Crowd of people

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Crowd of people. A piece from the social revolution of the 20th century is a revolutionary drama in seven pictures by Ernst Toller , which was written in October 1919 and published in 1921 by Gustav Kiepenheuer in Potsdam. It was premiered on November 15, 1920 under the direction of Friedrich Neubauer in the Nuremberg City Theater. On September 29, 1921 Jürgen Fehling brought the play to the Volksbühne in Berlin . Toller had international success: in the following three years, seventeen productions were added abroad.

In 1922 the Deutschvölkische Schutz- und Trutzbund protested against the performance of the play in Nuremberg as part of their anti-Semitic culture and social policy. The DVSuTB forced the piece to be removed from the program. The piece was then no longer performed in Germany.

The intellectual Sonja Irene L. leads armed workers into the fight against the war profiteers . After the defeat, the woman pays for her stability with her life.

content

Germany in November 1918 to May 1919: Irene's husband, a bourgeois and the bankers' sidekick, threatens to divorce because the wife is damaging the public interest and supporting the enemy within. Irene is not open to blackmail. She wants to tear the mask off the murderous face of her husband's state. The husband, who serves the bankers as a clerk at the stock exchange , believes that war is necessary for his state to survive. Although the battle is lost in the west, people continue to earn money from flamethrowers and poison gas . The bankers dance a foxtrot around the stock exchange desk for joy .

The workers want to put an end to dying in the trenches by storming the machines in the armaments factories. Irene calls for a strike. Her opponent, the nameless one, shouts: “Revolution!” Irene wants to prevent new murders. The nameless one prevails against Irene. The workers succumb. Irene is captured and executed.

Self-testimony

In October 1921, Toller wrote from imprisonment in the fortress in Niederschönenfeld : "The drama Masse-Mensch is a visionary show that literally broke out of me in two and a half days ... The arduous work of reshaping and filing lasted for a year."

reception

  • Kerr describes the sparse equipment as "allusion stage" and finds the piece on the one hand "too peaceful". On the other hand, he calls Toller a poet.
  • According to Siegfried Jacobsohn , the author of the play lacks both ingenuity and poetry.
  • For Alfred Döblin the piece failed because undigested ideas dominate instead of design. He describes Toller's figures as "figurines of thought, mannequins for ideas."
  • His critics had finally convinced Toller of the “abstractness” of his own piece. The three dream images in the play have also been criticized in recent times.
  • Koebner values ​​Toller as a "political playwright".
  • Violence versus humanitas is the big theme of the work.
  • Altendorfer sees the play as the author's attempt to critically examine the November Revolution and the Soviet Republic . Toller's method is "artistic distancing". Toller opposed the communist “The end justifies the means” with his conception of humanity in the revolutionary struggle. Toller abhor capitalism and communism alike, as both used violence.
  • Among other things, Schulz reads from the subtitle “A piece from the social revolution of the 20th century” that has a promising future. This drama, written in the year one after the November Revolution, points to the coming social upheaval.
  • The drama is - as it were Toller's "own drama" - also a piece of autobiography. Toller processed the events surrounding the Munich munitions workers' strike in February 1918 and the fate of Sarah Sonja Lerch . However, the peace fighter Toller added the first name Irene .
  • Schulz names further works on the drama: Malcolm Pittock (1972), Martin W. Wierschin (Frankfurt am Main 1986) and Steven D. Martinson (1988).
  • Kiesel attributes the piece to idealistic expressionism . Toller put less characters on the stage than “representatives of principles”.
  • In 1926, Theodor Geiger headed one of the chapters in his work The Mass and its Action with “Mass - Man”.

expenditure

  • Ernst Toller: mass of people. A piece from the social revolution of the 20th century. Kiepenheuer, Potsdam 1921. 82 pages (first edition).
  • Ernst Toller: crowd-man; a piece from the social revolution of the 20th century . G. Kiepenheuer, Potsdam 1924 ( archive.org ).
  • Ernst Toller: mass of people. A piece from the social revolution of the 20th century. Afterword by Rosemarie Altenhofer. 77 pages. Reclam Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-15-009944-7 .

