Ernst Toller and German Society: Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics, 1914-1939 1611476356, 9781611476354

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Ernst Toller and German Society

Ernst Toller and German Society Intellectuals as Leaders and Critics, 1914–1939 Robert Ellis

FAIRLEIGH DICKINSON UNIVERSITY PRESS Madison • Teaneck

Published by Fairleigh Dickinson University Press Copublished with Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 10 Thornbury Road, Plymouth PL6 7PP, United Kingdom Copyright © 2013 by Robert Ellis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ellis, Robert, 1946Ernst Toller and German society : intellectuals as leaders and critics, 1914-1939 / Robert Ellis. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. Summary: “Between 1918 and 1939 Ernst Toller was one of Germany’s prominent left-wing intellectuals, He was a leader of the German Revolution of 1918-1919, famous playwright of the 1920s and best known spokesman against Hitler during the 1930s, writing about a country unsuccessfully balancing between survival and annihilation. This study, the first comprehensive analysis in two decades, shows the influence that intellectuals can have in a troubled society and asks what qualities make leaders effective”— Provided by publisher. ISBN 978-1-61147-635-4 (cloth) | ISBN 978-1-61147-636-1 (electronic) 1. Toller, Ernst, 1893-1939—Political and social views. 2. Intellectuals—Germany—History—20th century. 3. Politics and literature—Germany—History—20th century. 4. Dramatists, German—20th century—Biography. 5. Authors, German—20th century—Biography. 6. Germany—Politics and government—1918-1933. I. Title. II. Title: Intellectuals as leaders and critics, 1914-1939. PT2642.O65Z654 2013 832'.912—dc23 2013026716 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

This book is for Howard Winter, Tenth Mountain Division, World War Two, Bronze Star: Warrior, Benefactor, and Hero. This book is also for Dr. Edward Berger.

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

1 2

Introduction The Intellectual as Critic

1 11

3 4 5 6 7 8

“Wandering” The Attractions of Ideology: Expressionism and Activism Revolution of Love: Bavaria 1918–1919 “A Gentle Apostle”: The Weimar Years The Critic as Exile Conclusion: What the Shadow Said

Selected Bibliography Index About the Author

31 55 85 131 179 209 227 239 241

vii

Acknowledgments

In his Hamburgische Dramaturgie, Lessing writes that the pure fountain of inspiration did not spring unforced within him; rather, various outside aids were necessary for his literary production. My first debt goes to George Novobaczky, the man who gave me my first serious introduction to history as an undergraduate. The present work has profited from the comments of the late Robert Kann and Harold Poor of Rutgers University. Lewis Wurgaft also went to the trouble to photocopy his Harvard dissertation on Kurt Hiller for me. His work was most helpful in setting Toller within the framework of the activist movement, and I am indebted to him for many of the ideas in chapter 3. I also wish to thank Dr. Harold Hurwitz of the Free University of Berlin for sending me a copy of some papers by Toller. I want also to thank Edward Zevin at Bronx Community College and Miriam Frolow at the University of Phoenix for their reading and comments. Conversations with Howard Winter helped teach me what courage and leadership are. Margarete Lamb-Faffelberger and June Schlueter at Lafayette College were kind enough to provide cogent comments which made this a much better study. This book could also not have been written without the help, support and encouragement of Judy Wilensky-Elsasser to whom I owe much. Also thanks to Carl Hanser Verlag in Munich for allowing quotes from selections from Toller’s autobiography “Eine Jugend in Deutschland” contained in the Rowohlt collection of Toller’s work, Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte (Munich, 1978). Libraries and librarians are wonderful additions to the world. Yale University’s Special Manuscripts Collection, the Rehse Collection at The Library of Congress, and the Bavarian State Archive were a source of material on Toller. The librarians at Christ Church College, Oxford University provided a comfortable space in an ancient university while I worked on revisions of the book. One of the unknown treasures of New Jersey has been the Giovatto Library at Fairleigh Dickinson University. The library and its staff have provided a home for me in finishing this book. Particular thanks I extend to Kathleen Stein-Smith, the library’s Director of Public Services, Debbie Daniele, who tirelessly tracked down obscure books in German for me, and particularly to Maryann Sena who provided much needed encouragement, understanding and support.

ix

ONE Introduction

To breathe the air of Germany is to be truly aware of the tragic nature of the twentieth century. It was Nietzsche who, in the nineteenth century, analyzed many of the contours of twentieth-century Germany, Freud who discovered its underside, Einstein who helped discover a possible means of its destruction, and Hitler who dedicated a part of his life to the elimination of much of its population. “The modern mind,” observes Erich Heller, “speaks German. Not always good German, but German none the less.” 1 This book is a study of the victim of such a century, a German, the “tragic expressionist figure” 2 Ernst Toller. In pictures taken long ago, Toller’s eyes stare out from faded black and white photos. Inquisitive eyes. Eyes deeply set under prominent brows, large eyes, vivid and questioning, like chipped dark agate semiprecious stones. Behind those eyes was a massively creative force. He had a strikingly exotic quality that attracted people, something that gave Toller a quiet air of authority and yet conveyed rare warmth. He was an impassioned public speaker, with a magnificent and stentorian baritone, speaking with dramatic outrage that excited audiences into emotional fervor. His speeches were performances and his powers of rendition formidable. He had an actor’s sense for the dramatic and used pacing, juxtapositions, aggregations of tone to form a shaping presence. He had this down to an art. Someone who heard him observed that his manner of speaking was a transformational event: Ernst Toller transforms the old unspoken yearnings of the workers into words, and [with] the heat of his tongue the words become a springboard for the rage of the exploited. He stands there in the park, like fire in the trees—young, dark-haired, electric, almost stuttering with emotion, the epitome of the Expressionist. . . . He is shaken by flaming hatred, of war and the war-mongers. He is in tears, he is moved and his 1

2

Chapter 1 expression moves the masses. They know this is no mere Paganini of rhetoric . . . this is Ernst Toller. 3

He was the equivalent of a rock star, a modern-day Mick Jagger or Bono (though with more politics and erudition). He had talent, natural charm, the gift of persuasion, and an incredible energy behind his skills. He was neutral in nothing. During the years of Weimar and the Third Reich, Toller was one of the more active of the “other Germany’s” left-wing intellectuals. A leader of the Bavarian Soviet of 1919, he had in addition won the Kleist prize and was recognized as one of Germany’s best playwrights. Indeed, during the years of the Weimar Republic, the popularity of his works was unquestioned, and they were translated and circulated on the grand scale that befitted that of an author of international stature. His first play, Die Wandlung, was soon sold out and required a second edition; his dramatic works and poems were eventually translated into twenty-seven languages. When he was released from prison in 1925, after serving a fiveyear term for his role during the Bavarian Soviet of 1919, authorities had to plan the beginning of his freedom carefully. He was placed in a sealed train and escorted out of the Bavarian state to forestall excessive celebration of his release. Bavarian authorities were well aware that even in prison Toller had become one of the most celebrated dramatists of his time. 4 During the 1920s, some said that he “dominated the German and Russian theatre” or that he was the “most spectacular personality in modern German literature.” 5 It was common for contemporaries to classify him as one of the foremost German writers of the Republican era, and even a more recent critic placed him among the top twelve authors of the 1930s. 6 Nor was his reputation limited to Germany. Between his release from prison and the mid-1930s, Toller was recognized in Europe and beyond; he was carried on the shoulders of enthusiastic Yugoslav students in Zagreb, greeted by labor leaders as “Comrade Toller” in the more radical of London’s pubs, recognized by cab drivers in Tripoli, and carefully watched by Mussolini’s police in Italy. 7 However, it is Toller the social critic rather than Toller the dramatist with whom we will be concerned—his ideas, his visions for Germany and Europe as transmitted in his works of drama and prose. While the present generation, perhaps grown cynical through the sobering experience of Nazi atrocities and ever greater wars, may reject as naïve the themes of peace, love, and brotherhood so passionately expounded by Toller, his oeuvre aptly suited his time: revolutionary in 1918, disillusioned in the 1920s, branded as degenerate in the 1930s, Toller fits as well into the years of German history that began in 1918 and ended with the outbreak of war as do the cabarets of Berlin, the song of Horst Wessel, or the fists of Max Schmeling.

Introduction

3

While alive, Toller was continually a figure of controversy, more political than literary. His failure in the Bavarian revolution and his role as a left-wing intellectual did not endear him to the nationalistic Right, the German bourgeoisie, or the extreme Left. Despite doctrinal distinctions, both Right and Left managed to cover their differences in a cadenza of common denunciation. His play, Hoppla, wir leben!, for example, found disfavor with the Right because of its “Bolshevik undermining of the stage,” while the Left found it “too humanistic.” 8 His second play, Masse Mensch, was deemed counterrevolutionary by some and “pure Bolshevism” by others. 9 For his part in the Bavarian revolution, the communists alternately denounced Toller as a petit bourgeois intellectual, a traitor, a half-fascist, or a romantic revolutionary anarchist. To the Right, he was a traitor to the values of all good Germans, a Jew Literat, and a communist. To his nationalist critics, he was a communist because he participated in revolution; to his communist critics, he was a traitor because he refused to follow the party line. 10 The puzzled historian, then, has a wide selection: Toller the traitor, Toller the revolutionary, Toller the counterrevolutionary, Toller the anarchist, Toller the fascist, Toller the communist, Toller the anticommunist. If Toller’s inclination toward controversy during his life was well known, it cannot be said that Toller after his death was, until recently, well remembered. Toller’s life was a series of cataclysmic explosions— war, multiple imprisonments, revolution, civil war, Hitler—and, after his death, it faded as enigmatically as it had come, leaving little but his name. The extensive translations of his work into languages as diverse as Armenian and Yiddish may have attested to his once cosmopolitan vogue, but, three decades after his greatest accolades, it was noted that Toller was almost forgotten, hardly ever played or read. 11 This has changed dramatically. There is a Toller website, a revived interest in Toller as a dramatist, excerpts of his plays on the internet, and even a Toller novel. 12 Interest in Toller began to revive in 1959 with the publication of an East German selection of his work. 13 Two years later, a larger anthology was published in West Germany and was extremely well received by critics. 14 It was in response to these republications that Wolfgang Frühwald suggested a re-evaluation of Toller. 15 Echoing this, John Spalek, three years later, called for a “new estimate” of Toller that would take into account his entire literary activity. 16 The further publication of Spalek’s comprehensive bibliography on Toller makes such a task particularly convenient. It contains an excellent listing of the secondary literature on Toller and also indicates the vast quantity of the works he produced, both published and unpublished. 17 The earliest general work is William Anthony Willibrand’s Ernst Toller and His Ideology. 18 Published six years after Toller’s death, Willibrand’s was a slender volume that made use only of Toller’s published works and made little effort to place Toller in the perspective of the historical

4

Chapter 1

milieu under which he wrote. Willibrand, moreover, was hampered by lack of access to much of Toller’s writing. Toller has shared the fate typical of many an emigrant author vocally opposed to the Nazi government; his work was suppressed, and much of Toller’s writing never appeared in German or remained unpublished. 19 In later studies, attention has been focused on Toller the writer or Toller the revolutionary. Both views are fragmentary at their best, and at their worst distorted. Literary critics know the first Toller, the expressionist dramatist, author of Die Wandlung and Masse Mensch. The evaluation of their subject is confined to Toller’s plays, most of which were published between 1917 and 1927. 20 Toller’s work during the 1930s was either forgotten or unknown. Historians, on the other hand, have studied the second Toller, the revolutionary, and know him best for his part in Bavaria’s short-lived Soviet of April 1919. Much of the work of this era was done by East German historians, crudely Stalinist in outlook and more concerned with indicting Toller for not following the party line of 1919 than with giving an accurate account of his part in the Bavarian revolution. 21 To correct this, I have used the records of the Bavarian archives in Munich, the Rehse Collection on Toller at the Library of Congress, and material on Toller in the National Archives in Washington. 22 Until the 1970s, Toller was primarily analyzed on the basis of his dramatic works. Yet, as one observer notes: a comprehensive survey of Toller’s entire literary production, including unpublished works and those published in a variety of journals and newspapers, suggests that an estimate based on his dramatic output alone does not do him full justice. The survey shows that Toller had been publishing essayistic prose in German and other languages since his release from prison in 1924; after 1930 this trend increased at the expense of his dramas until in exile his no belletristic prose actually exceeded his dramatic works in quantity and significance. 23

These essays, most of them on political topics, are a particularly fruitful source in discovering Toller’s views on German society between 1924 and 1939, and their consideration should serve to fill the considerable lacunae Kurt Hiller noted that exists in Toller’s activity during these years. 24 Yet Toller was more than a writer; he was also an intellectual. Historian István Deák has written about the long-neglected problem of the twentieth-century left-wing German intellectuals of which Toller was one of the leading representatives. 25 A recrudesce of interest in Toller started in 1968 with German playwright Tankred Dorst’s drama Toller. Two years after Spalek’s call for a new estimate of his work, the play put Toller literally back on stage. It was in many ways an unflattering estimate, despite its elements of truth. Toller is portrayed as vain (probably true), a narcissist (possibly), an impressive speaker (definitely true), and a naïve, irrational person responsible for the failure of the revolution (defi-

Introduction

5

nitely untrue). Dorst’s work was a success, partly because of elaborate productions in West Germany and partly because the theme of revolution was topical. This was, after all, 1968. The late 1970s and the decade of the 1980s began to see some serious work done on Toller. The 1970s produced a slew of dissertations on aspects of Toller’s life and work. 26 In 1981, Jost Hermand, a noted German scholar, collected a dozen scholarly articles on Toller’s work as a “manifestation of revolution, imprisonment, the Weimar Republic, fascist takeover and exile.” This was the most comprehensive analysis since Willibrand’s earlier work. 27 The best work, however, was done by writers Stephen Lamb, Frank Trommler, Richard Dove, and Keith Bullivant. 28 In the 1990s, with the establishment in Germany of The Ernst Toller Society, dozens of scholarly articles have been done on all aspects of Toller’s activities. 29 This study builds on that work in an exploration of Toller as a Jewish, German, left-wing intellectual. Each of these three rubrics—Jewish, German, and left-wing—is significant and deserves attention. Political history and the history of ideas can make extensive contributions to the understanding of literature. The author’s reaction to the events of his time, as well as the type of sensibility that goes with this, is a fruitful source of inquiry both for literary interpretation and historical analysis. István Deák, in his study of Weimar Germany’s left-wing intellectuals, has made a great contribution towards understanding the thought of many Weimar writers. How Toller fit into this group, a question as yet unexplored, is a main theme of my own study, which does not claim to be strictly political or literary or historical. It is, rather, partly a cultural, partly a psychological study, what the Germans call Ideengeschichte. In dealing with Toller, I have been aware of historical analysis, but less of the aesthetic merits or literary interpretation of Toller’s work than of his social significance. Toller was a writer, and aesthetic-literary theory interests a writer in much the same fashion that ornithology interests sparrows. In reading Toller, I have rather reflected on the responsibility an intellectual-critic has when writing about a troubled democratic society unsuccessfully balancing between survival and annihilation. Toller was, furthermore, a Jewish intellectual, a characteristic he shared with many other German intellectuals during the 1920s. How did his religion’s tradition shape his views? He was also German, and this raises a whole host of specifically German patterns of looking at the world that are dealt with in chapter 3. A related reflection is to ask what difference did it make? How much of an influence do intellectuals have in the development of society? What is the relationship between intellectuals and their readers in a troubled society? Weimar was particularly troubled. Its ambiguous founding, its attempt to deal with the new, spontaneously founded Councils, and its violent repression of those Councils affected the thought of all intellectuals about the relationship of art, politics, and

6

Chapter 1

social change. 30 These are old questions and issues, some of which have been addressed academically and philosophically; but I am not sure academic commentary and philosophy have answered them very vividly. Toller was more than just another left-wing Weimar intellectual. This has been overlooked and needs to be emphasized. He was also a leader in ways his colleagues were not. He was a literary leader, a leader in social criticism, one of the leaders of “the other Germany” opposing National Socialism, and, in his work for the Spanish Republic during his last years, an organizational leader. Yes, he was all these things. But he was also something the intellectuals of the Left did not have the misfortune to be. He was a political leader, a founding father of the abortive Bavarian Soviet of 1919, and, in fighting for it, a military leader too. He applied these leadership lessons to his work after 1919. Intellectual work begins, and usually ends, with ideas published in books. If read, they may become influential ideas, like those of Marx or Adam Smith or Plato. But their implementation is left to others. Marx never was director of economics for a communist country, Smith never headed a multinational company, and Plato never became a head of state. 31 Men of thought are seldom men of action, but men of action are frequently both. This view of Toller as both intellectual and leader has never been noticed, so I have asked some leadership questions also. What is the nature of leadership? What qualities did Toller share with other leaders that scholars of leadership have observed? Was Toller a successful leader? All these issues are treated in the conclusions of chapter 8. Toller certainly provided a vivid answer to these questions, and, if you keep reading, I promise these important questions, and others, will be answered. I hope this work might be one that asks theoretical questions but answers them practically, one that asks a critic’s questions and offers an historian’s answers. Books, even scholarly ones, should welcome readers. In some languages, German and French, for example, the word for history can also mean story. And a good story welcomes and engages readers. Toller’s is an exciting story, one of war, revolution, political battles, intellectual debates, fighting fascism, helping the helpless during the Spanish Civil War, and, tragically, of suicide. It is an engaging story that raises the issue of how one individual can make an impact on society and how such a lone figure can fight against forces more powerful than he. Toller’s story awakens us. As Franz Kafka observed: If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves. . . . A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. 32

Introduction

7

I have also not confined myself to studying only the relation of the intellectual to Weimar. Weimar culture lasted longer than the years of the Weimar Republic—a fact Peter Gay recognizes when he writes that the spirit of Weimar found its “true home, in exile.” 33 How Toller responded as an exiled Weimar intellectual and the problems and frustrations he faced also form a part of this study. Moreover, I have, as my subtitle indicates, concerned myself with the role of the writer-intellectual as a critic of society and have prefaced my discussion of Toller by what I think a necessary analysis of the social role of intellectuals in general and of German intellectuals in particular. In addition, Toller is seen in his dual role as an individual concerned with working for practical social change and as an intellectual involved in the more rarefied concerns of the spirit (Geist). The clash between politics and the intellectual is a major theme, and particular emphasis has been placed on the contradictions of these two diverse and frustrating roles. Their aspirations to change society led Toller and other German intellectuals to reshape their German intellectual heritage into an ideology that would be capable of serving their desires, one that would combine the man of power with the man of ideas; from such a heady brew there was to emerge a democratic and humanistic society. It was the failure of this society to emerge after 1918 that sparked Toller’s criticism of postwar Germany and led him to seek ways to change that society into one that would conform to his ideals. Toller became the unhappy champion of a noble but, nevertheless, lost cause. As a critic, Toller’s response was to the immediate; indeed, most of his essays are rejoinders, much of his dramatic literature a blend of art and advocacy for the left-wing cause. As an author, he was more discussed during the 1920s than Bertolt Brecht, but he has not achieved the lasting fame that fell to his left-wing contemporary. Toller’s real significance was as the ideal type in the history of the Left in Weimar and after, the best representative of his generation. He had a box seat with two performances at the Götterdämmerungen: World War I and the Third Reich. His life was a chronological unfolding that for twenty years “tore apart not only their author, but German society, and ultimately, in World War II, the comity of nations.” 34 Born too late to have taken part in the intellectual renewal of the 1890s, but old enough to have participated in the cultural awakening of the prewar years, Toller belonged to a generation whose intellectual outlook was determined by the First World War and its revolutionary aftermath, one converted by the first into pacifism and embittered by the results of the second into criticism. Under the impact of National Socialism, Toller’s generation finally disintegrated. Some, like Ludwig Marcuse, found a new home in exile; some, like Carl von Ossietzky, refused to leave Germany and found themselves at the mercy of their Nazi captors; and some, like Toller, found it impossible to go on living and, in the end, took their own lives. “Who is the poet?” rhetorically asked Thomas Mann. “He whose life is symbolic.” 35 As a symbol of his

8

Chapter 1

generation, Toller becomes more than just an individual, and his story easily becomes a significant part of German intellectual history. NOTES 1. Erich Heller, “The Importance of Nietzsche,” in The Artist’s Journey into the Interior and Other Essays, edited by Eric Heller (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 174. 2. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture:The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 170. 3. Richard Dove, He Was a German (London: Libris, 1990), 139. 4. Stephen Lamb, “Activism and Weimar Politics: The Case of Ernst Toller and His Contemporaries,” in Expressionism in Focus, edited by Richard Sheppard (Blairgowries, Scotland: Lochee, 1987), 113. 5. Kurt Pinthus, “Life and Death of Ernst Toller,” Books Abroad 14, no. 1 (1939/ 1940): 3; Oskar Maria Graf, “Totenrede für Ernst Toller,” in “Der gesellschaftlicheethische Protest im dicterischen Werk Ernst Tollers,” by Martin Reso (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Jena, 1957), Appendix, 42. 6. Francis Anderson, “An Analytical Study of Techniques of Persuasion in the Plays of Ernst Toller” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 1956), 147. 7. Hermann Kesten, Meine Freunde die Poeten (Munich: Kindler, 1959), 160. 8. Jürgen Rühle, Literatur und Revolution: Die Schriftsteller und der Kommunismus in Deutschland (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1960), 142. 9. Ernst Toller, I Was a German: The Autobiography of Ernst Toller (New York: Paragon House 1934), 102. 10. John Spalek, “Ernst Toller: The Need for a New Estimate,” German Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1966): 584. For Toller the socialist, see Richard Dove, Revolutionary Socialism in the Work of Ernst Toller (New York: Peter Lang, 1986). For Toller the anarchist, see Michael Ossar, Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980). For Toller the failed revolutionary, see Frank Trommler, “Ernst Toller: The Redemptive Power of the Failed Revolutionary,” in German Writers and Politics, 1918–39, edited by Richard Dove and Stephen Lamb (Basingstoke & London: Macmillan, 1992). 11. Kesten, Meine Freunde die Poeten, 168. To be sure, many of Toller’s plays are among the best examples of expressionist drama. It may well be this very fact that helps account for their oblivion. It is not just Toller’s plays that seem overrated, but expressionist plays in general. Perhaps a more realistic age finds itself repelled by one of the qualities that make them expressionist: their hyperbole. 12. Dove, He Was a German; website of Toller Society, ernst-toller.de/eng/gesellschaft.htm; Toller novel: Anna Funder, All That I Am (New York: Harper, 2012). For a complete listing of works on Toller, see Bavarian State Library at bsb-muenchen.de/ index/php. 13. Ernst Toller, Ausgewählte Schriften (Berlin: Volk und Welt, 1959). 14. Ernst Toller, Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961). Hereafter cited as PBDG. 15. See Frühwald’s review of Toller’s Ausgewählte Schriften, Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch, Neue Folge, 4 (1963): 279f. 16. Spalek, “Ernst Toller: The Need for a New Estimate,” 598. 17. John Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics: A Bibliography (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1968). 18. W. A. Willibrand, Ernst Toller and His Ideology (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1945). 19. Spalek, “Ernst Toller: The Need for a New Estimate,” 581.

Introduction

9

20. See, for example, Walter Sokel, “Ernst Toller,” in Deutsche Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert, 2 vols., edited by Hermann Friedmann and Otto Mann (Heidelberg: W. Rothe, 1961), 2:299-315. 21. Martin Reso, “Die Novemberrevolution und Ernst Toller,” Weimarer Beiträge 5 (1959): 387–489; Hans Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution zur Räterepublik in München (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1957). 22. Staatsarchiv für Oberbayern, St. Anw. München I, Nr. 2242/II; Rehse Collection, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress; National Archives, RG 242. 23. Spalek, “Ernst Toller: The Need for a New Estimate,” 596–97. 24. Kurt Hiller, introduction to PBDG, 14. 25. See István Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and Its Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); Harold Poor, Kurt Tucholsky and the Ordeal of Germany (New York: Scribner, 1968); Beth Irwin Lewis, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971). 26. Consult the following: Rosemarie Altenhofer, “Ernst Tollers politische Dramatik” (PhD, Washington University, 1976); Helen Cafferty, “Georg Büchner’s Influence on Ernst Toller” (PhD, University of Michigan, 1976); Robert Elsasser, “Ernst Toller” (PhD, Rutgers University, 1973); Martha Marks, “Ernst Toller: His Fight against Fascism” (PhD, University of Michigan, 1980); William Park, “Ernst Toller: The European Exile Years 1933-1936” (PhD, University of Colorado, 1976); Robert Reimer, “The Tragedy of the Revolutionary: A Study of the Drama-of-Revolution of Ernst Toller, Friedrich Wolf and Bertolt Brecht” (PhD, University of Kansas, 1971); Jacqueline Rogers, “Ernst Toller’s Prose Writings” (PhD, Yale University, 1972). 27. Jost Hermand, Zu Ernst Toller, Drama und Engagement (Stuttgart: Klett, 1981). 28. Dove, He Was a German; Anthony Phelan, The Weimar Dilemma: Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985); Keith Bullivant, Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977); Richard Dove, Revolutionary Socialism in the Work of Ernst Toller; Dove and Lamb, eds. German Writers and Politics, 1918–1939. 29. See Stefan Neuhaus, Rolf Selbmann, Thorsten Unger, eds., Ernst Toller und die Weimarer Republik: Ein Autor im Spannungsfeld von Literatur und Politik (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999); Kirsten Reimers, Das Bewältigen des Wirklichen (Würzberg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000); Thorsten Unger and Maria Wojtczak, Ernst Tollers Geburtsort Samotschin (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001). All are part of the Society’s publications. Non-Toller Society works of the 1990s include Cordula Grunow-Erdmann, Die Dramen Ernst Tollers im Kontext ihrer Zeit (Heidelberg: Winter, 1994); Dieter Distl, Ernst Toller: Eine politische Biographie (Munich: B. Bickel, 1993); and, most notably for Toller’s dramas, the detailed work of Cecil Davies, The Plays of Ernst Toller (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996). 30. Alan Bance, Weimar Germany: Writers and Politics (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1982), vi. See also Wolfgang Bialas and Georg Iggers, eds., Intellektuelle in der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996). Although not including material on the Weimar Republic, there is a good overview of German intellectuals at the website www.der-deutsche-intellektuelle.de/html/literatur.html. 31. Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 5. 32. Franz Kafka, Letter to Oskar Pollak, January 27, 1904, www.languagehat.com. 33. Gay, Weimar Culture, 145. 34. Davies, The Plays of Ernst Toller. 35. Davies, The Plays of Ernst Toller, 446; Thomas Mann, “Űber königliche Höheit,” in Reden und Aufsätze (Oldenburg: S. Fischer, 1965), 734.

TWO The Intellectual as Critic

In former times the worst offense was an offense against God. Today it is an offense against the State. But often the greatest men have been the severest critics of their countries. —Ernst Toller, “Unser Kampf in Deutschland”

Professor Dubreuilh in Simone de Beauvoir’s Les Mandarins asks: “What does it mean, the fact that man never ceases talking about himself? And why is it that some men decide to speak in the name of others? In other words, what is an intellectual? 1 Dubreuilh’s musing perplexity is understandable, and the bold spirit who would dare ask his question soon finds its answer elusive. Marxists found only frustration when attempting to define an intellectual and his social function. Where, after all, does one fit men of ideas into a system that recognizes only categories of economic development? Still, the embarrassing problem had to be faced. Lenin classified them as bourgeois. Sociologically, there is some justification for this: most intellectuals do come from the middle class. Yet Lenin failed to account for how his “bourgeois intelligentsia” could lead to proletariat. The function of the bourgeoisie is to assault the feudal aristocracy, not to supply the proletariat with theory. 2 Whatever their social role, intellectuals have long been regarded with suspicion. In Russia, the decision to include intellectuals in the franchise of the first Soviet constitution was much contested 3 —a paradoxical situation since the Bolsheviks, themselves a party of intellectuals, made the constitution possible. In France, Édouard Berth, a sympathizer with the Action Française, was wont to see intellectuals as effeminate, deceitful weaklings with nauseating humanitarian ideas. Maurice Barrès vituperated against “servile mandarins.” In the twentieth century, two of

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France’s leading intellectuals, Julien Benda and Raymond Aron, had unflattering observations about men of ideas. 4 Germany, Mme. de Staël’s “land of poets and thinkers,” has had its share of anti-intellectual ideas, particularly in the twentieth century. Intellectuals were seen by many as representative of a corrosive atomism, detrimental to the true and “spontaneous” nature of existence. As one exponent of this philosophy wrote: More important than all vivisection of intellectuality is the growth of a national myth, a myth not from the mind, but coming from the blood. For it is not rationalism which produces the myth of life. It is understood only in creation. That is the essence and content of our time. Therefore, there exists and must exist a hostility between genuine life and intellectualism. Genuine life is belief and growth; intellectuality is skepticism and sterility. Spirit is the genuine life; intellectuality is only superficial empiricism. 5

Even two of twentieth-century Germany’s greatest authors, Hermann Hesse and Thomas Mann, both at times had unkind remarks about intellectuals. Hesse’s Harry Haller chastises them for their unreal ideas. Crudely put, much of Thomas Mann’s work sees intellectuality as leading to weakness, decadence, and death, whereas the nonintellectual, living unencumbered by introspection, can live with vigor and health. The intellectual feels superior to the nonintellectual yet secretly envies him. Tonio Kröger admires Hans Hansen; Detlev Spinell is made to appear ridiculous in contrast with the crude Herr Kloterjahn; the intellectual Schiller envies his rival Goethe, who “knew how to live.” If we wish to understand this common prejudice against the intellectual and come to some conclusions about his role in society, common usage provides a convenient and logical point of departure. The word itself, “intellectual,” comes from the French intellectuel and is of fairly recent origin. The exact date of its first usage is somewhat ambiguous. Barrès, who thought it a “neologism” and “poor French,” nevertheless used it in 1888, while Paul Bourget had used it as early as 1882. Yet it was not until 1897 that the word became widely accepted. 6 Before this, various substitute terms were common: bohémien de l’intelligence, les ouvriers de la pensée, hommes de labeur intellectuel, professionnels de l’intelligence. By the end of the 1890s, however, intellectuel had come into popular usage, less as a professional designation than as a term of abuse. Mentioning the recentness of the word, Maurice Paléologue noted that it was used to designate, “as though they were an aristocracy, individuals who live in laboratories and libraries.” For Paléologue, such a situation was “one of the most ridiculous eccentricities of our time—I mean the pretention of raising writers, scientists, professors, and philologists to the rank of supermen.” 7 To Paléologue and others, such pseudo-supermen were a

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presumptuous lot indeed, a set of obnoxious arrivistes, audacious and arrogant. Although its terminological exactness cannot be established, the continual use of the words intellectual and anti-intellectual can be traced back to Romain Rolland’s “holy hysteria” of the Dreyfus affair. 8 It was originally a term of contempt—thus, Paléologue’s invective use of the word. Its connotation was one of presumption, of those who meddle in matters of which they are ignorant. It was perhaps this very negative use that allowed the intellectual community to come together and assert its identity against outside attacks. That favorite assertion of intellectual group identity, the petition, was vividly seen when on January 15, 1898, Anatole France, Émile Zola, Émile Duclaux, Félix Fénéon, Fernand Gregh, Daniel Halévy, Marcel Proust, Lucien Herr, and others signed a protest against the trial of Dreyfus. In January, February, and March, Le Temps frequently used the noun intellectuel. Rarely has a group consciousness been so quickly or so vehemently asserted. 9 The term of abuse was proudly taken up, as if by some mysterious magic, the anti-intellectual insults of their opponents made intellectual a badge of merit. Anatole France, Albert Réville, Georges Clemenceau—all took a militant pride in the appellation in spite (or perhaps because) of the fact that intellectuals had become a butt of right-wing criticism. Barrès, perhaps in a generous mood, called them “simpletons.” For him, they were deráciné, antiFrench, and in general a menace to society. In Germany, anti-intellectualism found an outlet in much völkisch thought and its most vivid expression in National Socialism. Even the far Left showed little love of intellectuals and many times surpassed their right-wing opponents in denunciations. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon spoke out against les mandarins. Mikhail Bakunin held little hope for intellectuals in his new society, dominated as they were by disdain for workers. Particularly among the Chernoe Znamia terrorists, book-learning and ratiocination were held inferior to instinct, will, and action. 10 Much of the far left-wing distrust was a fear that intellectual superiority would find its ultimate expression in an intellectual domination over society as oppressive as that of the aristocracy or bourgeoisie. Certainly, among both Left and Right, it is the presumptuousness of intellectuals that offends. During the Dreyfus affair, the arrogance of the self-proclaimed caste nobiliaire without a title found outlet in one of Méline’s most popular speeches in the Chamber of Deputies where he railed against the “élite intellectuelle” amidst applause and much amusement. 11 The sentiment was clear: those who live in laboratories and libraries had no right to meddle in affairs of which they knew nothing. The absentminded professor is no more capable of running the business of others than he is of managing his own. The impracticality or even ridiculousness of intellectuals’ ideas on society is seen in the young Frédéric Moreau, hero of Gustave Flaubert’s L’Education sentimentale. For the young Moreau, the

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Club de l’Intelligence, a collection of elderly painters and writers who had never published, ends up looking ridiculous and slightly pathetic. In the end, Frédéric gives up abstract intellectual politics for the more sensual pleasures of Rosanette. In real life, Franz Schoenberner felt much the same way after attending a session of the Council of Intellectual Workers (Rat Geistiger Arbeiter) established after Munich’s revolution of 1918. Like Moreau, he, too, was “a bit disappointed by the political activity of intellectual groups.” 12 It was such an involvement of intellectuals in political affairs that the French writer Julien Benda saw as one of the tragic themes of the twentieth century. Indeed, his definition of an intellectual (or “clerk”) excluded “practical aims”: “all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, but who seek their joy in the practice of an art or science, or act of metaphysical speculation, in short the possession of nonmaterial advantages and hence in a certain manner say: ‘my kingdom is not of this world.’” 13 Intellectuals may, indeed, be such lofty upholders of the sacred tradition, but more correctly they are also prophets, descendants of “all those inspired madmen who preached in the wilderness, far removed from the institutional pieties of court and synagogue, castigating the men of power for the wickedness of their ways.” 14 Far from being divorced from attempting to change society or absorbed in aesthetic contemplation, for better or worse, intellectuals were born into the world as screaming protesters, feeling themselves guardians of moral standards ignored by political power. The first intellectuals of the Dreyfus case recognized a dichotomy between political power and morality and agreed with Marx that the important thing was not contemplation but change. They recognized that society and government needed criticism. 15 Nonconformity with society is an historic characteristic of intellectuals; as critical nonconformists, they are seldom apologists for the status quo. Indeed, intellectuals and social protest seem to go together, producing a mentality of permanent opposition. Opposed to society, intellectuals are perhaps born to be unhappy. Certainly, the theme of intellectual alienation has been a major one since Romanticism. In a more integrated age, when knowledge was a preserve of church and aristocracy, social alienation of intellectuals was rare. The development of modernity, set in motion by the interaction of the democratic and industrial revolutions, created a novel set of social conditions and, in the process, created a new consciousness. The physical ugliness of the new landscape, along with the crass materialism of the anti-intellectual nouveaux riches who, for example, populate Dickens’s Hard Times, offended thoughtful spirits. The development of a market that freed the artist from patronage and set him loose from the establishment brought the intellectual into sharp conflict with a social milieu against whose ethos he rebelled.

