Toller succeeded him in the party chairmanship of the Bavarian USPD and, together with Gustav Landauer , Erich Mühsam and others, formed the Munich Soviet Republic , which was proclaimed on April 7, 1919 (first phase of the Soviet Republic).

After the Red Guards, under the command of the sailor Rudolf Egelhofer , thwarted the Palm Sunday coup against the council government of April 13, 1919, KPD cadres around Eugen Leviné and Max Levien took over the leading political posts in the council government (second - communist - phase of the council republic). Egelhofer, whose main task was to build a "Red Army" to defend the Soviet Republic, was appointed city ​​commander of Munich . Ernst Toller, who recognized the change in leadership, was assigned to him as deputy and section commander. As such he was the commander of the “ Red Army ” of the Munich Soviet Republic in the west of Munich. He succeeded and his deputy Gustav Klingelhöfer with the assumed red storm battalions on April 16 to Dachau had penetrated Freikorps organizations fight back ( Battle of Dachau (1919) ). As a commander, he was able to hold the city until April 30th.

Ernst Toller during his imprisonment in the fortress prison Niederschönenfeld (early 1920s)

On May 1st, shortly before the Soviet republic was crushed by the Freikorps and Reichswehr troops , Toller, who was caught a reward of 10,000 marks , initially went into hiding. Among other things, he was provided with material or hidden in private apartments by the actress Tilla Durieux , who at the time was staying in Ferdinand Sauerbruch's clinic in Munich for treatment. On June 4, 1919, he was tracked down in the Schwabing apartment of the painter Johannes Reichel, arrested and charged.

His defense attorney in the process before the Munich People's Court (a special court with negotiation similar to standing) on ​​July 16, 1919 was Hugo Haase , who, in addition to his function as a lawyer, was also Reich Party Chairman of the USPD. As a defense witness, the well-known sociologist and university professor Max Weber stood up for his former student. Regardless of his own fundamental opposition to the Soviet republic, he attested Toller the "absolute honesty" of a radical ethicist . This testimony of the renowned scientist, together with Haase's plea, may have contributed to the fact that Toller - unlike Eugen Leviné  - was spared the death sentence for high treason and that he was sentenced to five years of imprisonment in a fortress relatively mildly. After the first few months in the provisional fortress prison in Eichstätt, he served most of his prison term - from February 3, 1920 to July 15, 1924 - in the Niederschönenfeld prison .

Weimar Republic

Oops, we're alive! , First edition by Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag Potsdam 1927

During his imprisonment, Ernst Toller was very productive as a writer. In addition to many of his poems ( Das Schwalbenbuch ), there were pieces such as Masse Mensch (1919), Die Maschinenstürmer (1921), Hinkemann (1922), which were successfully performed on various theater stages in the early Weimar Republic and made Toller known as a playwright and poet . In view of the public attention for the prisoner, he was offered a pardon in 1920 by the Bavarian state government on the occasion of the 100th performance of the drama Die Wandlung, which had already been written in 1917/18 . Toller refused this on the grounds that he did not want to be preferred over the other prisoners after his demand for a general amnesty for all revolutionaries of the Soviet republic had turned out to be unrealistic.

Even after his release from prison, Toller's revolutionary, expressionist poems caused a sensation. In the play Masse Mensch , based on the fate of Sarah Rabinowitz , he dealt, among other things, with the conflict of conscience resulting from his revolutionary work in Munich.

In 1926 Toller became a member of the Revolutionary Pacifist group founded by Kurt Hiller . With his history revue Oops, we're alive! opened the Piscator stage in the Berlin theater on Nollendorfplatz in 1927 , which became the epitome of avant-garde theater of the 1920s. In 1926 the Berlin sculptor Renée Sintenis created a bust of Toller.

In 1931 Ernst Toller visited the Second Spanish Republic, torn by the class struggle . He repeated this visit in 1936, during the civil war , accompanied by Christiane Grautoff.

