Background
Ernst Toller was born on December 1, 1893, in Szamocin, Province of Posen, Prussia (now Poznań, Poland). He was a son of Max and Ida Toller, and had a sister and brother.
1251 Avenue Centrale, 38400 Saint-Martin-d'Hères, France
The Université Grenoble where Ernst Toller studied from 1912 to 1914.
Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1, 80539 München, Germany
The University of Munich where Ernst Toller studied from 1914 to 1917.
69117 Heidelberg, Germany
Heidelberg University where Ernst Toller studied from 1917 to 1918.
Ernst Toller during his imprisonment in the Niederschönenfeld fortress.
L. Ernst Toller and Stefan Lorant sitting together on the rocky shores of Sanary, France in 1936.
(The author, a German Expressionist, recounts his life, wr...)
The author, a German Expressionist, recounts his life, writing career, and political activism, and discusses his pacifist outlook on life.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1557784353/?tag=2022091-20
1934
(The plays collected within this volume are social dramas ...)
The plays collected within this volume are social dramas and tragedies. They bear witness to human suffering, and to fine yet vain struggles to vanquish this suffering. Four of these plays were written in prison, others were banned. This early work by Ernst Toller was originally published in 1934, we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography.
https://www.amazon.com/Seven-Plays-Comprising-Machine-Wreckers-Transfiguration-ebook/dp/B00JPINZYG/?tag=2022091-20
1936
Political activist screenwriter writer
Ernst Toller was born on December 1, 1893, in Szamocin, Province of Posen, Prussia (now Poznań, Poland). He was a son of Max and Ida Toller, and had a sister and brother.
Ernst Toller attended the University of Grenoble from 1912 to 1914. He also studied at the University of Munich from 1914 to 1917 and Heidelberg University from 1917 to 1918.
Ernst Toller served in the German Army from 1914 to 1917. After military service he focused on politics, involving himself in pacifist and leftist groups. In Berlin, Toller began to speak before munitions workers, urging them to strike. In 1918, he was arrested for his anti-war efforts. During his imprisonment, he wrote Die Wandlung (Transfiguration). He continued writing in prison and wrote such books as Masse Mensch (Masses Man) and Die Maschinenstürmer (The Machine Wreckers).
When Ernst Toller was released from prison in 1925, his Hoppla, wir Leben! (Hoppla, We're Alive!) premiered in Berlin. In 1933, Ernst Toller was exiled from Germany because of his work. He moved to London and in 1935 he participated as co-director of his play Rake Out the Fires. In 1937 his play The Machine Wreckers was produced in New York. He did a lecture tour in 1936-1937 in the United States and Canada. He also worked as a screenwriter for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1936 to 1938. Toller wrote such books as I Was a German and Letters from Prison. He was a contributor to periodicals, including Die Weltbuehne, Labor Monthly, Die literarische Welt, Juedische Rundschau, Das Tagebuch, Neue Buecherschau, Die Linkskurve, Berliner Tageblatt, Bookman, New Statesman and Nation, Atlantic Monthly.
(The author, a German Expressionist, recounts his life, wr...)
1934(The plays collected within this volume are social dramas ...)
1936Ernst Toller joined leading anarchists, such as B. Traven and Gustav Landauer, and communists in 1919. He was involved in the short-lived 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic where he served as President from April 6, 1919 to April 12, 1919.
Quotations:
"Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother?"
"In a quiet Franciscan monastery kind and silent monks looked after me. After many weeks I was discharged. Unfit for further service. "
"At that moment of realization I knew that I had been blind because I had wished not to see; it was only then that I realised, at last, that all these dead men, French and Germans, were brothers, and I was the brother of them all. "
"We revolutionaries acknowledge the right to revolution when we see that the situation is no longer tolerable, that it has become a frozen. Then we have the right to overthrow it. "
"I was at the front for thirteen months, and by the end of that time the sharpest perceptions had become dulled, the greatest words mean. "
Ernst Toller was suffering from depression after learning that his sister and brother had been arrested and sent to concentration camps. He committed suicide on May 22, 1939.
Quotes from others about the person
Robert Payne: 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.
Ernst Toller married Christiane Grautoff in 1935. They divorced in 1938.