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While freeing the artist from patronage, such a process called forth a divorce between power and intellect, a situation unique to industrial civilization. Plato’s political philosophy consists, in part, of making philosophers kings and kings philosophers. Renaissance princes and enlightenment philosophers actively sought a union between power and knowledge, hoping for a symbiosis of the two. Power would be civilized by its association with intellect, and intellect broadened by association with power. Industrial civilization, however, assigns a different function to knowledge. Intellect is no longer critical. When the modern state resorts to knowledge, it does not desire its criticism but rather its expertise, a narrow utilitarianism that directs itself to solving a technical problem and not to criticism of social institutions. In industrial society, knowledge and the state can join together, but not the state and intellectuality. The government knowledge expert is no longer an intellectual but a hired mental technician who works at the beck and call of those who pay him. 16 As intellectuality, alienation, and protest go together, so often do intellectual and left-wing ideologies. Leftist ideas have attracted many, if not most, intellectuals. Such a left-wing protest contains many ideas congenial to the intellectual mentality. Antibourgeois and cosmopolitan, it has struck a responsive chord in intellectual circles. Revolutionary in its aim, it offers hope for social change to those impatient with the status quo. Moreover, its internationalism allows the expression of the intellectual’s quest for an ethic of global responsibility: the truly just society will only be attained when all are free. 17 While it cannot be denied that many intellectuals are men of the Left, to associate all intellectuals with the Left would be a rash generalization. Barrès, despite his anti-intellectualism, was an intellectual; so was the devout Slavophil Constantine Asimov, and the not-so-devout Friedrich Nietzsche. What unites all intellectuals of both Right and Left is their criticism, their refusal to ignore social conditions. If it were possible to point to a society without conflict, there would be no need for intellectuals. 18 As active exponents of social change, however, intellectuals transform society’s conflict of interests into conflicts of ideas. Yet it would be misleading to confuse intellectual articulation of social protest with narrow doctrinal interests. While intellectuals do formulate ideologies, they are not necessarily ideologues. While they may attach themselves to a party, they forfeit their critical function when they become apologists for a party line or degenerate into party hacks. This is what the German Socialist Alfred Weber called the socially unattached intelligencia (freischwebende Intelligenz), and what Karl Mannhein explained as their ideological “elasticity” and an “experimental outlook, unceasingly sensitive to the dynamic nature of society and to its wholeness.” 19 Ideally, ideology should not dominate intellectuals; intellectuals should dominate ideology, for there always remains certain open-endedness among intellectuals. Al-

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lowing free rein to their thoughts, they must always be prepared to question assumptions—even their own. On the level of society, this involves a mentality of permanent opposition to conventional social wisdom, certain skepticism of majority opinion. On a personal level, it means a constant readiness to test the validity of opposing ideas. Left-wing protest tends to attract a disproportionate number of intellectuals. As has been shown, the original French term was at first applied to supporters of Dreyfus, themselves by and large men of the Left. A similar left-wing connotation may be seen in the German evolution of the word. 20 Originally, an intellectual was a person who merely used his reason, one who thought and reflected. At the end of the nineteenth century, the term was narrowed to those who were concerned with social questions. As one authority sums it up: Skepticism vis-à-vis traditional authority and exclusively rational judgments predominate among intellecktuelle. According to their interpretation, the mental technician (Wissenschaftler) is predominantly indifferent to the problems of society; the intellectual sees the results of his work from the point of view of their social significance for contemporary problems. Most of these “free intellectuals” (the term is Max Weber’s) emphasize the values of the Aufklärung . . . From this individualistic, enlightened viewpoint, they see traditional institutions as suspected . . . they wish to change those views that are opposed to the ideas of a rationally ordered society. Criticism of institutions is felt by them to be a necessary role of their activity. 21

While criticism is a quality of all intellectuals, social criticism in Germany, particularly after 1871, was dominated by men of the Right. That this was so is not surprising. What characterizes the leftist intellectual in Germany is his relative impotence. Modern German history is practically identical with the German Right, and in Germany the goals of the Left were only attained when the force of circumstances coerced the Right to take parts of their program and make them their own. 22 As historian Theodor Schneider notes, “The absence of a revolutionary intelligentsia in Germany is conspicuous.” 23 Such domination by conservatives may help explain why cultural criticism largely remained a preserve of the Right, or at least of the antiliberals. After 1871, the liberals were busily engaged in accepting Bismarck’s work—too much so to offer much criticism. The socialists, on the other hand, were too involved in the prosaic affairs of party organization, particularly after the antisocialist law of 1878. Social criticism of German society, then, was a relative rarity on the Left. 24 However, Toller and Weimar Germany’s other left-wing intellectuals were not Germany’s first leftist critics. Indeed, Germany’s twentieth-century critics believed themselves a part of a German intellectual tradition,

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one that differed from the “official Germany” of the Right. One of their best-informed historians concludes: As free publicists, without academic connections, as “westerners” and as democrats, they were—the leftist intellectuals felt—heirs of Heine, of ‘Young Germany’ and of the critics of Wilhelminian society. They were part of that ‘other Germany’ which for a hundred-odd years had faced the contempt of official, reactionary Germany. 25

The earliest and most notable left-wing critics of German society were the circle of writers collectively known as Young Germany. Converted to radical politics by the French revolution of July 1830, they included Karl Gutzkow, Ferdinand Freiligrath, Heinrich Laube, Georg Herwegh, and Ludwig Börne. Like the activists of expressionism during the twentieth century, 26 they believed that literature could help alter social conditions and unabashedly acknowledged the political role of the writer. Believing that revolution must come to Germany and that in a time of radical change literature should change radically from a medium of entertainment to one of social criticism, they shocked and titillated their contemporaries by their treatment of topical issues. In Freiligrath’s most famous collection of poems, Ça ira, for example, the author ominously portrays the emerging proletariat as the real force in society, the agent that will overthrow the state. In Freiligrath’s words, “We are the power! We’ll crush and renew with hammer blows that rotten thing, the State! / We whom, till now, God’s anger has condemned to be the proletariat.” 27 More philosophically, a similarly radical social critique was expressed by Karl Marx and the Young Hegelians, who, again like the activists, sought to unite philosophy with politics as a tool for social change. The Young Germans such as Freiligrath and Herwegh and the Young Hegelians such as Bruno Bauer and Arnold Ruge are largely forgotten. However, this has not been the case with the most famous of the Young Germans, Heinrich Heine, who in many ways shared much with the leftwing critics of Weimar. Born a Jew, Heine considered himself a German and believed, like Toller, in the spiritual kinship of Germans and Jews. A victim of anti-Semitism, he found it more convenient to give up his Judaism for Christianity, like Kurt Tucholsky. While the leftist critics of Weimar lived at a time when Germany had been defeated by France, Heine lived at a time when Prussia had conquered her Western neighbor. Nevertheless, the political climate of both times was similar. If German treatment at the hands of the allies at Versailles after 1918 aroused hostility toward France, an anti-French temper had been aroused by the struggle against Napoleon. Prussia’s victory after 1815 made for a “feeling of moral and spiritual superiority over the French and the Revolution, of which only the failures and extremes were recognized.” 28 Against prevailing opinion, both Heinrich Heine and Weimar’s left-wing intellectuals rejected the chauvinism of their countrymen and acknowledged their

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affinity for France. While both were on the Left, both also refused to associate closely with any one particular political organization and remained politically homeless. Both “unestablished intellectuals” who did not attach themselves to any institution, they were “free intellectuals”— publicists and journalists—members of a profession never highly praised in Germany. As a Jew, as a “westerner” who did not share in the antiWestern sentiments of his fellow Germans, as a leftist critic, Heine was out of step with his time—as were his twentieth-century followers. Imperial Germany produced no writer of the greatness of Heine. While the authors Theodor Fontane and Wilhelm Raabe were popular among their countrymen and wrote what may be called social novels, their social criticism had little connection with the leftist critics of Weimar. 29 Although some of Germany’s most brilliant artists—Nietzsche, Wagner, Brahms, Hans von Maress—were doing their work during the time of the Second Reich, the arts in general suffered a decline, particularly during the reign of Wilhelm II. Numerous popular artists, encouraged by the Kaiser, attempted to glorify the new Empire and give to it a feeling of bellicose vigor and greatness. Government policy and popular taste coincided, and the massive monument Germania showed the partnership at work. 30 While some critics of the philistine tastes of society and the irresponsible policies of the government kept their doubts to themselves, such as the historian Theodor Mommsen, whose Testament indicting his times, was suppressed by his own wish, many observers were not at all reluctant to expose the pretentions of their age. 31 Heinrich Mann’s novel Der Untertan, for example, was a barbed indictment of Wilhelminian society. Moreover, the journals Die Zukunft and Simplicissimus attacked and satirized the vulgarity of the philistine world of Imperial Germany, its narrow caste spirit of Junkers and military, “in short against all the symptoms of the Wilhelminian era which the Kaiser himself perfectly personified.” 32 The Reich’s most powerful critic, Friedrich Nietzsche, was also its most misunderstood. 33 An antisocialist whose ideas were to be misused by the Nazis, his antiegalitarian call for a species of supermen may at first seem to make him an opponent of the humanistic left-wing intellectuals. However, Nietzsche shared much with such men. A westerner, he admired Socrates and the traditions of the Enlightenment and castigated his country for the irrational patterns of thought he saw around him. Consistently, from his first works to his last, he politicized against state idolatry, Germanomania, racism, and nationalism. He broke his friendship with the anti-Semitic nationalist Richard Wagner because he had become an extreme nationalist (Reichsdeutsche), and for this Nietzsche could never forgive him. A “good European,” Nietzsche considered himself a cosmopolitan; when his fellow Germans were celebrating their victory over France in 1871, Nietzsche gave an impassioned expression of his disillusion with the new German Empire. He rejected the philistine readiness of

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his countrymen to believe that military victory proved German cultural superiority. Indeed, such an attitude was evidence of a lack of culture on the part of the Germans. He acknowledged that “power makes one stupid” and expressed his fear that German nationalism was the end of German philosophy. Nietzsche’s influence was immense, but in a way in which Nietzsche would have been the first to repudiate. 34 The violence of his language when taken out of context and his glorification of power and of a new elite allowed the antiliberal nineteenth-century critics of Germany to feel a misplaced sense of kinship with Nietzsche. His antidemocratic elitism appeared to such critics to be related to their own very different views, and they firmly relied on Nietzsche to supply them with some of the arguments they needed to attack liberal humanitarianism. In contributing to the demise of democracy in Germany and providing receptive soil for antidemocratic ideas, such antiliberal critics of German society were largely successful. The twentieth-century leftist critics, on the other hand, were notable for their lack of success. Any study of this group is a study in their frustration. Historians in their search to explain great events have seldom concerned themselves with either failure or the impotent opposition. Those foolish or ignorant enough to oppose the Zeitgeist frequently found themselves ignominiously exiled to Trotsky’s “dust-bin of history.” Unsuccessful movements have been ignored, the innocent victims of historians interested only in success. 35 In the fourteen years of the Weimar Republic, it is the Right that has received attention. As the force that overthrew the young Republic, its success has been chronicled and analyzed in an ever-increasing number of works that overwhelm the individual historian. To a lesser degree, the same is true for individual studies of Weimar’s leftist political parties. Weimar’s “homeless Left,” those who did not attach themselves to any of the established left-wing parties and who were so conspicuously unsuccessful in attaining their goals, until recently had been largely ignored in historical literature. We may, as historians, proclaim as inevitable the victory of the Right and the failure of the left-wing critic and concentrate our attention on the first. This is, to be sure, an historical truth, but one, nevertheless, not particularly enlightening. Responsible in large measure for the rich and varied literature that has given Weimar such a respected place in literary histories, accountable for much of its general cultural brilliance, which has led some to compare its intellectual life with German classicism or to see in Weimar a German “Periclean Age, 36 the unattached critic was also responsible for the most consistent defiance to the German Right, a defiance that did not emerge from any of the established parties. 37 This trend towards cultural criticism from the Left was an anomaly in Imperial Germany. After its 1871 unification, German liberals had surrendered to the values of the new Second Reich. These liberals were actively engaged in an accommodation with the new state, too much so to become

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part of a left-wing intellectual opposition. The party that was on the Left, the Social Democrats, had become either theoretical Marxists or party bureaucrats. Intellectual descendants of the eighteenth-century’s Enlightenment humanism, adherents of the nineteenth-century’s ideas of democracy and socialism, the twentieth-century intellectual’s inability to become “party men” caused an acute sense of alienation. Disappointed by the failure of the German revolution of 1918 and convinced that there was little difference between the alleged reactionary Junker state of the Second Reich and Weimar Germany, they experienced frustration in their plans for reform, while the rise of National Socialism caused them to despair. Yet despite their singular lack of success, Germany’s postwar critics have an importance that transcends their impotence; they were perhaps the only group within German society that offered the kind of responsible criticism the Republic needed. The center parties were generally too engrossed in the practical problems of attempting to govern to offer any objective criticism, the communists too immersed in the party line of the Third International to offer any independent ideas, the parties of the Right too involved in hypertonic denunciations of the “November criminals” to offer any constructive proposals. By default, then, there remained only the politically homeless man of the Left to set forth any responsible ideas. That they failed was ultimately not only their own misfortune but a misfortune of Weimar Germany and, indeed, the whole of Europe as well. As a class, the left-wing intellectual was something of an enigma, a curious amalgam of individuals each with his own obsession and personal idiosyncrasy. Indeed, for the uninitiated, the picture may be more of a mêlée than a monolith. How, for example, does one reconcile the difference in temperament between Carl von Ossietzky and Kurt Hiller; or between Erich Kästner, who embraced no ideology, 38 and noted Weimar communist Willi Münzenberg, who assuredly did; or between Hiller’s elitist theories and Toller’s avowed repudiation of elitism? 39 But while united, unity did not signify agreement, and it would be unfruitful to extend the examples of dissent. Yet although they did not have a party line, the left-wing critics were a party. Despite disparities of opinion, they were united on an ambitious program of political, social, and intellectual reform for Germany. Tirelessly, they railed against what they saw as the shortcomings of German society. Fighting the rising surge of nationalism and the evils of bureaucracy, advocating reform of the Army and the judiciary, they showed themselves dedicated opponents of l’infâme. If the radical right-wing critics of nineteenth-century Germany were the sick analysts of a partly sick society, the left-wing critics were the healthy analysts of a society that showed even more alarming symptoms of disease. 40 Despite their differences and personal quarrels, they all wished to see a new Germany. There were many left-wing intellectuals, but only one left-wing intellectual movement. 41

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What united all was hostility to traditional attitudes. A large number were Jewish in a country with a tradition of anti-Semitism; 42 all were Western rather than Germanophile socialists in a community where even liberalism had failed; cosmopolitans caught up in an age of increasingly narrow nationalism: Aufklärer in a place where enlightened ideas had failed. They were the prototype of the prophet without honor, out of place in German society. More positively, all of them desired a revolution for Germany, not only on a political level but, more importantly, on a moral and spiritual level—the cultivation of what Kurt Tucholsky once called a “sense of decency” (anständige Gesinnung). With the exception of Ernst Toller, few of Weimar’s critics were actual revolutionaries, yet all wished to revolutionize society, and all remained hostile to the type of society that emerged after 1918. For Carl von Ossietzky, Weimar was an “impossible Republic” totally lacking in élan; for Tucholsky, the November revolution was a counterrevolution, “the complete triumph of German reaction”; Toller wrote bitterly of the Republic being founded by those “linked by blood and friendship with the representatives of the monarchy” and satisfied only with the “juste milieu of the bourgeoisie.” 43 The sentiments aptly sum up the relation between the leftist critics and what they viewed as a sham Republic. They were unable to give full support to Weimar because they saw in it the vices of monarchical Germany thinly disguised by a pseudo-republican veneer that changed the form but left the content intact. It was not, noted Ossietzky, that the Weimar Republic lacked republicans, but that the republicans of the Left lacked a true Republic. Estranged intellectuals, they all suffered from the frustration of being unable to cure the social ailments they so tellingly diagnosed. “By what black magic have we become aliens among our own!” wrote the playwright Aleksandr Griboyedov. “A people of the same blood, our people is estranged from us; and forever.” 44 The sentiment is from a nineteenth-century Russian intellectual, but the alienation of Germany’s twentieth-century leftist intellectual was every bit as acute. Gadflies of their age, examples of Nietzsche’s untimely men, they preached republican ideas to a nation unprepared to listen. Holding forth the vision of a Germany of justness and toleration, they ran the gamut of disillusion. In their revolutionary aims, the devotees of the Left increasingly became aware of a growing incomprehension and hostility among their fellow citizens who refused to accept their vision of a new Germany. In their function as critics, it was not uncommon for the Left-intellectual to be accused by his contemporaries of a failure to offer any positive proposals for social reform. Wrote Tucholsky: The accusation is often made against us writers . . . that we say no to everything, that we are not positive enough . . . But we are not yet able to say yes. We cannot strengthen a people who forget the humanity in man. . . . We cannot say yes to a people whose outlook is still such that

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To give Germany a sense of guilt in addition to a sense of decency, to shake it out of its reactionary mentality, to make it aware of its injustice— in short, to make it aware of unfulfilled promises of 1918—was the selfproclaimed function of the leftist critic, the primary role of the intellectual. Committed or not, the status of the writer within German society was seldom happy. To many educated Germans, the writer was looked down upon as a Literat. Not all of German society agreed with Paul de Lagarde that the critical literati were the expression of every corrosive force in modern Germany, “a poisonous weed that must be extirpated from our streams and seas.” 46 However, the ancien régime idea of the man of letters as a specialized retainer of his betters, a craftsman of words and, hence, not to be considered above any other craftsman, never quite wore off in a deferential society where old regime distinctions were slow to break down. The frivolous nature of the genre and the sense of alienation on the part of the writer were common laments in German literature. 47 Laments were not limited to Germany. The French essayist Elias Regnault, commissioned by the editor of Les Français peints par eux-mêmes to write on the modern writer in France, could produce nothing but frustration. Pharmacists had a trade, but the writer had no real skill. “It is a title,” he explained, “that serves to hide mediocrity and social uselessness.” Yet the same Encyclopedia could tell of the bourgeois who resolved to put an end to his son’s pharmaceutical career upon hearing that a playwright could obtain up to 6,000 francs for short work. 48 A century before, Charles Pinot Duclos, in his Considérations sur les moeurs de ce siècle, spoke of writing as the new profession, which conferred not only money but also distinguished estate on those of great talent but modest birth. 49 In Germany, however, the situation was somewhat different. Dietrich Grabbe’s mother in Hanns Johst’s play Der Einsame: Ein Menschenuntergang is scandalized to find that her son wishes the disreputable life of a writer. Art, she observes, is a spare-time activity; Goethe, after all, was a Privy Councilor. Although the mother has heard of Goethe’s artistic works, she feels these deviations are offset by his accomplishments as a bureaucrat. Her son is a misfit, unwilling to work in a real, accepted position. No matter how financially rewarding a career as a writer could be (and it was generally not financially attractive), the response in Germany was to turn to a position in established society, be it in the workings of the bureaucracy or the lecture halls of the university. In a society where the Geisteswissenschaften were institutionally cultivated, it was

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common to question the seriousness of the self-proclaimed intellectual who attached himself to the frivolity of the coffee house rather than to the seriousness of the university. While the unattached intellectual was free to criticize, it was difficult for him to survive economically. Laments from the independent writer about the parsimony of his publisher were not new. 50 While attachment to a legitimate institution, on the other hand, did give a measure of financial security, it also made difficult the independent criticism the state needed. Criticism stopped at the door of the institution. Yet society needed the independent writer, the critic unencumbered by outside domination. Tucholsky noted: “The writer outside the parties and outside of the Press concerns is in contrast to those attached to institutions, the true promoter of culture. He and he alone can, unencumbered by vested interests, say what is so often necessary to say. If he has the courage of his convictions, he and he alone has little to fear. The type also has a tendency to starve.” 51 Contrast with France is instructive. It was possible for Voltaire to return to Paris in the late eighteenth century and be triumphantly feted. In the nineteenth century, it was possible to observe the apotheosis of Victor Hugo at a state funeral complete with brass bands and a final resting place in the Pantheon. The Third Republic consummated the relation of politics and intellect. Clemenceau, novelist and friend of Claude Debussy, Alphonse Daudet and Edmond de Goncourt, Jules Guesde writing Baudelairian verses, Alexandre-Marie Quesnay de Beaurepaire, judge and novelist—none were exceptional figures. 52 By the twentieth century, Albert Camus could say in L’Été that France is a nation that attributes exaggerated importance to the profession of letters, expecting her writers to involve themselves in public affairs that have little to do with literature. 53 The situation, however, was different in Germany; the Literat tradition was too strong. Hostility of writer and society was not limited to Germany, yet uniquely German conditions made the sense of frustration and rootlessness particularly acute. The centuries-old tradition of small German states that existed before German unification gave to Germany a political homelessness that affected its literature. Until the later part of the nineteenth century, Germany, a geographical expression, had no capital, no established court society remotely comparable to Versailles. To be sure, eighteenth-century Germany did have numerous little Versailles, each with its own potential Louis XIV. Petty princes and bishops attempted to emulate the artistic pomp across the Rhine, German versions of Lepautre and Oppenord designed hôtels and gardens. German equivalents of French composers wrote operas and concerti. The eighteenth-century flowering of German rococo demanded artists, architects, and composers, all glorifying established society. What it did not demand was the German writer; society as yet had no need of him to praise its alleged

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achievements. Part of the explanation is that most of the German states held little love for the German language. Frederick the Great had but a faulty knowledge of German and disdained German literature. French was the language of the aristocracy and the educated class. Gottfried Leibniz’s New Essays on Human Understanding, for example, were published in French, while even Goethe lamented that he was coerced to work in such a poor medium as German. The German writer was superfluous to an aristocracy either too crude to appreciate literature or too ignorant to learn German. The emerging writer was, then, of necessity forced into criticism. Rejected by society, the writer held little fondness for it and took delight in exposing its pretentions. The insignificant and despotic states of the eighteenth century in Germany were fertile field for attack, and much of the literature of the time was avowedly antiestablishment. The influence of enlightened ideas in an unenlightened society and of the French revolution in a conservative system of states intensified much of this criticism. When the German writer looked at society, it was with a mixture of scorn and indignation coupled with resentment. One leading writer of German literature observed that the German writer “felt far above ‘society’ with its unbelievably petty intrigues and heartless egoisms. Excluded from or arrogantly patronized by it, he inwardly despised its conventions to which he outwardly conformed. Since he knew no other he scorned ‘society’ as such and rejected . . . [it]” 54 Whether the rejection of society was by choice, as in the case of the Romantics, or whether it was the society that excluded the writer, the result was the same. Social alienation was not new to Republican critics; his ancestors were unattached from the outset. 55 In such a climate, calm reflection was difficult. The writer-critic’s negative view of the system (be it represented as in the eighteenth century by the aristocracy or as in the nineteenth and twentieth by the bourgeoisie) made it difficult for him to view it realistically. It was exaggerated and abstracted; the writer saw it through a “distorted mirror.” 56 The situation was particularly aggravated by the result of the First World War. Here, at last, was the opportunity to witness the downfall of the old system and the building of the new. “Europe must be rebuilt,” wrote Toller, “its foundations made anew. Our fathers had betrayed us and the young who had known war, hard and unsentimental would begin the business of spring-cleaning.” 57 The unsuccessful revolutionaries, those who eagerly looked forward to the “spring-cleaning,” met with disappointment. The distorted mirror became further distorted. The Left-writer was in a position of added delicacy. The role of a critic in any society is of necessity unpopular. In a fundamentally conservative society, such as Germany, this was particularly so; the critic was viewed as a disturber of peace and order. There was, however, yet another situation that helps explain the hostility with which the Left-intellectual was forced to deal. Again, contrast with France is revealing. Unlike the

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French, the German Left lacked a patriotic tradition. The very success of the ideas of 1789 gave to the French Left a patriotic glow lacking across the Rhine. Germany had fought the external revolution of 1792 and won. Yet the Left received a double defeat. The ideas of 1848, less radical than those of fifty-nine years before but leftward enough to be more than a slight discomfort to the German aristocracy, proved abortive. Unable to be successful and unable, therefore, to obtain legitimacy, the German Left was doubly discredited. To be on the Left, if not unpatriotic, was at least to be an object of suspicion; to be on the Left and be a critic was to be despised. The Left-intellectual of the twentieth century lived in an antiPanglossian universe, in many ways the worst of all possible worlds. Moreover, their political ideas were not suited to the historical trends of the twentieth century. They firmly adhered to the principles of a synthesis of democracy and individualism on the one side, with the ideas of socialism and collectivism on the other. They did not realize that their presuppositions had become obsolete. After the success of the Russian revolution and the failure of the German revolution, there existed one alternative for German socialists: that taken by the Majority Socialists of cooperation with the capitalist system or that of the communists of permanent preparation for revolution on the model of the Russian dictatorship. The Left-intellectuals, however, were unable to take either. They did not wish to give up the basic rights of the individual, as the communists did in their total organization of society, nor did they want to renounce the goal of socialism, something that pragmatism of the Social Democrats consigned to the oblivion of the unforeseeable future. In 1928, Carl von Ossietzky, editor of Weimar Germany’s premier organ for left-wing intellectuals, Die Weltbühne, described the dilemma of the Left-intellectual: “the follies of the Communists did not make the politics of official social democracy more appetizing, but rather they strengthened the feeling of rootlessness which so often infected the German Left.” 58 We can accuse the critics of unreality and chide them for their impracticality; we may even cast upon them the more serious reproach that they aided in the demise of Republicanism in Germany. 59 Weimar did perhaps suffer from a superfluity of gadflies, and their indictment of the Republic was formidable: corrupt political institutions, domination of private interests, increasing social evil, militarism, reaction, lack of élan. But critics are a necessary part of any society. They force it into rethinking its all too facile assumptions. While it is difficult at times to live with them, any society is surely the poorer without them. Hesse’s words in his Briefe nach Deutschland, although written at a different time and under different conditions, may justifiably be viewed as the epitaph of Germany’s left-wing critics: “Stay true to the light and to the spirit. You are so few but perhaps the salt of the Earth!” 60

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NOTES 1. Simone de Beauvoir, Les Mandarins (Paris: Gallimard, 1954), 38. 2. The Marxian classification that defines individuals by their economic role is clearly inadequate. More satisfactory, but vague, was the Russian attempt to classify individuals simply as raznochintsky—that group that did not fit into the traditional estate system. See the essays in Richard Pipes, ed., The Russian Intelligentsia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961). 3. E. H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923 (Harmondsworth: Penguin 1966), 1:152. 4. There is an excellent discussion of French intellectuals in Victor H. Brombert, The Intellectual Hero: Studies in the French Novel, 1880–1955 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 21–40. For an interesting discussion of the word intellectual used as an insult, see Dietz Bering, Die Intellektuellen: Geschichte eines Schimpfwortes (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978). 5. The German is particularly hard to translate: “Wichtiger als alle Vivisektion des Intellektualismus ist das Wachstum eines nationalen Mythos, eines Mythos nicht aus den Nerven geschwitzt sondern aus dem Blute blühend. Nicht der Rationalismus, der Mythos zeugt Leben. Er ist in der Bildung begriffen. Das ist der Sinn und Inhalt dieser Zeit. Darum ist Feindschaft gesetzt und muss gesetzt sein zwischen Volkheit und Intellektualismus. Volkheit ist Glaube und Wachstum. Intellektualismus ist Skeptizismus und Dürre. Der Geist ist in der Volkheit; bei dem Intellektualismus ist nur Gewitztheit.” Hjalmar Kutzleb, Mord an der Zunkunft (Berlin: Wiederstands-Verlag, 1930), quoted by Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1968), 63. 6. Brombert, The Intellectual Hero, 243. At least in this one area, Russia was ahead of the West. Their own word for intellectuals, intelligentsia, had its origins in the 1860s. The term is from Latin and not from French—probably the adjectival substantive intelligens, given a Russian pronunciation. See Martin Malia, “What is the Intelligentsia?” in The Russian Intelligentsia, edited by Pipes, 18. From Barrès’s observation about the word being poor French, it is possible the term entered French through Russian. There is an excellent discussion of the word intellectual in “Zur Geschichtlichkeit des Wortes Intellektuelle,” in Für und wider den Expressionismus: Die Entstehung der Intellektuellendebatte in der deutschen Literaturgeschichte, by Michael Stark (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1982). 7. Maurice Paléologue, Journal de l’Affaire Dreyfus, 1894–1899 (Paris: Plon, 1955), 90–91. See also Brombert, The Intellectual Hero, 22–23. For German Intellectuals, see also Dagmar Barnouw, Weimar Intellectuals and the Threat of Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988). Barnouw’s is an interesting but complicated study concentrating on Rathenau, Musil, Mann, Broch, and Ernst Jünger. 8. Jacques Barzun, The House of Intellect (New York: Harper, 1959), 1. 9. Brombert, The Intellectual Hero, 23. 10. See “Anarchism and Anti-Intellectualism,” in The Russian Anarchists, by Paul Avrich (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). 11. Brombert, The Intellectual Hero, 27. 12. Franz Schoenberner, Confessions of a European Intellectual (New York: Collier, 1965), 1. 13. Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals (New York: Norton, 1969), 43. 14. J. P. Nettl, “Ideas, Intellectuals, and Structures of Dissent,” in On Intellectuals, edited by Philip Rieff (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1970), 67. 15. Much thought has been spent on whether an intellectual can fulfill his critical function if he becomes too closely associated with power. Cf., for example, Irving Howe, “This Age of Conformity,” Partisan Review 21 (January/February 1954): 7–33. When intellectuals “become absorbed into the accredited institutions of society they not only lose their traditional rebelliousness, but to some extent or other they cease to function as intellectuals.” Another writer has questioned “whether the individual who sincerely believes in and approves of the larger movements of society can reconcile the

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demands of his mind and those of society.” Loren Baritz, The Servants of Power (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1960). See also Richard Hofstadter, “A Note on Intellect and Power,” American Scholar 30, no. 4 (1961): 588–99. 16. Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage, 1966), 428. 17. Raymond Aron called this the intellectual’s “proud will to think for all mankind.” One cannot help thinking, however, that Aron’s proud will is a negative quality, just another noxious form of arrogance. See Brombert, The Intellectual Hero, 140. 18. See Nettl, “Ideas, Intellectuals, and Structures of Dissent,” 95. 19. Barnouw, Weimar Intellectuals and the Threat of Modernity, 3. 20. The German word for intellectual, intellektuell, is taken from French. Der Grosse Brockhaus: Handbuch des Wissens in Zwanzig Bänden (Leipzig: F. A. Brockhaus, 1931), 9:160. There is a more Germanic term, Geistige, that can mean intellectual, but the French term is most often used. 21. Brockhaus Enzyklopadie in zwanzig Bänden (Wiesbaden: F. A. Brockhaus, 1970), 9:164. 22. Ernst Nolte, “Germany,” in The European Right: A Historical Profile, edited by Hans Rogger and Eugen Weber (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 263. 23. Theodor Schneider, “Grundfragen der neueren deutschen Geschichte,” in Probleme der Reichsgründungszeit 1848–1879, edited by Helmut Böhme (Berlin: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1968), 31. 24. Harold L. Poor, Kurt Tucholsky and the Ordeal of Germany, 1914–1935 (New York: Scribner, 1968), 69. 25. István Deák, “The World of Carl von Ossietzsky: Germany’s Homeless Left in the Weimar Republic” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1964), 23. 26. See chapter 3. 27. Quoted by Eda Sagarra, Tradition and Revolution: German Literature and Society, 1830–1890 (New York: Basic Books, 1971), 142. 28. Hans Kohn, The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation (New York: Harper & Row 1965), 99. 29. For Fontane and Raabe, see Joachim Remak, The Gentle Critic: Theodor Fontane and German Politics, 1848–1898 (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1964). 30. Sagarra, Tradition and Revolution, 288. 31. Sagarra’s assertion that “hardly any subject of the Second Empire submitted the new system to a searching criticism” is certainly an exaggeration. Sagarra, Tradition and Revolution, 295. 32. Schoenberner, Confessions of a European Intellectual, 313. 33. See Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche:Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (New York: Random House, 1968). 34. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (New York: Doubleday 1965), 344–50. 35. James Joll, The Anarchists (New York: Grossett & Dunlap, 1966), 11. 36. Henry M. Pachter, “Freedom and Democracy in Germany,” World Politics 11, No. 2 (1959): 300. 37. István Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and Its Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 224. 38. Katherine Sue Larson, “Through the Looking Glass of Erich Kästner: Culture and Society in Germany (unpublished PhD dissertation, Stanford University, 1969), 4. 39. See Ernst Toller, Letter to Hiller, September 15, 1923, in Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961), 231. Hereafter referred to as PBDG. There is an excellent discussion of German intellectuals in Michael Stark, Deutsche Intellektuelle, 1910–1933 (Heidelberg: L. Schneider, 1984), 13–25. 40. For the nineteenth century, see Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. 41. In looking at the Left-intellectuals in this way, I am indebted to Peter Gay’s ideas on the eighteenth-century philosophes. See his “The Little Flock of Philosophes,” in The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 3–27.

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42. See Peter Pulzer, The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria (New York: Wiley, 1965); Paul Massing, Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political AntiSemitism in Imperial Germany (New York: Harper, 1949); and Hans Helmuth Knütter, Die Juden und die deutsche Linke in der Weimarer Republik (Düsseldorf: Drosteg, 1971). 43. Kurt R. Grossmann, Ossietzky: Ein deutscher Patriot (Munich: Kindler, 1963), 155; Kurt Tucholsky, “Die Ebert-Legende,” in Gesammelte Werke, edited by Mary GeroldTucholsky and Fritz Raddatz (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1962), 2; Toller, Eine Jugend in Deutschland, in PBDG, 99. 44. Quoted by Irving Howe, Politics and the Novel (Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, 1967), 119. 45. Kurt Tucholsky, “Wir Negativen,” in Gesammelte Werke, edited by Gerold-Tucholsky and Raddatz, 1:372. 46. Paul de Lagarde, Deutsche Schriften (Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1937), 276. 47. Tonio Kröger’s lament that literature was not a profession but a curse may be used as an example. Public contempt for the writer was only at times equaled by the writer’s contempt for the public. See C. P. Magill, “The German Author and His Public in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Modern Language Review 43, no. 4 (1948): 492–99. Goethe’s lament that the German writer “did not enjoy the slightest standing” is not quite as valid as it once was; however, in a poll taken in 1955, it was found that the status of the writer was below that of an elementary school teacher. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, “Dichtung and Wahrheit,” in Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespräche, edited by Ernst Beutler (Zürich: Artemis-Verlag, 1948–1954), 10:436–37. Poll quoted by Golo Mann, “The Intellectuals: Germany,” Encounter 4 (1955): 42–49. 48. Quoted by Cesar Grana, Modernity and Its Discontents: French Society and the French Man of Letters in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 25–26, 35. 49. See Robert Darnton, “The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in Pre-Revolutionary France,” Past and Present 51, no. 1 (1971): 99. 50. The situation seems to have been particularly bad in Germany. Walter Scott, for example, earned more in three years than Goethe did in a lifetime. See W. H. Bruford, Germany in the Eighteenth Century: The Social Background of the Literary Revival (London: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 271–327. 51. Tucholsky, “Schriftsteller,” in Gesammelte Werke, edited by Gerold-Tucholsky and Raddatz , 1:672. 52. See Michael Curtis, Three Against the Third Republic: Sorel, Barrès, Maurras (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 27. 53. John Cruickshank, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 1. 54. Walter Sokel, The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth Century German Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), 16. 55. Superficially, much the same situation existed in eighteenth-century France; however, peculiarly French conditions allowed the author to attain a status unequalled in Germany. When the Regency happily misgoverned France, the writer was little more than a hired wit who amused the aristocracy. While his bon mots might be applauded, the writer was never mistaken as an equal. The classic example, too good not to be mentioned, is, of course, Voltaire’s encounter with the volatile chevalier de Rohan and the lack of sympathy the luckless author received from the French ruling class. Three years before, in 1722, when Voltaire complained to the Regent of a public beating that a police spy had given him, he was condescendingly told, “You are a poet and you have got a cudgeling. . . . That is in order and I have nothing to say to you.” (Quoted by Peter Gay, Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist [New York: Vintage Books, 1965], 34–35.) Yet as Voltaire’s triumphant return to Paris in 1788 shows, the status of the writer had increased considerably. Moreover, while in the early part of the century the writer was little more than an establishment hack, by Voltaire’s death some had become a part of socially accepted society. Capturing during the course of the century

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the Académie franҫaise, forty authors attained the privileged status of moving in the upper levels of French society. Even the best of German authors could never hope to reach such heights on their reputation as writers alone; while Goethe and Schiller were a part of established society, this did not rest on their notable accomplishments as writers; one was a high bureaucrat, the other a university professor. 56. The phrase is Erich Kästner’s. See Erich Kästner, “Eine kleine Sonntagspredigt,” Neue Zeitung, August 4, 1943. 57. Ernst Toller, I Was a German: The Autobiography of Ernst Toller (New York: W. Morrow, 1934), 102. 58. Raimund Koplin, Carl von Ossietzky als politischer Publizist (Berlin: Annedone Leber, 1964), 220–21, 226–27. 59. This is further discussed in chapter 6. 60. Hermann Hesse, Gesammelte Schriften (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1957), 7:453.

THREE “Wandering”

Wandering—as usual. . . . Like him, Ahasuerus, the wandering Jew whose shadow crawls through fettered streets, who hides in dark and pestilential cellars, who gathers rotten swedes in frozen fields at night. Yes, it’s he I seek. My great brother, Ahasuerus, the eternal wanderer, the homeless one. —Ernst Toller, Die Wandlung

In the late nineteenth century, the village of Samotschin, then in Prussia (present-day Szamocin, Poland), lay flat on the vast East German plain and rested in a lazy sleep of a sparsely populated backwater which had a total of only about 2,000 residents. The landscape itself would have been unspectacular, ordinary, possessing the lonely beauty of fields, pine woods, and streams, corresponding to the meandering pace of an era now long past. Then still a part of Germany, it was one of the less notable acquisitions of the second Polish partition of 1793. Samotschin, sluggish and sleepy, lay in the brown-needled carpet of pine-wooded fields, broken during the winter by the white fog of smoke unwinding from plastered chimneys. The village today remains little noticed, in the late nineteenth century even less so. Nothing exceptional ever happened in this haphazard little hamlet until December 1893. On the first day of that winter month, Ernst Hugo Toller was born, third child of Mendel Toller, age thirty-seven (1856–1911) and his wife, Charlotte Chaia Toller-Cohn, born in the same year as her husband. Toller’s great grandfather apparently had accumulated a respectable amount of wealth—enough, at least, to manage sometime during the reign of Frederick the Great to leave the certainly less attractive ghetto and purchase the honor of being Samotschin’s sole Jew. His paternal great-grandfather, of Spanish descent, had a West Prussian estate, and family rumor had it that his wealth was so great he could afford to eat from gold dishes. As a boy, Toller used to dream of such legendary 31

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riches; however, the alleged family fortune had declined somewhat through the years, and Toller’s parents were merely well-off members of Germany’s middle class. Of his father, Max, who eventually became one of Samotschin’s town councilors, we are told that, after a brilliant career at an unnamed university, he became a pharmacist. It is left to the imagination why he gave up a career in pharmacy and followed the trade of his father, that of a shopkeeper. His father apparently encouraged his son’s literary ambitions and sent Toller’s first youthful poems to the father of the future literary critic Kurt Pinthus. 1 The Samotschin of Toller’s childhood was an intensely German town. Its proximity to Poland heightened German national feeling even among the town’s Jewish inhabitants. Although the surrounding region had become Prussian only in the last century, the Germans had little difficulty in viewing themselves as hereditary rulers. The conflict between Poles and Germans was occasionally hostile, with each group fighting over every piece of land. For the children of Samotschin, the Polish minority were derisively called “Polacks,” descendants of Cain and, therefore, cursed by God, who singularly blessed only Germans. For their parents, biblical mythology was perhaps not quite as strong; they were content to surround anti-Polish sentiment with nationalism, labeling any German who dared sell land to a Pole as little better than a traitor. To such sentiments even the young Toller was not immune. When one of his neighbors had the temerity to sell a small plot of land to a non-German, Toller waxed “highly indignant,” holding forth about such an unpatriotic act, and even demanding intervention by the Prussian authorities. “What times we live in,” he lamented, “when morals and common decency are daily flouted and Germans are no longer on the alert. What will become of the Fatherland?” 2 While the position of the Jew in German society was little better than that of the Polish minority, Samotschin’s Jews had little sympathy with fellow sufferers. Indeed, both Jew and German managed to unite in common opposition against the Pole. Looking upon themselves as pioneers of German culture, Jewish homes became cultural centers where German literature, philosophy, and art were cultivated with what Toller noted to be “a pride and assiduousness which bordered on the ridiculous.” 3 In opposition to the Polaken, it was possible for the Jew to find an otherwise elusive community of interest with the German. Traditionally rejected by society as an outsider, a group essentially “un-German,” Samotschin’s Jews could, in their opposition to alleged Polish encroachment, almost feel themselves assimilated into German society. The Jew could declare the Pole to be “unpatriotic” and, at the same time, could celebrate the Kaiser’s birthday at the same table with the reserve officers, the War League, and the Home Defense Corps, drink beer and schnapps and proudly raise his glass to the Kaiser’s health. Samotschin was, of course, no more immune to anti-Semitism than to anti-Polish feeling, yet the first

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could always be ignored if a family was jovial enough to overcome veiled insults, politically shrewd enough (like Toller’s father) to hold a municipal position of some importance, and self-effacing enough not to emphasize the peculiarity of being Jewish. Indeed, among the Jew’s circle of Christian friends, Jewishness could almost be forgiven—but even here it was seldom forgotten. Anti-Semitism could take a variety of forms from public Jew baiting on the streets, to which the young Toller was subjected, 4 to the more subtle but no less painful nuances of polite conversation. It was the latter that the Berlin drama critic Alfred Kerr had in mind when he noted: Even people of a sensitive nature could put up with things as when on the Day of Atonement, a boor would call a gentleman with a prayer book “Damned Jewish dung!” Or when a major of the “Eleventh” would declare on the streetcar: “There are so many pregnant Jewish women—it makes you want to vomit!” These things did not hurt. But when enlightened, well-meaning, and considerate friends said “The Jewish gentleman”—that hurt. 5

“A sneering appellation on the street, a venomous glance, a scornful appraising look, certain contempt” 6 —all could perhaps be overlooked by the Jew who wished to succeed in German society. Yet for one with as perceptive and as sensitive a nature as the young Toller, the fact of being “different,” of not being like “the others,” was painful. 7 Despite Samotschin’s more liberal attitude toward its Jewish minority (one is tempted here to make a connection with its intolerance toward Poles), Toller’s earliest memories were of a vaguely perceived sense of isolation, an uncomfortable impression of being an outsider, an ill-defined feeling of belonging to a group which for all its attachment to German civilization, somehow did not quite fit into German life. Toller’s first childhood recollection, one that remained with him almost four decades after it occurred, was of being unable to play with a neighborhood child, a Christian, when it was discovered Toller was Jewish. 8 The strains of anti-Semitism were felt so profoundly that as a child Toller would have preferred not to be a Jew at all. As he explained, “I don’t want the other children to run after me shouting ‘Dirty Jew.’” 9 As an outsider wishing to become an insider, Toller was uncomfortable at a separate Jewish school and was proud to be admitted to a Latin school taught by a Christian minister. 10 Toller never forgot he was a Jew, although it may have been only his early contacts with anti-Semitism that made him aware of being a Jew rather than a German, and the effects of being a Jew in German society stamped much of Toller’s work. Unlike his fellow intellectual Gustav Landauer, who would also be one of the leaders of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet of 1919, Toller seldom alluded to his Jewish heritage. He did not, like Kurt Tucholsky or the novelist Alfred Döblin, give up his religion in favor of Christianity; nor did he, like the brilliant and idiosyncratic

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Viennese satirist Karl Kraus, engage in a self-hatred about his Jewish origins. 11 He neither made it a point to advertise his religion, nor did he ever renounce it. It was merely not emphasized, except by others. It is perhaps not surprising, in view of his later humanism, that Toller expressed a preference for the more humanistic New Testament over the legal formalism of the Old Testament, the one emphasizing love and brotherhood, the other law and ritual. Toller’s later expressionist embrace of an ideology of spiritual love and brotherhood, almost as a religious experience, can be traced back to Plato. It is Plato who first sees love as the desire to possess absolute goodness and beauty, taking us from an imperfect and transient space to one of perfection and eternity, a picture of love’s ascent from the physical to the divine. It is a quality adopted by Christianity, where it became a world-conquering power of divine grace, a great redeeming force that exists in a higher realm than ordinary life. It is seen in the messianic plays of Toller, Die Wandlung the most prominent among them, which trace its roots to the Middle Ages and German Romanticism. This idea of love as religion was particularly developed in Germany. Writes one observer of this: “no people have been remotely as concerned to rediscover the sacred in the ordinary. No people have had such a will (and ability) to foster earthly spirituality with eyes to see and ears to hear and a mind to formulate the presence of the absolute in everyday things and events.” Love as religion, seen in the works of both Schlegel and Novalis, reaches back to a tradition of German mysticism first formulated by Meister Eckhart and Jacob Boehme. 12 This may perhaps explain why Toller, while admiring the “power and beauty” of the Hebrew Bible, found its ethos “alien.” 13 Yet despite his alienation from the Old Testament ethos, the fact of being a Jew was a formative influence on his thought. A quasi-religious tone remains in much of his work even after the religious faith and ritual were disregarded. Toller himself even equated religion with both poetry and politics, two fields in which he was to be much concerned. 14 In addition, although repudiating traditional Jewish theology, it was impossible for him to repudiate the tradition of persecution and separation, nor the tradition of hostility of Christian society in Germany toward Jews. Even if some Jews attempted to ignore the stigma of their religion and were willing to give up overt Jewish customs, even if many were willing to make the attempt to become more German than Jewish, 15 many undoubtedly felt their Jewishness a problem at least upon occasion. At some time during their lives, many Jews like Toller became aware that all was not well, that Jewishness was a problem that had to be faced. Many German intellectuals of Jewish origin recognized the problematic nature of their existence and were, consequently, forced into taking a position toward it. From the poet Heinrich Heine, to the satirist Karl Kraus, to the uncomfortable industrialist Walter Rathenau, to the writer Ernst Toller, there existed the same complex of questions: What does it