Emigration and death

Toller was named on the first expatriation list on August 25, 1933 after the Nazi takeover

Toller fell in love with the 23-year-old Berlin actress Christiane Grautoff by 1932 at the latest. That year she visited him in Amsterdam , where he had rented an apartment which he shared for a time with his editor and publisher Fritz Landshoff von Querido . In the same year, before the takeover of the Nazis , emigrated Toller from Germany, first to Switzerland. During his stay in Zurich he was expatriated by the National Socialists , later moved to Paris , then to London , where he married Grautoff on May 16, 1935. During his time in London, he was supported in his work by the journalist and resistance fighter Dora Fabian . Eventually he settled in California in the United States . Since he was recorded in August 1933 on the first expatriation list of the German Reich from 1933 , all later works by Toller are counted as exile literature. Toller's writings also fell victim to the book burning in Germany in 1933 .

Landshoff attests to his author and friend great kindness, willingness to help and, in addition to an “often childish sense of humor”, a “passionate hope for a better world”, as well as a “secret love for luxury”, great charm, especially towards women, and a shaken one Degree of vanity - weaknesses, about which Toller was, however, at times "touching" clear.

In 1934 Toller visited Moscow and in 1935 the Paris Writers' Congress initiated by Ilja Ehrenburg to defend culture. At the beginning of May 1939 Toller was only able to take part in the New York congress of the PEN Club with difficulty ; he made his last public speech there. When that session was over, he and a few colleagues were invited to the White House by Vice President John Nance Garner , where he was introduced to President Roosevelt .

Ehrenburg describes the "poet partisan" Toller as an "exceptionally meek" person who nonetheless always faced the hardships of life. At the end of May of the same year, Toller was apparently no longer able to cope with the ordeal associated with it: He attempted suicide in a room in the Mayflower Hotel in Central Park in New York.

Toller had suffered from intermittent depression for many years and had the habit of always carrying a rope in his suitcase when traveling. Landshoff emphasizes that in these ups and downs, Grautoff has always been an “irreplaceable support” for Toller. Political reasons increased Toller's desperation. According to Gustav Regler's testimony, shortly before his death, Toller had tried to organize a worldwide campaign to use the surplus grain of the United States for the starving children in Spain. But Franco won. Toller hanged himself "in complete desperation over the inertia of the democratic world and the brutality of the fascist leaders" .

The memorial service took place five days later at the Campbell Funeral Chapel on Broadway in Manhattan. The writers Oskar Maria Graf and Sinclair Lewis and the Spanish politician Juan Negrín spoke at Toller's coffin. His friend Thomas Mann had his son Klaus Mann read a greeting. WH Auden wrote a poem "In Memory of Ernst Toller". On May 28, 1939, Ernst Toller was cremated in the Ardsley crematorium . His ashes were not picked up for years and were buried at an unknown time in a simple collecting urn grave of cheapest design in the mausoleum of Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Literary work

Toller became known as a representative of expressionist literature immediately after the First World War. In the 1920s he wrote plays and short stories in the New Objectivity style . He was considered a prominent representative of the littérature engagée of the Weimar Republic, who wanted to have a political impact with literary texts:

“Can art influence reality? Can the poet gain influence over the politics of his time from his desk? There are authors who answer this question in the negative, I answer them in the affirmative. All art has a magical effect. [...] Art reaches more than the mind, it anchors one's feelings. It gives the anchored feeling spiritual legitimation. I therefore believe that the artist should not justify theses but create examples. Art is one of those rare spiritual means to illuminate buried instincts, to train brave attitudes, to deepen a spontaneous feeling for humanity , freedom and beauty . "

In addition to the volume of poems Das Schwalbenbuch (1924), written in prison, and the autobiography Eine Jugend in Deutschland (1933), which was written while emigrating , Toller's reputation as a writer has been based primarily on his work as a playwright since the early Weimar Republic.

