Ernst Toller, the son of Mendel Toller, a successful Jewish wholesale grain merchant, was born in Samotschin in 1893. At the age of twelve Toller was sent to boarding school in Bromberg. Later Toller described it as a "school of miseducation and militarization". He was not a good student but while there managed to have several of his articles published in the local newspaper, the Ostdeutsche Rundschau. In 1914 Toller moved to France where he studied at the University of Grenoble. Six months after arriving, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo. When Germany declared war on Russia, Toller headed back home and was in one of the last trains to be allowed out of France before the border was closed.
Toller, like most Germans, accepted that it was his duty to join the German Army and defend the Fatherland. He immediately enlisted in the First Bavarian Foot Artillery Regiment. In March 1915, he was sent to the Western Front. When he heard the news he wrote in his diary: "How happy I am to go to the front at last. To do my bit. To prove with my life what I think I feel."
After six months working as an observer with an artillery unit, Toller asked to transferred to the front-line trenches. The reason for this request was that because he felt he was being victimized by his platoon commander. Like at school, Toller believed he was being persecuted because he was Jewish.
Toller served at Bois-le-Pretre and then at Verdun. Appalled by the physical slaughter that he witnessed in the trenches, Toller began to question the nationalistic propaganda that he had experienced since his schooldays. He wrote in one letter: "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? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth."
In May 1916 Toller became very ill. Taken to a hospital in Strasbourg, his doctor diagnosed him as suffering from "physical exhaustion and a complete nervous breakdown". After being transferred to a hospital near Mainz, he was discharged from the German Army as "unfit for active service".
Toller returned to his studies and now went to Heidelberg University where he met the pioneering sociologist, Max Weber. Although the two men became close friends, they disagreed about the war. Weber believed that Germany must continue to prosecute the war, whereas Toller favoured a negotiated peace.
Toller also returned to writing poetry. His views on the subject had been dramatically changed by his experiences on the Western Front. He completely rejected the idea of "art for art's sake". The purpose of art was no longer simply aesthetic.
Otto Dix, The War (1924)
Toller believed that it was his duty as a human being to write political poetry. The role of the poet was not only to "decry the war, but to lead humanity towards his vision of a peaceful, just and communal society". In the poem, To the Mothers, he included this message to poets writing about the war: "Dig deeper into your pain, Let it strain, etch, gnaw. Stretch out arms raised in grief. Be volcanoes, glowing sea: let pain bring forth deeds."
Toller, who by 1917 was both a socialist and pacifist, formed the Cultural and Political League of German Youth, an organisation which called for an end to the war. Toller's political activities soon resulted in him being expelled from Heidelberg University. Toller now moved to Munich where he helped Kurt Eisner to organize a munitions workers' strike. When 8,000 workers withdrew their labour in Munich, Eisner, Toller and other trade union leaders were arrested and sent to Leonrodstrasse military prison. Toller was charged with "attempted treason" but was released in May 1918 and returned to theGerman Army. He expected to be sent to the Western Front but instead he was committed to a Psychiatric Clinic in Munich. Once again he was diagnosed as being "unfit for active service" and discharged from the army.
Toller supported the German Revolution began on 29th October 1918, when sailors at Kiel refused to obey orders and engage in battle with the British Navy. The sailors in the German Navy mutinied and set up councils based on the soviets in Russia. By 6th November the revolution had spread to theWestern Front and all major cities and ports in Germany.
Toller supported the German Revolution began on 29th October 1918, when sailors at Kiel refused to obey orders and engage in battle with the British Navy. The sailors in the German Navy mutinied and set up councils based on the soviets in Russia. By 6th November the revolution had spread to theWestern Front and all major cities and ports in Germany.
In Munich, Kurt Eisner, leader of the Independent Socialist Party, declared Bavaria a Socialist Republic. Eisner made it clear that this revolution was different from the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and announced that all private property would be protected by the new government.
On 9th November, 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated and the Chancellor, Max von Baden, handed power over to Friedrich Ebert, the leader of the German Social Democrat Party.