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mean to be a Jew? How should he react to his environment? Should he emphasize his religion, renounce it, hate it, conceal it, or just ignore it and hope others would do likewise? For many, the answers to such questions became sources of inner conflict that gave to their lives a certain inner restlessness. Such a restlessness was reflected in Toller’s first drama, Die Wandlung. Its hero, Friedrich, himself not a member of the Christian community, stands at an open window watching the burning of Christmas candles, feeling an acute sense of loneliness and isolation. The image of Ahasuerus, the Jew, doomed to wander throughout eternity for his insensitivity to the sufferings of Christ, haunts his mind. In the end, he bewails a religion that marks him as “an outcast, struggling between one shore and the next, far from the old and farther from the new, a nasty hybrid.” 16 Friedrich stands between two cultures; although he may reject his religion, he is still rejected by a society to which he wishes to belong. Many Jews, wishing to become members of the German community and aware of the prejudices against them, attempted to submerge their religion under devotion to German Kultur. Tucholsky’s quip, “If the German Nationalists were not so stupid as to be anti-Semitic, the greater part of conservative Jewry would flock to them,” 17 was perhaps an exaggeration born of disappointment but one which, nevertheless, had some validity. In an effort to gain acceptance, many Jews felt a need to prove their patriotism. In 1914, Toller was to enlist enthusiastically to defend the fatherland and wrote home from the front to say that now, at last, his name could be erased from the list of the Jewish community. 18 Similarly, Arnold Zweig’s Jewish hero, Bertin, willingly fights for his country. The Jewish intellectual in the trench, however, was soon disillusioned. Toller’s war experience turned him into a pacifist, while Zweig’s Bertin was quick to realize he had more to fear from the anti-Semitic Junker than the French poilu. Many Jews could try to be German—indeed, could totally accept German culture. Yet this did not imply its opposite. German culture did not totally accept the Jew. The Jew was, in addition, in a position of increased sensitivity. Jewish emancipation owed much to liberal ideas, and it is, therefore, not surprising that many educated Jews were liberals. Commercially inclined, they naturally tended to congregate in the cities and were associated in the popular mind with the growth of capitalism. Rejection of both liberalism and the city were powerful currents in German intellectual history. 19 The absence of a powerful liberal bourgeoisie able to extract political concessions from a reluctant monarch has long been an accepted fact of German historiography. Its all too unsuccessful career and all too accommodating character made liberalism an easy target for those who had only contempt for its principles. 20 Yet there existed also a profound undercurrent of antiurban bias in German culture. Numerous critics of Germany’s increasing industrialization during the nineteenth century sprang up in defense of the preindustrial rural community, indulging themselves in

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nostalgic yearnings for the lost Volk ethos that had degenerated under the pernicious development of capitalism. Revolted by the spiritual void urban life had allegedly created, they blamed the embourgeoisement of German life on the liberal ideas that had provided the ideological justification for modern industrial society. It was easy to point the accusing finger at the ubiquitous Jew. Jewish participation in city life was greater than their numbers warranted; because they were associated with business, it became fairly easy to assign to them the blame for capitalism, to accuse them of reducing the harmony of man to self-interest, and of destroying the patriarchal rural community: in short, of being the agent of modernity that had selfishly destroyed the old Germanic values. Paul de Lagarde, a leading writer and conservative revolutionary of the late nineteenth century in Germany, succinctly phrased what was all too often a common view of the Jew: “the carriers of decay who pollute every national culture, exploit the human resources of their hosts, destroy all faith, and spread materialism and liberalism.” 21 Although himself an anti-Semite, Lagarde was correct when he noted the attractiveness of liberalism for Jews; many Jews were, indeed, associated with left-wing political ideas. Anti-Semitism produced outsiders “and the status of the outsider, no matter how it is attained, makes for radicalism.” 22 This, of course, is not to say that all Jews were wide-eyed radicals; most were moderate liberals, and some, such as Friedrich Julius Stahl, were even conservative. However, a disproportionate number of Jews were involved in radical political ideologies, and it can hardly be accidental that many who were involved with Toller in the Bavarian revolution were of Jewish origin. In addition, the feelings of isolation, being a minority in a country in which emancipation remained at best partial, directed the thought of many Jewish intellectuals away from the increasingly narrow nationalism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries toward a cosmopolitan ideal of universal fellowship and concern with all humanity. Reinforcing this was the ethical humanism of the Aufklärung with its “religion of humanity.” 23 Socialism, with its idea of world harmony, fused with the humanitarian ethos of the Enlightenment and attracted many Jews to its ranks. 24 For many Germans, however, the cosmopolitan socialism of Jewish intellectuals only turned them into the “classic party of national decomposition.” One unsympathetic critic observed: “From Moses Hess to Landauer, Toller and Eisner, it has been the Jewish fashion to acquire influence by indulging and arousing the instinct of the proletariat and to make unpatriotic politics with this influence.” 25 Cosmopolitanism was mistaken for rootlessness, socialism for treason—both a confirmation that the Jew could never be a true member of the German community. In addition to helping explain why Toller was a left-wing intellectual, his Jewish heritage also allows the historian to account for two traits noticeable in his character: the desire, so frequently expressed in his

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work, for integration and acceptance into a community, and the messianic nature of his manner as well as the chiliastic quality of much of his thought. As outsiders, many Jewish intellectuals were attracted to the expressionist yearning for a true community in which all religious and political differences were to be submerged into a harmonious totality. 26 The aggravating factor of being an outcast, stemming from his neighbor’s anti-Semitism during his youth, heightened Toller’s desire for full acceptance and helps account for the attractions he found in the social program of German expressionism. Moreover, is it an accident that many who knew Toller described his mentality as more that of an Old Testament prophet rather than that of a politician? 27 It was in the loneliness of exile during the 1930s, brooding over past illusions, that Toller gave an evaluation of his position both as German and Jew, and in the process gave an introspective analysis of his GermanJewish dilemma: I thought of my childhood, of my misery when the other children shouted “Dirty Jew!” at me, of my childish appeal to the picture of Christ, of my terrible joy when I realized that nobody would recognize me for a Jew, of the first day of the war and my passionate longing to prove I was a real German by offering my life to my country, of my writing from the front to say they could strike my name from the list of the Jewish community. Had it all been for nothing? Had it all been wrong? Had I not stood in the rich beauty of the Mediterranean landscape and longed for the austere pine woods, for the beauty of the still, secret lakes of North Germany? And was not the German language my language, the language in which I felt and thought and spoke, a part of my very being? But was I not also a Jew? A member of that great race which for centuries had been persecuted, harried, martyred and slain; whose prophets had called the world to righteousness, had exalted the wretched and oppressed, then and for all time, a race who had never bowed their heads to their persecutors, who had preferred death to dishonor? I had denied my own mother and I was ashamed . . . I was born and brought up in Germany. I had breathed the air of Germany and its spirit had molded mine. As a German writer I had helped preserve the purity of the German language. How much of me was German, how much Jewish, I could not say. 28

This eloquent exposition of his religion, to be expected from so skilled and so sensitive a writer, may also explain why Toller eventually turned toward a literary career. Jews had traditionally been active in literature. The high percentage of Jews in journalism and writing suggests the extent of the participation, although not the assimilation, of Jews in German intellectual life. Yet though a part of the German intellectual scene, Jewish intellectuals were not totally accepted. As outsiders, they were underrepresented in official intellectual institutions; few Jews, for example, be-

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came university professors or made their way into the highest grades of the bureaucracy. Excluded from establishment society, Jews gravitated to unestablished areas, where their contribution was greatest. Forming a minority of only one percent of the total German population, Jews were heavily overrepresented in what Karl Mannheim called “free lance intellectuals” (freischwebende Intelligenz). 29 Freelance intellectual is often a euphemism for the independent writer or scholar, and many Jews made significant contributions in these areas. As Paul Meyer explained in an essay on the German-Jewish publicist Maximilian Harden: Intellect and language, books and speech are for the Jews the road to the authority that the “native” can claim by the right of birth and tradition. . . . Literary activity is their most significant, often their only weapon in the struggle for acceptance. . . . In Germany the Jews were forced upon their emancipation into the opposition. The minutest measure of public activity was closed to them, and they were forced to write well and speak well, for otherwise they would have been lost. 30

Whatever the reasons for his subsequent career as a writer, Toller had begun as early as 1904, at the age of ten, to write poetry and dream of being a playwright. 31 Particularly after he left Samotschin to attend high school in Bromberg, literature became a large part of his life. It was here that he continued with his poetry, wrote his first play and supplemented his allowance by writing local stories for the Samotschiner Zeitung and the Ostdeutsche Rundschau. It was also as a student that Toller wrote his first work of social criticism, a letter to Samotschin’s local paper protesting the callousness of some of the town’s citizens for refusing to help a half-mad orphan of his village who had died in an epileptic fit. “I cannot understand the ways of humanity,” he confessed, echoing the lament of the hero of his later play Hinkemann: “men could be good with so little trouble, yet they delight in evil.” 32 An instrument of self-expression, Toller’s first social protest was also an instrument of discovery; when he was a child, the brutal reality of society forcibly clashed with his sensitive nature, and Toller’s vocation as a rebel received perhaps its first expression. 33 If it was the writing of outrageous letters that was the cause of Toller’s troubles at home, it was the reading of outrageous authors that was a cause of trouble at school. It is evidence for the conservative nature of the German high school that Toller’s favorite authors—he mentions Gerhart Hauptmann, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, and Frank Wedekind— were banned. Reprimanded for reading such an “ultra-modern revolutionary” as Hauptmann, Toller was cautioned by school officials to learn mathematics and concern himself with more practical things. 34 Toller, however, had other plans and became so deeply involved in literary matters that they soon became more important than school work. He was president of the school’s literary club, Clio, and one of his fellow stu-

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dents, Rudolf Jonas, observed that the young author was “very interested in literature and drama.” 35 While Toller may have been interested in literature, there is little evidence for any direct interest in politics. His earliest political memory was the news of Germany’s gunboat Panther appearing in Agadir. It was a measure of the young Toller’s acceptance of German nationalism. that he had no objection to the nationalist clichés of his teachers that were called forth by the possibility of a German-French war in 1911. 36 Such Francophobia and national enthusiasm were only further reinforced when Toller attended the University of Grenoble after his graduation from Bromberg in January 1914. While at Grenoble, he rarely attended lectures; these he dismissed as “French propaganda.” 37 He preferred the German students’ union, where he could meet other Germans, drink beer, and sing the German national anthem. “We deprecated the loose morals of a degenerate people [The French] and admonished ourselves to always think that we had a loftier culture.” 38 Despite such cultural parochialism, Toller intended to attend the Sorbonne at the end of his first term and improve his unpracticed French. The outbreak of war in August prevented him from fulfilling this desire. Nevertheless, frustration of such plans was not an occasion for disappointment, and the young Toller participated fully in what was erroneously remembered as the intoxication that prevailed during the August days following the start of World War I. This memory has been discovered to be a myth. Most of the parades that greeted the declaration of war were in cities, but Germany was overwhelmingly an agricultural land, and such retrospective enthusiasm for the war has been greatly exaggerated. 39 For Toller, however, it was a time of “emotional delirium”—the opportunity for him to end the alienation his religion had imposed. “All factions were to be united, everyone spoke one language, everyone defended one mother: Germany.” 40 The emotionalism of Toller’s reaction was echoed by the enthusiasm of other German intellectuals who also found emotional catharsis in their praise of conflict. 41 The intensity of their response came from something more than just patriotism. In part, the war was to be a relief from the boredom of the pre-1914 years, the collapse, in Thomas Mann’s words, of a “peace-time world of which we had enough, quite a bit more than enough.” 42 In part, the response reflected a misconceived romanticism on what was to be the nature of warfare in the twentieth century. Twenty years later, Toller noted that for many, himself included, the war was to be “a heroic game, accompanied by the splendid thunder of guns, a knightly combat of man against man, a modern crusade in which human courage and audacity could be nobly proved and developed . . . We longed for war. And when war came we greeted it with a roar of jubilation.” 43 The war of 1914 (and the revolution of 1918 that was its result) was to be the decisive event in the generation of which Toller was a part. War

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service created a caesura between the new generation of Toller from those who had reached intellectual maturity in the 1890s. In 1905, for example, intellectuals such as Freud and Weber, Durkheim and Bergson, Mosca and Croce were too old for frontline duty. August 1914, the date of the start of World War I, was not their war: it was the war of their sons. To them, the decisive life experience had been the intellectual renewal of the 1890s—the defense of Captain Dreyfus perhaps for French intellectuals. The great event for those younger was the war itself. 44 From the crucible of the war, those who survived would emerge, some as pacifists, some as nihilists, but all quite different from what they had been before 1914. To Toller, it signified a radical turning of thought. It was only during military service that he began to contemplate the ending of the war. For what followed was not a short, happy war promised by King, Kaiser, and Tsar, ossified war optimists, and congenital euphemizers who glorified heroism and whose martial qualities so attracted Toller. What emerged instead was a long and grim struggle. At Langemarck in November 1914, thousands of young German soldiers sang the German national anthem as they attacked enemy lines and were killed. Different moods were then expressed that contrasted with the initial enthusiasm of the August days. “The war is not beautiful,” wrote one disillusioned soldier, “I would thank God if it was over today and I could return home unscathed.” 45 Many intellectuals experienced much the same transformation. Particularly valuable as an index of the intellectual’s response to the war was the journal Zeit-Echo, founded in 1914 as an “artist’s war diary.” 46 Its first issues contained articles by Georg Simmel and Martin Buber praising the war spirit; by 1916, however, Zeit-Echo had become a radical journal opposed to the war. For Toller, too, uncritical patriotism could not survive the experience of frontline duty where he saw war as “it really is, not as it is so often represented”: 47 “We lost our enthusiasm, our courage, the very sense of our identity. There was no rhyme or reason in all this slaughter and devastation. . . . In that time of horror, of night and desperation, I understood that death was not the meaning of life—that man in his fugitive span of earthly existence has other work to do.” 48 Europe was full of the dead, disabled, and barely ambulatory walking on crutches because legs had been blown off. Many came back with unwelcome companions that stayed with them throughout life, little pieces of what they had caught in war, shards of steel that could not be removed from bodies or inexpressible sadness that could not be removed from troubled minds. Toller had seen the dying, had looked into the faces of the dead close up. The official cultural values he had once accepted as a child were to appear unromanticized when confronted with the hard reality of trench warfare. He had seen the dead bodies on the ground, stepped over the near dead bodies in battle, and saw dead faces of bodies

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filled with flies. Toller too died in the war, or at least a big piece of him did; a part of his soul left his body like a magician waving a silk handkerchief as it slipped from sight. Toller’s experience of war was to be imprinted into his life with archival finality. Yet in August, 1914, Toller was convinced that Germany had been attacked by France, and he was anxious to defend the honor of his country. After rejection by both infantry and cavalry, Toller was accepted into the 1st Bavarian artillery regiment, and by August 6 he was in military training near Munich. A fellow soldier described Toller as “pale, almost boyish . . . modest, rather shy.” 49 It is indicative of the effect the war would have on Toller that, in its aftermath, he would be neither modest nor, as a noted public speaker, shy. Toller was an enthusiastically eager recruit. The words Germany and fatherland, he later remembered, had an almost mystical power, and even the necessary but disagreeable job of cleaning latrines made him feel “positively distinguished.” 50 In those first months of war, Toller had found the acceptance he had craved so much as a child. It is significant that he later remembered that “as a soldier, no one had to ask me if I were a Jew.” 51 Before leaving for frontline duty, for which he had volunteered, Toller wrote in his diary of his newfound happiness, how glad he was to go to the trenches: “At last to be allowed to take one’s part! To prove one’s thoughts, one’s feelings with one’s life.” 52 Although soon promoted to corporal, frontline service not only took Toller’s enthusiasm for war away but also radically changed his ideas. It transformed the aggressive nationalist into what he was to remain for the rest of his life—pacifist and a socialist. War and death, paradoxically, became catalysts for his later ideas of peace and brotherhood. The harrowing experience of trench warfare undermined his naïve patriotic faith; the sight of death convinced him of the oneness of mankind. 53 Digging in a trench one day, he pulled out a slimy, shapeless bundle. Toller was about to have a hideous awakening of insight, a tragic epiphany that stayed with him forever and changed the course of his life: A dead man. What made me pause then? Why did those words startle me so? They closed in upon my brain like a vise; they choked my throat and chilled my heart. A dead man—I tried to thrust the words from my brain. What was there about them that they should so overwhelm me? . . . and suddenly . . . the real truth broke in on me. The simple fact of man which I had forgotten, which laid deep and 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 those corpses had been men; all had breathed as I breathed, had a father, a mother, a woman they loved, a piece of land which was theirs, faces which expressed joy and suffering, eyes that knew the light of day and the color of sky. At this moment of realization I knew that I had

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Where before Toller had eagerly volunteered for infantry combat, he now desperately sought escape and applied for transfer to the air force where he could be above the fighting, remote from the digging of filthy trenches filled with the entrails of the dead. Thirteen months of fighting, however, had left him emotionally exhausted and physically weak. He was sent to a Strasbourg hospital and discharged a few weeks later in January 1917, for psychological reasons, unfit for further duty. 55 Discharge for psychological reasons only baldly states a fact. The war was the single defining experience of Toller’s life, and what he saw and felt, and what war is really like, merits attention. What exactly did Toller mean when he later wrote about seeing war as “it really is, not as it is so often represented”? Combat is like drunk driving—intoxicating but filled with unpleasant consequences. Toller was in a particularly gruesome area of the army, in artillery, the most frightening place to be. War and its psychological effects are sanitized in cheerful news coverage and euphemism and in tricks of publicity and advertising. Attempts to glorify battle are daydreams straining to romanticize a ghastly experience. In photos of war, bodies of the dead lay on the ground, almost as if asleep. But anyone who has been in battle knows this is seldom true. Soldiers do not die with soft sighs or fall to the ground in slow grace. But if one waits long enough, the blood evaporates, bodies become memories, and “battle takes on a pleasing shape, in the way a jagged rock is worn smooth by insistent surf.” 56 Victims under artillery fire could become physically bizarre, entering a place where violence became perversely aestheticized, even transforming itself into a gentle arabesque. Henri Barbusse, in his 1916 book Le Feu, witnessed a shell burst two men “into the air vertically fifteen feet perhaps, amid a spout of soil . . . They rose and fell with the easy careful poise of acrobats, a rifle, revolving slowly, rose high above them, still revolving it fell.” Later Barbusse saw a body rising upright with his two arms fully extended outright and where a head had been was now a flame. 57 Bodies are dismembered, becoming severed heads, strewed limbs, and hanging intestines and excrement. Violent dismemberment of human beings is traumatic, repulsive, frightening. It can even be smelled. Burning bodies release every putrid gas known to chemists. Rhinal cavities are on overdrive. The stench is all pervasive. For the survivor who beholds such horror, it can cause insanity, even in the strongest of men. Eventually, all will break down, given enough time; it is not just the weak, the gentle, and the sensitive, like Toller, who will inevitably be reduced to quivering wrecks and “walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh,” as one soldier who

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had seen many battles writes. 58 It was not only the outside bodies and body parts soldiers saw, but the hidden parts as well. There are scenes in battle that should only be observed by crazed gastroenterologists. In World War II, General Sir John Hackett saw “an inert mass . . . swinging down a parachute harness beside me, a man from whose body the entrails hung, swaying in reciprocal rhythm. As the body moved one way, the entrails swung the other.” 59 Toller had experienced artillery and mortar fire. These were, for ground troops, more terrifying than bullets, accompanied as they were by round after round of cacophonous terror that could burst eardrums, cause vomiting, and cause loss of control of bowels and sphincter muscles. Shelling both tore and ripped the body (or atomized it into tiny red bits that landed on the as yet living) and worked on the mind to the brink, and beyond, of sanity. 60 The maximum time of endurance for such wild destruction of other humans is 240 days, according to medical authorities. Toller, like most survivors of World War I, was there considerably longer. “Psychiatric casualties are as inevitable as gunshot and shrapnel wounds in warfare,” notes one observer. 61 In World War I, the poet Wilfred Owen was driven near to madness by lying next to the dispersed body parts of the former living. World War II was a repeat of the Great War: “Marine officers climbing above body parts going insane, pilots of landing craft going insane steering through severed heads and limbs, downed fliers adrift at sea on rafts, driven insane in addition to drinking their urine [as] they tried to relieve their thirst by biting their comrades’ jugular veins and sucking the blood.” 62 This was all more than merely most unpleasant. It was little wonder Toller was psychologically affected by his war experience. The diagnosis and treatment of shell shock mirrored the industrial experience of Germany. Physicians who were suddenly confronted with this new medical challenge adapted an industrial model concentrating on efficiency and assembly line models for treatment. Standardization and speed became prime procedures that mirrored the centralized and rationalized administration of the whole war. 63 What Toller would have experienced in treatment would not have been pleasant. Every attempt would have been made to brand him as a “malingerer” or coward or to question his virility. 64 As a decorated soldier who had proven himself in battle, this would have been difficult, and it may be a sign of how badly Toller was affected that he was discharged so soon. The Toller that emerged in 1917 was, as a result of combat, far different from the Toller of 1914. At first a narrow nationalist, he had now begun to concern himself with more exclusive ideas that stressed the brotherhood of man. The former warrior had become a pacifist, and as a pacifist he rejected not only war but also a government that to him had made that war possible. It was while in Munich after his discharge that Toller came to the conclusion that “the German government was guilty of

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the outbreak and continuation of the war and that the German people were being deceived.” 65 He emerged from war hostile to Germany’s leaders and bitter about a system that had allowed such leaders to attain positions of power. In Shakespeare’s Henry V, soldier Williams echoes across the centuries Toller’s own feeling: But if the cause be not good, the King himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all those legs and arms and heads, chopp’d off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all “We died at such a place”—some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. (Henry V, act 4, scene 1)

But the war may have also left with Toller something positive. While the war did not create expressionism, surrealism, and the avant-garde that became Weimar, a majority of Weimar’s avant-garde artists were part of Toller’s war generation. War was a catalyst for the avant-garde movement. 66 The expressionist and Dadaist surreal visions of insanity, severed limbs and lost souls separated from disfigured bodies, reflect the intimate familiarity with the reality of vast European slaughterhouses thrown up by four years of trench warfare. Radical times required radical art. “We were looking for an elementary art,” wrote the avant-garde artist Jean Arp, “which would be capable of saving humanity from the furious insanity of the times. We aspired to a new order which could restore the equilibrium between heaven and hell.” 67 Yet, although radicalized, Toller, in his search for Arp’s new order, was not yet a radical. He recognized the need for political change but had not yet begun actively to involve himself with politics. When Toller arrived in Munich, the war began to show what was to become an all too common scene on the avenues of the Weimar Republic after demobilization: war cripples on sidewalks, wounded soldiers, the embittered and the cynical mixed uncomfortably with those who were not away at the front. Toller tried to forget the war. He returned to the University of Munich, where he had been registered intermittently since the winter of 1914, 68 and threw himself into his studies with a fervor that was in sharp contrast to his lackadaisical work at Grenoble. We know what seminars and classes he took in law, economics, philology, and economics. Of particular importance for his later development as a writer was a seminar on literary criticism and writing held by Artur Kutscher, who later described Toller as his “dearest and most talented student.” Kutscher’s class introduced Toller to avant-garde techniques he would later use in his expressionist plays, including the “station technique” developed by Strindberg. In addition, he began to make contacts in Munich’s literary and political circles, met Rainer Maria Rilke, had Thomas Mann criticize some of his writings and met writers Frank Wedekind, Hanns Johst, and Erich

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Mühsam. Mühsam would later join Toller in Bavaria’s Soviet revolution. 69 Increasingly, Toller became involved in German intellectual life, so much so that he attracted the attention of Eugen Diederichs, publisher of the neoconservative journal Die Tat. Toller, who was involved in the German Youth movement, was attracted to the older man, among other things, because of his support of the movement. Diederichs had collected a small coterie of intellectuals, among them Max Weber, Richard Dehmel, Friedrich Meinecke, Werner Sombart, and Ferdinand Tönnies, who, along with promising young intellectuals such as Toller, he invited to his Thuringian castle, Burg Lauenstein, “to discuss together the problems and tendencies of the times.” 70 A cultural pessimist, disciple of Nietzsche and Lagarde, Diederichs was a part of the cultural opposition of the Bismarckian Empire against whose alleged philistine qualities he railed in the pages of Die Tat. A self-proclaimed leader of the youth movement, he was an active proselytizer for a new German Kulturpolitik that he hoped would renew the nation. 71 The war had affected all who came to Diederichs’ discussion circle. Both members of the older generation of intellectuals who had matured under Bismarck and those of Toller’s generation were questioning old values and attempting, although at times only gropingly and vaguely, for a reformulation of ideas that they hoped would take into account the social changes Germany had experienced through war. It was an indication of the effect of that war on the two generations that Toller was repelled by the intellectual remoteness of the elders from the hard reality of the trench life he had experienced. Even those for whom Toller had respect, such as Max Weber, remained separated from him; although paying tribute to some of their ideas, the gap between Weber’s generation of elders and Toller’s generation of war was great. While the elders were concerned only with reform, the war generation had much greater ambitions. Wrote Toller: To them the world into which they had been born seemed ripe for annihilation and they sought for a way out of the dreadful confusion of the times. They sought to make a new order from chaos. . . . The older generation, however, were no Biblical prophets to condemn the familiar ways and reveal the new. They were not ready to brave the rage of kings and tyrants nor were they rebels. 72

As befitted Diederichs’ taste for the eccentric—he frequently expressed a fascination with the “mystical essence of life” and presided over his meetings wearing zebra-skin pants and a turban 73 —many members of his circle were more eccentric than the staid Max Weber. Toller was alternately amused and repelled by much of the nebulous thought at Lauenstein that expressed itself in a conglomeration of Utopian völkisch roman-

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ticism. Some of the ideas called for the establishment of a Germanic religion or world salvation through the German spirit. Toller noted that: the young wanted something more than theorizing. . . . And so it went on, talk, endless talk, while the battlefields of Europe shuddered beneath the blows of war. We waited and waited. Why did these men not have a solution? Were they deaf, dumb and blind? Was it because they themselves had never lain in a dugout, never heard the despairing cries of the dying, the dumb accusation of a devastated wood, never looked into the desperate eyes of a hunted refugee? 74

Bitterly disappointed by his stay at Diederichs’, Toller found that “the faintly sighing pines of Thuringia” only reminded him “more powerfully by contrast of the grim battle whose prelude of four years warfare was just being played.” 75 Toller left Lauenstein and went to Heidelberg to study economics during the winter term 1917–1918. Less concerned now with scholarship than in protesting the war, Toller began his expressionist antiwar play, Die Wandlung. He joined a group of pacifist students and quickly assumed a leading position. Although not “one of the clearest,” Toller was “one of the most enthused,” 76 and it was under his direction that the group officially formed itself into the Kulturpolitischer Bund der Jugend in Deutschland. The Bund manifesto, which Toller wrote, 77 with its stress on culture and politics, was reminiscent of the discussions at Lauenstein, where talk had frequently centered on “culture’s involvement with political questions.” 78 As befitted such ambiguous phraseology, the Bund had as its purpose “to awaken responsibility in young people and lead them to political activity.” It wished to create a true community of friends (Gemeinschaft), infuse German society with “the Spirit of Brotherhood” (Geist), and end the separation between the intellectual and the nation, “for we are convinced that it is necessary for the intellectual to root himself in the people.” 79 More specifically, the Bund put forth a nine-point program. Points one and two demanded the “peaceful solution of the contradictions of national life” and the “abolition of poverty.” Other than going on record, however, for an economic system that would guarantee a “just division of material goods,” the Bund remained silent on exactly how such a society would be organized. Other parts demanded separation of church and state “to free true religiosity from traditional restraints,” the establishment of free universities (freie Universitätsgemeinden), and the distribution of cheap popular editions of expressionist and antiwar literature, including Carl Hauptmann’s Krieg, Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu, Walter Hasenclever’s Antigone, and Leonhard Frank’s Der Vater and Die Kriegswitwe. In spite of the proposals of the Bund, Toller made it clear that the organization was not limited only to pragmatic goals or just concerned with reform; he demanded nothing less than a “total revolution of intellectual attitudes.”

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The Bund’s program was imbued with an idealism that did little to compensate for its vagueness. While its goals may have been admirable, its high-minded idealism found little support. 80 Older, more conservative and traditional individuals, such as Weber, predictably more concerned with reform than revolution, were hostile to the supposed extremism of the manifesto’s language and to the refusal of the Bund’s members to accept compromise. 81 Even among Toller’s fellow students, the organization found little echo. One official estimated Toller’s following to be between ten and twelve students. 82 After the publication of Toller’s manifesto, the Student Council at Heidelberg made it clear that it rejected not only Toller’s program but also “all attempts of certain groups which seek in this critical time to disturb the tried and true views of the present student body when the greater part of our fellow students are helping to defend our beloved fatherland.” 83 Toller, quick to reply, rejected the implication that the Bund was unpatriotic (nicht vaterländisch): Is it “unpatriotic” to strive for the peaceful union of free and independent nations? Is that extenuating the evils of any particular government? Is that demanding “peace at any price”? Those of us who have actually experienced war feel themselves doubly bound to hold the path they have chosen. We know that only so are we truly helping our brothers in the field. We love Germany, perhaps in our own way. We demand much from it—but much also from ourselves. 84

Although Toller affirmed his patriotism, the outspoken pacifism of the Bund was enough to bring upon it the wrath of the German High Command as well as that of the newly-founded Fatherland Party, a right-wing mélange of annexationist groups toward which the Bund, not surprisingly, had expressed much hostility. Toller’s organization was dissolved, its Austrian adherents deported, and its German members ordered to report for induction into the Army. Warned of the army’s intentions, Toller quickly left Heidelberg for Berlin. If Toller had become an active opponent of the war during his university study at Munich and Heidelberg, it was during his stay in Berlin that he became further convinced that “the war had been thrust upon us by egomaniacs thirsty for power and glory.” 85 It was while in Berlin that he first met Kurt Eisner, later to be the leader of the Bavarian revolution, became attracted to socialism, and began to question not only the war but also “the guilt of capitalism” 86 for making such a conflict possible. It was an indication, however, of Toller’s naïveté that, when he first heard of Germany’s responsibility for starting the war and the grandiose war aims of the government, he refused to believe it. Incredulity soon turned to bitterness, and Toller came to the conclusion that the German people had been betrayed:

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It was this motif, that Germany had failed to live up to the ideals of all right-thinking men to make the nation conform to its true image, that again and again was to occur in Toller’s thought. During the Nazi years, he was to accuse Germany of betraying the spirit of classic German humanism; during the period of the Weimar Republic, he was to indict the nation for betraying the revolutionary ideals of the Left; now in 1917, he accused Germany of betraying the idealistic justifications that it put forth in 1914. Yet there was something more abstract, less easily definable in Toller’s critique of German society. In a revealing letter to Gustav Landauer, whose book, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, so impressed him, Toller wrote of the ideas that motivated him. In view of the great importance Toller attached to the letter—he had it published six times between 1920 and 1933—it is worth quoting in full: It is not simply necessity which has driven me to do what I am doing, not only pain in the face of hideous everyday happenings, not only indignation of the political and economic system. Those have all counted, of course, but there is more behind it than that. I am not a mystic concerned only with relations between myself and God to the exclusion of the rest of humanity. I pity those who can think only of their own personal little troubles. I pity those whose hysterical enthusiasm for the movement demands futurist cabarets and revolution with equal emphasis. No, I am determined to embrace life in all its manifestations. For all that, I believe dead wood must be cut out. No one has a right to life who has nothing to give. I demand of those who would go with us not merely devotion to the needs of spirit alone or of mind or of body, but devotion to man in all his needs. I am not dreaming of a band of community creators. The creative spirit manifests itself in its purest form in the work of individuals, but community feeling is encouraging and stimulating to creating. I know the ideas I am fighting against and I imagine that I also know what ideas must supersede them; but I still cannot visualize with any clearness the exterior form these new ideas must take. I am conscious of an inner peace that is freedom, which gives me freedom. I know that my mind is far from peaceful, that I can still fight bitterly and violently against dirt and ignorance but yet this sense of inner peace remains. 88

All Toller’s later ideas were expressed here. The hostility toward a corrupt and corrupting system, an unbending humanitarian ethos, a desire for change, and a vague longing for an ill-defined (or perhaps indefinable) community—all would be the main themes of his plays and many

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of his essays, the subject of his letters and conversations. As yet inexperienced in political reality and still imbued with a youthful idealism, Toller had yet to suffer from the very real wounds a society unready for such lofty ideals could inflict. During the Bavarian revolution, when his ideals came into what was to be painful conflict with reality, he experienced anguish and despair, and his subsequent life would lack that inner peace of which, as a youth, he had so confidently spoken. Through three-and-a-half years of war, Toller’s thought had radically altered. The uncritical and eager warrior of 1914 had become the unflinching pacifist of 1918. The bellicose nationalist who had once depreciated the French for their decadence and affirmed the superiority of German culture had now become the cosmopolitan convinced of the essential oneness of mankind and passionately dedicated to “man in all his needs.” The theorizing of the Diederichs circle convinced Toller that the important thing was not contemplation of the world or even its reform, but its radical change. The apolitical adolescent emerged an indignant socialist. War, then, had both positive and negative consequences for Toller. Negatively, it alienated him from the government. Yet war had not only destroyed Toller’s old values, as can be seen in his letter to Landauer; it also stimulated his imagination by making him aware of an incipient new society that he hoped would emerge from the ruins of the old. It was also important that Toller’s early poems and his first major play were expressionist in style. The attractions of expressionism were strong and served to reinforce many of the feelings Toller had acquired since the outbreak of war. Of particular importance was Toller’s view that young intellectuals, such as he himself, were destined to play a major role in the transformation of Germany. Politicized by his participation in the war, Toller sought to combine desire for social change with literary inclination. Expressionism not only aids in explaining what Toller expected from revolution; it also forms the foundation for his later critique of German society. The mixing of these two ingredients, the political and the literary, was to provider an explosive, and ultimately disastrous, compound particularly well-tailored for someone of Toller’s sensitive temperament. NOTES 1. Richard Dove, He Was a German (London: Libris, 1984), 10. To1ler’s early life is found in his autobiography. Ernst Toller, Eine Jugend in Deutschland, in Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961), 30–49. Hereafter referred to as PBDG. See also Thorsten Unger and Maria Wojtczak, Ernst Tollers Geburtsort Samotschin (Würzberg: Ernst Toller Society, 2001). The best work is Fredrick Schouton, “Ernst Toller: A Youth Biography” (PhD dissertation, European University Institute, 2007). 2. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 43. 3. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 31. 4. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 36.

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5. Cited in István Deák, A Political History of the Weltbühne and Its Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 25. 6. Jakob Wassermann, My Life as German and Jew (New York: Coward-McCann, 1933), 11. See also Donald Niewyk, The Jews in Weimar Germany (Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 1980). 7. W. A. Willibrand, Ernst Toller and His Ideology (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1945), 7. 8. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 31–32. 9. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 37. 10. See Ernst Toller, “Toller schreibt über sich,” in Ernst Toller und seine Bühnenwerke, edited by Fritz Droop (Berlin: F. Schneider, 1922), 4. 11. See Hans Kohn, Karl Kraus, Arthur Schnitzler, Otto Weininger: Aus dem jüdischen Wien der Jahrhundertwende (Tübingen: Mohr, 1962). 12. See Simon May, Love: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), chapter 7 and 166. 13. Ernst Toller, Letter to “Mrs. T.” Niederschönenfeld, 1920, in Look Through the Bars: Letters from Prison, Poems, and a New Version of “The Swallow Book” (New York: Haskill House 1937), 64. 14. Ernst Toller, “Bemerkungen zu meinen Drama Die Wandlung,” Tribune der Kunst and Zeit, 13 (1919): 46–48. 15. Wrote Theodor Lessing in a revealing passage that expressed the frustration of many Germans of Jewish descent: “We felt passionately German and we could not understand how anyone could doubt our Germanity.” Theodor Lessing, Der jüdische Selbsthass (Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1930), 169. For an interesting analysis of how German authors have reacted to their Jewishness, see Lothar Kahn, Mirrors of the Jewish Mind (New York: T. Yoseloff, 1968). 16. Ernst Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 245. 17. Mary Gerold-Tucholsky and Fritz J. Raddatz, eds., Gesammelte Werke (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1960–1961), 1:790. 18. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 178. 19. See Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology (New York, Vintage Books, 1960). 20. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, 9. 21. Paul de Lagarde, “Űber die gegenwärtigen Aufgaben der deutschen Politik,” in Deutsche Schriften (Munich: Lehmann, 1937), 41. 22. Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), 228. 23. George L. Mosse, Germans and Jews: The Right, the Left, and the Search for a “Third Force” in Pre-Nazi Germany (New York: Grossett and Dunlap, 1970), 205. 24. The point is further developed in chapter 4. 25. The source of the quotation, from Georg von Below, a Freiburg professor, is indicative of the respectability of anti-Semitism in Germany. Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins, 224. 26. See chapter 4. 27. See, for example, Otto Zarek, German Odyssey (London: Jonathan Cape, 1941), 99–102. 28. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 178–79. Carel ter Haar, possibly incorrectly, considers Toller’s Judaism a dominant theme of his work. See Ernst Toller: Appell oder Resignation (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1977). 29. Erich Rosenthal, “Trends of the Jewish Population in Germany, 1910–39,” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 3 (1944), 255–56. 30. Quoted by Harry Young, Maximilian Harden: Censor Germaniae: The Critic in Opposition from Bismarck to the Rise of Nazism (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1959), 11. 31. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 40. 32. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 44.

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33. The letter, published anonymously, accused the whole town of brutality and created an uproar. Samotschin’s mayor sued the newspaper’s editor for refusing to name the author of the work. The whole affair, however, was quietly dropped when Toller’s father, a town councilor, used his influence and intervened. 34. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 46. Later, while in military prison during World War I, Toller was caught reading Werfel. “Whoever reads such nonsense,” announced an Army doctor, “should not be surprised if he ends up in prison,” in Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 91. 35. Letter from Rudolf Jonas to John Spalek, Collection of Professor John Spalek, State University of New York at Albany. Hereafter referred to as SC. See also Jacqueline Rogers, “Ernst Toller’s Prose Writings” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1972), 37–38. 36. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 47–48. 37. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 51. 38. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 50. 39. See Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 40. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 58, 60. 41. See Leon Fuller, “The War of 1914 as Interpreted by German Intellectuals,” Journal of Modern History 14, no. 2 (1942): 145–60. 42. Thomas Mann, “Gedanken im Krieg,” Die neue Rundschau 25 (1916): 1475, cited by Klaus Schroter, “Chauvinism and Its Tradition: German Writers and the Outbreak of the First World War,” Germanic Review 43, no. 2 (1968): 134. 43. Ernst Toller, “The Twentieth Anniversary of the War,” Special Manuscript Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University, 3. 44. H. Stuart Hughes, Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890–1930 (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), 338. 45. Cited in Walter Laqueur, Young Germany. A History of the German Youth Movement (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 89. 46. John Willett, Expressionism (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970), 105. 47. “Ernst Toller über Ernst Toller,” Die Literatur 31 (April 1929): 403. For an excellent series of essays on intellectuals and the war, see Kultur und Krieg: Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg, edited by Wolfgang Mommsen (Munich: Oldenburg, 1996). 48. Toller, Look Through the Bars, x; Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 73. 49. Dove, He Was a German, 21. For a description of Army life in Bavaria during the war, see Benjamin Zieman, Front und Heimat: Ländliche Kreigserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern, 1914–1923 (Essen: Klartext, 1997). 50. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 60. 51. Dove, Revolutionary Socialism in the Work of Ernst Toller (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), 25. 52. Toller, Look Through the Bars, ix. By all accounts, Toller was a surprisingly good soldier. At his trial in 1919, his commanding officer testified to Toller’s courage, remembering him as an “unafraid and self-sacrificing comrade.” Stefan Grossmann, “Die Geschichte eines Prozesses,” in PBDG, 474. Walter von Molo even noted that Toller had won the Iron Cross. See So wunderbar ist das Leben (Stuttgart: Deutsche Volksbücher, 1957), 217. Since Toller never mentioned this in his writings, I am inclined to discount it. An internet search for World War I Iron Cross awards does not mention Toller. 53. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 71. 54. Stefan Grossmann implies that Toller exaggerated his illness to avoid compromising his conscience. Stefan Grossmann and Hugo Haase, Der Hochverräter Ernst Toller: Die Geschichte eines Prozesses (Berlin: E. Rowohlt, 1919), 13. 55. Toller, “Toller schreibt über sich,” in Ernst Toller und seine Bühnenwerke, edited by Droop, 10.