Expressionist plays

Scene photography from the world premiere of Toller's play Die Wandlung , staged by Karlheinz Martin at the theater Die Tribüne in Berlin, September 30, 1919: Fritz Kortner (right in the picture) played the main role of Frederick, who was returning from war, based on Toller himself.

After the short phase of the Munich Soviet Republic, in which Toller participated as a gifted rhetor and political leader, the premiere of his play Die Wandlung , which was created during the First World War, was staged by Karlheinz Martin at the Berlin theater "Die Tribüne" on 30 September 1919 to an extraordinary success. A few months later the powerful broadcast continued in Stuttgart , where the premiere staged by Ferdinand Skuhra at the local “Deutsches Theater” on January 27, 1920 with Fritz Wisten as Friedrich actor and Willi Baumeister as set designer was followed by numerous performances.

Due to his imprisonment, Toller was unable to attend the premieres of his early plays. Toller's literary work, who developed into a symbolic figure of the left-wing intellectuals of the Weimar Republic while in prison, was a thorn in the side of his state government, as the performance bans of individual pieces in Bavaria prove.

At the center of the early expressionist dramas of ideas and stations is a young rebel who appears as a harbinger of a new social order. Toller's first dramas Die Wandlung (1919), Masse Mensch (1920) and Die Maschinenstürmer (1922) correspond to this scheme . On an abstract-reflexive level, they deal with the failure of the revolutionary uprisings of the soldiers and workers' movement from 1917 to 1919. Toller's early pacifist ideological dramas are characterized in terms of content by an ethical claim to absoluteness and formally by expressionist design features such as stereotypical character drawings, ideas as action-bearing elements and a shortened one Language off.

History games, time revues, comedies

Alf Sjöberg in the role of the main character Karl Thomas together with Anna Lindahl as Eva Berg in a Swedish production of the great drama Oops, we live! , Stockholm 1928

In the following plays, too, Toller remains “the playwright who contrasts an unjust order with the legally minded individual. He prepares general human traits in his heroes, who are essentially passively suffering their fate. ”The homecoming tragedy Hinkemann ushered in a phase of theatrical scandals surrounding Toller's work. Folk-like elements such as fairground and pub scenes represent the macabre scenery for the personal tragedy of the mutilated war returnees Hinkemann.

The following comedy The Unleashed Wotan (1923) reflects early on the dangers posed by the NSDAP in a plot about a seducer of the people and his 'export business' : A hairdresser (“Wotan”) filled with national mission awareness founds a society for emigrants, but suffers in Latin America Shipwreck. In 1927, at the zenith of Toller's creative power, he wrote the five-act oops, we're alive! , a drama about the betrayed November Revolution and the social conflicts of the Weimar Republic . In the production of Erwin Piscator in the Berlin Theater on Nollendorfplatz, the play developed into a great stage success in the same year.

With the historical drama Fire from the Ketteln from 1930, in which Toller processed the German sailors' revolt of 1917/1918, the author was unable to build on previous successes. With the plays Wunder in Amerika (1931) about the religious community Christian Science and Die Blinde Göttin (1932) about a woman who was imprisoned through no fault of her own, the playwright, disappointed by the political developments, turned away from current political events. The anti-war comedy No more peace from 1936/1937 to incidental music by Hanns Eisler , which was made during the US emigration, is set in the remote sphere of Mount Olympus . Historical figures like Francis of Assisi and Napoleon embody opposing historical principles; Biblical figures reflect the universal problem of war and questions of guilt and forgiveness. Toller's last drama Pastor Hall (1938) deals with the authentic story of a clergyman who was deported to the Dachau concentration camp because of critical statements against the Nazi regime . The play was filmed posthumously in Great Britain in 1940 by Roy Boulting.