In January, 1919, the Spartakist Rising, led by Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches, Clara Zetkin and Karl Liebknecht took place in Berlin. Friedrich Ebert now saw his own power under threat and called in the German Army and the Freikorps to bring an end to the rebellion. By 13th January the rebellion had been crushed and its leaders, including Luxemburg and Liebknecht, had been captured and executed.
The Bavarian Socialist Republic, despite the assassination of Kurt Eisner by a reactionary student, continued in power and in March, 1919, announced that it rejected parliamentary democracy and called for the introduction of workers' councils. Eisner responded by sending in the German Army and theFreikorps into Munich. The Bavarian socialists and communists were soon defeated and the German Revolution came to an end.
Toller was arrested and charged with high treason. Toller expected to be found guilty and sentenced to death but his friends began an international campaign to save his life. At his trial, Max Weber and Thomas Mann gave evidence on his behalf in court and although Toller was found guilty of high treason, the judge acknowledged his "honourable motives" and sentenced him to only five years in prison.
While in prison Toller wrote a series of plays that established him as one of the country's most important writers. By the time he left prison in 1924, plays such as Transformation, The Machine Wreckers, Hinkemann and Masses and Man had been performed all over Germany.
After leaving prison Toller wrote Hoppla, Such is Life (1927), Once a Bourgeois Always a Bourgeois (1928), Draw the Fires (1930), Miracle in America(1931) and the Blind Goddess (1932). He also remained active in politics and was a leading member of the League for Human Rights and the Group of Revolutionary Pacifists.
When Adolf Hitler became Chancellor on 30th January 1933, it soon became clear that no left-wing author would be allowed to write or publish in Germany. On 1st April, 1933 Josef Goebbels announced an official boycott of Jewish shops and businesses and denounced Toller as a public enemy of the Third Reich. Goebbels told his audience that "Two million German soldiers rise from the graves of Flanders and Holland to indict the Jew Toller for having written: 'the ideal of heroism is the stupidest ideal of all'."
Later that month Goebbels published a list of authors that were now banned. This included the work of Toller, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Bertolt Brecht,Ludwig Renn and Thomas Mann. When Hitler's government began arresting socialists and communists and putting them in concentration camps, Toller was persuaded by friends to leave Germany.
Toller arrived in London in September, 1933. While in England he completed his autobiography, I Was a German was published in 1933. He travelled extensively, where he lectured on the need for the international community to join together in order to resist fascism. He also wrote articles for theManchester Guardian, the Observer, the New Statesman, Time & Tide and the Spectator.
In October 1936 Toller left London for a lecture tour of North America. While he was there he was offered a contract to write film-scripts for MGM. Toller hoped that he would be given the freedom to write films that dealt with political issues such as the rise of fascism in Europe. This did not materialize, and the one script that he wrote that was used, Hangman Also Die, was changed so much that he disowned it.
Toller returned to writing plays and in 1938 completed Pastor Hall. The play was based on the life of Martin Niemöller, the Protestant pastor, whose opposition to Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany resulted in his arrest and trial for high treason.
While in the USA, Toller was also active in the campaign to raise funds to help the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. He went to Spain as a journalist. Alvah Bessie, met him at the Ebro: "Toller was a quiet, heavy-set man, who wandered about talking to the soldiers, asking questions; how much did we get to eat, and did we get enough to smoke, and watching the Fascist airplanes through a pair of opera-glasses, when everybody else was under cover."
In 1939 Toller became increasingly depressed. Fascism in Europe continued to grow and Adolf Hitler remained firmly in control of Nazi Germany. News had also reached him that his sister and brother had both been arrested and sent to concentration camps.Ernst Toller committed suicide in his hotel room in New York on 22nd May, 1939. His friend, Alvah Bessie, wrote: "Ernst Toller, the anti-Nazi dramatist and poet. He had been unable to adjust himself to what he saw as a life in exile and which need not have been one at all-had he only waited."
 |  He Was a German |
How happy I am to go to the front at last. To do my bit. To prove with my life what I think I feel.
(2) Ernst Toller, Spring 1915 (March, 1915)
In spring I go to war
To sing or to die.