literature

  • Georg-Michael Schulz: Ernst Toller: mass people. In: interpretations. 20th Century Dramas. Volume 1. Reclam Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-15-009460-7 , pp. 282-300.
  • Ernst Toller: mass of people. In: German literary history. Volume 9. Ingo Leiß, Hermann Stadler: Weimar Republic 1918–1933. Munich, February 2003, ISBN 3-423-03349-5 , pp. 285-290.
  • Gero von Wilpert : Lexicon of world literature. German authors A – Z. Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-520-83704-8 , p. 621, first column, 13th line from the top.
  • Helmuth Kiesel : History of German-Language Literature 1918 to 1933 . CH Beck, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-406-70799-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kiesel, p. 233 above
  2. ↑ Toller: mass people. Reclam, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-15-009944-7 , p. 3 below.
  3. ↑ Toller: mass people. Reclam, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-15-009944-7 , p. 53, 6. Zvo
  4. ↑ Toller: mass people. Reclam, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-15-009944-7 , p. 55, 3rd Zvu
  5. ↑ Kiesel, p. 234 above
  6. ↑ Hambrecht, Rainer, author: The brown bastion of the rise of the NSDAP in Middle and Upper Franconia (1922-1933) . ISBN 3-7319-0336-9 , pp. 18 ( worldcat.org [accessed May 12, 2020]).
  7. ↑ Toller: mass people. Reclam, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-15-009944-7 , p. 54, 16. Zvo and 27. Zvo
  8. ↑ Kerr in Kiesel, p. 1088 below
  9. ↑ Ernst Toller: Letters from prison. Quoted in Altendorfer, p. 59, 10. Zvo
  10. ↑ Kiesel, p. 234, 6th line from the top
  11. ^ Siegfried Jacobsohn, quoted in Schulz: Ernst Toller: Masse Mensch. P. 297, 6th Zvu
  12. ↑ Review in the Prager Tagblatt from November 24, 1921, collected in Alfred Döblin: A guy must have an opinion. Reports and reviews 1921–1924, Munich 1981, p. 17 ff.
  13. ↑ Schulz: Ernst Toller: mass people. P. 298, 4. Zvo
  14. ↑ Horst Denkler , cited in Leiß, Stadler: Weimarer Republik 1918–1933. P. 287, 7th Zvu
  15. ^ Koebner, quoted in Leiß, Stadler: Weimarer Republik 1918–1933. P. 286, 1. Zvo
  16. ^ Leiß, Stadler: Weimar Republic 1918–1933. P. 285, 2nd Zvu
  17. ↑ Altendorfer, Toller: Masse Mensch. Reclam Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-15-009944-7 , pp. 57-77.
  18. ↑ Altendorfer, Toller: Masse Mensch. Reclam Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-15-009944-7 , p. 61, 6th Zvu
  19. ↑ Altendorfer thinks that the communists adopted the saying “ The end justifies the means ”.
  20. ↑ Schulz: Ernst Toller: mass people. P. 290, 10th Zvu
  21. ^ Herbert Ihering , quoted in Leiß, Stadler: Weimarer Republik 1918–1933. P. 287, 12th Zvu
  22. ↑ Schulz: Ernst Toller: mass people. P. 283, 10. Zvo
  23. ^ Leiß, Stadler: Weimar Republic 1918–1933. P. 288, 23. Zvo
  24. ^ Leiß, Stadler: Weimar Republic 1918–1933. P. 288, 25. Zvo
  25. ↑ Schulz: Ernst Toller: mass people. Pp. 299-300
  26. ↑ Kiesel p. 1088
  27. ↑ Kiesel, p. 1088 below
  28. ↑ Kiesel p. 234 middle