Work overview

  • Die Wandlung , Drama, written 1917/18, published and premiered in 1919 ( digitized online on the pages of the Bielefeld University Library (ds.ub.uni-bielefeld.de/viewer))
  • Masse Mensch Drama, 1920, first draft October 1919, ( online on Projekt Gutenberg-DE )
  • The Machinists , drama, 1922
  • Hinkemann , tragedy. 1923
  • Wotan Unleashed , comedy, 1923
  • The swallow book , new through. Edition. Gustav Kiepenheuer, Weimar 1924
  • Oops, we're alive! , Drama, 1927 ( online on Projekt Gutenberg-DE)
  • Judiciary. Experiences , 1927
  • Across , 1930
  • Fire from the boilers , 1930 ( online on Projekt Gutenberg-DE)
  • The blind goddess , 1933
  • A youth in Germany , autobiography, Querido, Amsterdam 1933. ( online on Projekt Gutenberg-DE)
  • No more Peace , comedy, 1934
  • Letters from prison , 1935
  • Pastor Hall , drama, 1939

Work and letter editions

  • Complete works: critical edition. On behalf of the Ernst Toller Society ed. by D. Distl, M. Gerstenbräun, T. Hoffmann, J. Jordan, S. Lamb, P. Langemeyer, K. Leydecker, S. Neuhaus, M. Pilz, K. Reimers, Ch. Schönfeld, G. Scholz, R Selbmann, Th. Unger and I. Zanol. Wallstein, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-8353-1335-4 .
    • Volume 1: Pieces 1919–1923.
    • Volume 2: Pieces 1926–1939.
    • Volume 3: Autobiographical and judicial criticism.
    • Volume 4.1: Journalism and Speeches. Volume 4.2: Journalism and Speeches.
    • Volume 5: Poetry, short stories, radio plays, film.
  • Ernst Toller. Letters 1915–1939. Critical edition. Edited by Stefan Neuhaus, Gerhard Scholz, Irene Zanol, Martin Gerstenbräun, Veronika Schuchter and Kirsten Reimers with the assistance of Peter Langemeyer. Wallstein, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8353-3072-6 .

Author reading

  • Voices of the poets. German authors read from their works: 1907–1977. A documentation of the time magazine exclusively . PhD 1977 (S102). (LP) [Ernst Toller reads from the 2nd act of his time piece Oops, we're alive! from 1927.]

Reception in literature, radio play and film

Fiction

  • Anna Funder: All that I am. Penguin Books Australia, 2011.
    • dt. Everything I am. Novel. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2014.

play

radio play

Movie

  • Pastor Hall . Director: Roy Boulting. Great Britain: Charter 1940.

Toller was involved in the creation of the (German) dialogues for the film drama People Behind Bars (USA 1931), which dealt with the untenable conditions in contemporary US prisons, as well as the operetta adaptation The Adventures of King Pausole (Austria 1933).

Ernst-Toller-Platz in Munich

Honors

literature

Monographs

  • Dieter Distl: Ernst Toller. A political biography. Bickel, Schrobenhausen 1993, ISBN 3-922803-77-6 ( Edition Descartes 1; also: Munich, Univ., Diss., 1993).
  • Richard Dove: Ernst Toller. A life in Germany. Steidl, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-88243-266-7 .
  • Andreas Lixl: Ernst Toller and the Weimar Republic 1918–1933. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1986, ISBN 3-533-03853-X .
  • Wolfgang Rothe: Ernst Toller in personal reports and photo documents. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1997 = rororo 50312, Rowohlt's monographs ISBN 3-499-50312-3 .
  • Stefan Neuhaus (ed.): Ernst Toller and the Weimar Republic. An author in the field of tension between literature and politics. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 1999, ISBN 3-8260-1598-3 (writings of the Ernst-Toller-Gesellschaft, 1).