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56. Michael Stevenson, The Last Full Measure: How Soldiers Die in Battle (New York: Crown Publishers, 2012), xii. See also Karl Marlantes, What It Is Like To Go To War (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011). 57. Cited in Stevenson, The Last Full Measure, 206, from Henri Barbusse, Under Fire (London: Penguin, 2003), 154, 196. 58. Dwight David Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (New York: Doubleday, 1948), 279. 59. Quoted by Paul Fussell, Wartime (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 271, 278. 60. John Ellis, The Sharp Ends of War: The Fighting Men in World War II (North Pomfert, Vermont: Aurum Publishers, 1980), 300. See also Paul Lerner, “Psychiatry and Casualties of War in Germany, 1914–18,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 1 (2000): 13–28, and Doris Kaufmann, “Science as Cultural Practice: Psychiatry in the First World War and Weimar Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 34, no. 1 (1999): 125–44. 61. Fussell, Wartime, 281. 62. Fussell, Wartime, 273. 63. Lerner, “Psychiatry and Casualties of War in Germany, 18. 64. See Joanna Bourke, “Ethnicity and the End of Trauma: The Sufferings of Shellshocked Men in Great Britain and Ireland,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 1 (2000), and George Mosse, “Shell-shock as a Social Disease,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 1 (2000). 65. Toller, “Toller schreibt über sich,” in Ernst Toller und seine Bühnenwerke, edited by Droop, 10. See the outstanding article by Bernd Ulrich “Die Desillusionerung der Kriegsfreiwilligen von 1914,” in Der Krieg des kleinen Mannes: Eine Militärgeschichte von Unten, edited by Wolfram Wette (Munich: Piper, 1992). 66. See Annette Becker, “The Avant-garde, Madness, and the Great War,” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 1 (2000): 71–84. 67. “Rektorat an der K. Staatsministerium des Inneren für Kirchen- und Schulangelegenheiten. Munich, 7 February 1918. Betreff. Die Allgemeine Studentenversammlung vom 25. January 1918,” in Staatsarchiv für Oberbayern, St. Anw. München I, Nr. 2242/ II, 3. Hereafter referred to as SAO. 68. See Christa Hempel-Küter and Hans-Harold Müller, “Ernst Toller: Auf der Suche nach dem Geistigen Führer,” in Literatur, Politik und soziael Prozesse, edited by Georg Jäger, et al. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997), 78–106. 69. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 73–74. See also Gangold Hübinger, “Ernst Toller und eine neue Geisteskultur,” in Kultur und Krieg, edited by Mommsen. 70. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 75. 71. Klemens von Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism: Its History and Dilemma in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 9. 72. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 75–76. Marianne Weber noted that the younger generation at Diederichs’ felt the old world doomed and awaited the birth of “a new nation in which international cooperation, peace, brotherhood, solidarity and socialism would reign.” Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1926), 609. 73. George Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: The Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964), 53. 74. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 76. 75. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 76. 76. Käthe Lichter, “Max Weber als Lehrer und Politiker,” Der Kampf 19 (September 1926): 383–84. Lichter was a member of Toller’s Heidelberg group. 77. Ernst Toller, “Leitsätze für einen Kulturpolitischen Bund der Jugend in Deutschland,” Menschen Montagsblatt-Dresden, no. 26 (June 16, 1918). 78. Weber, Max Weber, 608. 79. Toller’s relation to the ideas of Gemeinschaft, Geist, and his attitude on the role of the intellectual is treated further in chapter 4.

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80. Toller mentions receiving support from Albert Einstein; however, he quickly added that such letters of support “were a thousand times outnumbered by the abusive and threatening letters which came each day.” Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 79. 81. Weber, Max Weber, 613. 82. “Prorektor Endemann an das Stellvertreter. Generalkommando I b. A.K. Munich, February 5, 1918,” SAO, 4. 83. “Erklärung der Heidelberger Studentenschaft,” Heidelberqer Tageblatt, no. 296 (December 18, 1917). 84. Ernst Toller, “Erwiderung,” Heidelberger Zeitungen, no. 298 (December 20, 1917); see also Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 80. 85. Toller, quoted by Howard de Forest, “Pacifist in Exile,” The Living Age 351 (February 1937): 507. 86. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 82. 87. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 82. 88. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 81. See also republications in Der Freihafen 3 (1920): 5–7; Der Kampf 13 (30 May 1920); Toller, “Toller schreibt über sich,” in Ernst Toller und seine Bühnenwerke, by Droop, 16–17; Vorwärts no. 16 (January 8, 1926), 2; Ernst Toller, Quer Durch: Reisebilder and Reden (Berlin: Verlag Das Wunderhorn, 1930), 189–91. The earliest version, unpublished, is “Brief an einen Menschen,” in Collection of Dr. Harold Hurwitz, Free University of Berlin.

FOUR The Attractions of Ideology Expressionism and Activism

Every real drama and every real comedy of artistic value has in its inner core the germs of rebellion. The spirit of freedom and justice lives in it. There has never been a great poet who has not spoken for the people and for the oppressed and who has not stood for the power of the spirit as against the power of force. —Ernst Toller, “Unser Kampf in Deutschland

Toller was a writer. He was not a political scholar or a philosopher. However, in the framework of German culture, any political conversation or controversy was deeply immersed in philosophical and cultural vocabulary in a way it was not in the United States, Britain, or any other part of continental Europe. It was a uniquely German discussion concerned with the Geistig (spiritual) justification of political institutions. Art, culture, philosophy, and politics were intertwined in a way they were not elsewhere. We see this in the works of the Right and the Left. They surface in a wide array of German writers—Thomas Mann, Herman Hesse, Ernst Jünger, Gottfried Benn, as well as Toller. As historian Kurt Sontheimer noted in his study of thought patterns in the Weimar Republic, “The Weimar Republic experienced a veritable onslaught of Geist on political and social reality, such as scarcely any other phase of German history witnessed. Seldom has the claim of Geist to transcend reality been made with such arrogance, with such pitiless radicalism.” 1 Idealism is a vague term in English; it is even more so in German. It was derived from the age of Goethe, Kant, Fichte, and Schiller, taught in the schools, spoken about at home, accepted as a common currency. Part metaphorical, part quasi-religious, part moral imperative and aesthetic theory, it was venerated by those who were educated, admired by those who were not, and 55

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aspired to by those in the middle. It was the cultivation of Innerlichkeit, an internal reality at once personal and messianic. And it was also specifically German, as the German historian Friedrich Meinecke put it: “Specifically German also . . . was the tendency to elevate something primarily practical into a universal world-view theory.” 2 In the nineteenth century, it was most often nonpolitical. By the early twentieth, things began to change. Literature and politics are two terms that in German history, at least, seem to be in some tension with each other. It is significant that Kurt Hiller, in his introduction to an anthology of Toller’s work, went to great length to refute the “nonsense” that literature could be separated from politics. 3 “Which German,” commented Wolfgang Paulsen in contrast, “does not immediately think when he hears the words literature and politics of Goethe’s dictum that a political song is supposed to be a dirty song?” 4 If the critic seeks a general characteristic of much of German literature, he may well be led to conclude that it is more philosophical and metaphysical than social and political. 5 There is a German tradition that looks upon Kultur—the use of the German spelling is intentional—as a replacement for politics. It vilifies the second and glorifies the first. Its aesthetic appeal, critical to understanding the Nazi era, is heard in Hitler’s statement that whoever did not understand Wagner did not understand National Socialism, and this was reflected in the coterie of his welleducated, musically-sensitive associates who appeared to view their politics as an ersatz for art. The propagandist Joseph Goebbels and ruthless S.S. leader Reinhard Heydrich come to mind as particularly distasteful examples, but there were many others. It is a tradition that can be traced to the late eighteenth century and continued, with frightful consequences, into the twentieth. Weimar Republic intellectuals showed a particular vulnerability for Utopianism and messianic visions, as well as distaste for the political. 6 The early Toller shared in this. As he experienced more, he began to share less. The dichotomy in German literature between the demands of art (or thought) and those of politics can already be seen in the eighteenth century. Goethe’s relative lack of concern with politics is well known. Even Schiller, to whom we would be doing an injustice to characterize as totally apolitical, when he asked in 1784 for contributions to a literary journal he was planning, made it clear that he wished to avoid all political questions. In his unfinished poem “Deutsche Grosse,” he expressly states Germany’s strength is in her spirit and not in her politics, 7 an assumption to which German history in the twentieth century perhaps lends a higher degree of truth than Schiller could have realized at the time. Jacques Droz saw Germany’s tragedy in such a separation of politics from intellect. German intellect was concerned with philosophy, while German politics was an affair of cabinets. 8 Fritz Ringer, an historian who has carefully studied these phenomena among German academics, writes:

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The themes were always the same: pure learning, the absolutely disinterested contemplation of the good and the true is the principal vocation of man. He best serves humanity who cultivates his own spirit to the fullest possible extent; for the world has no purpose and reality itself, no meaning apart from the creative labor of the mind and spirit. Compared to this work, everything else—the practical knowledge of every-day life, the details of social organization and the accidents of worldly work and situation—is insignificant. 9

There were, of course, exceptions, and to assert that German literature was totally unconcerned with political and social problems would be both foolish and misleading. Probably, the most active period of literarypolitical activity before expressionism was Young Germany; however, with the exception of Heine and Büchner, it produced few first-rate authors. With Germany’s increasing industrialization later in the century, many writers began to express strong social and political tendencies in their work, Hauptmann’s Die Weber being one of the best examples. Yet neither Young Germany nor Naturalism formulated a program of literary politics. This was left to the twentieth-century activists of expressionism. Thomas Mann once observed that a characteristic of the twentieth century was the “politicization of everything.” Certainly, for many German intellectuals, the impact of the century’s first great war moved them toward an increasing concern with political and social questions. The reality of a horrible war had affected German society politically. To remain divorced from politics, Wirklichkeitsfremd, during the most destructive European war since 1618, when every aspect of life was radically altered by the political and economic problems of war, was now impossible: even those who were apolitical had to mediate on politics. 10 As one member of the war generation put it: “politics had now become our destiny and it has never since surrendered its hold on me. Rather, in many respects it has determined our lives.” 11 Not only in politics but also in literature the war caused a change. Conventional artistic genres seemed irrelevant when set against trench warfare. All compromise with prewar aesthetics was altered. The awareness that 1914 was the culmination of the past social evolution, not a break in it, meant that culture, associated with the upper classes who were held responsible for the war, was condemned as the whole literary garbage pail of a generation whose cowardice and thoughtlessness, as Erwin Piscator, a producer of Toller’s plays during the 1920s, noted, served “to drive us into the trenches . . . New methods were now developed to express the new war vision rather than adopting techniques that had been appropriate in a pre-war world.” 12 On a personal level, Toller’s war experience and his turn to pacifism were not unique. Author Rudolf Leonhard and the expressionist author Fritz von Unruh went through much the same process. The response was at first one of emotion, based on the hard and unsentimental reality of

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trench warfare. The experience of war, however, soon called forth a theory that articulated the emotional feelings of sensitive young intellectuals such as Toller and, in the process, created the occasion for the intellectual to formulate a theory of political and literary involvement. The theory turned its back on literature divorced from politics and experienced literature as a political fever. Initially, politically neutral expressionism proved itself well-suited to writers desiring to become political leaders. Starting as a literary movement, by the end of the war expressionism had developed a more active aspect, one that emphasized concern for social questions and spoke the enthusiastic yet vague language of revolution. While the movements of expressionism and activism were not synonymous, 13 the two were linked; although not strictly a war phenomenon, their popularity rose the longer the war dragged on. Reaching a peak in 1918–1920, their fortunes fell as quickly as revolutionary excitement evaporated; both faded in the disillusion of Germany’s intellectuals with postwar society. It was not accidental that Toller became an expressionist. The literary movement was well-suited to attract someone with his background. Young, from a moderately affluent Jewish background, and reasonably well educated, he shared much in common with others drawn to that volatile genre. 14 While its emotional rhetoric appealed to the emotional Toller, its literary style also had a political dimension that made it greater than just an aesthetic theory. More than just a literary methodology, expressionism could also be ideology that, beneath its ecstatic and declamatory prose, had far-reaching implications for German intellectual life. The stylistic classification of artistic movements, a favorite pastime of literary historians, may prove that history is, after all, only a trick the living play on the dead. It is significant that, while most expressionists felt they were expressing their ideas in a novel fashion, by a literary paradox they rarely applied the term to themselves; indeed, at times they even showed some hostility toward it. Kurt Wolff, one of the main publishers of works of authors commonly considered expressionists, rejected the term as giving such writers “a common stamp which they never in fact possessed.” The artist, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, was positively revolted to be associated with such a “degrading” movement. Toller, who became one of the best-known and most widely translated of the German expressionists, vigorously asserted that he “did not know what ‘Expressionism’ was.” 15 Toller’s repudiation of expressionism was less evidence of his ignorance than it was of his independence, the perhaps justified reluctance of a creative artist to be arbitrarily classified as the representative of a particular literary school. Yet Toller was not a thoroughgoing pragmatist who shied away from doctrine and worked by his own unique combination of insight and experience. Toller’s ideas were not always empirical or even rational; they were emotional and ethical ideas that he derived from expressionism. After his discharge, it was already

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clear that Toller was turning to expressionism. A reviewer in the Münchener Zeitung, for example, unappreciative of the new avant-garde trends in literature, reproached Toller for his expressionist style. 16 If expressionism is defined as a literary quality, however, Toller was only an expressionist during the early part of his career. His later prose is less exuberant, more moderate and exact, his statements less intense and more subtle. In general, it resembles a later literary style in Germany called the New Realism, neue Sachlichkeit, although Toller disassociated himself with the movement. 17 If seen as a social philosophy, however, one could say that Toller remained an expressionist until his death. When we seek the reasons he became a revolutionary and what he expected for Germany, not only during the revolution but for years after as well, we must turn to expressionism. It is as impossible to explain Toller’s thought without regard to expressionism as it is to explain Dante without Thomas Aquinas, Marx without Hegel, or Nietzsche without Christ. An adequate outline of expressionism certainly is not due to a lack of secondary material; indeed, the more the evidence has proliferated, the less sure one is about what expressionism was. The almost Sisyphean task of arriving at a synthetic view appears more frustrating than ever. If, among its practitioners, the acceptance of the appellation “expressionist” was not axiomatic, this has little troubled their critics. The plethora of adumbrations, observations, commentaries, books, and articles on expressionism at least suggests that the term may have some validity. Although it was looked down upon during the Nazi years as degenerate art, postwar literary critics were quick to acknowledge its importance. In German alone, during the eight years between 1952 and 1960, almost three hundred titles of works on expressionism have been noted. 18 With such a surfeit of interpretive riches, any definition will have more than its share of those embarrassing nuances and anomalies that seem to bedevil any definitive statement on the nature of a literary movement. Although particularly popular immediately after World War I, expressionism was not just a product of the war years. As Toller noted, “the essential tendencies of postwar German drama began to develop years before, although it was only the war that brought them suddenly to eruption.” 19 The movement can be seen as a part of the general shift in European thought that took place during the 1890s. 20 Politically, the era that began with the fin de siècle and ended with the outbreak of the war was characterized by rising social tension in both foreign and domestic affairs—a tension that seemed at variance with liberal ideas of progress and social harmony. 21 Intellectually also a time of tension, the positivistic assumptions of much nineteenth-century thought were undergoing increasing revision. Growing awareness of the subconscious and nonrational in intellectual life frequently called into question many formally dominant social ideas. In Germany, literature had begun to find a way out of the impasse it had reached since political unification. Only a

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decade before in the 1880s, German literature had reached a low point. Although Nietzsche had written some of his best work during these ten years, it was left for the next decade to appreciate fully its value. Moreover, not a single gifted author was born for the score of years around mid-century. 22 In addition, the genres of classic German literature, the drama, lyric, and Bildungsroman, all appeared depressingly tired. Yet by the 1890s, and in particular at the turn of the century, the once littleknown Nietzsche had been rediscovered while figures such as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Rilke, Stefan Georg, and Wedekind all contributed to a renaissance of German letters. Indeed, looking back from a vantage point of almost twenty years, the Austrian author Robert Musil could write of a “stimulating fever” that arose to wake society up “to do battle against the old order.” 23 Musil’s stimulating fever was vividly seen in expressionism’s rejection of the dominant assumptions of traditional prose. In its literary style, expressionism was part of the general modernistic trend from an art based on transition to one based on juxtaposition. 24 The classic conception of art, going back to Aristotle, had traditionally required unity and a clear articulation of the relation between words or forms. In prose, this meant a logical connection of words; in drama, it meant a unity of form in which the well-made play had a beginning, a middle, and an end. In short, traditional art decreed that each part must orderly follow from the last to the next. The beginnings of a breakdown in form can already be seen in impressionism, yet it was not until around 1910 that a forceful art of juxtaposition “broke out like a rash.” 25 Apollinaire, Cendrars’s and Reverdy’s Simultanism, Unanimism, and Futurism all attest to the flaunting of classic transitional convention. Mimesis and verisimilitude were being replaced by the more abstract inner vision of the artist. Searching within itself rather than in objective reality, twentieth-century art became narcissistic, concerned not with photographic representation, a technique better left to the camera, but with the subjective state of the artist. Revolting against a scientific positivism and the attention naturalism had paid to surface detail, the expressionists attempted to probe more deeply in their search for genuine reality. In his influential anthology, Menschheitsdämmerung, Kurt Pinthus, a contemporary of Toller’s who served in the Soldiers Soviet during the 1919 revolution and later helped publish numerous expressionist writers, observes that expressionism: “avoids naturalistic description of reality. . . . Rather it produces its means of expression with mighty, violent energy from the . . . power of the spirit itself. . . . Never in world literature did the shriek, the fall, the longing of age ring out so loudly, liberatingly and startlingly. 26 It is clear that for Pinthus, and most expressionists as well, art had become an emotional, not a purely aesthetic, experience. Outrageous to early critics but tame to later readers, the authors of such intensely vola-

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tile outpourings were derisively called Explosionists. 27 The “highly active, forward pressing wish to cause peace-disturbing noise” 28 was mirrored in expressionist language: syntax became dynamic in an attempt to emphasize imagery and rhythm; the grammar was not one of clarity but one of thought and feeling; words became an abstract pattern that corresponded to the author’s emotions. Of particularly great influence was Marinetti’s “Manifesto of Futurism,” printed in the 1910 edition of Der Sturm, which advocated elimination of adjectives, adverbs, and conjunctions and stressed the infinitive in an attempt to convey emotionalism in speech. 29 Like most expressionist dramas, Toller’s were hostile to the conventional canons of what a well-made play should be. Sometimes illogical in staging and always emotional in language, expressionist plays featured speech that rose to a series of explosions. The short, emotional expressionist prose, almost barren of adjectives and staccato in presentation, is evident in his early work. However, by the time Toller had written his first play, expressionist innovation in prose, which in prewar writers such as Heym and Trakl was original, had degenerated into a self-conscious mannerism that today makes so many expressionist plays seem embarrassingly naïve and at times poorly written. Expressionist drama, in an attempt to be different, often ended up being only stale and flat. While the dynamism, the asyntatic, and exclamatory phrases of the early expressionists exist in the works of Toller and the later expressionists, they had become mere rhetorical devices, a series of emotional explosions. The reader does not extract emotion from such prose; rather, the author pours it in. In great works of art, it is passion that gives them life; while the expressionist prose of Toller is passionate, it is occasionally excessive, or so it appears to us nearly a century later. Nevertheless, such emotional intensity undoubtedly suited Toller’s emotional temperament. Indeed, it remained with him throughout his life. 30 Yet the expressionism to which he was attracted was more than just intoxicating grammatical contortion or eccentrically staged drama. Although in part a theory of literature, expressionism could also be a theory of social change. It was the latter that Toller advocated: To the expressionists it was not enough to photograph pictures. They knew that the artist was a part of society . . . that it was necessary to reform this society from the bottom up. For it was this society which the expressionist wanted to effect, to change, to give justice to (ein gerechtes, helleres Gesicht geben). Reality was to be infused with the light of ideas, it was to be reborn . . . It [expressionism] was born from contemporary history and wished to effect contemporary history. 31

Few literary ideas have had a more ambitious political and social program; despite its programmatic ambiguities, few have had so clear an ethical mission. None became a victim of the twentieth century so fast.

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From the outset, expressionism was potentially revolutionary. Its emotional cries revealed the unsettling qualities of its work. Although the experience of war and revolution intensified the social activism of the movement, it was not its cause. Like all literature, expressionism was in part the effect of social conditions, but, as Toller noted, it also tried to be the cause of social effects. Unconcerned with the settled past, it looked forward to the future and sought to influence events. Its disturbing language could easily allow expressionism to slip over into the realm of the political. Poet Ludwig Rubiner proudly announced that for the expressionist “the name disturber is an honorary title . . . for us destroyer is a religious concept, inseparable for us today from creator. And, therefore, it is right that literature explode into politics.” 32 Rebels with a cause, the expressionists lacked clear-cut goals or concrete programs. Such vagueness allowed a diversity that enabled its adherents to draw upon almost any revolutionary solution. Whatever their particular ideology, one which could range from the idealistic humanism of Toller to the National Socialism of Emil Nolde, the expressionists were a generation in revolt. It was certainly not an accident that so many expressionist writers were of the young war generation; nor was it accidental that, throughout his life, Toller placed great hope in the power of the young to cause social change. As early as 1906, the Dresden group Die Brücke, one of the first associations later termed expressionist, appealed to youth “upon whose shoulders the future rests, to win freedom of life and action against the entrenched forces of age.” 33 Similarly, Toller noted that: The young writers felt themselves separated by an unbridgeable abyss from the older generation. The struggle of generations, the father-son problem, the struggle between compromise and personal independence, between bourgeois values and anti-middle class values had moved young minds even before the war showed that what they prophetically saw coming could be realized. 34

The father-son theme “demanded of every good young writer,” according to playwright Carl Zuckmayer, 35 became so general among many expressionists as to become almost a cliché. Yet the struggle of youth against age was not the exclusive preserve of the expressionists. The prewar youth movement, a mélange of idiosyncratic tendencies ranging from sexual abnegation to homosexuality, atheism to quasi-religious fanaticism, pacifism to chauvinism, all joined hands in their rejection of prewar Germany. The natural rebelliousness of youth was added to an estrangement from what appeared to be the stifling and even tyrannical qualities of social life. It was a “form of opposition to a civilization that had little to offer the young generation, a protest against the lack of vitality, warmth, emotions and ideals in German society.” 36 Those of this generation inclined toward literature were able to give verbal expression

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to the general malaise of their colleagues. How pervasive the theme of generation conflict was is clear from the particularly large number of works that dealt with the topic. In the fifty years between 1880 and 1930, almost as many literary works treating the theme were published as from the Middle Ages to 1880. 37 Although youth versus age was a motif already employed by Wedekind, one of the first well-known plays to deal with it was Walter Hasenclever’s Der Sohn, written in 1914. German publisher Kurt Wolff observed that it was “explosive material for the generation born around 1890.” 38 Quickly following were Sorge’s first drama, Werfel’s poems against the old generation, and later Bronnen’s play, significantly entitled Vatermord. Analyzing the reasons for the theme, Toller saw youth as striving “for the Absolute. He compared the ideals announced in the school with the reality of the world and felt hatred against school and parents.” 39 This revolt against school and parents was a particularly powerful movement in Germany just before the war. There can be little doubt Toller shared in the animosity of which he wrote. Few were the political leaders, and even fewer the intellectuals among those born between 1890 and 1920, who were not at one time or another members of the youth movement or influenced by it in their most impressionable years. 40 Although there is no evidence that Toller actually joined one of the many youth groups, the movement did exercise a great influence on him. Throughout the Weimar years and the period of the Third Reich, he continually called on youth to regenerate and save society. During the war, he remained acutely aware that “our generation had a noble heritage that must be added to. That heritage, we thought, was the one thing that mattered. Riches, wine, comfort—those things were for weaklings.” 41 Bitterly, he indicted the elders for allowing this generation to die in battle: “Our parents—they are the war!” More specifically, Toller divided the family into two irreconcilable groups. On the one side, the father, symbol of uninspired materialism, darkness, and destruction; on the other, the mother, representative of light, rebirth, and love. Thus, in his autobiography, he noted he would never forget the horrible words his dying father cried out to his son: “‘It’s your fault,’ he groans, ‘it’s your fault.’” During the war, it is “the fathers” who bring death and destruction to youth. In Die Wandlung, Toller has its hero, Friedrich, acidly speak of “good kind father! He would talk to me about living respectably, about the solid virtues. And when I wanted to get away—to get away from here—he forced me to stay. He was my jailer.” 42 If the father is tyranny and destruction, the mother is renewal. Although the sons die in war, it is the mothers who will create a new generation. 43 While at Diederichs’, Toller had given one of his poems to poet Richard Dehmel and quoted him as saying: “That poem of yours which ends: I died / Was reborn / Died / Was reborn / I was my own mother—that’s all that matters. Once

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in his life every man must cast adrift from everything, even from his mother; he must become his own mother.” 44 Thus, the search for freedom and identity in Toller’s work corresponds to a father rejection that assumes the form of a mother search. Fragmentation and continuity become a part of a contrapuntal relation. The motif is one too obvious not to be taken into account. Intellectuals in conflict with their society, the expressionists decried what they saw as the domination of the ubiquitous father and instead asserted their own vision. Like the romantics, they set up the image of the artist-intellectual, one in which the minority of the creative did battle against the majority of the philistines. Such an attitude could easily slide over into elitism; it was little wonder that many expressionists lived precariously on the thin line between a desire to change society and among mutterings on the banality and utter hopelessness of the middle class. The concept of “middle class” (Burger) became a catchword for all that was despised as the unadventurous and respectable world of the bourgeoisie. In his critique of the Majority Socialists, for example, Toller could find no greater invective to hurl at them than that their limited aims extended no farther than “the juste milieu of bourgeois society.” 45 Expressionist anti–middle-class attacks perhaps reached their apogee in Carl Sternheim’s series of satires, Aus dem bürgerlichen Heldenleben. Distorted images of nobles, officers, judges, doctors, clergy, industrialists, and social parvenus all take on a strange and disturbing realism. Toller’s later play Hoppla! wir leben, in which he gave full vent to his disillusion with Weimar Germany, is full of such representatives of the middle-class world; despised as philistines and reactionaries, they must be rejected if society is to be saved. Bourgeois society becomes apocalyptic, doomed to fall through its own rottenness. The age and social position of expressionist authors help explain their vehement rejection of middle-class values. As a group they were fairly young. At the outbreak of the war, most were, like Toller, in their twenties. 46 A preponderant number were Jews and freelance writers left out of the German intellectual establishment. In spite of their evident estrangement, however, they remained reluctant to sever all ties with middleclass standards. Although Rubiner wrote of his “comrades,” the “prostitutes, poets, sub proletarians,” 47 few actually became members of Rubiner’s “holy mob” of the socially despised. Few embraced the underworld of Bohemia and lost all ties with bourgeois life. Most dressed conventionally, and few fell to the level of proletarians, pimps, or thieves. Although Toller frequently wrote of the proletariat and contrasted the opulence of established society with its domestic squalor, there is no evidence that Toller himself had any desire to partake of their suffering, a quality characteristic of many radical middle-class intellectuals. While he fought for the outcasts of society and was in genuine sympathy with their plight, he remained carefully removed from their style of life.

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This failure to embrace fully the proletarian style of life indicated that although the mentality of the middle class was rejected, seldom were its outward conventions. Yet in mind, if not in appearance, the expressionist was a man in revolt. The themes of radical social change, of a complete break with existing conditions, a “twilight of humanity” (Menschheitsdämmerung) from which a new world was to emerge, were common in this apocalyptic genre. Rather than occupying himself as the naturalist did with individual social evils, the expressionist demanded nothing less than the dissolving of the world in a cosmic ecstasy of world revolution. The critic looks in vain, however, for any exact program of revolution or any specific hint of the nature of the new expressionist world. The language of revolution was no doubt exciting, but it was, nevertheless, conveniently vague. Toller’s Kulturpolitischen Bund, for example, wished to inflame humanity and had as its goal the “true community of spirit” in which suffering, hate, and war would have no place. It remained distressingly silent on how such a world was to come about. For the author Johannes Becher, echoing the hostility of fathers and sons, the new world was the desire of the younger generation to distinguish itself from that of the fathers. Alfred Wolf was even less specific; for him it was the creation of that which had never before existed. 48 Such programmatic ambiguities were understandable, particularly after 1914. Conscious of living in an unstable world, the destruction of the war made it appear that it would take little to overthrow a society that was already so obligingly engaged in the task of self-destruction. In addition, for Toller, the war would not only bring on a new society by eliminating the old; it would also destroy the father world that had sent its sons to die: “Our fathers had betrayed us and we the young, who had known war, hard and unsentimental, would begin the business of spring cleaning.” 49 It is this desire, one might even go further and call it a passion, to remold society that firmly places Toller in the activist wing of expressionism. Expressionism’s relation with society could allow three responses: a total withdrawal from society into aesthetic contemplation, a defiant snub of society, or an attempt to integrate the intellectual into society and through this to alter social relations. To some extent, the journal Der Sturm followed the first, Wedekind and Sternheim the second. For the activist expressionist, however, the third offered the most enticing of possibilities. The intellectual could, like Toller, fight against what he saw as decaying and corrupt social values and enthusiastically prepare the way for a new and better world. 50 Alienated, the intellectual could overcome his alienation. He could give up ironic detachment, hostility, or aesthetic self-perfection and, instead, change society, elevate the image of man, and create a truly integrated social order. They rejected the ordered and sterile society of the present (Gesellschaft) and joyfully embraced the revolutionary people’s community (Gemeinschaft) of the future.

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Such a Gemeinschaft was not a mechanical alteration of politics but the transformation of man. Revolution became parousia. Social salvation could not come from without but only through an inner regeneration of humanity. 51 During a time when increasing industrialization had alienated many, the expressionist asserted the primacy of social integration that would reveal the true nature of man. Many expressionists took the view that man was naturally good. The evils of society were not the result of human nature but of institutions that corrupted man’s basic personality. It was important, therefore, that the individual experience an inner transformation (Wandlung) that would allow his true nature to assert itself. Toller’s Friedrich, for example, speaks of institutions victimizing and distorting humanity, twisting it into a caricature of its true self, conditioning it to act unnaturally: “You, all of you are human beings no longer, but distorted images of your real personality. And yet you could be men and women, still be human, if only you had faith in yourselves and in humanity . . .”: You might stride erect where today you creep along crooked and bent. Your eyes could be filled with the light of joy, while today you are half blind. Your steps might be winged, but today you drag iron chains behind you. Oh, if only you were men—unconditional free men. 52

If alteration of society becomes possible through the transformation of its individual members, in this process the intellectual becomes the agent of social salvation. His duty is to preach, exhort, and change. Converting a part of humanity, he comes rooted in his inner self and becomes a missionary whose task is to convert all. As Friedrich puts it: “Through pestilential streets and fields of poppies over sunlit, snowy mountain peaks and through the barren wilderness—knowing all the time that I am not uprooted, knowing I am rooted in myself.” 53 The experience of the war was particularly decisive in the development of the expressionist new man. As has been seen, Toller experienced his own personal transformation from narrow nationalism to cosmopolitan humanism as a result of frontline duty. War was at once rejected as a product of the old world, yet at the same time it was the harbinger of the new that was to emerge at its end. For some, war and conflict were replaced by pacifism. While not all expressionists were, like Toller, pacifists, over one-half were, 54 and René Schickele even equated expressionism with pacifism. 55 In the place of war and hate, many hoped for peace and cooperation. Activist journals such as Die weissen Blätter and Die Aktion, expressionist plays such as Toller’s Die Wandlung and Unruh’s Ein Geschlecht, all fought against what they saw as senseless slaughter and damned those they believed responsible. Many called for open resistance: Toller’s Friedrich advocates revolution; at the end of Unruh’s Ein Gesch-

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lecht, the cry is raised for soldiers to throw down their weapons; and in Hasenclever’s poem “Der politische Dichter,” the action demanded is “to wave from the factories the red flag against the grey sky.” 56 For the expressionist pacifist, killing for ideology or nation was rejected. Kurt Hiller, for example, felt it a moral imperative not to “murder for even the loftiest idea, for no idea is loftier than living.” 57 The hero of Toller’s Masse Mensch is made to feel much the same way: “No man may kill for a cause. / Unholy every cause that needs to kill.” 58 Their desire to bring universal peace caused the expressionists to fight force without using violence. While the war lasted, the idea seemed attractive. It was only when the attempt was made after the war to put pacifism into practice, as Toller attempted in Bavaria, that its inner contradictions arose. Sure that man could be saved, they neglected the possibility that man may not wish salvation. Convinced that force could be replaced by cooperation, they overlooked the ubiquity of aggression. 59 They yearned for, but were never able to attain, that which they so ardently desired. In their cries of revolt and desire for transformation, the expressionists were calling for an end to social fragmentation. No more would there exist isolated and suffering individuals. In the place of such a fragmented society, the image was set up of the union of all men: not that which separated but that which united, not the new Darwinist struggle for existence but universal cooperation were to be the foundation of the new world. “I belong,” proclaimed Toller, “to those who fight ruthlessly against the defilement of the image of humanity.” 60 The intensity of much expressionist prose and poetry was exceeded only by its raptures over such an image of humanity, one based on the brotherhood of man and not the selfish interests of the few. The embrace of humanity, which Pinthus saw as the main motif of expressionism, was an attempt to overcome the alienation of the artist from society. Society was not to be changed directly; it was to be transcended through love. Lack of love, Friedrich observes, has twisted man’s personality. Those who cannot love are “sick, corrupted with disease.” The Sick Man in Die Wandlung laments his incapacity to believe in love and tragically bewails the fact that no one has ever loved him. A decade later, Toller saw only “one sin against the Spirit: to destroy among one’s neighbours the capacity for Love.” 61 The expressionist concept of love, however, was not physical. The cerebral creativity of the artist that marked him off from society became submerged in his love of man. His creative mind allowed him to set up the universal essence of love abstracted from any one individual. The alienated writer could, therefore, give up the hostile real world for the more amenable world of abstract love divorced from any single person. 62 The expressionist emphasis on love, community, and regeneration was, in fact, the outcry of the artist in his suffering, an expression of his

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loneliness, and, at the same time, the joyful exclamation of his happiness at finding a way out of his painful isolation. Starting with estrangement, he finds acceptance. 63 In this schema, regeneration stands for an end to alienation. For Toller, the Jewish outsider, seeking community feeling and wishing, as he wrote in his manifesto for the Bund, to end the separation of the intellectual from the nation, such ideas must have had particular fascination. Toller wished a reintegration of society into a totality, a spiritual unification that would complete Germany’s political unification. Love and regeneration are mystical invocations to this unity, a unity that rallies and roots the individual in the community. Thus, in his program for the Bund, Toller frequently invoked the idea of humanity and of a society liberated from the artificial bonds that separate man from man: “Only from an inner Wandlung of humanity can the Gemeinschaft for which we strive, grow.” 64 In addition to the role of the intellectual as spiritual mentor, activist expressionists found it an easy transition to the role of the intellectual as social leader. Oskar Kokoschka, one of the few expressionists known for his works of both literature and art, noted that “The concern is, after all, with . . . society; anything that does not lead to its solution has become senseless.” 65 The society desired, however, was at times more a religious than a secular idea. Its messianic fervor was echoed in the expressionist writer Fritz von Unruh’s assertion that expressionist communalism was the attempt to communicate to all men “the one great holy vision of their deification.” 66 The idea of regeneration perhaps received its classic example in the conversion of the apostle Paul, and at least one observer has seen a direct connection between the New Testament experience and expressionist Wandlung. 67 Rejecting the supernatural basis of religion, expressionists frequently asserted the possibility that a regenerated society could be established on earth. The activists of expressionism rejected the Christian dichotomy of the things of Caesar and those of the Lord. Although the expressionist community was transcendental, it was, unlike that of paradise, attainable on earth. Supernatural religion was rejected in favor of the possibility that man himself might usher in a new age. Toller frankly confessed both to the religious nature of his literature and those of his politics as well: “The basic prerequisite of the political writer (who somehow always is a religious writer) is: to feel responsible for himself and every one of his brothers in the human community. Once again: one who feels himself responsible for all.” 68 For Toller, religion became the responsibility of the individual for humanity and art became merged into politics; the goal of political activity, then, becomes the realization of religion. The image of an Old Testament was never far from Toller. From the heights of an expressionist Pisgah, it seems he had caught a fleeting yet alluring glimpse of a future and took it upon himself to lead his people out of the corrupt wilderness of the present and into the pleasures of an expressionist promised land. Fighting for a new soci-

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ety, he sought a certain religious timelessness by binding himself to the present and instilling in that present society the vision of its future. 69 Dedicated to an “idea,” a vision of a regenerated humanity, the writer as prophet works at making his idea a reality. Spokesman for the inarticulate, he obeys the demands of spirit, that high moral imperative toward human self-realization. The writer or intellectual became for Toller the director of action, one who shows society its faults and points it in a new direction “when the times betray the spirit.” 70 It is Toller’s evocation of the word spirit (Geist) that plays a central role in his later critique of German society and, in addition, gives Toller’s thought an abstract quality, indeed at times even an irrational one. Geist or “the idea” (Toller uses the words synonymously) is a universal and timeless ethical postulate: “They exist beyond the social classes, for they reveal the relationship between man and the universe.” 71 Unlike naturalism, which aimed at representing a mirror of the world, expressionism sought to probe more deeply into the nature of reality and convey the transcendental quality of existence that naturalism’s attention to surface detail tended to neglect. At times, the expressionist could border on mysticism. Toller, for example, wrote with pleasure of those dream-like times when “we are not clearly conscious either of ourselves or of the rest of our earthly bustle. We feel ourselves mysteriously separated from all connection with reality and resting lightly, who knows in what middle place, at last in the reach of our final, our nearest, our furthest aim, that no tongue names and no truth stammers.” 72 Like the dreaming mind, in expressionism reality became distorted, exaggeration became commonplace and, at times, even bordered on the grotesque. Inner reality took on a more real quality than the external world of everyday objects. Concerned with the ineffable, the expressionist became an idealist paradoxically seeking to communicate the incommunicable feeling of transcendental experience. Paul Kornfeld, one of the leading expressionists, contrasted the “psychological man” who could be portrayed and the “souled man” who could only be felt. 73 The power of such a “felt” force was a central one to the genre. The demands of reality and those of Geist were in continual conflict, and the intellectual, himself imbued with Geist, was called upon to fight an incessant battle with the practical demands of society. A genuine cooperative society was only to be attained when the demands of the spirit coincided with those of the world. The personal vision of the intellectual took on a particularly important function since it was only through the creative artist that such a community could come about. 74 Pinthus’s dichotomy between spirit and reality was evident in the concept of Wandlung. The transformation was from man as he is into the higher reality of man as he ought to be. Friedrich’s “distorted images” become “real men,” with the sensitive artist performing Pinthus’s role of the intellectual as missionary of the spirit. In his role as an intellectual,

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Toller saw as one of his main tasks a struggle against that which “denies the spirit.” 75 It is the duty of the intellectual, asserted Toller, to make men conscious of their true nature. For Toller, lack of Geist distorts humanity; all social classes are equally affected, and the writer-intellectual has “no right to close his eyes to the tragedy of human life which is to be found among the middle-class as well as among the proletariat.” 76 All classes are deformed and dehumanized, unwittingly subject to forces that deny their true nature. Even the rich, asserts Toller’s Friedrich, have hearts and are a part of the human community. Attractive as such a spiritual community was, the legacy of Geist could be contradictory, and expressionism split between an “abstractionist” and an “activist” conception of the role that Geist should play in social life. Walter Sokel, in his study of expressionism, has observed how the activist abstractly: interprets Geist in the Platonic-aesthetic sense as pure form or idea which man can contemplate, comprehend and indeed create, but which he can never actualize in life. Geist for him is a formal principle. It can conceal and “cover up” the horror of matter. It can invent for us the lie that beautifies, the illusion that helps us transcend matter—for a while. But Geist cannot be realized in the world. The activist interprets Geist in the Biblical-Messianic sense as a dynamic and divine reality. . . . [The activist] is an optimist. Although he rejects and combats the world in its existing “natural” state, he believes in its potentiality. Geist for him is a fertilizer and a redeemer of matter. 77