What do I care for my own troubles?
Today I shatter them, laughing in pieces.
Oh, Brothers, know that young spring came
In a whirlwind.
Quickly throw off tired grief
And follow her in a host.
I have never felt so strongly
How much I love you, Oh, Germany,
As the magic of spring surrounds you
Amidst the bustle of war.
In spring I go to war
To sing or to die.
What do I care for my own troubles?
Today I shatter them, laughing in pieces.
Oh, Brothers, know that young spring came
In a whirlwind.
Quickly throw off tired grief
And follow her in a host.
I have never felt so strongly
How much I love you, Oh, Germany,
As the magic of spring surrounds you
Amidst the bustle of war.
(3) Ernst Toller, I Was a German (1933)
My observation post was situated in a little pocket just under the peak of the hill. With the aid of glasses I could make out the French trenches and behind them the devastated town of Mousson and the Moselle winding its sluggish course through the early spring landscape. Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.
A subaltern was watching through his glasses.
"See those Frenchies" he asked.
"Yes, sir." "Let's tickle them up! Range twenty-two hundred," he cried to the telephonist.
And "Twenty-two hundred," echoed the telephonist.
I kept my eyes glued to the glasses. My head was in a whirl, and I was trembling with excitement, surrendered to the passion of the moment like a gambler, like a hunter. My hands shook and my heart pounded wildly. The air was filled with a sudden high-pitched whine, and a brown cloud of dust dimmed my field of vision.
The French soldiers scattered, rushed for shelter; but not all of them. Some lay dead or wounded.
"Direct hit!" cried the subaltern.
The telephonist cheered.
I cheered.
My observation post was situated in a little pocket just under the peak of the hill. With the aid of glasses I could make out the French trenches and behind them the devastated town of Mousson and the Moselle winding its sluggish course through the early spring landscape. Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.
A subaltern was watching through his glasses.
"See those Frenchies" he asked.
"Yes, sir." "Let's tickle them up! Range twenty-two hundred," he cried to the telephonist.
And "Twenty-two hundred," echoed the telephonist.
I kept my eyes glued to the glasses. My head was in a whirl, and I was trembling with excitement, surrendered to the passion of the moment like a gambler, like a hunter. My hands shook and my heart pounded wildly. The air was filled with a sudden high-pitched whine, and a brown cloud of dust dimmed my field of vision.
The French soldiers scattered, rushed for shelter; but not all of them. Some lay dead or wounded.
"Direct hit!" cried the subaltern.
The telephonist cheered.
I cheered.
(4) Ernst Toller, I Was a German (1933)
One night we heard a cry, the cry of one in excruciating pain; then all was quiet again. Someone in his death agony, we thought. But an hour later the cry came again. It never ceased the whole night. Nor the following night. Naked and inarticulate the cry persisted. We could not tell whether it came from the throat of German or Frenchman. It existed in its own right, an agonized indictment of heaven and earth. We thrust our fingers into our ears to stop its moan; but it was no good; the cry cut like a drill into our heads, dragging minutes into hours, hours into years. We withered and grew old between those cries.
Later we learned that it was one of our own men hanging on the wire. Nobody could do anything for him; two men had already tried to save him, only to be shot themselves. We prayed desperately for his death. He took so long about it, and if he went on much longer we should go mad. But on the third day his cries were stopped by death.
One night we heard a cry, the cry of one in excruciating pain; then all was quiet again. Someone in his death agony, we thought. But an hour later the cry came again. It never ceased the whole night. Nor the following night. Naked and inarticulate the cry persisted. We could not tell whether it came from the throat of German or Frenchman. It existed in its own right, an agonized indictment of heaven and earth. We thrust our fingers into our ears to stop its moan; but it was no good; the cry cut like a drill into our heads, dragging minutes into hours, hours into years. We withered and grew old between those cries.
Later we learned that it was one of our own men hanging on the wire. Nobody could do anything for him; two men had already tried to save him, only to be shot themselves. We prayed desperately for his death. He took so long about it, and if he went on much longer we should go mad. But on the third day his cries were stopped by death.