Articles and anthologies

  • Ralf Georg Czapla : Verism as a critique of expressionism. Otto Dix's “Match Dealer I”, Ernst Toller's “Hinkemann” and George Grosz's “Brokenbrow” illustrations in the context of contemporary art debates. In: Stefan Neuhaus, Rolf Selbmann, Thorsten Unger (eds.): Engaged literature between the world wars. Königshausen & Neumann , Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2395-1 pp. 338-366. (Writings of the Ernst Toller Society, 4)
  • Wolfgang Frühwald , John M. Spalek (ed.): The Toller case. Commentary and materials. Hanser, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-446-12691-0 .
  • Werner Fuld , Albert Ostermaier (ed.): The goddess and her socialist. Christiane Grautoff - her life with Ernst Toller. With documents on the life story. Weidle, Bonn 1996, ISBN 3-931135-18-7 .
  • Volker Ladenthin : Dedicated literature - what for? Statement or meaning. Aporias in Toller's literary aesthetics. In: Stefan Neuhaus, Rolf Selbmann, Thorsten Unger (eds.): Engaged literature between the world wars. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2002, ISBN 3-8260-2395-1 pp. 53-65. (Writings of the Ernst Toller Society, 4)
  • Volker Ladenthin: The literary aesthetics of Ernst Tollers. In: Petra Josting, Walter Fähnders (Eds.): “Laboratory Versatility”. On the literature of the Weimar Republic. Festschrift for Helga Karrenbrock on her 60th birthday. Aisthesis, Bielefeld 2005, ISBN 3-89528-546-3, pp. 127-143.
  • Martin Mauthner: German Writers in French Exile. 1933-1940. Vallentine Mitchell, London 2007, ISBN 978-0-85303-541-1 .
  • Oliver Schlaudt: Margarete Turnowsky-Pinner: “A study friendship with Ernst Toller”, in: Markus Bitterolf, Oliver Schlaudt, Stefan Schöbel (eds.), Intellectuals in Heidelberg 1910–1933. A reading book, Edition Schöbel, Heidelberg 2014, pp. 359–376. ISBN 978-3-9816366-2-8 .
  • Volker Weidermann : The book of burned books. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2008 ISBN 978-3-462-03962-7 , especially pp. 79–82.
  • Judith Wisser: Entracte of a revolutionary poet - Ernst Toller in Heidelberg, in: Markus Bitterolf, Oliver Schlaudt, Stefan Schöbel (eds.): Intellectuals in Heidelberg 1910–1933. A reading book, Heidelberg 2014, Schöbel Verlag, pp. 341–352. ISBN 978-3-9816366-2-8 .
  • Hannah Arnold, Peter Langemeyer Eds .: Ernst Toller. Focus issue text + kritik , issue 223, 2019