The abstractionist, therefore, asserts the primacy of Geist within himself. Spirit and reality become two separate spheres. For the activist, on the other hand, reality is not accepted and contemplation becomes linked with social change. The sensitive intellectual rebels against society and seeks to alter it through an infusion of Geist. The activist was a Utopian, but nevertheless one impatient with Utopias relegated to the distant future; for him, social transformation was imminent, to be born through spiritual conversion. The task of the activist-intellectual, then, is to unite the concerns of the present with those of the spirit and in the process make the intellectual into an agent for social change. Thus, for the true writer, according to Toller, literature is the “obligation to fight, because the word, created by Geist, is the highest means of influencing human beings.” 78 In short, activism asserted the primacy of the intellect and at the same time attempted to unite Geist with political involvement. 79 The movement had no well-defined program; indeed, there were probably as many activisms as there were activists. Their only dogma was “intellectual honesty and an uncompromising desire to say the truth.” 80 Yet the movement was not all intellectual chaos. Activists asserted that intellect (and, hence, the intellectual) had a place in social development and sought to

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bring mind and society into close contact. In Heinrich Mann’s novel Zwischen den Rassen, for example, its activist hero opposes the unintellectual society in which he lives. Based on force, the intellectual seeks to change it through the power of his mind. He will succeed in his self-proclaimed task only by asserting the power of his spirit through social action. By so doing, he performs his social function, regenerating both himself and society as well. The activist idea on the role of the intellectual greatly influenced Toller’s own self-image of the task of the writer. “We often ask ourselves,” he wrote, “can art influence reality? Can the writer at his desk influence the politics of his time? There are authors who answer this question in the negative; I in the affirmative.” 81 Toller was, of course, speaking of his own intellectual development, but his affirmation is also a suitable symbol representing the activist generation. Littérature engagée is hardly the invention of existentialist authors. It is part of an age born during World War I that found itself abruptly experiencing Stephen Dedalus’s nightmare and a formulation by those who desired to transform anguish into action. Literature became aggressive, concerned not with analysis but with change. Sometimes lyrically naïve but always militant, belief in the “power of the word” to change society became the common property of many German intellectuals toward the end of the war. They wrote not in order to write, but in order to agitate. With Voltaire they would agree: “I have no need of a sword. I have a pen.” In 1911, Heinrich Mann gave theoretic formulation to such ideas and produced what Kurt Hiller regarded as the first activist manifesto. Published in the journal Pan, Mann’s “Geist und Tat” was a spirited indictment of the passivity of German intellectuals who, in contrast to their French counterparts, were men content only to theorize and not to act. 82 According to Mann’s argument, German intellectuals (Geister), although noted for the profundity of their thought, have been unable to abolish unjust power. Mostly antidemocratic and anti-parliamentarian, they have for too long been apologists for the status quo and “have glorified the Ungeist, worked for the sophistic justification of the unjust, and for [his] ‘the writer’s’ mortal enemy, power.” 83 In contrast to the establishment intellectuals, Mann praised the writer. In direct opposition to the Literat tradition, which had assigned the writer an inferior social position, Mann set up the image of the writer so dear to activism. A constant fighter against social injustice, the writer’s duty was one “imposed by the spirit” to assert the dignity of humanity and dedicate his life to the pursuit of the truth. A destroyer of society’s false illusions, he makes the great seem small and the small see mirrored in themselves that basic human dignity too long denied them. The devotee of Littérature engagée proudly defended not only the respectability of the free writer, unattached to those in authority, but also the peculiar social role such men assigned themselves. Observed Mann:

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Chapter 4 The spirit should rule through the people. They should mediate . . . for the nation, make it see its genuine nature so that it honors itself as never before, time and honor demand that finally German intellectuals become agitators and unite the people against power; that they devote the whole strength of their words, the force of the spirit to this struggle. . . . Unjust power based on force must be the enemy. An intellectual who ties himself to the ruling class commits a betrayal of the spirit. 84

Toller’s frequent use of the words Geist and Idea and his later indictment of Germany for “betrayal of the spirit” show a probable familiarity with Mann’s essay. Under the influence of Gustav Landauer, Toller would become even further committed to activism. 85 Toller’s image of the role of the writer-intellectual owes a clear debt to activism, for Toller’s conception of the writer, like Mann’s, stood in stark contrast to those German intellectuals content only to theorize and not to act. The barrier separating words from deeds, expression from experience, was keenly felt, as was the attempt made to destroy it. Toller’s experience with Eugen Diederichs had already disillusioned him with much of German intellectual life: “I had been bitterly disappointed by my stay at Lauenstein. Great words were spoken, but nothing done.” 86 His respect for traditional men of letters was further decreased when he wrote to Gerhart Hauptmann during the war calling on him to become the “spiritual leader” of youth and speak out against the government. Toller waited in vain for a reply. It was, in part, this experience that called forth his wrath ten years later against those intellectuals “too cowardly to take a simple stand.” 87 Earlier, he had indicted German intellectuals (geistig Arbeiter) for “their blindness [to] social problems, their isolation from all contemporary forces, their time-tested inability to identify themselves with the lower classes.” 88 Against those locked away in “little ivory towers,” carefully isolated in tranquil contemplation from the dominant social forces of contemporary life, Toller set up the image of the writer as agitator, one who stimulates and strengthens the “will for freedom.” 89 As for Mann, the purpose of literature was not to bring peace but change, and the writer was committed by his words and deeds to the fight against injustice, violence, and oppression. In his hands, art becomes a weapon, and the “fighting artist’s obligation [is] to fight, because the word, created by the spirit, is the highest means of influencing humanity . . .” 90 Should the artist not partake in the struggles of contemporary history, according to Toller, he runs the danger “of becoming an aesthetic.” 91 In a tribute to Henri Barbusse, similar to that Mann had paid to the French tradition personified in Voltaire, Toller favorably spoke of the tradition of the revolutionary poet, “one who, at the decisive moment, stands up from his desk and actively places himself against the injustice and misuse of power.” For the engaged author, to write was not a playful dream (“spielerisches Bilden”) but a fighting duty (“kämpferische Verpflichtung”). 92 In an older society, Toller

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seemed to be saying, where institutions were more stable, literature might be unconcerned with society; now, however, if literature were to keep pace with history, it had to have a hand in making it. Not content to be a detached spectator, the writer must become an active participant. As an active participant, Toller refused to exclude political themes from his work. When asked in 1928 whether drama should have a political bias (Tendenz), Toller thought the question “wrongly put. More correctly it should be: can drama not have a Tendenz?” 93 Earlier, he had frankly confessed that there were no plays without political bearings. 94 There was, however, the chance that such engaged literature could be used as party dogma, that art could become propaganda, the danger that in the precarious coalescence of art and politics, the exigencies of the latter would overwhelm the former. The accusation has been made that Toller was a victim of such a danger. Wrote one critic: “He could not distinguish between the theatre and a political platform.” 95 Yet Toller himself was aware of such pitfalls and realized that good political literature needed literary craftsmanship not propaganda: One should not confuse political literature with propaganda which uses literary means. The latter serves only transitory goals; it is both more and less than literature. More because it hides within itself the possibility . . . to drive the reader to immediate action. Less because it never attains the depth of literature and gives the reader a sense of the tragic and cosmic. 96

Toller’s defense of the political in literature was valid, although many of his fellow Germans might have resented the intrusions of contemporary affairs on the eternal concerns of literature. Yet the etchings of Goya are not inferior as art because they have political intent, nor does the intrusion of politics in Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed make it any less of a great novel, just as Picasso’s Guernica, a political protest, is no less a work of art. Yet the critic is forced to confess that, while Toller may have made a distinction between art and propaganda, his social fervor has contributed to the relative neglect of much of his work. Political literature belongs to its historic milieu, but, if it is to be eternal, it must also be autonomous enough to transcend its environment and appeal to a different generation. It must produce a timeless interchange between the author and his subsequent readers. Although clearly appealing to his own generation, Toller was unable to transcend his environment. For the historian, the fact that Toller’s plays reflect the times during which they were written makes them invaluable as historical documents, but the time-bound qualities of his work unfortunately do not make them into literary classics. The experience of the war was particularly decisive in the development of Toller’s ideas on the role of the writer in society. It became the duty of all those who took part to reveal the false romanticism of a mentality that glorified conflict. For those who had gone through the war,

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Toller wrote: “The chaos of the time is mirrored in our work. We did not want to bring peace and order, but we wanted to create unrest. We wanted, in Hebbel’s words, to stir the world from its sleep.” 97 To the emerging young dramatist, the theater was particularly well suited to perform this role. Unlike the novel, its appeal was more widespread; unlike poetry, it was less esoteric. In common with many expressionists, Toller shared the view that the theater was not just a place of entertainment. The stage had ethical tasks; it “arouses the listener’s will to revolutionary activity; it causes him to commit himself for the struggle against present injustice.” 98 Particularly in a time of great social change, it was “a crime to see only nuance and present only fine shadings which illuminate life while concealing with deceptive embellishments the hideous and plain contours of commonplace existence.” 99 The popular appeal of drama made the theater into a didactic institution, a place of moral edification that could serve to alter social conditions and end that pernicious separation Toller saw existing between the intellectual and the nation: “What we dream of is a great Gemeinschaft between stage and public, a Gemeinschaft of a feeling for life, for the world, the Gemeinschaft of the Idea. . . .” 100 Toller’s view of the educational function of drama was not the exclusive invention of expressionism. Since Lessing, the theater had been viewed in Germany as a place that could spread moral and social standards. Notes one observer: The influence of the stage as a “moral Tribunal,” acknowledged from the time of Goethe and Schiller, had established drama as the primary artistic means of social criticism. The theatre was therefore taken more seriously by the public than in other European countries, instead of being regarded primarily as a means to satisfy a demand for distraction and was the natural outlet of German radicals. 101

In this tradition, the twenty-four-year-old Toller had written his first play, Die Wandlung. Started in 1917 and finished early the following year, he candidly considered it: as a broadsheet and handbill. I read scenes from it aloud to a group of young people in Heidelberg and wanted to uproot them (incite them against the war!). After my expulsion from Heidelberg, I went to Berlin and again gave a reading of the play. It was always with the intention of arousing the apathetic, of inducing the reluctant to march, of pointing the way for the groping—and of winning them all for essential and detailed revolutionary labor. 102

Die Wandlung is Toller’s only optimistic play. 103 The contradictions between pacifism and love of humanity and between war and cruelty are starkly outlined. In his later works, there is much more ambiguity, and the proposed moral solutions offered become more tragic. The play reflected Toller’s entire background—his Jewishness, his alienation from the German nation, and his own personal transformation. It was a repre-

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sentation of an ideology as yet untouched by the experience he met when the attempt was made in the Munich of 1919 to make that crucial and ultimately disappointing transition from theory to practice. His concern with the suffering fraternity of mankind had shown the urgency of ending war; the ideals of expressionism pointed the way toward a vision, ecstatic and Utopian, that was to be attained by the regeneration of society. When the emotional excesses of his ideas finally gave way to somber reality, the experience was profoundly discouraging; yet, for the rest of his life, anguish and despair were tempered by his hope for a new future, and, up to the last years of his life, he retained a touching and, one is forced to confess, naïve faith in many of the ideals formulated before the Bavarian revolution proved them utterly impractical. Toller’s Die Wandlung opens with Friedrich, a young middle-class Jew, caught between a religion that marks him as an outsider and a passionate desire to be like “the others.” He soon finds a way out of his dilemma and volunteers to fight in a colonial war. Here, he hopes to prove himself a genuine member of the nation. The vision of a community of the Fatherland repeatedly enables him to risk his life in battle and to resist the disgruntled mutterings of his fellow soldiers who denounce the war and the nation that has sent them to die. Friedrich’s gallantry in battle is rewarded with a decoration, and he is temporarily allowed to feel that finally he “belongs” and is one of “them.” His newly found feeling allows him to overlook a slight pang of conscience when he hears the tumultuous celebrations of his comrades who rejoice at the killing of 10,000 of the enemy. After the war, Friedrich turns to sculpture and begins work on a large statue of a man to be called “Victory of the Fatherland.” Friedrich, however, soon begins to see the effects of war. When he meets a beggar and her husband, now made a cripple through a venereal infection caught during the war, Friedrich begins to become aware of the degrading effects of conflict and hatred. He destroys his statue and, out of sheer despair, contemplates suicide but is saved by his sister, who performs a role similar to Dante’s Beatrice and points the way toward God, whom she has found realized in humanity. Friedrich renounces patriotism; he now attaches himself to mankind and finds the true nature of community. Possessed of Geist, he dedicates his life to the reawakening of his fellow man. Friedrich is soon presented with the opportunity to transform others. At a mass meeting, a communist agitator receives an enthusiastic response when he advocates class dictatorship and violent revolution as the only way to overthrow an unjust society. The crowd becomes a mob ready to march, but Friedrich appears and pleads they reconsider their decision. He denounces the agitator as one who has no faith in humanity, one who can offer only the cold materialism of bread and not the inner warmth of regeneration, one whose ideas of class war will only bring

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more misery. In opposition to this, Friedrich puts forth a vision of a new society: “No more suffering, no war, no hate.” 104 The next day, when the crowd reassembles, Friedrich forcefully advocates the ideas of transformation. He knows of the poverty-stricken and empty lives of the young and old, the rich and poor—all are distorted images of their real selves. They have built the “evil phantoms” of state, church, and materialism and allowed them to rule over society: You sow hatred in the hearts of your children, for you know no more of love. You have carved the figure of Christ and nailed it to a cross because you yourselves refuse to go the way of the crucifixion which alone can bring redemption. You built castles and prisons and set men to rule over them who serve neither God nor humanity but a phantom, an evil phantom. 105

His words have their effect. During his speech, there is an ever-increasing agitation among the crowd. Some have piously kneeled down; others are openly weeping and have buried their heads in their hands. At the end, they rise in great gladness and open their arms to heaven. There is now the final, profound realization that they had forgotten their humanity. Redeemed through Friedrich, they are ready to use their spirit to march against the forces of injustice and oppression and destroy the “false castles of illusion”: Now brothers, now I bid you march! March now in the light of day! Go to your rulers and proclaim to them with the organ tone of a million voices that their power is but an illusion. Go to the soldiers and tell them to beat their swords into ploughshares. Go to the rich and show them your heart. . . . Yet be kind to them, for they too are poor, poor and straying. But the castles—these you must destroy; destroy them laughing, the false castles of illusion. Now march! March forward in the light of day. Brothers, stretch out your tortured hands, with cries of radiant, ringing joy! Stride freely through our liberated land with cries of Revolution, Revolution! 106

The ideas expressed in the play represent Toller’s ideology before his participation in the Bavarian revolution and need to be carefully examined. 107 Antiwar in nature, the drama is also avowedly revolutionary. It attacks religion, the state, nationalism, militarism—indeed, the whole configuration of social and political relations. Religion and the state encourage hatred and war. The economic order encourages an obnoxious and destructive materialism rather than human welfare. All institutions enslave and corrupt not only the body but, more importantly, the spirit. Die Wandlung demands the overthrow of a society that allows such conditions to exist; it asks for nothing less than total revolution. Yet Toller, the pacifist, believer in universal peace and brotherhood, was not prepared to resort to physical force. Resort to violence is contrary to the whole

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thrust of the play. War and injustice are to be overcome through spirit, by the impact of a regenerated humanity. Thus, Toller’s hero opposes appeals to revolution based on hatred and class conflict. As victims of an unjust social order, all men are united in that vast union of humanity, and Toller reserved his greatest strictures against those who sought to deny that essential unity. The communist agitator who advocates proletarian violence appeals only to the undifferentiated crowd: “For him the people are the masses; he knows nothing of the people as men and women. Have no faith in him, for he has no faith in humanity. And before you set out on your great march, you must have faith in humanity.” 108 Unable to distinguish Masse from Volk, the agitator stands for class conflict and a materialism incapable of satisfying the spiritual needs of man. Friedrich, on the other hand, addresses himself to the Volk, the totality of humanity without class distinction. It is the Volk who realize that all men, regardless of class, are brothers; it is they who enthusiastically respond to Friedrich’s vision of a humanity regenerated. Friedrich’s revolution is one of Wandlung, a revolution of love. The battles of World War I aided the cause of modernism in art and Utopianism in politics by their promise that a new world was at hand. Particularly during the last two years of the war, the prophetic theme came to play an ever more central role in German expressionism. Whether the individual author was optimist or pessimist, violent or, like Toller, humanitarian and pacifist, the hope seldom varied: man must be redeemed by suffering and living, that man must be purified and give birth to a higher species. 109 In the months before November 1918, this apocalyptic strain of chiliastic revolutionary change through spiritual conversion received renewed impetus by a belief in neuer Geist—an intensified conviction that a new world, a genuine step in the direction of Paradise, was at hand. 110 Neuer Geist was the expression of a passionately if vaguely held idealism that led to a heightening of activist expressionism. New periodicals soon responded to the call of the new spirit. The newly established Neue Blätter für Kunst und Dichtung in July 1918 featured an article by Walter Hasenclever on the activist aspects of art. Former literary journals such as Die neue Rundschau and Die Weltbühne increasingly turned toward questions of social and political reorganization. The result of such revolutionary strivings could, and did, produce political chaos. Many expressionists declared themselves independent and would have agreed with Kurt Pinthus that the politics of mankind were above the politics of party. 111 Yet the vagueness of what different expressionists desired from revolution allowed for a diversity of political opinions. Most of the activists were men of the Left. Karl Otten declared himself a Communist (one of the few openly to do so); Becher, Leonhard Frank, Rubiner, Pfemfert all belonged to the German Socialist Party. 112 After the breakup of the Socialist Party in 1917, many like Toller at-

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tempted to find a political home in the new Independent Socialist Party of Germany (USPD). Yet the more mystical aspects of expressionism allowed a certain irrationalism that could equally as well find a home on the radical Right. Hanns Johst and Gottfried Benn with their nihilistic leanings, and Emil Nolde with his anti-Semitic and anti-French outlook, as well as his early participation in the Nazi party—the very antithesis of Toller—showed expressionism compatible with all political opinion. Commitment to passion transcended a narrow commitment to one political party. The vagueness of revolutionary phraseology allowed revolutions both of love and nihilism. Particularly for those of the Left, the vagueness of their program was a fatal handicap when the attempt was made to put their ideas into practice. The Oh Mensch poetry of mankind, the vision of a new Paradise, was a mélange of idealist, anarchist, and Bohemian theories that culminated in the demand for a Utopian community. Exactly how this community was to be reached was, of course, unclear. With no leader and no program, it was not surprising that the activist expressionist was invariably powerless, consigned to the borders of political life. During the revolution in Bavaria, for example, Heinrich Mann did organize a Rat Geistiger Arbeiter; however, perhaps the kindest words one could apply would be to call it ignored and ineffective. With Shelley, the activist might with rapt defiance insist that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world, yet they were of that most tragic species of lawgiver—legislators without a mandate. While they had no program for revolution, the revolutionaries of the spirit, nevertheless, had a revolutionary program. Thus, when revolution finally did come to Germany, expressionists of all hues supported it. The Novembergruppe, founded in December 1918, attracted expressionists from Nolde to Toller. “The future of art and the seriousness of this hour force us revolutionaries of the spirit . . . toward unity and close cooperation,” announced their manifesto. 113 While many joined the group, few were given the opportunity actually to take part in the mechanics of revolution. Toller, however, was one of the few intellectuals who not only supported revolution but actually had a hand in making one and leading it. Although an utter failure, it was important for several reasons. In June 1919, a Congress of Activists had met in Berlin. Like other activist organs, it, too, was politically ineffective. The only genuine experiment in the application of expressionist ideals on social reorganization occurred in Bavaria. The earliest and most radical of the German revolutions, it was only here that a peculiar constellation of forces created the opportunity that for a time made it appear that perhaps the expressionist Wandlung had finally come. Its failure in May 1919 was the practical collapse of activism; it certainly signified the end of any genuine leftwing revolutionary possibilities for German society.

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The attempt to merge Geist with Tat was to prove a failure. To the poet-revolutionary, Ernst Toller, the practical necessities of revolutionary activity were to be profoundly disappointing. The gap between theory and reality, which Friedrich had found nonexistent, proved for Toller to be unbridgeable. Toller soon found that the demands of the intellectual and those of the politician increasingly diverged. Activism was a theory that made the poetic or intellectual self half of a split personality. In theory, poetry was to merge with politics. The future society, as Gustav Landauer saw it, was to be characterized by “strongly connected Geist” and “the power of the Spirit will step in the place of the brutal power of the sword.” 114 After the clash of poetry and politics in Bavaria, it became increasingly difficult for Toller to keep up his poetic function, his view of the writer as social leader whose Geist can save society, his ideas that Geist could influence matter. Toller’s later writings and activity show a remarkably honest, poignant, and tragic narration of the difficulties of remaining an intellectual in the twentieth century. In November 1918, however, such disappointments still lay in the future. Toller expected the German revolution to realize those ideals that the activist wished and the revolution would guarantee. It was, then, with a bright expectancy that some writers greeted the events of November. The enthusiasm with which most intellectuals had greeted the outbreak of war was repeated in their welcome of revolution. Writer René Schickele hoped for “a new world” and a “liberated mankind.” For Schickele: The ninth of November was the most beautiful day of my life. On the ninth of November I was a believer; I would say even that I was positively in Heaven. I felt that from that day on I would never again be alone. Never again would I be forced to despair for myself and for others. For the first time I lay, well protected, in the bosom of Germany. 115

Schickele’s view was shared among many intellectuals. Germany had experienced a revolution, something it had not had in seventy years. The activists were determined that this particular revolution would not, like the abortive revolutions of 1848, be a failure. With Toller’s Friedrich, they could shout: “Brothers, stretch out your tortured hands. With cries of radiant, ringing joy! / Stride freely through our liberated land. With cries of Revolution, Revolution!” The young author did not know then that he was starting a new life, one that had sprouted in the trenches of World War I, had grown, and was about to be harvested in an event that would tear Germany apart and determine the future course of Ernst Toller’s life.

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NOTES 1. Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1968), 39. 2. Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair (New York: Doubleday, 1965), 16–17. 3. Ernst Toller, introduction to Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961), 7. Hereafter referred to as PBDG. 4. Wolfgang Paulsen, introduction to Der Dichter und seine Zeit: Politik im Spiegel der Literatur. Drittes Amherster Kolloquium zur modernen deutschen Literatur (Heidelberg: Stiehm, 1970), 7. 5. “Deeply ingrained in German literary criticism is the aversion against any art that somehow seems to lack an ideal metaphysical axis. Failure of a work to fit into a traditional frame of reference within a transcendent spiritual-intellectual sphere would almost automatically condemn it to rejection as slight.” William Pfeiler, German Literature in Exile: The Concern of the Poets (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1957), 7. See also Anthony Phelan, “Some Weimar Theories of the Intellectual,” in The Weimar Dilemma: Intellectuals and the Weimar Republic (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1985), and Wolf Lepenies’ excellent book, The Seduction of Culture in German History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 6. See Klaus Schreiner, “Messianism in the Political Culture of the Weimar Republic,” in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, edited by Peter Schäfer and Mark R. Cohen (Leiden: Brill 1998), 311. 7. Ludwig Kahn, “Goethe and the Problem of Leben and Geist in German Literature,” German Life and Letters 6, no. 4 (1953): 239–40. 8. Jacques Droz, “L’Allemagne et la Révolution française,” Revue Historique 198 (1947): 177. 9. Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970), 20–21. 10. Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair, 259. 11. Carl Zuckmayer, A Part of Myself (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1970), 188. 12. C. D. Innes, Erwin Piscator’s Political Theatre: The Development of Modern German Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1972), 11. 13. There did exist inactive expressionists. Herwarth Walden’s Der Sturm (Berlin, 1925), for example, asserted the independence of expressionism from attempts to employ it for social ends. Albert Soergel classified activism and aesthetic expressionism as the two wings of the expressionist movement. See Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit (Leipzig: R. Voigtländers, 1925), 27. 14. For a sociological analysis of expressionist authors, see Helmut Grüber, “The Politics of German Literature, 1914–1933: A Study of the Expressionist and Objectivist Movements” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1962), 12. 15. John Willett, Expressionism (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970), 7; Walter Sokel, ed., Anthology of German Expressionist Drama: A Prelude to the Absurd (New York: Cornell University Press, 1963), xi–xii; Ernst Toller, Letter to T. D., 1920, in Look Through the Bars: Letters from Prison, Poems and a New Version of “The Swallow Book” (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937), 47. 16. “Kunst and Wissenschaft,” Münchener Zeitung, February 2, 1917. 17. Ernst Toller, “Ruckblick,” Berliner Tageblatt, December 23, 1928. 18. Richard Brinkmann, Expressionismus: Forschungs–probleme, 1952–1960 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1961), 5. 19. Ernst Toller, “Bemerkungen zum deutschen Nachkriegsdrama,” Die literarische Welt 5, no. 16 (1929): 9. 20. Egbert Krispyn, Georg Heym: A Reluctant Rebel (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1968), 2.

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21. See Arno Mayer’s suggestive essay, “Domestic Causes of the First World War,” in The Responsibility of Power: Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn, edited by Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern (New York: Macmillan, 1967). 22. Henry Hatfield, Modern German Literature: The Major Figures in Context (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968), 1. 23. Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1952), 56, cited in Hatfield, Modern German Literature, 59. 24. Roger Shattuck, The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I (New York: Vintage Books, 1968), 352–53. 25. Shattuck, The Banquet Years, 334. 26. Kurt Pinthus, ed., Menschheitsdämmerung: Symphonie jüngster Dichtung (Berlin: E. Rowohlt, 1919), xiv–xv. 27. Jost Hermand, “Expressionismus als Revolution,” in Von Mainz nach Weimar (1793–1919) (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1969), 311. 28. Albert Ehrenstein, Der Mensch schreit (Leipzig: Kurt Wolf, 1916), 186. 29. Armin Arnold, Der Literatur des Expressionismus: Sprachliche und thematische Quellen (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966), 16–27. 30. Many observers attested to Toller’s emotionalism. Harry Kessler, for example, noted in his diary that “Toller in conversation is hyper-excitable and touchy to a degree, speaks softly and stares at his interlocutor with glowing eyes.” Harry Kessler, In the Twenties: The Diaries of Harry Kessler (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1971), 277. 31. Ernst Toller, “Bemerkungen zum deutschen Nachkriegsdrama,” 9. 32. Ludwig Meidner, Septemberschrei: Hymnen, Gebete, Lästerungen (Berlin: Paul Cassirer, 1920), 15. 33. Cited in Victor Miesel, Voices of German Expressionism (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 13; Willett, Expressionism, 63. 34. Toller, “Bemerkungen zum deutschen Nachkriegsdrama,” 9. 35. Cited in Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 114. 36. Walter Laqueur, “Reflections on Youth Movements,” in Out of the Ruins of Europe (New York: Library Press, 1971), 114. 37. Kurt Wais, Das Vater-Sohn-Motiv in der Dichtung (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1931), quoted by Krispyn, Georg Heym, 9. 38. Cited in Gay, Weimar Culture, 112. 39. Ernst Toller, “Konflikte der Jugend in Deutschland,” in Quer Durch: Reisebilder und Reden (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1930), 258. 40. Walter Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York, Basic Books, 1962), xi. 41. Toller, quoted by Howard de Forest, “Pacifist in Exile,” The Living Age 351 (February 1937): 507. 42. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 47; Toller, “Bemerkungen zum deutschen Nachkriegsdrama,” 9; Ernst Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 246. 43. See his postwar poem “To the Mothers,” in Look Through the Bars, 8. 44. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 77. 45. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 99. 46. Just old enough to serve in the army—a fact that may help account for the decline of expressionism during the early twenties. Some of its best writers were killed. In the first two years of war, Alfred Lichtenstein, August Macke, Ernst Stadler, Georg Trakl, and August Stramm, had all fought—and died. Willett, Expressionism, 104. 47. Rubiner, “Der Mensch in der Mitte,” in Anthology of German Expressionist Drama, edited by Sokel, 3–4. 48. Helmut Grüber, “The Political-Ethical Mission of German Expressionism,” German Quarterly 40, no. 2 (1967): 195.

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49. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 89. 50. See Pinthus, ed., introduction to Menscheitsdämmerung, 23. 51. Pinthus, ed., Menscheitsdämmerung, 27. 52. Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 284–85. 53. Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 283. 54. Grüber, “The Politics of German Literature,” 18. 55. René Schickele, “Wie verhält es sich mit dem Expressionismus?” Die Weissen Blätter 7 (August 1920): 339. 56. Walter Hasenclever, “Der politische Dichter,” in Menschheitsdämmerung, edited by Pinthus, 215. 57. Hasenclever, “Der politische Dichter,” in Menschheitsdämmerung, edited by Pinthus, 215. 58. Quoted by Helmut Grüber, “The Political-Ethical Mission of German Expressionism,” 192. 59. Grüber, “The Political-Ethical Mission of German Expressionism,” 192. 60. Toller, Letter to Stefan Zweig, 1921, in Look Through the Bars, 73. 61. Ernst Toller, “Art and Life: From my Notebook,” London Mercury 32, no. 192 (1935): 460. 62. Walter Sokel, The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth Century German Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), 117. 63. Sokel, The Writer in Extremis, 159. 64. Ernst Toller, “Leitsätze für einen Kulturpolitischen Bund der Jugend in Deutschland,” Menschen Montagsblatt-Dresden, no. 26 (June 16, 1919). 65. Quoted by Sokel, The Writer in Extremis, 147. 66. Quoted by Sokel, The Writer in Extremis, 147. 67. Arnold, Der Literatur des Expressionismus, 61. See also Wayne Cristaudo, Messianism, Apocalypse and Redemption in 20th Century German Thought (Adelaide, Australia: ATF Press, 2006), and Lisa Marie Anderson, German Expressionism and the Messianism of a Generation (New York: Rodopi, 2001). 68. Ernst Toller, “Bemerkungen zu meinem Drama Die Wandlung,” Tribüne der Kunst und Zeit 13 (1919): 46–47. 69. Erich Heller, “The Writer’s Image of the Writer: A Study in the Ideologies of Six German Authors, 1918–1933” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1951), 116. 70. Ernst Toller, “Rede auf dem Pariser Kongress der Schriftsteller am 25. Juli 1938,” Das Wort 3, no. 10 (1938): 124. 71. Toller, Quer Durch, 167. 72. Toller, Letter “To Tessa,” Niederschönenfeld, 18.5.21, in Look Through the Bars. 73. See Sokel, The Writer in Extremis, 52. 74. For a statement of this position, see Kurt Pinthus, “Rede für die Zukunft,” Die Erhebung 1 (1919): 411. 75. Toller, Letter to Kurt Tucholsky, 1921, in Look Through the Bars, 82. 76. Toller, Letter to Siegfried Jakobson, Niederschönenfeld, 1920, in Look Through the Bars, 49. 77. Soke1, The Writer in Extremis, 175–76. 78. Toller, Quer Durch, 278–79. 79. See Lewis Wurgaft, “Kurt Hiller and the Activist Program” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1970), and Wolfgang Rothe, introduction to Der Aktivismus, 1915–1920 (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1969). See also Eva Kolinsky, Engagierter Expressionismus: Politik und Literatur zwischen Weltkrieg und Weimarer Republik (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1970). 80. Rothe, Der Aktivismus, 12. 81. Toller, Quer Durch, 295. 82. In later essays on Voltaire and Zola, Mann further unfavorably contrasted the French with the German literary tradition. Voltaire in particular was praised for placing himself at the head of those who opposed power. Goethe, on the other hand, only

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looked out from his “Olympian heights of detachment.” His work, his thoughts, his name in Germany changed nothing. Behind his coffin, there is no Calas family. Heinrich Mann, Essays (Hamburg: Claassen, 1960), 19. Mann may have exaggerated. Voltaire was not averse to accepting financial support from the powerful. Mann also seems to have overlooked how much both he and Goethe shared. Goethe, too, rejected narrow German nationalism. Moreover, at a time when many were surrendering to anti-Western Germanophilism, he firmly remained an adherent of Weltbürgertum and refused to engage in the beginnings of a widespread German intellectual arrogance that contrasted German depth and spirituality with “superficial” French culture. Indeed, like Mann, Goethe had much praise for the French. The intellectual milieu of later years, however, was closer to Mann’s analysis. 83. Mann, “Geist und Tat,” in Essays, 13. 84. Mann, “Geist und Tat,” in Essays, 14. 85. This is given further treatment in chapter 5. 86. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 78. 87. Toller, Quer Durch, 270. 88. Ernst Toller, “Die Künsterkolonie,” Die Weltbühne 24, no. 46 (1928): 754. 89. Toller, Letter to Siegfried Jakobson, Niederschönenfeld, 1920, in Look Through the Bars, 49. 90. Toller, Quer Durch, 272, 296. 91. Ernst Toller, “Auf dem Wege zur Kunst,” Das Programm der Piscatorbühne, no. 1 (1927). 92. Ernst Toller, “Henri Barbusse,” Die Weltbühne 25 (1929): 413. 93. Toller, writing in Die Scene 18 (1928): 329. 94. Toller, Letter to Editor of the Tagebuch, 14.4.24, in Look Through the Bars, 302. 95. Stanley Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, eds., Twentieth Century Authors (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1942), 1410. 96. Toller, Quer Durch, 287–88. 97. Toller, “Rede auf dem Pariser Kongress der Schriftsteller,” 123. 98. Ernst Toller, “Ein Wort für Finkelnberg,” Das Wort 3, no. 6 (1938): 122–26. 99. Toller, Quer Durch, 268. 100. Ernst Toller, “Zur Revolution der Buhne,” Die Rampe (Olmütz) 1, no.1 (1923–1924). 101. Innes, Erwin Piscator’s Political Theatre, 11. 102. Ernst Toller, “Bemerkungen zu meinem Drama Die Wandlung,” 46–47. 103. For a discussion of Toller’s dramatic work, see Cecil Davies, The Plays of Ernst Toller: A Revaluation (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996). 104. Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 277. Cecil Davies, “Ernst Tollers Dramen als ‘Engagierte Literatur,’” in Engagierte Literatur zwischen den Weltkriegen, edited by Stefan Neuhaus, Rolf Selbmann, and Thorsten Unger (Würzberg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002), 269. 105. Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 284. 106. Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 284–85. The play is a particularly difficult work to summarize adequately, and the above covers only the main plot. Toller had scattered throughout the play a series of dream-like scenes that symbolically represented Friedrich’s path to regeneration. In one, for example, a “wanderer” with Friedrich’s face is surrounded by a thick fog. In a later scene, the fog has vanished. A mountain climber, again Friedrich’s features, joyfully climbs to the summit. The process of the hero’s rebirth is thus suggested by a series of episodic scenes ranging from pessimistic and sordid, before Wandlung, to ecstatic regeneration after. In the end, it is the reborn hero who, after enduring his inner conflicts, emerges to preach the gospel of humanity and inner transformation. 107. W. A. Willibrand, Ernst Toller and his Ideology (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1945), 39–41. 108. Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 276. 109. Gay, Weimar Culture, 113.

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110. See Wurgaft, “Kurt Hiller and the Activist Program,” 150–69. 111. Kurt Pinthus, “Zur jüngsten Dichtung,” in Vom jüngsten Tag: Ein Almansch neuer Dichtung (Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, 1917), 244. 112. Grüber, “The Political-Ethical Mission of German Expressionism,” 70. 113. Cited in Bernard Myers, The German Expressionists: A Generation in Revolt (New York: Praeger, 1966), 220. 114. Quoted by Ulrich Linse, Organisierter Anarchismus im deutschen Kaiserreich von 1871 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969), 282. 115. Quoted by István Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and Its Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 74.