(5) Ernst Toller, I Was a German (1933)
The French inhabitants who lingered on in their villages in the fighting zone lived wretchedly in cellars and barns, in odd little rooms or kitchen cupboards, like shipwrecked sailors clinging to bits of wreckage, only to be swept off into eternity by a sudden storm. Impotent witness of its own downfall, the village in which parents and grandparents still lived was blown to bits, its fields ploughed by guns and sown with shells instead of seed; and the fruit of the seed was death and destruction.
The French got enough from the Germans to save them from starvation; but many a woman sold herself for a loaf or a chunk of sausage. Soldiers and peasants lived together on friendly terms; they knew each other and their everyday routines, and trusted each other; they shook their heads together over the war.
The French inhabitants who lingered on in their villages in the fighting zone lived wretchedly in cellars and barns, in odd little rooms or kitchen cupboards, like shipwrecked sailors clinging to bits of wreckage, only to be swept off into eternity by a sudden storm. Impotent witness of its own downfall, the village in which parents and grandparents still lived was blown to bits, its fields ploughed by guns and sown with shells instead of seed; and the fruit of the seed was death and destruction.
The French got enough from the Germans to save them from starvation; but many a woman sold herself for a loaf or a chunk of sausage. Soldiers and peasants lived together on friendly terms; they knew each other and their everyday routines, and trusted each other; they shook their heads together over the war.
(6) Ernst Toller, I Was a German (1933)
I saw the dead without really seeing them. As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity.
I stood in the trench cutting into the earth with my pick. The point got stuck, and I heaved and pulled it out with a jerk. When it came a slimy, shapeless bundle, and when I bent down to look I saw that wound round my pick were human entrails. A dead man was buried there.
A dead man.
What made me pause then? Why did those words so startle me? They closed upon my brain like a vice; they choked my throat and chilled my heart. Three words, like any other three words.
A dead man. I tried to thrust the words out of my mind; what was there about them that they should so overwhelm me?
And suddenly, like light in darkness, the real truth broke in upon me; the simple fact of Man, which I had forgotten, which had lain deep buried and out of sight; the idea of community, of unity.
A dead man. Not a dead Frenchman. Not a dead German. A dead man.
All these corpses had been men; all these corpses had breathed as I breathed; they had a father, a mother, a woman whom they loved, a piece of land which was theirs, faces which expressed their joys and their sufferings, eyes which had known the light of day and the colour of the sky. 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.
After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now? But I never asked who was to blame. Each had defended his own country; the Germans Germany, the Frenchmen France; they had done their duty.
I saw the dead without really seeing them. As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity.
I stood in the trench cutting into the earth with my pick. The point got stuck, and I heaved and pulled it out with a jerk. When it came a slimy, shapeless bundle, and when I bent down to look I saw that wound round my pick were human entrails. A dead man was buried there.
A dead man.
What made me pause then? Why did those words so startle me? They closed upon my brain like a vice; they choked my throat and chilled my heart. Three words, like any other three words.
A dead man. I tried to thrust the words out of my mind; what was there about them that they should so overwhelm me?
And suddenly, like light in darkness, the real truth broke in upon me; the simple fact of Man, which I had forgotten, which had lain deep buried and out of sight; the idea of community, of unity.
A dead man. Not a dead Frenchman. Not a dead German. A dead man.
All these corpses had been men; all these corpses had breathed as I breathed; they had a father, a mother, a woman whom they loved, a piece of land which was theirs, faces which expressed their joys and their sufferings, eyes which had known the light of day and the colour of the sky. 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.
After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now? But I never asked who was to blame. Each had defended his own country; the Germans Germany, the Frenchmen France; they had done their duty.
(7) Ernst Toller, letter (1916)
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? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.
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? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.
(8) Ernst Toller, Corpses in the Wood (1916)
A dung heap of rotting corpses:
Glazed eyes, bloodshot,
Brains split, guts spewed out
The air poisoned by the stink of corpses
A single awful cry of madness.
Oh, women in France,
Women of Germany
Regard your menfolk!
