A brief biography of revolutionary, poet, and playwright Ernst Toller. Apart from his writings Toller is probably most remembered for his part in the Bavarian Council Republic of 1919 which announced governance by workers’ councils and rejected the rule of the German government.
Ernst Toller was born in 1893 in Samotschin, Germany (now Szamocin, Poland), into a Jewish family. He would go on to become both a noted revolutionary and one of the most popular writers in Germany. In 1914 Toller moved to France to study at the University of Grenoble.
With the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Germany and, believing it was his duty to defend the nation, volunteered for service in 1915. This experience was to transform his outlook completely. Already an accomplished poet, his experiences at the Western Front ended within him all notions of art for art's sake. Convinced of art's political purpose, and of the need for creative opposition to the war, Toller now viewed the duty of the poet as encouraging humanity in the direction of a peaceful, just and communal society. In his poem, “to the Mothers,” he urged his fellow poets: “Let pain bring further deeds.”
Following expulsion from Heidelberg University in 1917, for his part in forming the anti-war Cultural and Political League of German Youth, Toller moved to Munich where he worked to organize a munition workers’ strike alongside the socialist Kurt Eisner. When nearly 10000 workers struck, Toller was arrested and committed to a psychiatric clinic.
Upon release Toller became an active supporter of the German Revolution of 1918 and the sailors of the German Navy at Kiel who mutinied and set up councils based on the Russian Soviets. Apart from his writings Toller is probably most remembered for his part in the Bavarian Council Republic of 1919 which announced governance by workers’ councils and rejected the rule of the German government. When the Social Democratic government deployed the proto-Nazi Freikorps to crush the Republic Toller escaped the murderous fate suffered by many of his comrades including Gustav Landauer. Arrested and charged with high treason, Toller was released, partly on the urging of prominent friends Thomas Mann and Max Weber.
With Hitler installed as Chancellor in January 1933 Toller was formally denounced as a public enemy of the Third Reich and his name included on Goebbel’s list of banned authors. Convinced by friends to leave Germany in September 1933 Toller spent the last years of his life lecturing publicly on the need for an international mobilization to resist fascism. His work included campaigning to raise funds for the Republican effort in the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, depressed at the continued growth of fascism, Toller committed suicide in New York City
Further Reading
Toller, Ernst. 1991. I Was a German. Paragon Press.
1996. The Machine Wreckers. Nick Hearn Books.
2023. Letters from Prison and Other Writings. Loch Raven Press.
2024. A Youth in Germany. Broadview.
The Ernst Toller Papers. https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/12/resources/3838
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