FIVE Revolution of Love Bavaria 1918–1919

We do not want to make a Russian or Berlin revolution with bloodshed, but rather a Bavarian revolution of love. —Ernst Toller, at his trial after the Bavarian Revolution

“I asked myself why men do that. What kind of a fatherland is it that gives orders to cause suffering and to kill? Hardly had I placed the question to myself than I found the answer. The answer was a true fatherland cannot demand from its citizens such things.” 1 Thus had Toller made the decision in 1918 to create a true fatherland, one of Geist and not force. Toller was well-stocked with ideals; yet, although an idealist, even Toller was enough of a realist to conclude that “one cannot fight war with poetry and drama.” 2 Driven by conscience— his wish to stop the war, and later his desire to erect a new society—rather than by ambition, Toller stepped out of emerging literary fame to seek an active role in politics. His activity made him well-known as the “revolutionary expressionist,” but it also shows what the intellectual must overcome when he goes from the realm of ideas into that of political affairs. Vilified by both Right and Left, Toller was also to be repudiated by politicians who saw him as only a writer and by writers who saw him as only a politician. Viewed as a corrosive “Jew Literat” by the far Right and as a traitor to the working class by the far Left, Toller was more acutely aware than any other activist of the gap separating dream from fact and suffered the anguish of those who, not content to theorize, fought to convert their theory into reality. The most political part of his life, his role in the Bavarian revolution, was also to be his most controversial and, on a personal level, his most disappointing. The exigencies of revolutionary politics presented 85

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this man of ethics with an insoluble conflict. As Toller wrote, sobered after his revolutionary experience: The ethical man: exclusively satisfies the laws of his being. The political man: fights for rules of society which are and might be the foundation of a higher standard of life for others. Fights even when to fight is opposed to the laws of his being. If the ethical man becomes political man, what way of tragedy is not spared him. 3

Incipit tragoedia: The beginning of 1918 found Toller in Bavaria as a student. The State of Bavaria, the second largest after Prussia, joined the German empire in 1871. As a condition of entry, the state was allowed certain “reserved rights,” allowing it as much autonomy as possible. Bavaria was unlike Prussia in religion. Over two-thirds of Bavarians were Catholic and a third Protestant. The opposite was true in Prussia. There the largest party was socialist. In Bavaria, it was the two Catholic parties, the Center and the Bavarian Peoples Party. Bavaria was the most agricultural of the new German states, less industrialized than Prussia. This was reflected in the size of its cities. Munich, with a population of 735,000, was the largest. Berlin, Prussia’s capital, was four million. This conservative, Catholic, rural land was about to become the site of the most radical of the revolutions that affected Germany after the end of the war. It was led primarily by urban, left-wing, Jewish intellectuals who hoped to turn a rural society into a socialized state, or, as one of its more testosteroneminded leaders, Erich Mühsam, termed it: “a republic based on councils combined with sexual revolution.” 4 In January 1918, Toller was in Munich. If Berlin represented the commercialization and militarization of German civilization, Munich was its cultural center. “There,” wrote Thomas Mann, “life is lived for pleasanter ends than the driving need for gain.” With its “white columned temples, the classical monuments and the baroque churches, the leaping fountains, the palaces and parks,” the city possessed a poignant charm and even “the owners of the smallest and meanest of . . . shops spoke of Mino de Fiesole and Donatello as though he had received the rights of reproduction from them personally.” 5 By his own statement, Toller was in Munich to write a doctoral dissertation, although records from the University of Munich indicate he was not a registered student. 6 In accord with Toller’s activist temperament, which sought to combine contemplation with revolutionary activity, he was also engaged in antiwar activities and circulated propaganda highly critical of the Fatherland Party. 7 While Toller’s radical Bund of the previous year had met with little success, events in 1918 were more congenial to the development of radicalism. The enthusiasm that had greeted the outbreak of conflict four years earlier had largely evaporated by 1918, and there was general war weariness among large parts of the population. Impetus for mass antiwar demon-

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stration, however, came from outside Germany. Germany’s grandiose war aims, blatantly evident with the Russian Peace Treaty at Brest-Litovsk, when Russia was forced to cede thousands of miles of land to Germany, shattered whatever illusions may have existed about the nation’s desire to stop the war without annexations. A certain sympathy with the plight of the new Soviet government became fused with an even more intense longing for peace, shown by an outbreak of strike activity in Austria-Hungary. On January 16, 1918, thousands of Austrian workers stopped work and demonstrated against the policy of the German government, demanding that “peace with Russia should not be rendered impossible through the demands of the German annexationists.” 8 Hapsburg authorities, themselves fearful that the demands of their greedy ally might extend the war, not only endorsed a peace resolution of the Vienna Workers’ Council but also declared themselves in favor of parliamentary reform. In spite of censorship, news of Austria’s protest quickly reached Germany. A meeting of the Turners Union held on January 27 in Berlin, to which all principal industries sent representatives, unanimously decided to call a general strike for the following day. 9 Although Kurt Eisner in Munich declared the goal of the strike, the overthrow of the Monarchy and the total destruction of militarism, 10 the actual demands of South German protestors were considerably less ambitious, and strikers in Munich presented the same program as their counterparts in Berlin: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

1. Immediate peace without annexations. 2. Freedom of press and assembly. 3. Termination of martial law. 4. Demilitarization of industrial plants. 5. Release of Karl Liebknecht and other political prisoners. 11

Hesitation by Bavaria’s Majority Socialists, led by Erhard Auer, who, like their counterparts in Germany’s capital at first were reluctant to join the strike unless assured it would not injure the war effort, caused Bavaria to be out of step with Berlin, and it was not until January 31, three days after the Berlin strike, that Munich had its demonstrations: “In this struggle for peace I turned toward the people, the people, always exploited, always betrayed. Was not its historic task to overcome and so give meaning to the meaningless suffering of mankind in its age long enduring need?” 12 Thus had the messianic Toller expressed the reasons for his participation in the January strike, his first introduction to revolutionary activity. It was the beginning of a fifteen-month process of deep disappointment. As early as January 25, he had addressed students at Munich’s university, inciting them against the war and reading poems that university authorities, clearly unappreciative of avant-garde literature, found “crass and hyper-revolutionary.” 13 Tirelessly, Toller attended strikers’ meetings and naively read scenes from his newly written Die Wandlung “because I

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believed that these verses, born of the horrors of war, might touch them and strike home.” 14 The January strike was also the first time Toller had occasion to demonstrate his considerable oratorical ability. In his speeches, he became almost a matinee idol of sorts, a rock star for the Munich proletariat. His engaged passion for social justice was exceeded only by a certain flair for self-dramatization, a quality he maintained up to his death. He could call up the righteous indignation of a workers’ assembly with his denunciations of the gross injustice and callousness of society and alternate this with his visions of brotherhood, humanity, and social justice. In his speeches, he cried out his feelings, heatedly and ecstatically and with wild gesticulations, almost as though feverish, painting with all the poetic and rhetorical fire he could call forth the horror of war. He carried everyone with him. Women were seen weeping or becoming completely wild. 15 Otto Zarek, who heard Toller many times, believed It was not his matter, but his manner that finally won his hearers. People couldn’t make up their minds whether he was right or not, but they had no doubt that he was sincere. . . . He carried the people by the force of his convictions. His short struggle for support was amazing. He began by speaking in small cafés; he ended by addressing huge crowds in the Munich beer-cellars. The working classes gradually got used to his elaborate phraseology, and Toller, for his part, learned how to please the Bavarians. He learned that a Munich crowd expected a speaker to be deferential towards them. As he grew more experienced, he did not dare open a meeting without first apologizing that he, “a stranger,” was addressing them, and “when he went on to explain that their case was the case of mankind and that their longing for peace was shared by the whole of humanity, the little man from the suburbs felt flattered and applauded loudly. . . . He wanted a mission in life; Toller supplied him with one. 16

If Toller had already realized poetry and drama could not end war, he soon discovered that neither could emotional speeches. German authorities, in contrast to Austrian, refused to surrender to the demands of obstreperous workers, and the government took upon itself the task of forcibly suppressing any further demonstrations. On January 31, a state of siege was declared, special courts martial set up, the publication of Vorwärts, the paper of the German Socialist Party (SPD), forbidden, and all meetings of strikers dispersed by the police. 17 In Bavaria, Kurt Eisner, later to be father of the Bavarian revolution, was arrested and confined to Neudeck prison outside Munich, where he spent the next eight-and-ahalf months. A demonstration led by Toller on February 1, demanding the release of imprisoned strike leaders, 18 predictably resulted in no action other than Toller’s arrest. Toller’s first excursion into revolutionary activity ended in failure. For his activity in the January strike, he was redrafted and confined for three months to the military prison in Mu-

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nich’s Leonrodstrasse. On the insistence of his mother, who was unable to imagine how her son had come to be such a radical, Toller was placed under psychological observation. The clinic was headed by Dr. Emil, noted annexationist and member of the Fatherland Party. Reports describe Toller as “clearly one of those men who live only in their ideas without being able to appreciate correctly the events of the real world. . . . according to the professional opinion of Dr. Lipowsky he is an advanced hysterical personality. . . . Dr. Backhaus considers him a neurohysterical neurotic.” These medical reports were later used to defame Toller after the April Soviet. Toller was characterized as a “boastful vain man, misled by the International obtrusive propaganda of all pacifist circles into megalomania.” 19 The reports say as much for the mentality of the Pan-German annexationists as they do for the pacifist, anti-annexationist Toller. It was while under arrest that Toller became intellectually attracted to socialism. It had been more by desire to end the war than by intellectual commitment to socialism that Toller had participated in the January strike: But in my prison cell I discovered the meaning of socialism and for the first time I saw clearly the true structure of society, the conditions which make war inevitable, the terrible perversity of the law that allows the masses to go hungry while a few grow rich, the true relationship between capital and labor, the historic significance of the working class. 20

Toller was never a doctrinaire socialist. His only politics were those of a humanitarian, not an ideologue. Officially, he was a member of the Independent Socialist Party (USP), Germany’s antiwar party, which had broken from the Majority Socialist Party (SPD) in April 1917. While it was a temporary home to many intellectuals and expressionist writers, expressionism was hardly what one literary historian called the “literary mouthpiece” of the Independent Socialist Party. If it attracted intellectuals, it was because its parent body, the SPD, had supported the war and because the German Communist Party was the party of doctrinaire Marxism, where intellectuals were required to follow party dictates. Toller joined the party because it was the party of Kurt Eisner, Bavaria’s revolutionary leader, but less for political reasons than for the personal attraction he felt to Eisner’s ethical ideas. In early March 1919, Toller, after the assassination of Eisner, even became its chairman, but Toller was never a good party follower or a believer in any organized political party. While Toller read Marx, Engels, Lassalle, Bakunin, Mehring, Rosa Luxemburg, and the Webbs, of decisive influence on him were less the political ideas of this group than the moral ideas of Kurt Eisner and Gustav Landauer, individuals who, along with Toller, were to play a major role in the Bavarian revolution. 21

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Before his arrest, Toller had been a part of Kurt Eisner’s discussion circle, which met weekly at the Golden Anchor in Munich’s Schillerstrasse, the place one observer has called the true birthplace of the Bavarian revolution. 22 Kurt Eisner was born in Berlin in 1867 to Jewish parents. He became contributing editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung, during which time he wrote an article attacking the Kaiser, which landed Eisner in prison for nine months. He became editor of the Socialist Party’s paper, Vorwärts, in 1905. He broke with the German Socialist Party in 1917, joined the more left-wing Independent Socialist Party, and was convicted of treason in 1918 for his role in a strike of munitions workers. He spent nine months at Stadelheim Prison, after which he was released during the General Amnesty in October 1918. In the Munich of 1918, a few dozen of Eisner’s adherents gathered, shared their faith in “Socialism as the religion of the proletariat,” preaching largely to themselves. 23 Eisner shared much with Toller despite the twenty-six-year difference in their ages. Like Toller, Eisner came from a moderately affluent Jewish family, although he never was a practicing Jew. Like Toller, as a youth he accepted its German values. While the young Toller had collected pictures of the Kaiser, Eisner in later life recalled that, as a boy of eleven in 1878, he had enthusiastically placed candles in his window after the Kaiser survived a second assassination attempt. The passing of the antisocialist law of the same year occasioned little remorse from the future socialist since he regarded the SPD as “a band of wild criminals.” 24 A student at Friedrich Wilhelm University, he withdrew in 1889 and began to work for a Berlin news agency. Two years later, in 1892, Eisner was attracted to the recently legalized socialists and began to write in support of the party. 25 After his resignation from the staff of the paper, Eisner turned to creative writing, became an author of many social satires, and even wrote an expressionist play, deservedly unknown, entitled Die Götterprüfung. 26 For Toller, Eisner was a man of entirely different mold from Ebert, Scheidemann, Noske, and Auer. In him was embodied all that is finest in Nordic austerity and Latin rationalism. His political idea was complete democracy. He had no use for the parliamentary democracy that once in a while summons the people to the ballot box and then loses touch with them for years on end. The Geist of life and truth, he urged, should permeate the whole social structure as a critical, invigorating, and fiery spirit to influence daily life. 27

Eisner’s idealism, captured in Toller’s last sentence, was strongly influenced by the neo-Kantianism of Hermann Cohen, a Marburg philosopher who had suggested a compatibility between the ethics of Kant and the goals of socialism. 28 Reconciling Marx with Kant, Eisner held socialism to be both scientifically necessary and ethically desirable. In line with activism, there was a strong element of voluntarism in Eisner’s ideology,

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which was combined with a Utopian vision of socialism as the midwife to “the golden age of the future.” Soon after the November revolution, he was quick to echo Heinrich Mann’s call for a merging of Geist and Tat when Eisner declared the goal of the Bavarian revolution to be “to give the world an example of a revolution, perhaps the first in the history of the world, to unite the Idea, the Ideal and the Reality.” 29 Even before Eisner’s attempt to merge ideas and reality, Gustav Landauer had expressed similar thoughts. Born into a Jewish family in 1870, Landauer became well-known for his anarchist socialism, which he presented in his major work, Aufruf zum Sozialismus. In 1914, Landauer would not let himself be carried away by the general enthusiasm for war. As an anarchist and a pacifist, he was one of the few Germans who fought against it from the very beginning. Similar to Eisner, socialism for Landauer was less concerned with economics than ethics, an endeavor, he explained, “to create a new reality with the help of an ideal.” 30 Unlike Eisner, however, Landauer saw a conflict between the ideal society and Marxism, an ideology he viewed as “the pest of our time and the curse of the Socialist movement.” 31 Unlike Marx, Landauer did not see society developing by stages leading inextricably to socialism. Rather, he opposed the Marxian view that capitalism was necessarily a progressive force, one signifying a higher stage of development toward a new state. Landauer saw no way to build a new society from capitalism. Not only was the system stronger than its opponents believed, but even the workers, the force Marxists saw as the agent of change, had become more concerned with improving their position within the capitalist system through higher wages and shorter hours than revolting against it. 32 This, he asserted, was particularly true of the SPD, a party less concerned with revolution than with reforms. 33 Moreover, where traditional socialists placed emphasis on increasing industrialization and economic concentration, Landauer’s socialism was avowedly anti-industrial and was to be based on agrarian communes rather than large-scale capitalist concentration. In 1909, for example, he lyrically wrote of “a socialist village with workshops and village factories, with fields and meadows and gardens, with large and small livestock and poultry . . . you proletariat of the big cities accustom yourselves to this thought strange as it may seem at first for that is the only beginning of true socialism.” 34 Combined with Landauer’s ideas was a strong element of voluntarism that contrasted sharply with left-wing determinism. Unlike Marxists, who waited for objective social conditions to develop, Landauer argued that a socialist revolution could only be realized through determined activity: “Capitalism need not change into Socialism. It need not perish. Socialism need not come. Also the proletarian state capitalist society of the Marxists need not come. . . . But Socialism can come and should come—when we wish it, when we create it.” 35

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The main burden of creating such a society fell, according to Landauer, on the writer whose task it was to lead society. In his Ansprache an die Dichter, Landauer asserted that society and Geist must come together through the mediation of the writer. Filled with Geist, the writer comes as “helper and savior” who must direct his creative forces from imaginative fantasy to social reality. Only he can awaken society, liberate it from “Un geist,” and lead it toward revolution: “We need the trumpet of Moses which from time to time announces the great day of happiness. We need—again and again and again—the revolution, we need the writer.” 36 Such heady phraseology was particularly appealing to Toller, and many of Landauer’s ideas echo in Toller’s work. The older man’s rejection of objective conditions of revolution was repeated years later when Toller, in an essay “From Banned Books,” rejected the argument many Marxists put forth to explain the failure of the German revolution: The German revolution was not a failure because the people were unripe. Every word of the necessary ripeness of a people for socialism is dialectical tight-rope walking. One can only become ripe in persistent work [stündliches und tägliches Arbeit], but not when a wall is placed between life and action. No one is ripe through knowledge alone; one must be given the opportunity to act [Möglichkeit zum Marschieren]. 37

During the Bavarian revolution, again echoing Landauer, Toller went on record in favor of giving a piece of land to each worker “which he shall cultivate and where he shall take root and live in freedom bound to it by the feeling of social responsibility.” 38 Such bucolic aspirations of Toller’s of course contrasted with Marx’s own scathingly sarcastic comments about the “idiocy of rural life.” In addition to the personal influence of Eisner and Landauer, the activist attractions of Geist also help explain Toller’s ethical socialism. The idealism of the activist movement allowed its adherents to remain hostile to dialectical materialism and to assert the ability of Geist to change society in a much deeper fashion. The scientific positivism of the nineteenth century had made man into a victim of uncontrollable forces. Through the power of Geist and active will, however, man could regain his free will and dignity. 39 Such a conception of spirit could allow the individual to realize his true self and transcend the narrowness of a society based only on the satisfaction of material desires. Moreover, the youth movement, which greatly influenced Toller, also expounded a vague socialism based on a critique of materialism. 40 It was, thus, hardly an accident that during the January strike Toller expressed great satisfaction that the workers were not demonstrating for material concerns, but rather for “ideal goals.” Later in life, he wrote of the “spiritual” yearnings of the proletariat. 41 Toller’s “ideal goals” made his socialism profoundly unpolitical. According to Kurt Pinthus, those who were expressionists did not aim at

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“the overthrow or victory of certain political parties or personalities, but at the politics of humanity and humanitarianism.” 42 Their aim was not a state based on political parties but a party-less state. It was the reconstruction of society. As Kurt Hiller wrote, what the activists desired was “no new sect next to the old”; what was desired was “transformation of the world.” 43 With few exceptions, the activists dreamed of a world that could create social harmony from class division, one guided by ethics rather than crass political materialism. More than just a change reducible to programmatic political categories, it was the setting up of the image of man. Many seemed to confuse such a spiritual revolution with mere political alteration. At his trial after the failure of the Bavarian Soviet, Toller was accused of treason, of an attempt to overthrow the legally constituted government of the Majority Socialists. The court erroneously tried to prove that Toller had made a political revolution. But he had not; his aim was much more than this. It was not only the hope for a new political order but also the expectation that a new man, a regenerated humanity, was emerging—this, of course, a vastly more far-reaching undertaking than merely replacing the Majority Socialists. Toller frequently made clear his rejection of politics. In his Bund program of 1917, he proclaimed: “It is far from our intention to follow ‘party politics.’ Politics for us is to feel ethically responsible for the fate of our country and to act accordingly. There is no limited morality; there is only morality which is valid for all humanity.” 44 Toller’s goal, then, was not politics, which he viewed with disdain and equated with conflict; it was the realization of Geist that he equated with social harmony. His aim was not party factionalism but a coalition of the oppressed, both proletarian and nonproletarian: “a community which no longer wears itself out in the petty fights of politicians, a community freed from the politician as a professional politician . . . a community which, without hunger and without fear, lives for exalted happiness.” 45 One reason for Toller’s attraction to such a coalition may have been his alienation from traditional society. Thus alienated, a possible reaction was to come into association with society’s outcasts, the workers, and there find that community of feeling that neither his home, his religion, nor the camaraderie of the trenches could supply. Desire for social integration, then, may be the reason for Toller’s version of socialism. In any case, one finds it difficult to agree with the assertion that Toller became a socialist because he felt it to be the “logical result of the capitalist system.” 46 Such a statement implies a degree of rationality the emotional and volatile Toller did not have. For all his later talk of the “guilt of capitalism,” it would be a profound mistake to view Toller as a socialist thinker. While he did read some theoretical works of socialism, there is little evidence he possessed more than a fairly elementary appreciation of economic theory. Although his ethical socialism was pronounced, only in the most general terms can

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Toller be called a neo-Kantian. For Toller, society consisted of the exploiters and the exploited; he was of the view that society was wrong and should be set right. Unlike Landauer, who formulated a theoretical view of socialism, Toller was much like Eisner. In both, there was little distinctive in their blend of ethical socialism and pacifism. 47 Toller’s socialism had little to do with scientific evidence. “Necessity,” exclaims a character in his play Masse Mensch, “necessity transforms me. Need to be human sways me.” 48 For Toller, socialism was little more than lyrical humanism, less a science of sorrow and exploitation than an acute cry of pain. As a man of ethics, Toller conceived of socialism as the unity of mankind. As a pacifist, he rejected class war. Nonetheless, Toller’s goals were clearly revolutionary, and it was to be his attempt to reach a revolutionary goal with humanitarian and pacifist means that was to be a problem that caused him much trouble when he became deeply involved in Bavarian revolutionary politics. With the exception of Erich Mühsam, none of the individuals later to gain prominence as leaders of Bavarian radicalism—Gustav Landauer, Eugen Leviné, Max Levien—were in Munich during the early days of November 1918. 49 Toller himself, recovering from influenza, was at his mother’s house in Landsberg, where he had been since his discharge during the summer. 50 Kurt Eisner had already turned massive social protests into a revolutionary movement in Bavaria’s capital. Toller was fatigued after a long train ride and recovering from influenza, his mind unaware of the catastrophe into which he was to be drawn. The anticipation of an adventure marked Toller’s arrival to Munich in mid-November of 1919. He was only days from his twenty-fifth birthday, and he enthusiastically placed himself in a six-month bout of confused politics, violence, civil war, personal danger, and revolutionary events that the young Toller hoped would profoundly change the world. He was to be disappointed. The most radical and earliest of the German revolutions began in a land seemingly unsuited for a socialist revolution. Unlike Saxony, Bavaria did not have a high degree of industry. At the beginning of the twentieth century, she still retained her predominately agrarian character—less than one million workers, of which only a third were industrial. 51 Bavaria’s socialists were largely revisionists who repudiated the revolutionary aims of some of their fellow SPD members. 52 Yet in November 1918, Bavarian political life not only became revolutionary; it expressed itself in a revolution that combined elements of political messianism, radical Utopian aspiration, sexual liberation, and death. It was the impact of war and Germany’s subsequent military collapse that provided the background leading to such a situation. Bavaria’s economic conditions had changed after 1914 with the establishment of new factories geared to war materials, while the influx of workers had altered the territory’s sociological composition. In addition, the 52,000 soldiers

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garrisoned in Munich, who would later play a part in the revolution, also increased Bavaria’s social instability. 53 As the war dragged on, inflation and food shortages became increasingly acute. Personalities as divergent as Crown Prince Rupprecht and Toller commented on the country’s deteriorating conditions. Josef Hofmiller noted in his diary during the late summer of 1918: “Everything is severely shaken. Shaken are (1) the workers, (2) the peasants, (3) (actually I should have made this 1) the military, (4) the women, (5) the white collar workers, (6) ala bureaucrats, (7) the press. No limitations. No dams. The mood of the land is terrible.” 54 By the end of October, the conditions Hofmiller had noted in the summer had become worse. Since the collapse of Austria, Bavaria had been exposed to possible invasion, a situation that produced great panic among the population. 55 Moreover, the prestige of the Bavarian monarchy had drastically fallen. The Wittelsbachs, Bavaria’s ruling house, had, under conditions imposed by the war, surrendered many of their particularistic privileges to Berlin. It was the central government in Berlin that decided all questions affecting the war and, hence, Bavaria. The dynasty appeared to many to be a tool of the Hohenzollerns, and the idea that the war was being conducted for Prussian interests grew ever stronger. 56 After the failure of Germany’s last great offensive in the spring, many felt it better to go to prison than fight and die for a bankrupt regime. “The war, the whole military is one gigantic swindle,” exclaimed one recently returned soldier. “Help can only come from a revolution.” 57 A yearning for peace, poor economics, and animosity against Prussia all benefited Kurt Eisner, who had begun to articulate the dissatisfaction now rife in Bavaria. At a peace demonstration of November 3, Eisner demanded a new government capable of concluding peace “so that the Bavarian people are not destroyed.” 58 Demands for peace received added impetus when on November 5 news arrived that in the northern port of Kiel the navy had mutinied. On November 7, while what was to be the last session of the Royal Landtag debated the potato shortage, Munich’s Theresienwiese, site of the annual Oktoberfest, began to fill with workers, some soldiers, and a motley assortment of café and “beer hall perennials” 59 who had assembled under the direction of the two wings of German socialism to demand peace. After a speech by Eisner, Felix Fechenbach, one of Eisner’s aides, shouted, “Kurt Eisner has spoken. There is no reason to wait any longer. Whoever is for the revolution, follow us!” 60 Spontaneously, a large part of the crowd obeyed the injunction. Eisner and the blind peasant leader, Ludwig Gandorfer, led the crowd to the city’s military garrisons, where most soldiers threw down their weapons and joined the throng. Red flags appeared, and, although officers’ epaulets were ripped off, only an occasional shot was heard. Few of Munich’s citizens were aware the revolution had started. 61 By the early morning of the next day, Ludwig, Bavaria’s last king, had fled, not to return to Munich until his

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death three years later. The monarchy gave way to a Republic headed by Kurt Eisner and the old Landtag to the new Council of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants. The old order had been almost effortlessly overthrown. No one was more surprised than Eisner. Exhausted from the day’s activity, he threw himself onto a sofa in one of Munich’s hotels and incredulously exclaimed, “Is this not something wonderful! We have made a revolution without shedding a drop of blood. Never in history has there been anything like it.” 62 The German November revolution attracted writers and artists, poets and journalists, to what they viewed as the historic chance to implement their hopes and dreams, thoughts, desires, and wishes into reality. It represented for them the “old” empire against the “new” society, the artistic program of their emancipation into revolutionary new beginnings. Expressionism was no more a concept, but a new glowing reality finding its confirmation in the beginnings of world revolution. Now, finally, so they believed, writers and artists, with a nebulous idea of Geist, up to now marginalized and without influence, could become “born revolutionaries” and implement their ideas. Thoughts such as these were, perhaps, going through Toller’s head. What we do know for sure is that the nonviolent revolution Eisner had made exercised great attraction for the young Toller. Eagerly, Toller telegraphed Eisner offering his services and received a polite reply but not an actual invitation. 63 Undeterred by this, wishing to become an apostle of humanity and turn political power into ethics, Toller travelled to Eisner in Munich and was soon elected second chairman of the Bavarian Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Council. 64 Only in a revolution could an inexperienced twenty-five-year-old rise to such heights in so short a time with so few professional qualifications. Had Toller remained in North Germany, he might have participated in Berlin’s revolution of November 9, yet it is doubtful if he would have assumed the position of responsibility he achieved in Munich. Crudely put, the difference between Berlin and Munich was the difference between Friedrich Ebert and Kurt Eisner. However, it was also a difference of parties. In Berlin, from the first, the SPD had led the revolution, rather reluctantly, while the Independents followed. In Munich, the situation was reversed. The Independents had willingly made revolution, much to the consternation of the Majority Socialists. 65 This had two consequences. It made Munich’s revolution more radical and, at the same time, more intellectual. The USPD tended to attract more intellectuals than its parent body. In addition to Toller and Eisner, Franz Pfemfert, Walter Hasenclever, Max Herrmann-Neisse, Johannes Becher, Friedrich Wolf, and Bertolt Brecht were all at one time or another active members. In Munich, the avant-garde of the intellectuals’ revolt came from Schwabing, the Bohemian sector near the city’s university, where writers and artists caricatured and lampooned established society. 66 The war had created the con-

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ditions necessary for revolution, but Schwabing café society did much to contribute to the mentality of younger intellectuals such as Toller. While these conditions allowed Toller to give his support to the Munich revolution, he remained highly reserved toward events in Berlin, and it was with hostility that he observed SPD leadership in the German capital. 67 The half-hearted character of the Berlin revolution that called forth Toller’s ire was manifested at its birth. While Eisner, the Independent in Munich, actively created a republic, Philipp Scheidemann, the Majority Socialist in Berlin, proclaimed its birth to stop the announcement of a Soviet Republic by Karl Liebknecht. Even this was too much for Ebert who chastised his colleague for his hasty action. For the Majority Socialist government of Ebert and Scheidemann (and for Bavaria’s Social Democrats as well), the revolution had ended with the fall of the monarchy. Their task was, therefore, one of consolidation, their goal to stop the chaos that appeared to threaten the new Republic, prevent radicalism, and elect a National Assembly that was to decide the final political form for Germany. For those farther Left, revolutionary Obleute, the small but vocal Spartacists, and the left-wing of the Independents to which Toller belonged, the overthrow of the monarchy was only a prelude to a more radical change in German society. Unhappily for the Republic, within a month the Majority Socialist government in Berlin had called upon the remains of the Imperial Army to preserve order. Contained behind this innocuous phrase was the violent suppression of left-wing radicals. The agreement with the defeated army may have saved the tottering semirevolutionary regime of Berlin’s Majority Socialists from the more extreme elements of revolution, but it did not augur well for the future of Bavarian radicalism. Radicalism in Bavaria centered on the councils, one of whose most forceful advocates was Toller. Councils (Räte) were set up all over Germany after the beginning of the revolution. The example of Soviets during the Russian revolution provided a model, but Richard Müller, leader of the left-wing shop stewards (Obleute), was probably correct in not emphasizing the direct influence of Russian Soviets on Germany. 68 The first council antedated the November revolution and was established in Leipzig in April 1917 to present demands of striking workers but was dissolved after its task was accomplished. In November of the following year, spontaneous councils were set up of workers and soldiers (and in Bavaria peasants as well). The councils, however, did not direct and organize the revolt. Established after the revolution, they were more symbols of the revolution triumphant than organs of subversion. The councils reflected all shades of radical opinion, yet not all were radical; in some of the better-off suburbs, such as Berlin’s Charlottenburg, they were even middle class in nature. 69 Although Toller was a firm believer in the “council system,” the heterogeneous councils had little contact outside their local areas, and the term “council system” implies a misleading

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homogeneity. Moreover, few council members saw such a system as a substitute for parliament, although left-wing Independents such as Toller and other radicals wished them to become so. In a speech during the early hours of November 8, Kurt Eisner went on record as favoring parliamentary elections. However, one week later, he spoke of a “living, creative democracy” whose prerequisites had to be laid before a parliamentary assembly could meet. For Eisner, such a living democracy was to include the newly created councils. It was his advocacy of the councils as a higher form of democracy that attracted Toller. As Eisner put it in a speech at the end of November: We do not want to create a formal electoral democracy in which a slip will be thrown into the ballot box every three to five years and then every-thing will be left to the leaders and representatives. That is actually the opposite of a democracy. The new democracy should be such that the masses themselves directly and continuously assist in the affairs of the commonwealth. . . . The restitution of parliamentarianism in the old style means the elimination of the councils of workers, soldiers and peasants. This I will attempt to prevent as long as I have the power to do so. 70

Eisner tended at times to view parliamentary organs as an institution of counterrevolution; yet he was enough of a realist to recognize that total exclusion of traditional parliamentary institutions was an impossibility. Rather, he spoke of a combination of parliament and councils in which the latter would form a type of co-parliament (Nebenparlament). Eisner was appropriately vague on the exact relation between the Nebenparlament and an elected Assembly. However, rather than outright abolition of the latter, he wished its election postponed so that the councils could work an “inner transformation” of Bavarian political life. 71 Other than this, Eisner never gave a more precise plan for his living democracy. Perhaps had Eisner not held a major position of governmental responsibility he would have been more intransigent in his view of the councils. His position as Prime Minister, however, in a coalition cabinet of Independent and Majority Socialists, made it necessary for Eisner to compromise with his less radical colleagues whose views on the role of the councils were considerably more moderate. Toller, however, was not in such a position of compromise, and, consequently, his views on the future place of the councils were more far-reaching. For both Toller and Eisner, the councils were a higher form of democracy. As Toller explained, in contrast to parliament, where voters do not legislate, in the councils the people themselves become legislators and the system combines both legislative and executive authority. But where Eisner was willing to make concessions to traditional institutions in the form of a Nebenparlament, Toller wished complete exclusion of what he viewed as old and discredited governing organs. Speaking against Bavaria’s parliament (Landtag), he

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observed: “This parliament does not have the moral force, the will, a sense of responsibility to decide the fate of the nation. . . . You may take any position you wish on the parliament; as for me a parliament has no raison d’être.” 72 His reservations about the Weimar Republic were not that it was antidemocratic, but that it was not democratic enough, a true democracy reflecting the will of the people. In traditionally elected parliamentary institutions, voters are persuaded to surrender power by delegation to elected officials, after which voters have little control. Revolution, particularly after the Russian communist takeover in 1917, is frequently believed to be the opponent of democracy, the work of a conspiratorial minority, sinister in thought and ruthless in application, to overcome the will of the people. For Toller, the councils were to be a new addition and expansion of democracy, an addition to the traditional parliament. Spontaneously arousing from the revolution, the councils were a new, grassroots counterpart to parliamentary institutions representing the general will. The term “General Will” was first made by Rousseau, and the opinions of Geneva’s best-known political philosopher reflect Toller’s own political thought, or at least illuminate it well. The concept of the general will was first introduced in the Discourse on Political Economy and developed in the Social Contract. In a traditional elected parliamentary democracy, delegates are elected and hold political power. To Rousseau, simply having been elected to power does not mean that power is either morally legitimate or represents the best interests of the electorate. True sovereignty is always directed at the public good and speaks to the good of the society as a whole, not to a particular interest group. This would be to confuse it with the collection of individual wills that would put their own needs, or the needs of particular factions, above those of the general public: “There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter looks only to the common interest; the former considers private interest and is only a sum of private wills.” In an American context, Madison dealt with a similar problem in Federalist Number 10. What distinguished Toller’s views from both Madison and Rousseau’s was that both of the latter were writing in a precapitalist economy. Toller had read Marx, and, while not a profound political thinker like Marx or Madison, he knew enough to recognize that in an industrial state, parliaments are part of a faction that is in business to protect the sovereignty of capital over labor. In preindustrial time, the purpose of the state was to protect property and wealth. In the seventeenth century, commentators wrote of the English parliaments as a “bulwark of property.” In the eighteenth, the Founding Fathers wrote of the protection of “life, liberty and property.” As far back as ancient Rome, Cicero held that the purpose of the state was to protect private property. Toller realized that no elected

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parliament would have the temerity to attack such vested interests. He wished to have the councils expand democracy as an alternative and in association with a parliament. It would have been odd for him to have viewed traditional chambers as a critical way to promote his views, rather than as one means among many. Such opinions were viewed with undisguised hostility by Bavaria’s Majority Socialists, for whom a viable council system in any but the most restricted form was anathema. While Toller advocated complete council government, Erhard Auer, Eisner’s SPD Minister of the Interior, was successfully attempting to assert his control over the councils and narrowly circumscribe their powers. Herein lay the main difference between the Independents and Majority Socialists. For the USPD, the councils were to play a major part in the new state; the SPD, however, feared the councils could develop into a Soviet dictatorship as had happened in Russia. Initially, after Russia’s February revolution, the Bolsheviks had found some sympathy among the SPD. Lenin’s party, actively striving for peace, was noticed, particularly after the provisional government had disappointed those who wished an end to the war. At the same time, the Bolsheviks were in favor of parliamentary elections. They, therefore, appeared as the party of peace and democracy. After the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly by the Bolsheviks, SPD sympathy turned to distrust. The Bolsheviks, and the Soviets on which they established their government, became synonyms for anarchy, dictatorship, and oppression. 73 It was little wonder, then, that Johannes Timm, Bavarian Majority Socialist Minister of Justice, spoke for the whole party in opposing the predominance of the council idea: “Next to a legally constituted assembly, a workers’ council with machine-guns has no place.” 74 Eisner wished a postponement of Bavaria’s Landtag elections, but his Majority Socialist colleagues were unwilling to approve the Prime Minister’s procrastination. Although Eisner spoke of the delay as a time to educate the population for living democracy, mixed in with his noble phraseology was also an element of self-interest. Eisner recognized that his party would lose if elections were held soon. 75 The period of education was, therefore, to buy time to allow the USPD to obtain vital electoral support. On December 5, however, it was decided elections for Bavaria’s Landtag were to be held on January 12, 1919, one week before general elections for Germany’s National Assembly. 76 That Eisner could not postpone parliamentary elections and that his objective of integrating the councils with traditional branches of government were met with much hostility show that Toller’s more radical ideas on exclusion of parliament had little support. This was true even among most council members and was clearly seen when, on December 16, a National Congress of Councils meeting in Berlin overwhelmingly rejected a proposal that would have excluded elections to a National Assembly. 77 The result of such a vote in favor of elections to the National

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Assembly meant not only the suicide of the council system in which Toller placed such great expectations; it also benefited those moderate socialists and nonsocialist parties that opposed the economic and military reforms needed to democratize Germany. Toller, who was in Berlin at the time, initially hoped the National Congress of Councils would vigorously assert “the political will of the German revolution,” but he was soon disappointed: what instability, what ignorance, what an utter lack of any will to power that Congress showed! The German Congress of Councils voluntarily renounced all the power the revolution had so unexpectedly thrust into their hands. They threw it overboard and left the fate of the Republic to the chance results of a questionable election and an ignorant people. . . . The Republic had passed its own death sentence. 78

While the councils in Berlin had come to a consensus, events in Munich were becoming increasingly polarized and provided Toller with the opportunity to make his first public speech as a revolutionary politician. Reliable organs of public security had been weak in Munich since the revolution. Indeed, Eisner’s success in attaining power had been due, in large measure, to the inadequacy of security forces in the capital. News of unrest in Berlin provided the impetus for the creation of a civil guard (Bürgerwehr) to protect Munich from possible unrest during the upcoming January elections. There was much to be said for the establishment of such an organization, and there existed genuine concern among some in Eisner’s cabinet that existing security arrangements that, in large part, relied on the soldiers’ councils were inadequate. This was the view of Erhard Auer, who, along with Johannes Timm, issued a decree for the formation of a Bürgerwehr on December 27. 79 What made Auer’s action develop into “the most sensational incident since the Munich Putsch” 80 was the strong suspicion that the Bürgerwehr was a thinly veiled attempt to provide the armed force from which to launch a right-wing coup against the Eisner regime. As Toller baldly recorded, “This Defense Corps was the first fruit of the counterrevolution.” 81 A degree of substance was given to such charges when, soon after the November revolution, members of Munich’s middle class had begun to establish “order societies” (Ordnungsbünde) to organize forces hostile to the new government. 82 In early December, an ostensibly apolitical organization representing the city’s middle class had established ties with Rudolf Kanzler, an individual who was collecting men and arms for a possible Putsch. 83 In addition, Rudolf Buttmann, an ex-Bavarian army officer and later National Socialist, had been urging the formation of a Bürgerwehr to be used as a reactionary force to supplant the soldiers’ councils. 84 Particularly embarrassing for Erhard Auer was that on December 28, one day after the issue of the Bürgerwehr decree bearing his name, twenty members of Buttmann’s group were arrested and charged

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with gathering weapons for a counterrevolution. Although Auer’s hostility to Eisner was well-known, it is unlikely he had conspired with Buttmann to overthrow the regime. It is more probable that Auer was the victim of the machinations of others rather than a counterrevolutionary, “less a villain than a dupe.” 85 Nevertheless, Auer’s political blunder called forth the wrath not only of the radicals, who wished both his and Timm’s resignation, but also of his own party, which was quick to disassociate itself from the Minister’s actions. The whole issue was publicly debated in front of the Provisional National Council on December 30. Toller was the chief spokesman for Auer’s critics and explained that in a revolution whose essence was a “struggle between capitalism and socialism,” there could be no cooperation between socialists and “counterrevolutionary capitalistic police organs.” Whoever believed so was “either naïve or dumb.” The Bürgerwehr, clearly a counterrevolutionary instrument directed against the radicals, was a provocation to the proletariat that could only lead to civil war. Toller assembled much evidence of Buttmann’s intentions and Auer’s marked hostility to radicalism in Munich. Yet he was quick to voice his conviction that Auer did not intentionally support Buttmann’s plans; however, Toller continued: “it is significant that all counterrevolutionaries, all reactionaries gathered themselves around Auer. . . . We cannot tolerate that a Minister who had a share in as outspokenly a counterrevolutionary institution as the Bürgerwehr remain any longer in the government.” Toller concluded by asking for “unity of the socialist masses” and leaders in whom the masses could have faith. “We do not wish—this I must make clear—a civil war. We wish a new Germany, a socialist new Germany, a free people, free and respected in the community of nations.” As a result of the Bürgerwehr affair, Toller later introduced a resolution he hoped would promote socialist unity, which called for a “united front of socialism and the Republic together with a united, resolute revolutionary government against capitalism and imperialism.” 86 Eisner had already compromised with Auer before Toller’s speech. Rather than demanding his fellow Minister’s resignation, which he feared would lead to civil unrest only two weeks before elections, Eisner had Auer retract his approval of the Bürgerwehr. Reading the statement of compromise, Eisner asked the Provisional National Council to support the Cabinet since it was “after all, a Social Democratic regime.” Both Toller and Eisner had spoken of the need for unity, and after the Bürgerwehr affair the slogan of an Einheitsfront was “the keynote of Eisner’s personal leadership.” 87 Yet each defined unity in different ways. For Eisner, the Prime Minister concerned with holding his Cabinet together, the united front was an attempt for Ministers of different political views to hide their disagreements in public. For Toller, unhampered by the compromise needed for a Minister, the united front meant “concerted action against all counterrevolutionaries, resolution for the accomplish-

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ment of radical political and economic demands. . . . A unity of the socialist revolutionary masses is urgently needed against the united organizations of the bourgeoisie, capitalism, the press and the Center party.” 88 Where Eisner had compromised with Auer and allowed him to remain in the government, Toller, in a debate on January 2, indirectly asked for Auer’s resignation, explaining that Ministers who did not have the confidence of the workers must resign. 89 Toller further went on record for thorough socialization. However, as early as November 15, Eisner, realizing the weakened state of Bavarian industry, felt that it seemed “impossible at a time when the productive power of the land is nearly exhausted to transfer industry immediately to the possession of society. There can be no socialization when there is scarcely anything to be socialized.” 90 In Munich, then, as in Berlin, socialism was to be an ideal end, but not a present reality. Toller’s call for immediate socialization was, in part, an expression of his ideals, but it was also paradoxically an expression of Realpolitik. As he noted, socialization would convince the Entente that the “criminals” of 1914 who had been responsible for the war were no longer in power: “And believe me, the Entente will not offer the same terms to a truly revolutionary government as they would to a government in which representatives of the old, corrupt system sit.” 91 The result of the Bürgerwehr crisis was to add a degree of instability to Bavarian politics and point up the polarization of forces between conservatives and moderates on the one side and radicals on the other. Advocacy of the discredited Bürgerwehr was taken to mean hostility toward the councils; supporters of the militia, therefore, became counterrevolutionaries, representatives of Toller’s “old, corrupt system.” But while the affair gave good propaganda material for Bavarian radicals who supported the councils, it did not give them electoral support when elections were held on January 12. In this, Bavaria’s first election since 1912, an electorate newly expanded through liberalized franchise laws clearly repudiated the policies of the USPD, which received only 2.5 percent of the votes and 1.6 percent of the seats in the new Landtag. In contrast to this dismal showing, the Bayerische Volkspartei, a Catholic-dominated, middle-class party, received the largest percentage with 35 percent of the total vote and 36.6 percent of Landtag seats, while the SPD, running a close second, obtained 33 percent of the vote and 33.9 percent of the total seats. Kurt Eisner, who ran in thirty-nine constituencies, received only 17,302 votes, while his main opponent, Erhard Auer, received 40,269 running in only five constituencies. Toller, not unexpectedly, did even worse than Eisner and failed to obtain a seat in the provincial parliament receiving a mere 834–1/2 votes. 92 While the election was not a referendum on the council system, the results did show how little support a pure council government had. Those Bavarian parties most in favor of traditional parliamentary govern-