They fumble with torn hands
For the swollen bodies of their enemies,
Gestures, stiff in death, become the touch of brotherhood,
Yes, they embrace each other,
Oh, horrible embrace!
I see and see and am struck dumb
Am I a beast, a murderous dog?
Men violated
Murdered.
A dung heap of rotting corpses:
Glazed eyes, bloodshot,
Brains split, guts spewed out
The air poisoned by the stink of corpses
A single awful cry of madness.
Oh, women in France,
Women of Germany
Regard your menfolk!
They fumble with torn hands
For the swollen bodies of their enemies,
Gestures, stiff in death, become the touch of brotherhood,
Yes, they embrace each other,
Oh, horrible embrace!
I see and see and am struck dumb
Am I a beast, a murderous dog?
Men violated
Murdered.
(9) Ernst Toller, I Was a German (1933)
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. The war had become an everyday affair; life in the line a matter of routine; instead of heroes there were only victims; conscripts instead of volunteers, life had become hell, death a bagatelle; we were all of us cogs in a great machine which sometimes rolled forward, nobody knew where, sometimes backwards, nobody knew why. We had lost our enthusiasm, our courage, the very sense of our identity; there was no rhyme or reason in all this slaughtering and devastation; pain itself had lost its meaning; the earth was a barren waste.
I applied for a transfer to the Air Force, not from any heroic motive, or for the love of adventure, but simply to get away from the mass, from mass-living and mass-dying.
But before my transfer came through I fell ill. Heart and stomach both broke down, and I was sent back to hospital in Strassburg. In a quiet Franciscan monastery kind and silent monks looked after me. After many weeks I was discharged. Unfit for further service.
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. The war had become an everyday affair; life in the line a matter of routine; instead of heroes there were only victims; conscripts instead of volunteers, life had become hell, death a bagatelle; we were all of us cogs in a great machine which sometimes rolled forward, nobody knew where, sometimes backwards, nobody knew why. We had lost our enthusiasm, our courage, the very sense of our identity; there was no rhyme or reason in all this slaughtering and devastation; pain itself had lost its meaning; the earth was a barren waste.
I applied for a transfer to the Air Force, not from any heroic motive, or for the love of adventure, but simply to get away from the mass, from mass-living and mass-dying.
But before my transfer came through I fell ill. Heart and stomach both broke down, and I was sent back to hospital in Strassburg. In a quiet Franciscan monastery kind and silent monks looked after me. After many weeks I was discharged. Unfit for further service.
(10) Ernst Toller, speech at his trial for high treason (14th July, 1919)
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.
The working class will not halt until socialism has been realized. The revolution is like a vessel filled with the pulsating heartbeat of millions of working people. And the spirit of revolution will not die while the hearts of these workers continue to beat.
Gentlemen! I am convinced that, by your own lights, you will pronounce judgement to the best of your knowledge and belief. But knowing my views you must also accept that I shall regard your verdict as the expression, not of justice, but of power.
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.
The working class will not halt until socialism has been realized. The revolution is like a vessel filled with the pulsating heartbeat of millions of working people. And the spirit of revolution will not die while the hearts of these workers continue to beat.
Gentlemen! I am convinced that, by your own lights, you will pronounce judgement to the best of your knowledge and belief. But knowing my views you must also accept that I shall regard your verdict as the expression, not of justice, but of power.
(11) Alvah Bessie, Men in Battle (1939)
Joe North returned again, this time with Ernst Toller, the exiled German dramatist, and a young man whose name was Daniel Roosevelt, who told me he was a correspondent for my old paper, The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. That is to say, he had agreed to send them articles from Spain that they might publish if they cared to, but he had not written any and was going back to Paris any day. Toller was a quiet, heavy-set man, who wandered about talking to the soldiers, asking questions; how much did we get to eat, and did we get enough to smoke, and watching the Fascist airplanes through a pair of opera-glasses, when everybody else was under cover. "Who's that dope standing out there in the open?" some one shouted; but Toller stood and watched, changing his position to get a better view, and saying quietly, "We did not have so many planes during the World War."
Нема коментара:
Постави коментар