Fiction

Web links

Commons : Ernst Toller  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Ernst Toller  - Sources and full texts
Wikiquote: Ernst Toller  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Dove: Ernst Toller. A life in Germany. Steidl, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-88243-266-7 . Pp. 26-30.
  2. ↑ Brigitte Degelmann: Lauenstein Castle: 100 years ago intellectuals from all over Germany poured into the Franconian Forest. In: Neue Presse , February 12, 2014. Online at www.ludwigsstadt.de, accessed on November 5, 2014.
  3. ^ Margarete Turnowsky-Pinner (1884-1982) - biography | ZbE. Retrieved on November 21, 2019 (German).
  4. ^ Levke Harders: Ernst Toller. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG )
  5. ↑ Dr. theol. Karl Ried: Cronheim a former aristocratic residence, Eichstätt 1935
  6. ^ Levke Harders: Ernst Toller. Tabular curriculum vitae in the LeMO ( DHM and HdG ) Bavarian USPD chairmanship mentioned under the year 1919
  7. ↑ Bernhard Grau: Red Army, 1919. In: Historisches Lexikon Bayerns . November 23, 2015, accessed December 20, 2015 .
  8. ↑ Michaela Karl: On the run - The hunt for Ernst Toller. literaturportal-bayern.de, accessed on September 14, 2014.
  9. ↑ Hans-Peter Kraus, Werner Schmitt (ed.): Ernst Toller 1893-1939; 1919–1924: fortress , there section 1920: pardon offer on the occasion of the 100th performance of his play Die Wandlung . From Das Schwalbenbuch website , accessed on September 3, 2015.
  10. ↑ Figure in the Brockhaus Enzyklopädie , 19th edition, Volume 20 from 1993, p. 322
  11. ^ Ilja Ehrenburg : People - Years - Life. (Memoirs). Special edition Munich 1962/1965, Volume II 1923–1941; Portrait Tollers pp. 244-252.
  12. ^ A b Fritz H. Landshoff: Amsterdam, Keizersgracht 333, Querido Verlag. Berlin 1991, p. 116.
  13. ↑ Michael Hepp (Ed.): The expatriation of German citizens 1933-45 according to the lists published in the Reichsanzeiger . tape 1 : Lists in chronological order. De Gruyter Saur, Munich 1985, ISBN 978-3-11-095062-5 , pp. 3 (reprinted 2010).
  14. ↑ Ilja Ehrenburg, Munich 1962/65, Volume II, p. 245.
  15. ^ Fritz H. Landshoff: Amsterdam, Keizersgracht 333, Querido Verlag. Berlin 1991, p. 117.
  16. ↑ Gustav Regulator: The ear of Malchus. Memories. Cologne 1958, p. 509. Regulator met the “prophet” Toller as a student, first in Heidelberg (pp. 74–76), then in Munich (pp. 92–94, 113–114), where Toller was admittedly very tangible the “Rote Army ”, and finally in 1934 at a writers' congress in Moscow (p. 270).
  17. ^ Forbidden, persecuted and exiled - the fate of authors after the book burning on May 10, 1933; Documentation for the project seminar "Literature and Persecution from 1933" as an exhibition in the University and State Library in Düsseldorf from May 8 to June 30, 2003. Accessed on February 23, 2015 .
  18. ^ Ernst Toller: Critical writings, speeches and reports. Edited by John M. Spalek and Wolfgang Frühwald. (Collected Works, Vol. 1). Hanser, Munich / Vienna 1978, p. 148.
  19. ^ Wolfgang Kermer : Willi Baumeister - typography and advertising design . Edition Cantz, Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-89322-145-X . Pp. 45–46, 304. The program booklet “Blätter des Deutsches Theater Stuttgart” (Baumeister Archive in the Stuttgart Art Museum ), published on the occasion of the first performance in Stuttgart and designed by Willi Baumeister, appears to have only a single copy on the avant-garde Stuttgart “Deutsche Theater”, a private stage that opened at the end of November 1918, which is also remarkable for Toller's research: “The booklet, which has also been overlooked in terms of theater history, contains a text on Toller's stage play, Toller's poem 'Aufrüttelung' and contributions, which has not been given a name by (Karl Konrad) Düssel 'Zu Ernst Tollers' Wandlung', (Friedrich) Skuhra '' Die Wandlung 'als Directional Task' and Richard Herre 'Das neue Bühnenbild' […] “, Kermer, cat. 4, p. 46.
  20. ↑ Klaus Kellers: Drama and class struggle. Relationship between epoch problems and dramatic conflict in the socialist drama of the Weimar Republic. Berlin / Weimar 1970, p. 294.
  21. ^ Toller, Eine Jugend in Deutschland . BR radio play Pool
  22. ↑ Walter Wicclair reports on massive disputes about the film, to which Eleanor Roosevelt had spoken a foreword, in the United States up to a ban by the police censorship office in Chicago in 1940: From Kreuzburg to Hollywood. Henschel, Berlin (GDR) 1975, pp. 135-137.
personal data
SURNAME Great, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German writer, politician and revolutionary
DATE OF BIRTH December 1, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Samochin
DATE OF DEATH May 22, 1939
Place of death New York City