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ment had won a great victory; the party most identified with the councils, the USPD, lost. With such a clear rejection of radicalism, it might seem logical that Bavarian politics would achieve a measure of stabilization. Logic, however, seldom has entered into emotionally charged politics, and the elections served only to polarize further political extremes. The newly-founded Communist Party of Germany (Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (KPD), led in Bavaria by Max Levien, now saw no reason to enter into a united front. The possibility that the communists might support Eisner to prevent Erhard Auer from becoming head of the government had been made obsolete by the elections, and it was only a matter of time before the Eisner regime would be supplanted by an SPD-led coalition. Eisner’s policy of compromise now appeared discredited to the radicals. An article in the Münchener Post, jocularly entitled “The Socialist Unity Front,” showed how broken such unity was. Disputes between Gustav Landauer, who wished a greater role for the radicals, and Eisner, who now more than ever had to give in to the Majority Socialists, indicated how fragile socialist unity had become. A meeting between Eisner and the radicals degenerated into disorder, with each side exchanging insults. Little wonder, then, that Toller, who, because of his position as an Independent and a council supporter, attempted to mediate between the USPD and KPD and failed to stem a falling out of the two parties. 93 Eisner clearly realized that, because of the large SPD vote, grandiose conceptions on the future role of the councils were unrealistic. The idea of a Nebenparlament was now abandoned. Rather, Eisner began to speak of a more limited role for the councils as a bureaucratic adjunct of the executive. 94 But if Eisner was willing to make concessions on the councils, the radicals were characterized by their intransigence. A movement known as “Left Socialism,” consisting of the KPD and radical council members, went on record in rejecting as reactionary any limitation of the power of the councils. Under the direction of Levien, a resolution was accepted by the Left Socialists demanding the transformation of the councils into organs of government control. 95 An indication of the penetration of radicalism was a meeting of Bavarian councils held on January 21. In spite of the elections and their indication that most voters wished a restricted function for the councils, no member took this into account. Indeed, the feeling was that the councils should become a dominating or, at least, major element in the state. It was Toller who was the most outspoken. He made clear his hostility to the Landtag and admonished his colleagues not to be so inhibited by parliamentarianism. As he put it, “Basically the Landtag and councils are contradictory.” 96 As Toller’s statement hinted, polarization in Bavaria between parliamentarianism on the one side and radicalism on the other was becoming acute. Josef Hofmiller’s observation, “whoever agitates against the National Assembly is a Bolshevist,” 97 indicates that many middle-class parliamentarians immediately associated the councils with Bolshevism. For those who shared Toller’s view, on the

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other hand, anyone against the councils was a counterrevolutionary. To many, the choice appeared to be between a radical councils’ republic (“Bolshevism”) or traditional parliamentary assembly (“counterrevolution”). Eisner realized his weak position as Bavaria’s leader and that he would soon be forced to resign. In an attempt to avert this and gain support for his role as Prime Minister, he and Toller travelled to Bern on February 3 for the opening of the first postwar congress of the Second International. Here, Eisner hoped, he might become a spokesman for Germany, rally the support of world socialism, revive his popularity at home, and thereby retain his leadership of the revolution. Eisner became a practitioner of the new diplomacy, attempting to appeal over the heads of national and party leaders to the people. 98 Eisner was well received. He got an enthusiastic reception for his denunciation of militarism and Germany’s guilt for the war. Yet international socialism in 1919 was not an effective instrument on which to rely. Toller noted the underlying divisions at the congress and expressed his disappointment that “parties which could literally have conquered the world voluntarily sounded their death-knell. It was the shattering of a tremendous faith, a tremendous hope for humanity.” 99 Eisner’s attempt to play the new diplomacy was a failure. German Socialists were appalled and thought Eisner’s confession of German war guilt a disgrace. Eisner, aware of the denunciations that the Munich press was heaping upon him and of his deteriorating position back home, left Bern to travel back to Munich. Toller had gone from the congress at Bern to visit with friends in the Engadine and did not return to Bavaria until February 21: “At one of the stations I heard a Swiss porter outside shouting excitedly and in the carriage a German commercial traveler started cheering. I could not take in the words beating into my head. But at last I realized—Kurt Eisner had been murdered.” 100 There is every reason to believe that if Eisner had not been murdered, events in Bavaria would have stabilized. After his return to Munich, Eisner realized the uncertainty of his position and had prepared his resignation, which he planned to read on February 21 at the opening session of the Landtag. Had he done so, a new government dominated by Majority Socialists would have been formed. Although such a government would still have had to deal with radicalism, it would have been in a firmer position to do so than the Eisner regime. It was Eisner’s assassination by Count Arco Valley that threw Bavarian political life into confusion and revitalized radicalism. 101 It was Toller’s opinion that the consequence of Eisner’s murder was to convince many “that the idea of parliamentary government was bankrupt. The idea of a Council Republic had swept the masses.” 102 Toller’s last statement was more the result of wishful thinking than an accurate

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appraisal of the situation. At the time of the first Council Republic in April, the Bavarian KPD declined to take part, claiming that only the “masses” could make revolution and that the party rejected any government proclaimed from “a green table.” 103 The communist implication that a small clique with little outside support had established a Republic of Councils was valid. The council idea was limited to the Left Socialists, themselves a minority group in Bavarian political life. Even most council members had little desire for a council Republic but preferred a return to parliamentary procedure that would in some way make use of the councils without allowing them to dominate political life. Among the Left, the cry was raised to fulfill “Eisner’s legacy.” 104 Exactly what that legacy was remained in some doubt. Since Eisner was an advocate of the councils, it could mean all power to the councils. Since Eisner was also prepared to resign and hence recognize the authority of the Landtag, it could just as well mean parliamentarianism. Eisner’s legacy, then, was largely confusion. Nevertheless, his assassination clearly did reopen the question of the councils. On February 24, the Munich councils publicly proclaimed their desire to establish a Council Republic. 105 The ultimate form the state would take, however, was not decided by the Munich councils but by the General Congress of Bavarian Councils, which began its sessions one day later. Predictably, spokesmen for the SPD supported immediate restoration of the Landtag. It was an indication that Eisner’s murder had pushed the center of gravity to the Left, that even the Majority Socialists now spoke of giving vague concessions to the council system. Max Levien, speaking for the communists, proposed a council government that was to exclude the old parliamentary structure. There could, he concluded, be no compromise with the old regime. 106 It was Toller who, although agreeing with Levien on many points, attempted reconciliation between the two wings of socialism and reiterated the need for a united front. After appropriate words to Eisner’s memory, Toller distinguished developments in Bavaria from those in North Germany, “where there is an Empire without an Emperor.” It was the task of Munich to convince the world that Bavaria was making a clear break with the policy of Ebert, Scheidemann, and Noske and their alliance with Generals and to see that any new government in South Germany did not have representatives of the old system. He saw Eisner’s mistake in calling a Landtag too quickly and rejected the present Assembly for not having the will necessary to lead the Bavarian people. (This last assertion was greeted with cries of “Sehr wahr!”) Only a Council Republic could bring order, Toller continued. “Here is the great question: Council Republic or Parliamentary democracy.” With more hyperbole than objectivity, Toller asserted that “from the extreme Left to the extreme Right all are united that we must have quick administration through the councils.” He made clear his rejection of the SPD’s idea of using the councils as a

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transitional institution that, after a time, would yield to a parliament and vigorously stated that the councils would never allow the revolution “to move backward.” Here Toller returned to his unity theme, emphasizing that councils could never be established without the united will of the whole proletariat. He castigated both moderates and radicals for policies that made such unity difficult: moderates for their hostility to the communists and communists for wildly characterizing their opponents, even the USPD as counterrevolutionaries if they did not follow the party line of the KPD. Such polarization, he continued, could only lead to civil war as had happened in Berlin when Minister of Defense Gustav Noske used the army to suppress “brother proletarians.” Noske’s action in Prussia marked him as a representative of “capitalism and militarism.” Toller hoped Bavaria could become a beacon for Germany and Europe and give the world an example of “liberation from capitalism and militarism.” It was particularly necessary to convince those who wished to impose a vindictive peace on Germany that the new Germany would disassociate itself from the policies of the old. Toller concluded his address on an optimistic note, convinced that the council idea would establish itself, for “when an idea takes possession of a people, indeed of humanity, such an idea cannot be suppressed. This is the exact situation here in Bavaria. You can do what you wish, but this idea can never be killed. . . . Never forget the final goal: It is a question of world revolution.” 107 Toller’s speech, greeted with enthusiastic applause and cries of “Bravo,” indicated not only a degree of increased support for the councils but also showed Toller’s views of the revolution. His forthright advocacy of the councils placed him firmly in the radical camp. However, as his attempt to mediate between moderates and communists shows, he placed the ideals of “the revolution” above those of any particular party. While the revolution had gone bad in Berlin, he hoped Bavaria might save the German Revolution. Above all, he expected that events in Russia were but a first step to world revolution and that it was the task of Bavaria to plant the seeds of revolution in Central Europe. If it can now be seen that Toller’s long-range expectations for world revolution were misconceived, so also were his short-range plans for council government. A motion by the anarchist Erich Mühsam that Bavaria immediately declare itself a “socialist Council Republic” was defeated by 234 votes to 70. Over Toller’s objections, the Congress then approved an alternate motion calling for the recall of the Landtag. 108 Equally as disappointing for Toller was that the Majority Socialists and a part of the USPD had come to an agreement at Nuremberg. After intense negotiations, it was decided that the assembly would be reconvened and the councils were to have an advisory function as well as the right to hold a referendum on actions of the Landtag. 109

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When the accord was submitted to the Congress of Councils, it was clear the Independents were deeply divided. Some, such as Felix Fechenbach and Hans Unterleitner, felt there was little alternative to acceptance and urged their colleagues to think realistically. USPD radicals were in no mood for what they viewed as a betrayal of the revolution. Speaking for the radicals, Toller rejected the accord and participation in any government. He advised not acceptance but intransigence. “Go into opposition. Hold yourselves in readiness and wait for the moment when we can go into a third revolution.” 110 In spite of Toller’s threat, a show of hands had indicated a majority in favor of the accord. Bavaria again had an ostensible stable government, this time headed by the Majority Socialist Johannes Hoffmann. The new regime was plagued by the same economic conditions that had troubled every government since November—lack of coal, a large debt, and a great contingent of the unemployed—all of which made for social instability. Equally as ominous was news reaching Bavaria at the end of March that Béla Kun had established the world’s second Soviet Republic. There was little direct connection, however, between events in Hungary and those in Bavaria. Impetus for a Council Republic came not from Budapest or even from Munich, but from Augsburg. It was to the Swabian capital that many radicals had withdrawn after the establishment of the Hoffmann government. On Thursday, April 3, Ernst Niekisch, a left-wing SPD member, spoke to an assembly of radicals. Although on the Left of his party, Niekisch urged his audience to come to terms for a time with parliamentarianism until conditions had matured sufficiently to allow council government. The socialist regime of Hoffmann was “the only visible way.” Niekisch found little support for his views and was surprised at the radicalism of the assembly, which demanded the establishment of a Council Republic, alliance with Russia and Hungary, and full socialization. The assembly then decided formally to present their demands to authorities in Munich. 111 As with the first revolution of November, the old order was easily overthrown. Hoffmann had decided to reconvene the Landtag on Tuesday, April 8. Unaware of the new radical threat, he had gone to Berlin. Thus, when the Augsburg delegation arrived in Munich, the SPD, in the absence of its leader, was naturally unwilling to accede to radical demands. To this, the Zentralrat, the executive organ of the councils, responded by rescinding the convocation of the Landtag. Again, as with the November coup, decisive for the April Putsch was the failure of the Army to intervene. 112 Only this cooperation allowed the Munich citizenry to read in the morning papers of April 7 that Bavaria was now a Council Republic. Placards announced that the dictatorship of the proletariat was a reality and that a “true socialistic community” could now be formed. The Landtag, “that unfruitful manifestation of a worn-out bourgeois-capitalistic age,” was dissolved, the press socialized, and a Red

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Army was to be formed to protect the young Republic against “reactionary attempts from without and within.” Following the example of the Russian and Hungarian people, the Bavarian Council Republic extended fraternal greetings to these most recent of peoples’ democracies. Finally, it rejected cooperation with the “despised government of Ebert, Scheidemann, Noske, and Erzberger because under the banner of a socialistic Republic they follow the imperialistic, capitalistic, militaristic policies of the disgraced and destroyed government of Imperial Germany.” 113 Exactly why a Soviet was set up remains in some doubt. It was believed at the time, and has even been asserted since, that Toller had established the Soviet. 114 However, Toller was in Nuremberg when he first heard news of its proclamation, and he had no part in its establishment. 115 Actually, it was Ernst Schneppenhorst, Hoffmann’s Minister of Military Affairs, who first proposed the project. While Toller was in Nuremberg, Bavaria’s future was being decided during the early hours of April 5 in the Wittelsbach Palace. To the astonishment of most individuals there, Schneppenhorst, known as a foe of the councils, now insisted on the proclamation of a Council Republic. One of the Republic’s historians explains Schneppenhorst’s action as a desire to draw the communists into a coalition government that Schneppenhorst hoped would commit the party to official responsibility for its actions. “He could thereby achieve two objectives at once: keep the SPD in a position of authority and control the Communist threat.” 116 Others have asserted that Schneppenhorst called for a Council government knowing it would stand no chance of survival; thus his action was an attempt to eliminate radicalism once and for all. 117 Whatever his ultimate intentions, if Schneppenhorst desired to draw the communists into a government, he failed. The KPD declined to take part in a Putsch “proclaimed from a green table.” Speaking for the party, Eugen Leviné, noted that Noske had beaten down radicalism in other parts of Germany and that Bavaria was in no position to maintain an independent existence. 118 Left unsaid were that the communists were asked only to participate in a government, not to dictate to it. On hearing news of developments in Munich, Toller left Nuremberg. While Toller was travelling to the Bavarian capital, the SPD quickly repudiated Schneppenhorst’s action and declared their hostility to the new Republic. A session of the Zentralrat, at which Toller was present, voted in favor of a Council Republic even without Majority Socialist or communist support. While Toller had been a forceful advocate of council government, he realized the lack of support such a government had at the present time and at first opposed its proclamation. Later, he was to recognize the Council Republic for what it was, “a fool-hardy coup de main on the part of bewildered workers, an attempt to save the lost German revolution.” Yet inner tension made him hesitate to actively oppose his colleagues.

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Had a revolutionary party the right to leave the people in the lurch? Revolutionary leaders should not blindly follow the whims of the masses. They should guard against making mistakes. But was this merely a whim? Was it not already a fait accompli, only the results of which we could influence: The party leaders advise, but it is the people who act. At that moment the Council Republic was already proclaimed at Würzberg, Augsburg, Fürth, Aschaffenburg, Lindau and Hof. Long before this, we should have enlightened the people as to the true balance of forces in Germany. We had only ourselves to blame if they did not fully understand how things stood. 119

Although Toller recognized the weaknesses of the new regime, interests of “proletarian unity” made him agree to support it. 120 On April 8, Ernst Niekisch, chairman of the Zentralrat, resigned his position. As he curtly put it, the situation of the Republic was “untenable.” 121 The Hoffmann government had withdrawn to Bamberg, and there was the beginning of plans for an armed assault on Munich. In most of the cities Toller mentioned as favoring a Council Republic, the old legal order was soon restored, and only in the small area between Augsburg, Rosenheim, and Garmisch could Munich claim control over Bamberg. 122 Toller, aware as Niekisch of the Republic’s poor position, had hoped for a period of time in which the people could “come to an understanding of our aims. But events overwhelmed us. We were obliged to act.” 123 Toller now became Niekisch’s successor as Zentralrat chairman. As Niekisch later explained, Toller felt responsible to the workers and took his job out of a feeling of “noblesse oblige” (Ritterlichkeit). 124 Such feelings may have been admirable, but the council government that Toller led found little admiration from subsequent historians. For the communists, it was denounced as the “pseudo–Soviet Republic,” a product of “anarchistic Don Quixotes.” 125 Arthur Rosenberg characterized its leaders as “patently pathological.” Robert Waite describes the Republic as the “happy, irresponsible government of the coffee house anarchists” led by Ernst Toller, “the neurotic young poet and essayist.” 126 It is true; the first days of the regime did have a carnival air. As chairman of the Zentralrat, Toller had to endure the lines of people who crowded into his anteroom waiting to see him: “Each one of them believed the Council Republic had been expressly erected to satisfy his own private interests. . . . Unappreciated cranks submitted their own particular programs for the betterment of humanity, believing that at last their much scorned ideas would have a chance to turn Earth into Paradise.” 127 Toller himself was not immune to such idealism. With his approval, a sign was placed over the doorway of the new “People’s Theater” proclaiming that “the world must become a field of flowers in which everyone can pluck his share.” 128 During the short six-day existence of the

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Council Republic, the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten was full of articles on the “new art” appropriate for the new form of government. Gustav Landauer, Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction, proclaimed that “history, that enemy of civilization” was to be suppressed and that the University of Munich was to become a democratic community of Dozenten and students. 129 Franz Lipp, Foreign Minister and self-proclaimed friend of the Pope, assured everyone that the Pontiff would bless the weapons of the Republic and, in a telegram to the Pope, declared, “We want peace forever. Immanuel Kant. Zum ewigen Frieden, 1795, theses 2–5.” 130 Because of such antics, the Council Republic was subject to indiscriminate ridicule, its leaders accused of being more concerned with cultural matters than dealing with the pressing economic, social, and military dangers that threatened the government. It is impossible that in predominantly rural, conservative, and Catholic Bavaria, a Soviet would have survived even without attacks by Reich troops and Freikorps militia. However, genuine attempts were made to face problems. Regulations, proclamations, and orders were written and issued in feverish haste. Attempts were made to socialize the press and mines, institute a revolutionary tribunal, register living quarters, confiscate needed supplies of food, and form a Red Army. Toller’s name appeared under regulations controlling hotels and restaurants, rationing furnished rooms to allay the housing shortage, rules attempting to stop the outflow of capital from Bavaria, and decrees of general socialization. 131 Given the short existence of the Council Republic, such decrees were like dancing on quicksand, and Toller could do little to avoid sinking into the mire of Bavaria’s thwarted experiment in Soviet revolution. There was little any of the Republic’s leaders could have done to make their experiment a success. From the outset, the attempt was doomed, given the fact that the Republic could not survive as long as other parts of Germany did not follow the Bavarian example. After the failure of the January uprising of Spartacus agitators earlier in the year, all hopes for council government were lost. In April 1919, then, Munich was three months out of step with the rest of Germany and with the willingness of the Berlin government to repress radicalism, it was only a matter of time before Bavaria was forcefully brought back into harmony with the rest of the Reich. Toller, aware of the government’s weakness, was unwilling to abandon the Council Republic and remained true to his earlier program of a united front of all socialists. Cast into the role of a mediator, he suffered the fate of all unsuccessful mediators, denounced by all opposing factions. On April 7, after the communists had made known their decision not to take part in the government, one of the numerous “revolutionary assemblies” held at the Hofbräuhaus, one of the city’s largest breweries, unanimously accepted Toller’s resolution to extend an “urgent brotherly request” to the communists to reconsider their decisions. 132 Three days

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later, Toller renewed his call for unity of the “revolutionary proletariat.” 133 On April 12, he attended a unity congress at the Hofbräuhaus, but the KPD persisted in its intransigent attitude even though most of those present were in favor of a coalition with the communists. 134 The twists and turns of communist policy were tortuous. Led by Eugen Leviné, communists had rejected the April 7 government as a “pseudo–Soviet Republic” and demanded that power be transferred from the Zentralrat to the factory councils (Betriebsräte), where the party had some influence. Twenty-four hours later, however, the KPD decided to support the government but not actually enter it. While rejecting its leadership, the party was willing to defend the Republic against counterrevolutionary White guards. 135 On April 9, Toller was informed that the communists had called a meeting of radical shop-stewards in the Mathäserbräu, a beer-hall on Munich’s Karlsplatz. He addressed the gathering and again called on the party to “cooperate in saving the revolution.” He asserted that no revolution could succeed in Bavaria without peasant support and asked how the communists planned to obtain such needed cooperation. Admiration for the Russian revolution was still strong, and Leviné confidently spoke of bringing class warfare into the villages “as was done in Russia.” Toller utterly rejected the comparison with Russia, something to which he was later to return in his polemics against the KPD leadership. In spite of Toller’s oratory, the communistdominated meeting appointed itself leader of a new government and promptly had Toller arrested. The attempted Putsch soon proved to be a failure. A communist call for a general strike went unheeded, and, after a coup de théâtre, Toller was “saved” by troops loyal to the council government. The new communist government fell as quickly as it had been established. 136 As the Munich revolutionaries were engaging in intrafactional quarrels, both Ebert and Hoffmann were making plans to overthrow the Council Republic. Hoffmann’s plans included a potential blockade of the city. If this proved inadequate, he was willing to resort to a military assault. The latter alternative was warmly supported by Ebert, who telegraphed, “If the economic measures you have in mind do not succeed in short order, a military procedure seems to be the only possible solution.” The knowledgeable Reich president ominously added that “experience in other places has taught us that the quicker and more thoroughly this is done, the less resistance and bloodshed are to be expected.” 137 Aware that military action was being planned, Toller was also aware that the “Council Republic was doomed.” 138 The inadequacy of its leaders, the failure of “socialist unity,” the disorganization of administration and increasing food shortages convinced him that any armed conflict between Munich and Bamberg would result in a civil war from which the Council Republic was sure to be defeated. In an attempt to avert such useless bloodshed, Toller began the first of a series of futile negotiations

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with the Hoffmann government. Secret talks between representatives of the Bamberg authorities and Toller had already started before April 12 but broke down as a result of yet another Putsch in Munich. 139 On Palm Sunday, April 13, a detachment of troops loyal to Hoffmann broke into the Wittelsbach Palace and arrested Erich Mühsam and Franz Lipp. Toller, warned of a possible Putsch the preceding day, hid and managed to avoid arrest. 140 By mid-morning, Munich’s citizens were informed that the Zentralrat was deposed and the Hoffmann government was to resume its power. However, like the attempted communist coup three days earlier, the Palm Sunday action was a failure. Reinforcements the Putschists expected did not arrive, and by evening the counterrevolutionary troops had been forced to retreat. While the Council Republic had survived, its leadership did not. Scarcely a week had passed since the communists had declared that any council government was bound to fail, that conditions were against it, and that its formation would rebound to the benefit of reactionaries. Communist reasoning ultimately proved true, but the Sunday victory over the “counter-revolution” convinced the KPD that it now had mass support. A meeting at the Hofbräuhaus conducted by Leviné voted to constitute itself the Factories’ and Soldiers’ Councils of Munich (Betriebs und Soldatenräte Münchens). Toller’s government was declared overthrown and executive power given to a fifteen-man “Action Committee” with Leviné at its head. In place of the “pseudo-Soviet,” a “real Soviet” was established and a state of emergency decreed. 141 After being informed of the “election” of the new government by the Factories’ and Soldiers’ Council, Toller gave up his position as leader of the Zentralrat. However, as he later confessed, he expected little from the new government “particularly because in my view the new government was not sufficiently acquainted with Bavarian conditions.” Considerations of “proletarian unity” made him keep his doubts to himself. 142 He demanded the new government support the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialize factories, banks, and estates. So long as it met his conditions, he would lend the regime his support; if not, Toller was prepared to “turn to the revolutionary masses.” 143 Yet whatever economic policies the government followed were as irrelevant to the situation as the will of the “revolutionary masses.” The Republic would only survive if it managed to defeat the troops Hoffmann was assembling at Bamberg. Plans to form a Red Army to protect the Republic had been entrusted to Rudolf Egelhofer, a twenty-six-yearold ex-sailor. Egelhofer had promised ten days’ advance pay to anyone who volunteered to carry a rifle. Up to 20,000 individuals may, at one time or another, have joined Egelhofer’s Army, but this was probably less from conviction than a desire for cash. After the hopelessness of the Soviet position became known at the end of April, desertions were numerous, and an effective armed force was never organized. 144

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The imminent siege of Munich presented Toller with a painful dilemma. As he wrote: A year ago, when I had been arrested for complicity in the strike, I had refused to wear a uniform or carry arms. I hated force and had vowed to suffer from force rather than employ it myself. Was I to break this vow now that revolution had come? I had to break it. The workers had put their trust in me and made me their leader and I was responsible to them. If I refused to defend them now, if I called on them to renounce force of arms, would I not be betraying their trust? If I stopped to think of the possible bloody consequences of every thing I did, I should have refused all office. 145

When the attack on Munich started, Toller preferred to serve as a “simple soldier.” 146 However, the Factories’ and Soldiers’ Council insisted that a politically well-known individual assume field command of the army, and with great reluctance Toller was forced into accepting a position for which he recognized his total lack of qualifications. 147 Thus, on April 16, the pacifist Ernst Toller was made divisional commander of the Red Army of Bavaria, and, surprisingly, it was under his leadership that the Soviet won its only victory at Dachau and Toller became the closest thing the Republic had to a national hero. The battle at Dachau is all the more remarkable when considering the quality of his opponents. They were experienced troops, formidable fighting units that had been recently fighting Polish armies in Silesia. A curt order from Egelhofer informed Toller: “Dachau to be stormed and taken under cover of preliminary artillery bombardment.” 148 Toller, refusing to use artillery for fear of killing innocent civilians, personally led a charge on Dachau and routed Hoffmann’s forces. This was an impressive performance for someone so young with so little military experience. As his troops took control of the city, Toller was unable to match the ruthlessness with which White guards were to take Munich the following month. Requested by Egelhofer to execute prisoners his troops had captured, Toller tore up his order “believing that generosity to the conquered should be the first axiom of revolutionary conduct.” Captured enemy troops were treated as misled friends who “would soon recognize the justness of our cause and see they had been deluded”: “Not that civil war was not often brutal. I knew in Berlin counterrevolutionaries had murdered Red prisoners in cold blood; but we were fighting for a better world. We were demanding humanity and we had to show humanity ourselves.” 149 Even Colonel Ritter von Epp, the notorious Freikorps leader, was amazed at Toller’s surprising military talent and gave him full credit for the Dachau victory. 150 After the capture of Dachau, Toller was hailed as the “Conqueror of Dachau,” the “Red King of Bavaria.” Without doubt, Toller, who enjoyed being the center of attention, was not averse to such accolades. By the communists, the battle at Dachau was hailed as a “great victory,” and the

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action committee confidently asserted that now there was no “military danger.” 151 Yet the victory at Dachau was the beginning of the end for the Soviet. Hoffmann’s confidence that he could take Munich without outside aid received a rude shock by the humiliating defeat his soldiers had sustained, and he was now forced to notify Berlin of his need for additional troops. By April 23, the Bavarian general von Möhl was in command of 35,000 men prepared for an assault on Munich. 152 In addition to its poor military position, the Soviet was suffering from the same economic conditions that had plagued all Bavarian governments since November 1918. Attempts to deal with this remained as ineffective as those of the Council Republic. Moreover, Toller’s idea of a united front had fallen apart. Opposing parties preserved their sectarian predilection for cultivating differences. Communist and noncommunist radicals began to engage in a falling-out in which each side exchanged mutual insults and recriminations. By the end of Easter, it was clear to the sensible that the Soviet was neither socially, politically, economically, nor militarily in any position to continue. In spite of this, the KPD urged resistance and hoped that a miraculous military victory could save the revolution. Toller disagreed profoundly with such a policy: “We have no right to call the workers to battle when the only prospect was certain defeat; no right to call the workers to shed their blood for no purpose at all . . . it was our duty to save what we could for the workers.” 153 In Munich, an opposition movement in the Factory Council was being led by Emil Männer, the government’s Commissioner of Finance. At an April 26 meeting at the Hofbräuhaus, Toller resigned his command, feeling he could no longer be responsible for the foolishness of the executive council and General Staff. In his resignation, he was quite clear in his attacks on the Bavarian leaders, indicting them as a disaster for Bavaria, a clear danger to the Council movement, and incompetent. 154 Together, Männer and Toller challenged the communist leadership. Both accused the KPD of avoiding negotiations at a time when conciliation might save the city from the certain ravage by White troops and of keeping the true economic position of the Soviet from the public. Toller indicted communist leaders for failing to recognize the peculiar nature of Bavarian problems. In a thinly veiled reference to Leviné, who had been born in Russia, Toller asked his audience to “remember 1789 and its consequences. Think of how the great revolution was destroyed by the Corsican, Napoleon. Whenever foreign elements attain leadership of a revolution, the dictator follows.” Toller continued that he was only in favor of dictatorship of the proletariat, one based not on hate but on love. 155 A few hours later, Toller again emphasized this point: “With each action it is not questioned whether it suits the situation of our peculiar circumstances, the views of the great majority of our workers, the cares for our present and future, but only if it conforms to the teachings of Russian Bolshevism. . . . We [are] Bavarians are not Russians.” 156

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Whether Toller’s audience knew, or could certainly discern from Toller’s cultivated North German accent, that the speaker was a non-Bavarian is not recorded. Emotionally, Toller further went on record as viewing the communist government “as a catastrophe for the Bavarian workers. Its leading men are for me a danger to the council idea . . . To support them means to endanger the revolution.” 157 Convinced by Toller’s views, the Factory Council gave a vote of no confidence to the communist government and commissioned Toller to begin immediate negotiations with Hoffmann. 158 Officially, at least, the communist Soviet was at an end. Yet as far as the communists were concerned, there could be no peaceful solution, and they contemptuously rejected all attempts at negotiations. 159 In addition, efforts to mitigate von Möhl’s harsh demands for unconditional surrender were a failure. On the first day of May, enemy troops surrounded Munich as they prepared for their last assault. The capture of the city would perhaps not have been so savage had it not been for the senseless execution of ten hostages held at Munich’s LuitpoldGymnasium. After his address to the Factory Council, Toller, in a cyclonic frenzy, pleading with whoever would listen, had attempted to free all hostages and had finally argued with Egelhofer for signing execution orders. Toller had found among the still-living hostages Count Arco Valley, Eisner’s murderer. Toller, who admired and loved Eisner, was generous in even saving Arco’s life. It was a tribute to Toller’s courage, compassion, and thinking under great pressure that one of the invading generals in the siege, Max Freiherr von Speidel, characterized Toller as “a brave, respectable young man. If anyone wishes to start a petition for amnesty for him, I will sign it.” 160 On hearing of the murder of the ten, Toller denounced the shootings as “cowardly murder” and a “lunatic act” and immediately went to the gymnasium to free the remaining six prisoners. The immediate consequences of this inflammatory incident were exceedingly grim, and right wing reaction was seen at its most hysteric pitch. News of the hostage murder provided a convenient excuse for invading troops and Freikorps to engage in irresponsible brutality, which reached its climax when twenty-one innocent victims, mistaken for Red soldiers, were murdered. Estimates of those killed in defense of Munich vary between 600 and 1,200. Funeral homes were unable to cope with the disposal of bodies, and the stench of decaying corpses that littered the city’s streets became a health hazard. 161 Those former leaders of the Soviet unfortunate enough not to have escaped immediate arrest were either placed in jail for terms up to fifteen years or were executed. Those who fell into neither category were less fortunate. Landauer, so an eyewitness told Toller, was captured, slapped about, beaten to the ground, then shot two or three times by a sergeant who finally trampled him to death. Utopia was over; the revolution of love had been put down.

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Disturbingly, this revolution of love, which Toller not only participated in but led, may have been formative to the development of the Nazi Party. For there were in Munich during that April of 1919 two contradictory leaders—one was Ernst Toller, the other Adolf Hitler. Hitler loved Munich. The fifteen months he had spent there just before the war were “the happiest and by far the most contented” of his life, as he later wrote in Mein Kampf. Munich was the city he was “more attached . . . to [than] any other spot of earth in this world.” 162 We do not know why Hitler became a radical anti-Semite. Given the institutionalization of anti-Semitism in European culture by the Church, both Protestant and Catholic, it would have been unusual for most Europeans not to have been at least mildly anti-Semitic. Hitler received his first serious introduction in the poisonous atmosphere of prewar Vienna, quite possibly the most virulent anti-Jewish city on the Continent. 163 He was, certainly before 1914, an opponent of Jewish culture and religion. But this in itself would not have been unusual. Many were. What was unusual was his conversion to a radical anti-Semitism after the end of the war. Hitler, like Toller, was a product of a lost war, revolution, economic chaos, and civil war. He was in Munich during those bleak April days of 1919 and witnessed close-up the consequences. Already predisposed to anti-Semitism, he had surely been aware of the disproportionate number of Jews who had led the Bavarian Soviet, which may have been decisive in solidifying his radical anti-Semitism. Hitler certainly held the Jews responsible for Munich’s chaos, a development that, as he writes, “finally led to a dictatorship of the Councils, or, better expressed, to a passing rule of the Jews, as had been the original aim of the instigators of the whole revolution.” 164 There is no direct evidence that Hitler ever heard Toller speak. But absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. What we do know was that Toller was known as a particularly effective public speaker, knew how to rouse an audience, and was charismatic. As with any effective speaker, Toller knew it was less what he said than how he said it. Munich in 1919 was a small city by contemporary standards, only a few hundred thousand. Hitler was certainly interested in the city’s political situation, and it would not be surprising if he had heard Toller or Eisner speak, much though he would have disagreed with what they said. In Mein Kampf, Hitler notes that his power as a speaker only revealed itself soon after the Soviet’s fall. Significantly, his first recorded attempt at public speaking in the city was an anti-Semitic tirade. Hitler’s career as an effective public speaker, a skill that directly led to power, had now officially begun: “For at once I was offered an opportunity of speaking before a larger audience; and the thing that I had always presumed from pure feeling without knowing it was now corroborated: I could speak.” 165 His speaking ability became the way to political power. He was able to convince himself and to convince others. He had learned how

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to make an impression by his presence to crowds. He had learned the use of body language to convey his convictions. He suddenly had an assurance, an ability to connect and to convince, to be theatrical, and was a master at exploiting emotions. There is no recorded evidence or testimony of Hitler’s ability as a speaker before 1919, neither from his boyhood friend August Kubizek nor from anyone who knew Hitler during the war. He seems only to have acquired this after the fall of the Bavarian revolution. Of all the leaders of that revolution, only two have been noted for their great ability as public speakers: Ernst Toller and Kurt Eisner. The attempt to make a connection between Toller and Eisner and the fledgling public speaker Adolf Hitler may bear some attention. With the end of the revolution, orders were issued for Toller’s arrest and a price of ten thousand marks offered for his capture. 166 Placards announcing the reward were posted all over Munich and soon penetrated into even the most remote of Bavarian villages. The search for Toller was so intense that it nearly resulted in the potential death of a noted founder of the Frankfurt School, Max Horkheimer. Toller and Horkheimer had frequented the same literary circles in Munich and met at an atelier of Germaine Krull for political and artistic discussion. In the spring of 1919, Horkheimer started at the university reading in psychology, philosophy, and economics. “Don’t believe the lies about Munich . . . madness and injustice are not the order of the day,” he innocently wrote to his girlfriend during the rule of the Soviet. He was later nearly killed and only had to wait a few days to discover how naïve he had been. Horkheimer had been a supporter of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, founders of the German Communist Party. After the revolution, Horkheimer gave shelter to former members of the Soviet, Tobias Axelrod and Willi Bittrich, helping them flee to Austria, where they were later arrested and sent back to Germany. Horkheimer himself was arrested two times by local authorities when patrols mistook him for Toller. He was about to be beaten before he managed, with difficulty, to convince his potential attackers of their error of identification. 167 It is probable that had Toller been immediately captured, he too would have experienced that swift, on-the-spot justice that invading troops reserved for those of differing political opinions. He was offensive to everything they hated: a non-Bavarian, a Jew, a writer, a pacifist, a socialist, and a political agitator. After the fall of the Soviet, Toller was an unpopular figure. Indeed, according to Ernst Niekisch, Toller had become one of the most hated men in Bavaria, and, after his eventual arrest, Toller himself was sure he would meet an end similar to Gustav Landauer, beaten to death. 168 Toller spent three weeks in hiding, running from capture for weeks, and these weeks, mercifully, allowed political passions to cool. On June 4, after his betrayal by a fellow student, Toller was merely arrested and taken to the Stadelheim prison where Gustav Landauer was murdered. 169

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Toller was brought to trial before a Munich court under the treason provisions of the old Imperial code and accused of attempting to overthrow the legal government of Hoffmann. 170 The composition of the court did not augur well for an impartial hearing. The judge had recently passed a sentence of death on Eugen Leviné. It was an action that Toller, in his accustomed emotionalism, had criticized in an open letter in which he accused the judges and courts of representing class interests rather than those of impartial justice. 171 Numerous writers, among them Romain Rolland and Thomas Mann, came to Toller’s defense and were willing to attest to his good character. Even Wolfgang Heine, Prussian Minister of the Interior, in a written statement to the court, observed that Toller, “an indefatigable believer in peace,” was not responsible for the bloody events that followed in the wake of the suppression of the Soviet Republic. Toller’s “intensified idealism,” Heine continued, was carried away by the chaotic events of April 1919. “Such a political development,” continued the sympathetic official, “must have made for confusion in the young, immature poet’s soul.” 172 Because of such testimony and Toller’s attempts to prevent the murder of hostages, the court did not impose the maximum sentence. Toller was found guilty and sentenced to five years at the fortress of Niederschönenfeld. He had committed treason, but from “honorable intent.” 173 Toller’s involvement in the Bavarian revolution was the most political part of his life. Politics is not only an art of the possible; it is also an art of controversy, and it is, therefore, not surprising that Toller’s role in the confused politics of Bavaria was also the most controversial of his career. Quantitatively, more has probably been written on his activity in 1918 and 1919 than on any other time of his life. Unfortunately, such an expenditure of words has resulted in more polemic than history and has consequently produced more heat than light. To Bavaria’s citizenry, Toller provided a scapegoat for the problems associated with the Soviet Republic. The Prussian-born Toller was bitterly denounced for his attempts to change society. During the Council Republic, an announcement “To the population of Munich” promised the Republic was to bring a new order. 174 In the end, the Republic brought only confusion and civil war. Many were quick to accuse Toller of bringing such chaos. Wrote a fellow student of Toller: “He, the foreigner, hardly twenty-six, an immature, confused person, full of fanatical pathos, helped to throw the Bavarian capital into terrible suffering. Intoxicated with ideas of the happiness of humanity, he extended his hands to others and helped conjure up chaos.” 175 However, the chaos that resulted was less because of Toller—who, in fact, did everything he could to avoid bloodshed—than of circumstances over which he had no control. Although Toller frequently has been wrongly identified as a communist, the most severe criticism of his activity during the Bavarian revolution has come from communist historians. 176 Ideologically, he has been

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denounced for his failure to follow the communist party line, his inexperience in proletarian class struggle, and his inadequate knowledge of communist revolutionary theory. 177 On a practical level, he has been accused of betraying the Republic through his negotiations with the Hoffmann government. As a military leader, he has been denounced for failing to follow up his victory at Dachau and for “throwing great confusion into the ranks of the Red Army” by giving up his command. “In the interest of historical truth . . . ,” writes Toller’s communist critic, “we can draw no positive portrait of the political and military activity of Ernst Toller in the Soviet Republic.” 178 Such criticism is easily refuted. As far as Toller’s decisions while head of the army are concerned, it makes little sense to castigate him for failing to follow up his victory at Dachau. To do so is to confuse the momentary tactical advantage won by Toller with the strategic impossibility of a Soviet Republic. With a reliable army and suitable political conditions, it might have been possible, although doubtful, for the Bavarian revolution to have spread to other parts of Germany. However, with the failure of the communist Putsch in January and the lack of sufficient manpower for the Bavarian Red Army to hold Munich, Toller’s “failure” was based on a realistic appraisal of Bavarian conditions. As Allan Mitchell, the Bavarian Soviet’s historian, observes: “To make much of one Red Army officer’s order to his men to retreat is to obfuscate what was essential about the history of the Bavarian Soviet Republic: its economic and military situation was entirely hopeless.” 179 Behind the dilemma of what to do after deposing the Hoffmann government lay fundamental economic and social problems that made it impossible for any leader to have erected a viable government and undertaken a long-range program. It was Toller’s recognition of this hopelessness that led him to attempt to peacefully liquidate the Republic by negotiation. To call this “treason” is to raise the question (ultimately unanswerable) whether a realistic recognition that military defeat was certain and a desire to save as many lives as possible is a “betrayal of the working class.” Toller may have made mistakes, but he did not cause the ultimate end of the Soviet. This was done by events Toller could not control. The calumnies communist historians cast upon him are undeserved. “For what is merit in the writer may well be a vice in the statesman and the very qualities which go to make up great literature can lead to catastrophic revolutions.” 180 Tocqueville’s words clearly have relevance to Toller’s experience in the Bavarian revolution. Beginning as a revolution of love and ending as a tragedy, events in Munich signified the conclusion of a stage of the revolution Berlin had reached in January. From the outset, Toller had recognized the hopelessness of the situation, yet he found himself involved in an enterprise he knew would fail. Toller was viciously attacked from the radical Right to the radical Left. Both

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were amusingly well-trained in interpretive flexibility. To the Right, and to the jingoism of truculent old Teutonic rustics of the Bavarian Stammtisch, he was seen as a raging Bohemian Bolshevik: knife clenched between rotted and bloody teeth, spittle dripping from his lips, cackling with malignant glee, the anarchical expressionist ready to murder good German men and women. To the Left, he could not be forgiven for not resisting “to the end” and for his humanitarian action in preventing needless deaths. For Franz Pfemfert, far left-wing editor of the intellectual periodical Die Aktion, Toller was an “ambitious, politically naïve mama’s boy,” “a coward totally lacking in dignity.” Toller’s dilemma in the revolution was to attempt to unite his ideals with the compromise required by the politician. Full of illusions, young and naïve, Toller was forced to confront the political milieu in all its hard reality. Involuntarily, he watched the world to which he was emotionally bound fall apart. A pacifist, he found it necessary to renounce pacifism. An antimilitarist, he found himself an army commander and coerced to use violence to save a revolution that was to be based on love and nonviolence. Believing that “it is the virtue of the socialist revolution to be magnanimous and kind,” he had caused blood to be shed. 181 Antipathetic to violence, he had, nevertheless, become caught up in its center. Inexperienced and hostile to politics, he yet penetrated its main dilemma: “Whoever wishes to take part in politics . . . must clearly know that the consequences of his actions are determined by forces other than his own good intentions.” 182 The revolution had taught Toller what separated politics from ideals. Frantically, he cried out his newly found knowledge: “Politician and artist, politician and man of religion, politician and moralist, I know at last what separates them in their innermost being. No palliative, no compromise can help.” 183 After idealistic ethics had clashed forcefully with revolutionary practice, Toller became increasingly depressed and disillusioned with many of his former ideals. Before the revolution, he believed in humanity because he loved it; after the revolution, he sadly noted, he only pitied it. 184 Writing in 1921, he confessed he no longer believed in a Wandlung to a new mankind: “More than ever I feel the sense of the tragic words of Pindar: Man becomes what he is.” 185 Meditating in the loneliness of his prison cell, Toller mused that perhaps Max Weber had been right when he told him the only logical way of life for those determined never to overcome evil with force was that of St. Francis: Must the man of action always be dogged by guilt? Always? The masses, it seemed, were impelled by hunger and want rather than by ideals. Would they still be able to conquer if they renounced force for the sake of an ideal? . . . As an individual a man will strive for his own ideals even at the expense of the rest of the world. As mass-man social impulses sweep him toward his goal even though his ideals have to be

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Oppressed by the disheartening experience that so harassed and bewildered him, Toller gave dramatic expression to his inner conflict in Masse Mensch, “one of the plays that made expressionism famous.” 187 Toller wrote the play in a two-day fit of creative activity and mesmeric urgency in his prison cell. As he explained to his producer: Masses and Man in its entirety is an imaginative play which was sweated out of me at fever-heat in two and a half days. . . . Those two nights which I had to spend—one of the penalties of life in gaol—in a dark cell were abysses of anguish: I was, as it were scourged with images. In the morning I sat down at my table and did not stop until my fingers, numb, trembling, would work no longer. Nobody was allowed to come into my cell. I would not have it cleaned. In ungovernable anger I turned on my comrades who kindly wanted to help me or to ask me something. Afterwards I was like an emptied vessel; for days I lay in bed and scarcely knew what I had written. 188

The drama centers on the conflict of an idealistic intellectual, The Woman, who wishes to save humanity, and the masses, as yet unready for salvation, who are represented by a character called The Nameless One. The Woman, a middle-class pacifist now in the service of the workers, opposes the violence of The Nameless One. Wishing a nonviolent general strike that she hopes will overthrow an unjust society, the intellectual is opposed by those who advocate violent revolution. For The Woman, The Nameless One, who wishes violence and revenge, is a “bastard child of war,” who would merely shift bloodshed from international battlefields to those of internal war between capitalists and workers. Like Toller’s Friedrich, The Woman initially views the masses as the repository of all virtue: “You are the Masses. You are right.” However, unlike Friedrich, she finds it impossible to appeal to man’s rationality. The innate brutality and suspiciousness of the masses she wishes to save cause them to arrest her as a traitor. The Woman, potential leader of a new society, is not only without followers; but her pacifism is alien to the irrational hate of the people she so willingly serves. The attempted revolution fails. Escaping the revolutionary tribunal, The Woman is placed on trial by the victorious counterrevolution and accused of collaboration in the murder of hostages. Seduced by the violence of The Nameless One, she had condoned the use of violence and now willingly is prepared to pay the penalty and in despair confesses that the masses are not ready for Wandlung: The masses are not holy. Force made the masses; Injustice of possession made the masses. The masses are instinct, necessity, And credulous humility, Revenge and cruelty;

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The masses are blind slaves And holy aspiration. The masses are a trampled field, A buried people.

In a final argument with The Nameless One, The Woman indicts those willing to kill for mankind and ready to sacrifice human life to dogma. Yet Toller’s Woman was still not ready to renounce the possibility of a new society. Beneath the violence and irrationality of man that she had found, she still sees some faint hope for regeneration: “Set free in the masses their humanity. / Set free in the masses their community.” Although disillusioned with mankind, The Woman can still go to her death an optimist. If reality has shown false the view that the masses are good, she comforts herself with the idea that man can at least try to be good: “Men grope for goodness. / Even their evil doings wear the mask of goodness.” For the rest of his life, the conflict Toller presented in Masse Mensch was to haunt him with increasing frequency. The precarious synthesis the youth in his twenties presented was less and less viable in the man of his thirties and forties. In the end, it was not the idealistic Woman who was to have the last word but the more practical Nameless One: “The rough wind at the gate will cure you! Hurry! Time is short.” 189 Ernst Toller was cast in the role of a tragic hero in the Bavarian revolution. What Toller painfully learned from his participation was that as a pacifist he should despise power and not resort to force; yet he who abjured violence was forced to be violent. The lesson was: to act is to suffer. 190 Instead of nonviolence, the revolution ended with a bloody reprisal, with Toller desperately caught up in the inferno. Frantically tearing execution orders, attempting to save lives and stop bloodshed, he was, in the end, denounced by all sides for his concern, cast into the unwilling role of the sorcerer’s apprentice, unable to control the demonic spirits he had so unwittingly evoked. For the next twenty years, with his visions of a new Germany, he wandered pitifully, like a self-blinded Oedipus, unable to find that which he so ardently wished. Toller remained what Max Weber said of him at his trial: one whom God in his wrath made a politician. 191 NOTES 1. “Ernst Toller von Ernst Toller,” Berliner Tageblatt, February 12, 1929, 2. 2. “Ernst Toller von Ernst Toller,” 3. 3. Ernst Toller, Letter “To Tessa” 12.11.20, in Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961), 199. Hereafter referred to as PBDG. 4. Anthony Phelan, The Weimar Dilemma: Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985); Richard Dove and Stephen Lamb, eds., German Writers and Politics, 1918–1939 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, 145.

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5. Thomas Mann, Gladius Dei, in Stories of Three Decades (New York: Vintage Books, 1930), 181–82. 6. Gegenwartig I. Staatsanwalt Lieberich. June 4, 1919, Staatsarchiv für Oberbayern, St. Anw. München I, Nr. 2242/II, 3. Hereafter referred to as SAO. This was a deposition Toller gave after the failure of the Bavarian Soviet. 7. “Rektorat an das K. Staatsministerium des Innerem,” SAO, 3–4. 8. Arthur Rosenberg, Imperial Germany: The Birth of the German Republic, 1871–1918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 211. 9. Rosenberg, Imperial Germany, 212. 10. See “Vorbereitung des Münchener Munitionsarbeiterstreiks vom Januar 1918 (Nach unveröffentlichen Geheimakten 4), Monatshefte 21 (1924): 28. 11. Quoted in Hans Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution zur Räterrepublik in München (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1959), 1–2. 12. Ernst Toller, preface to Look Through the Bars: Letters from Prison, Poems and a New Version of “The Swallow Book” (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937), xi. 13. Abschrift der Ludwig Maximilian Universität an der Stellvertreter. Generalkommando I. b. A. K. Betrff: Friedensbewegung, February 5, 1918, SAO, 4. 14. Ernst Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 83. 15. Oskar Maria Graf, Wir sind Gefängene: Ein Bekenntnis aus diesem Jahrhundert (Munich: Drei Masken, 1927), 338. 16. Otto Zarek, German Odyssey (London: Jonathan Cape, 1941), 86–87. 17. Rosenberg, Imperial Germany, 215. 18. Auszugsweise Abschrift c. 24. 18, SAO, 1–2. 19. Abschrift c. 24. 18 SAO, 2–3. Ernst Muller-Meiningen, Aus Baÿerns schwersten Tagen (Berlin: W. de Gruÿter, 1923), 190. 20. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 88. 21. See Richard Shepparf, “Artists, Intellectuals and the German Independent Socialist Party,” in German Writers and Politics, edited by Dove and Lamb. 22. Oskar Maria Graf, “Theresienwiese November 1918: Eine Erinnerung an Felix Fechenbach,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, November 9, 1968. For Eisner, see Jesse Rusell and Ronald Cohn, Kurt Eisner (Edinburgh: Lennex Corporation, 2012). 23. Allan Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria 1918–1919: The Eisner Regime and the Soviet Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), 62. 24. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 36. 25. Paul Pörtner, “The Writers’ Revolution: Munich, 1918–1919,” Journal of Contemporary History 3, no. 4 (1968): 143. 26. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 36. 27. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 103. 28. See George Mosse, “Left-Wing Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic,” in Germans and Jews: The Right, the Left, and the Search for a “Third Force” in Pre-Nazi Germany (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1970), 180. 29. “Ansprache anlässlich der Revolutionsfeier im National-theater am 17. November 1918,” Die neue Zeit, November 18, 1918, 35. 30. Gustav Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus (Berlin: Cassirer, 1919), 1. For general studies of Landauer, see Charles Maurer, Call to Revolution: The Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1971), and Eugene Lunn, Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). 31. Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, 5. 32. Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, 93. 33. 33 Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, 46. 34. Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, 58. 35. Landauer, Aufruf zum Sozialismus, 62. 36. Gustav Landauer, “Ansprache an die Dichter,” in Der Aktivismus, 1915–1920, edited by Wolfgang Rothe (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1969), 109–15. 37. Ernst Toller, “Aus verbrannte Büchern,” Die neue Weltbühne 29 (1933): 1049–50.

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38. Ernst Toller, “An Appeal” from The Young Workers of Germany. Typed manuscript. New York Public Library, Manuscripts Division, 2. 39. Walter Sokel, The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth-Century German Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968), 117. 40. Walter Laqueur, Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement (New York: Basic Books, 1962), 118. 41. Ernst Toller, Quer Durch: Reisebilder und Reden (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1930), 125. 42. Kurt Pinthus, “Zur jungsten Dichtung,” Die weissen Blätter, December 1915, 1509. 43. Kurt Hiller, Geist werde Herr (Berlin: E. Reiss, 1920), 157. 44. Ernst Toller, “Leitsätze für einen Kulturpolitischen Bund der Jugend in Deutschland,” Menschen Montagsblatt-Dresden, no. 26 (June 16, 1919), 3. Toller’s views had changed little twenty-two years later: “We do not love politics for its own sake. We take part in the political life of today, but we believe that not the least important meaning. Our fight is to free a future mankind from the shallow fights which is today called ‘politics.’” Ernst Toller, “We Are Plowmen,” New Masses 21 (1936): 6. 45. Toller, Letter to a Working Man, Niederschönenfeld, 1922, in Look Through the Bars, 167. 46. Francis Anderson, “An Analytical Study of Techniques of Persuasion in the Plays of Ernst Toller” (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 1956), 36. 47. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 70–71. 48. Ernst Toller, Masse Mensch, in PBDG, 297. 49. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 193. 50. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 96, 100. The origins of the revolution have been well told by Allan Mitchell, and this is not the place for detailed discussion of Bavarian pre-revolutionary politics. For other works on the revolution, see the articles in Karl Bosl, ed., Bayern im Umbruch: Die Revolution von 1918, ihre Voraussetzung, ihr Verlauf und ihre Folgen (Munich: Oldenberg, 1969); also see Gerhard Schmolze, Revolution and Räterepublik in München 1918/19 (Düsseldorf: Rauch, 1969). Marxists views of the revolution are contained in Paul Frölich, Die bayerische Räte-Republik Tatsachen und Kritik (Leipzig: Franke, 1920), and Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution zur Räterrepublik. For the subject of anti-Semitism, see Martin Geyer, Verkehrte Welt: Revolution, Inflation und Moderne, Munchen 1914–1924 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998). 51. Otmar Emminger, Die bayerische Industrie (Munich: R. Pflaum, 1947), 21–25. 52. Peter Gay, The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism (New York: Collier, 1962), 233. 53. Schmolze, Revolution and Räterepublik, 27. 54. Josef Hofmiller, Revolutionstagebuch 1918/19: Aus den Tagen der Münchner Revolution (Leipzig: K. Rauch, 1939), 21. 55. Rosenberg, Imperial Germany, 268. 56. See Crown Prince Rupprecht’s assertion, “We Bavarians have been sold out by the Prussians,” in Mein Kriegstagebuch, by Kronprinz Rupprecht (Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1929), 2:216. 57. Ludwig Curtius, Deutsche und antike Welt: Lebenserinnerungen (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1958), 293. 58. Eisner, quoted by Falk Wiesemann, “Kurt Eisner. Studie zu seiner politischen Biographie,” in Bayern im Umbruch, edited by Bosl, 404. 59. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 94. 60. Graf, Wir sind Gefängene, 391. 61. Graf, Wir sind Gefängene, 396. 62. Eisner, quoted by Wilhelm Herzog, Menschen, denen ich begegnete (Munich: Francke, 1959), 67. 63. Gegenwärtig I Staatsanwalt Lieberich, SAO, 3. 64. Gegenwärtig I Staatsanwalt Lieberich, SAO, 3.

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65. For the role of the SPD in the Bavarian revolution, see Peter Kritzer, “Die SPD in der bayerischen Revolution von 1918,” in Bayern im Umbruch, edited by Bosl, 427–52. 66. See Georg Franz, “Munich: Birthplace and Center of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party,” Journal of Modern History 29, no. 4 (1957): 322–23. 67. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 98–99. 68. Richard Müller, “Das Rätesystem in Deutschland” (Leipzig, 1921), reprinted in Arbeiterräte in der Novemberrevolution: Ideen, Wirkungen, Dokumente, edited by Dieter Schneider and Rudolf Kuda (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968), 65–67. See also the essays by Erich Matthias and Eberhard Kolb in Deutschland und die Russische Revolution, edited by Helmut Neubauer and John Staude (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1968); “German Socialists and Russian Soviets: The Transfer of Workers Councils from Russia to Germany in 1918,” in The Transfer of Ideas: Historical Essays, edited by Craufurd D. W. Goodwin and I. B. Holley (Durham, North Carolina: South Atlantic Quarterly, 1968). The word Räte may be translated as “council” or “soviet.” I have followed the practice of F. L. Carsten and have used the English word “council.” Thus, Arbeiter und Soldatenräte translates as Workers and Soldiers’ Council, not Soviet; Toller’s Räterepublik becomes the Councils’ Republic, not Soviet, since it was controlled by the communists for only a short time. I use the terms “Bavarian Soviet Revolution” and “Bavarian Soviet” interchangeably. See F. L. Carsten, Revolution in Central Europe, 1918–1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 9. 69. A. J. Ryder, The German Revolution of 1918: A Study of German Socialism in War and Revolt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 148. 70. Verhandlungen des provisorischen Nationalrätes, Beilage, II, 13–23. 71. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 161–62. 72. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 161–62. 73. See Walter Tormin, “Die deutschen Parteien und die Bolschewiki im Weltkrieg,” in Deutschland und die Russische Revolution, edited by Neubauer, 54–68. 74. Cited in Kritzer, “Die SPD in der bayerischen Revolution von 1918,” 443. 75. Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution, 27. 76. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 170–75. 77. Allegemeiner Kongress der Arbeiter- and Soldatenräte Deutschlandst (Berlin: Zentral der sozialistischen republic Deutschlands, 1919), 113. 78. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 101. 79. Text in Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution, 146. 80. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 200. 81. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 101. 82. Kritzer, “Die SPD in der bayerischen Revolution von 1918,” 445. 83. Rudolf Kanzler, Bayerns Kampf gegen den Bolschewismus (Munich: Parcus, 1931), 10. 84. Kritzer, “Die SPD in der bayerischen Revolution von 1918,” 445; Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 200–201. 85. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 205. 86. Verhandlungen des provisorischen Nationalrätes, no. 7, 186–229. 87. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 205. 88. Verhandlungen des provisorischen Nationalrätes, no. 8, 257, 258. 89. Verhandlungen des provisorischen Nationalrätes, no. 8, 258. 90. Eisner, quoted by Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 120. 91. Verhandlungen des provisorischen Nationalrätes, no. 8, 258. 92. Statistisches Jahrbuch für den Freistaat Bayern (Munich, 1919), 578–79. For a further analysis of the election results, see Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 214–27. 93. “Die sozialistische Einheitsfront,” Münchener Post, January 16, 1919. 94. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 225–26. 95. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 245–47. 96. Aktionsausschuss-Sitzung der A.S.u.B. “Räte Bayerns am Dienstag den 21. Jan. 19 vormittags 9 Uhr,” Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv, Akten betref. Arbeiter- und Soldatenräte 4; Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 248.

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97. Hofmiller, Revolutionstagebuch, 123. 98. See Arno J. Mayer, Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918 (New York: Vintage Books, 1970). 99. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 102. 100. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 103. 101. A combination of motives explains Arco’s act. One is that by killing Eisner, Arco hoped to stop radicalism. Another is that Arco, of partially Jewish parentage, was driven to show his Germanic fidelity. See Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 272, n.45. 102. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 104. 103. Rosa Leviné-Meyer, Aus der Münchener Rätezeit (Berlin: Vereinigung Internationaler Verlags-Anstalter, 1925), 12. 104. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 276. 105. “Münchener Arbeiter- und Soldatenrät,” Münchener Post, February 24, 1919. 106. Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Kongresses ArbeiterBauern-und Soldatenräte vom 25. Februar bis 8. Marz 1919, 2 session, 26–27, 32–36, 43. 107. Stenographischer Bericht . . . vom 25. Februar, 51–56. 108. Stenographischer Bericht . . . vom 25. Februar, no. 3, 74–75. 109. Stenographischer Berich . . . vom 25. Februar, nos. 4–8, 97–194. 110. Stenographischer Bericht . . . vom 25. Februar, no. 8, 194. 111. Ernst Niekisch, Gewagtes Leben (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1958), 63–65. 112. This was the main reason Hoffmann later gave for the success of the Zentralrat’s action. Frölich, Die bayerische Räterepublik, 11. 113. “An das Volk Bayern!” reprinted in Frölich, Die bayerische Räterepublik, 71. 114. “Early in April, 1919, the Landauer-Toller group decided that the time had come to effectuate their plans. They got the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council of Augsburg to demand the establishment of a Soviet Republic.” Samuel William Halperin, Germany Tried Democracy: A Political History of the Reich from 1918 to 1933 (New York: Norton, 1965), 123. Writes Robert Waite, “On the night of April 6 in the Queen’s bedroom in the Wittelsbach Palace, Ernst Toller and his friends proclaimed that Bavaria was now a Republic of Soviets.” Robert G. L. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918–1923 (New York: Norton, 1969), 82. 115. Gegenwartig I Staatsanwalt Lieberich, 4, SAO; Ernst Toller, “Zur bayerischen Räterepublik,” Collection of Dr. Harold Hurwitz, Free University of Berlin, 2. Hereafter referred to as HC. 116. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 307. 117. Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution, 69. 118. Rosa Leviné-Meyer, Aus der Münchener Rätezeit, 12–16. 119. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 107–108. 120. “Ernst Toller,” SAO, 1. 121. Niekisch, Gewagtes Leben, 73–76. 122. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 314. 123. Toller, quoted by Hiram Moderwell, “The Blood of Munich,” The Liberator, September 1919, 13. 124. Ernst Niekisch, “Erinnerungen an Ernst Toller,” in Theater der Welt, edited by Herbert Ihering (Berlin: B. Henschel, 1949), 24. 125. Frölich, Die bayerische Räterepublik, 7. 126. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism, 83, 82. 127. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 109. 128. Forstrat Escherich, Von Eisner bis Eglhofer: Die Münchener Revolution von November 1918 bis zum Zusammenbruch der Räteherrschaft (Munich: Heimatland, 1922), 9–10. 129. Waite, Vanguard of Nazism, 83. 130. Toller, Eine Jugend, PBDG, 110. After reading Lipp’s communications with the Pope, Toller recognized him as insane and forced his resignation. 131. See Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, April 9, 1919: “Alle ortlichen Arbeiterräte werden aufgefordert . . . Beginn der Sozialisierung,” “Volkskommissar für Wohnungswesen. Verordnung über Beschlagnahme and Rationerung der Wohnräume”;

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Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, April 10, 1919: “Verordnung gegen Mietwucher”; München-Augsburq Abendzeitung, April 9, 1919: “An allen Banken, Bankgeschäfte, Sparkassen, Postchekämter and Geldinstitut.” 132. See Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, April 9, 1919: “Alle ortlichen Arbeiterräte werden aufgefordert . . . Beginn der Sozialisierung,” “Volkskommissar für Wohnungswesen. Verordnung über Beschlagnahme and Rationerung der Wohnräume”; Münchner Neueste Nachrichten, April 10, 1919: “Verordnung gegen Mietwucher”; München-Augsburg Abendzeitung, April 9, 1919: “An allen Banken, Bankgeschäfte, Sparkassen, Postchekämter and Geldinstitut.” 133. See his statement “An das Proletariat,” in Die Münchener Räte-Republic, by Max Gerstl (Munich: Verlag der “Politischen Zeitfragen,” 1919), 46. 134. “Die Einigungsbestrebungen des Münchener Proletariats,” Bayerische Kurier, April 12, 1919. 135. See the party’s statement, “An die Arbeiterschaft Münchens!” in Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution, 155. 136. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 112–14. 137. “Reichspräsident Ebert an Legationsekretär Jordan,” April 11, 1919, in Ursachen und Folgen: vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart (Berlin: Dokumenten-Verlag, 1958–1963), 3:129. 138. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 114. 139. Gegenwartig I Staatsanwalt Lieberisch, SAO, 6. 140. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 114–15. 141. See “An die Arbeiter and Soldaten von München and ganz Bayern,” in Die bayerische Räterepublik, by Frölich, 84–86. 142. Gegenwartig I Staatsanwalt Lieberisch, SAO, 7 and 15. 143. Gerstl, Die Münchener Räte-Republik, 17. 144. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 321. 145. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 118. 146. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 118. 147. Toller, Eine Jugend” in PBDG, 127. 148. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 112. 149. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 112. 150. See “Ernst Toller zum Gedächtnis, Dachau,” Pariser Zeitung, May 24, 1939. 151. An die Bevolkerung Münchens,” Mitteilungen des Vollzugsrats der Betriebs- und Soldatenräte, no. 4, April 17, 1919. 152. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 322 153. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 128. 154. Hansjörg Viesel, Literaten an der Wand: Die Münchner Räterepublik und die Schriftsteller (Frankfurt am Main: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1980), 374. 155. Toller, Mitteilungen, no. 18, April 29, 1919. 156. “Die Lage,” Neue Zeitung, April 30 1919; Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 131. 157. Erklärung, 26.4.1919, SAO. 158. Gegenwartig I Staatsanwalt Lieberisch, SAO, 13. 159. “Verhandeln?” Münchener Rote Fahne, April 28, 1919. 160. Toller, quoted by Imanuel Birnbaum, “Juden in der Münchener Räterepublik,” in Von Juden in München: Ein Gedenkbuch, edited by Hans Lamm (Munich: Ner-Tamid, 1959), 303. 161. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 330; Waite, Vanguard of Nazism, 90. 162. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943), 126. 163. Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889–1936 (New York: Norton, 1999), 133. 164. Kershaw, Hitler, 207. 165. Kershaw, Hitler, 215–16. For a more extended analysis of Hitler and Hitler’s oratory, see Sterling Fishman, “The Rise of Hitler as a Beer Hall Orator,” The Review of Politics 26, no. 2 (1964): 244–56.

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166. Haftbefehl, May 12, 1919, SAO; Bayerisches Polizeiblatt Sonderblatt, no. 52 (May 15, 1919). 167. John Abromeit, Max Horkheimer and the Foundationas of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011); Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno: Eine Biographie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003), 120; Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History, Theories, and Political Significance (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994), 45. 168. Niekisch, Gewagtes Leben, 99; Toller, Letter to Adolf von Hatzfeld, Niederschönenfeld, 22 January 1922, in Briefe der Expressionisten, edited by Kasimir Edschmid (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1964). 169. Abschrift, June 5, 1919. Der Kriminaloberkomissar Josef Hilzensauer an die Polizeidirektor München, Rehse Collection, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. 170. See Stefan Grossmann, “Der Hochverräter Ernst Toller: Die Geschichte eines Prozesses,” in PBDG. 171. See “Gegen den Justiz Mord an Eugen Leviné,” in Toller, Quer Durch. 172. Quoted by Grossmann, “Der Hochverrater Ernst Toller,” in PBDG, 482. 173. Urteil, Sitzung vom 14–16 July 1919, 15, SAO; Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 153. 174. See Frölich, Das ayrische Räterepublik, 71. 175. “Ernst Toller,” SAO, 1. 176. Frequently in secondary literature, Toller is identified as a communist, although he was never a member of the KPD, and, as has been seen, he actively opposed its policies. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, for example, identify Toller as a “young Communist,” and Peter Gay characterizes Toller as an “uncomfortable Communist.” Gay, incidentally, compounds his error when he identifies Gustav Landauer as a communist—an error equivalent to identifying Socrates as a Sophist or Christ as a Christian. H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 22; Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (1946; New York: Harper & Row, 1970), 105, 150. Toller preferred to characterize himself as a “radical socialist.” See his statement in Die Fakel 31, no. 827/833, 106. 177. See Frölich, Die bayerische Räterepublic, and Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution, passim. 178. Beyer, Von der Novemberrevolution, 124. 179. Mitchell, Revolution in Bavaria, 346. 180. Quoted by Walter Laqueur, “Literature and the Historian,” in Out of the Ruins of Europe (New York: Library Press, 1971), 144. 181. Toller, Quer Durch, 99. 182. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 118. 183. Toller, Letter to Stefan Zweig, 1921, in Look Through the Bars, 73. 184. Toller, Letter to Annemarie von Puttkammer, 22.5.1921, reprinted in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 1 September 1966, 16. 185. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 175. 186. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 175. 187. Soke1, The Writer in Extremis, 195. 188. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 175; Toller, Letter to J. F. 1920, in Look Through the Bars, 500. 189. Toller, Masse Mensch, in PBDG, 287–330. 190. Cecil Davies, The Plays of Ernst Toller: A Revaluation (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996). 191. Quoted in Frölich, Die bayerische Räterepublik, 21. For more of Toller’s relationship with Weber, see Philipp Zettel, “Fundamentalismus und offene Gesellschaft,” in Die Rote Republik, Schriften der Erich Mühsam Gesellschaft, Heft 25, edited by Sabine Kruse and Jürgen-Wolfgang Goette (Lübeck: Erich Mühsam Gesellschaft, 2004).

SIX “A Gentle Apostle” The Weimar Years

This dark-eyed Toller is like a gentle Apostle, filled with his mission: to help, to denounce, to encourage. —Alfred Kerr after Toller’s release from prison

It had taken two centuries, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth, for England to industrialize and approach modernity. The first to industrialize, it paid the penalty of going first. It took an extraordinary amount of time. Others who followed, building on Britain’s example, could do it much faster but with consequences England did not experience. Europe’s second great industrial power was Germany, overwhelmingly rural in 1815 but only seventy-five years later well on the way to competing with Britain economically and militarily. But there were major problems. The speed at which this happened created a crisis of modernity, revealing great social and political strains. World War I only added to the problems of this new economy. Events in the social and economic area became reflected starkly in the Weimar Republic, which achieved a triumph of modernity in society and culture, combining Germany’s first Republic with a lethal brew of postwar modernity and political disaster. Weimar was a saturnalia of the outrageous, the unexpected and the bizarre. Its most articulate observer, historian Detlev Peukert, has concluded that “in the years between the First World War and the world economic crisis of the early thirties, classical modernity advanced on all fronts: its contradictions were intensified, and its profoundest crisis was played out. Weimar was a brief, headlong tour of the fascinating and fateful choices made possible by the modern world.” 1 Toller, during the life of the Republic, became a teacher of sorts to fellow Germans, giving a skilled lecture of everything he found hateful and false. Weimar became for him 131

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an egregious colloquium about militarism, racist solipsism, capitalist greed, and schoolyard bullying. Like much that emerged from Toller’s pen, however, subjective pique was always combined with objective insight. However unstable politically and fragile economically, Weimar had a unique treasure of intellectual achievement. The plays of Toller and Brecht, the novels of Mann and Döblin, the productions of Reinhardt and Piscator, the cartoons of Grosz, films including The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari and The Blue Angel, and political cabaret all shared uneasy space with the politics of Hitler, the culture of antimodernism, and the society of antiSemitism. Germany during Weimar was a deeply divided culture: two mutually uncomprehending cultures that had little to say to each other, “mutually alien and hostile, each denying (though with different degrees of justification) that [the] other was a culture at all.” 2 The first culture was a culture of modernity, in literature, art, architecture, and drama; the second one was, at best, deeply conservative, at worst, radically antimodern. By 1933, the antimodernists had won. Weimar Germany was a combination of unstable and squalid politics combined with great cultural vibrancy. Its cultural efflorescence had been seen before, but only rarely. The comparisons are Periclean Athens, Rome under Augustus, Italy during the Renaissance, or Elizabethan England. 3 Weimar itself was part of a Central European phenomenon lasting from 1895 to 1933. This was the era of the birth of modernism, technology, the sexual revolution, the welfare state, world war, terrorism, feminism, psychotherapy, weapons of mass destruction, and the Middle East conflict. Central Europe was, in the words of Karl Kraus, editor of the Central European journal Die Fackel, “the research laboratory for world destruction.” Freud was discovering the unconscious, Einstein was formulating the Theory of Relativity, Herzl had written his book on Zionism, anarchists were throwing bombs (one was to set off the First World War) and the Second Viennese School was reinventing music. The twenty-first century is still dealing with this cauldron Central Europe brewed up in the first half of the last century. We shall live with its consequences for quite some time. The German revolution of 1918 was at once the hope and disappointment of German intellectuals. Initially welcomed, it was soon denounced by both Right and Left. Unlike the French Third Republic, Weimar did not even have the merit of longevity. The First Republic of Germany became, in the end, that form of government that most divided Germans. While many had seen the antics of William II as the most convincing proof of the virtues of a Republic, conservatives proved themselves unable to embrace Weimar. On the other side, even those in the German Socialist Party were reluctant revolutionaries indeed, prepared to save the institution of the monarchy even if they recognized, as most did, the bankruptcy of the monarch. Some of the initial opponents of the Republic

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gradually reconciled themselves to a fait accompli, in the process of becoming known as Vernunftrepublikaner—republicans out of common sense and not out of conviction. They were at best lukewarm supporters. Active advocates of Weimar were distinguished only by their inconspicuousness. November 1918 found a potentially revolutionary situation that lacked a revolutionary party. Outside of a small coterie of anarchists and Left radicals, no revolutionary group existed. Among the parties of the Left, none, not even the faction collected around Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, was at all prepared for revolution. None had any plans on how to substitute for the monarchy. Toller bitterly observed: The German revolution found an ignorant people and a class of leaders of bureaucratic philistines, Biedermänner. The people shouted for socialism, but never in the past years did it have a clear conception of what socialism was. They fought against their oppressors; they knew what they did not want, but they did not know what they wanted. The rightwing socialists were closely bound up with the monarchy and capitalism whose sins were their sins. They were satisfied with the juste milieu of the bourgeoisie; their goal was to make the proletariat into elevated members of the middle class. They lacked all faith in the doctrines they had announced, all faith in the people who trusted them. 4

Republicanism in Germany was born almost in embarrassment, unloved and, after the first flush of revolutionary excitement, unwanted. At the beginning of November 1918, however, everyone recognized Germany was in revolution. It was to be expected that conservatives would be more acutely aware of change than any other group. Otto Hoetzsch, a contemporary commentator and historian, had already seen the mild October reforms, which abolished the three-class voting system in Prussia and introduced a Western parliamentary government in the Empire, as a revolution—one made from above in the hope that a more radical one from below could be avoided. It was, therefore, not surprising that the November 11 edition of the Conservative paper Kreuzzeitung observed with what now seems excessive hyperbole: “We stand in the middle of an upheaval such as history has never before seen.” 5 Radical opinion was equally as exaggerated. Many believed themselves to be entering a new era. After four years of war, they abandoned themselves to a hope without limit. The final shot of the war was to bring on the debut of a new beginning, an age of peace and happiness. 6 Such hopes were clearly Utopian, such a society without precedent. But a characteristic of the war was that it, too, was without precedent. Was it, therefore, not totally illogical to believe that from an unprecedented war would emerge an unprecedented society? 7 The hyperbole of the conservatives was one born of fear; that of the radicals, one born of hope. Both were wrong, yet both were understandable. Each saw the revolution more radical than it actually was. The mod-

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els were those of 1789 and the recent Russian revolution of 1917, both of which had ended with the execution of the monarch and the persecution of the old ruling class. That developments in Germany were to run more along the model of 1848 was, of course, as yet unknown. Initial exaltation ended in civil war, and by June 1919, Ruhe und Ordnung had won out over any viable attempts to change German society. The destruction of radicalism had increased the stature of Weimar President Ebert and Gustav Noske, his Minister of Defense. In the eyes of both the German High Command and the Allies, each had “saved” Germany from the disorder of Bolshevism. Radicalism was defeated, but so, too, was any chance for genuine democracy in Germany. Unable to condone the excessively eager suppression of the radical Left, the leftist intellectual was soon bitterly disillusioned with the German revolution from which he had once expected so much. “Our progress,” ruefully reflected Toller in 1921, “differs from that we hoped for so ardently, that dreamed of by thousands of men in 1918 at the beginning of the revolution.” 8 At his trial, Toller had given a passionate defense of revolution, asserting that reprisals against revolutionary leaders could not stop the revolutionary idea: Revolution is like a container filled with the pulsating heartbeats of millions of working men. The revolutionary spirit will not die until the hearts of men have ceased to beat. We who recognize this do not promise a paradise. We know that the next years will bring us difficult times, that the exhaustive work and communal feeling will be needed from each individual. However, we also know that when this time is over, future generations will reap its harvest. The revolution will not be stopped by antiquated party hacks or the state as it now stands. In the place of this state, a universal community of mankind will be erected, externally united by a minimum of power, internally by a spirit of respect for each individual, through a spirit of socialist brotherhood, through the spirit of love. The struggle has begun and not all the united persecution of all the united capitalist governments of the world can stop it. 9

Ostensibly, Toller’s ideas had not changed. From his words at his trial, it is clear that he was still the optimistic propagator of secular chiliasm and not the hard-headed follower of political realism. His personality as much as his ideas still made him the active champion of revolution. In his view, capitalism made for an inescapable conflict from which a new social order was sure to emerge. Injustice, exploitation, and poverty were not mere accidents to be passively endured or the exclusive fault of the machinations of evil and greedy men; they were built into the very nature of present society. His concern with those he saw as the oppressed infused his socialism with a strong glow of humanitarianism. He was of the opinion that the poor had no obligation to be content with their position

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and that injustice was a condition that neither human nature nor social necessity gave any reason to tolerate. In short, he was what he was to remain: an intellectual rather than a politician. Nevertheless, the Toller of 1919 and after was different from the Toller of 1918. His disappointing sortie into revolutionary politics allowed a certain pessimism to creep into his mind. The contrast between the prerevolutionary Toller and his postrevolutionary counterpart was that of the contrast between the revolutionary optimism of Die Wandlung and the more sober Masse Mensch. His optimism became more guarded, subject to increasing doubts that came to occupy more and more of his time. He was being forced to the unwelcome and painful conclusion that the consequences of revolutionary politics brought not increasing social justice but increasing disillusion, and that to the idealist it brought only extensive personal unhappiness. Three years after his participation in the Bavarian revolution, he sadly wrote: I have been reading Beer’s History of the Social Struggles. The same struggles repeated, the same ideas, the same discord between fact and idea, the same heroism, the same confusion between the needs of the masses and the needs of the intellectuals—from revolution to reaction, from reaction to revolution, the same circle. To what end? I have a deep, deep homesickness. And the home is called: Nothingness. 10

A part of Toller’s pessimism can be attributed to prison conditions. Niederschönenfeld was a former reform school. Sheltered on the misty plain between the Danube and the Lech, at the time Toller was there it was a dismal, three-winged structure. It was, of course, not necessarily disagreeable to be confined to prison. It was not unknown for authors to receive there the leisure needed to write and the fame that could result. The young Voltaire entered the Bastille obscure and, eleven months later, emerged with his Oedipe, the play that made him famous. 11 Mein Kampf was leisurely dictated while Hitler served eight months in Landsberg outside of Munich. Niederschönenfeld’s conditions, however, were not as comfortable for the left-wing revolutionary Toller as they were for the right-wing Putschist at Landsberg. Throughout his prison years, Toller maintained a constant fight with the authorities to preserve the few privileges he was allowed. While apparently not physically mistreated, he was subject to annoying and arbitrary actions. Letters too critical of political events were censored. Newspapers were frequently withheld. News that did come through of political developments was of little comfort. In June 1920, when the Kapp Putsch and the disastrous decline of republican votes in the Reichstag elections of that month indicated that the politics of militarism and counterrevolution were on the ascent, Toller despairingly asked: “What will the coming years bring to Germany? There are times

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when I want to scream aloud and run away from the pictures of horror that haunt me like hallucinations.” 12 Yet the twenty-six-year-old Toller entered prison unknown outside of Bavaria and emerged five years later a national figure. Between 1919 and 1924, he managed to write the plays Masse Mensch; a minor two-act puppet play entitled Die Rache des verhöhnten Liebhabers; Die Maschinenstürmer, a historical drama on the Luddites; Hinkemann, a disillusioned commentary on the failure of socialism; and the satire Der entfesselte Wotan. In addition, he composed three short pieces, “Bilder aus der grosser französischen Revolution,” “Krieg und Frieden,” and “Erwachen,” as well as his collection of letters, Gedichte der Gefangenen, and the poems Vormorgen and Das Schwalbenbuch. 13 Toller was on his way to becoming one of the most controversial writers in Germany. After his release from prison, theater critic Alfred Kerr was to write that “This dark-eyed Toller is like a gentle Apostle, filled with his mission: to help, to denounce, to encourage.” Such literary outpourings are, in part, explained by Toller’s confinement. As he wrote in 1929, “I was caged and under strong prison censorship. The only place in which I could have a little air was in dramatic work.” 14 Yet much of the reputation Toller acquired was due less to the activity of Toller the writer than to the activity of Toller the politician. Given the highly charged atmosphere of Weimar Germany, the two were inextricably connected. Admiration for the writer demanded defense of the politician. The staging of Toller’s works was seldom just dramatic events. A theatrical reading became a public riot. Productions became political issues, a platform from which Toller supporters and Toller opponents could shout each other down and exchange invective. As John Spalek observes, “The opposition was waged mainly by a people who never read his plays. During the Weimar Republic a Toller production that was not banned, subjected to a riot or at least protested against publicly was an exception.” 15 Such an assertion is easily documented. The Berlin theater Die Tribune refused to allow the production of Die Wandlung to be performed for striking Berlin workers, explaining that its performance would be party propaganda. 16 The third performance of Masse Mensch in Nuremberg caused such commotion that the Bavarian authorities prohibited further showings. 17 Die Maschinenstürmer, staged in Berlin’s Grosses Schauspielhaus a few days after Rathenau’s assassination, was the occasion for an emotional defense of Toller by Karlheinz Martin before its start as well as for intermittent pro-Toller demonstrations by the audience. Less sympathetically, one right-wing reviewer denounced such “Bolshewistentheater” and called on all respectable citizens to boycott any theater that produced such work. 18 The apogee of activity over Toller’s plays occurred at the Dresden staging of Hinkemann, called by one observer the most serious theater riot ever to take place in Germany. 19 Various völkisch groups, led

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by a future Nazi Gauleiter, had packed the theater and, on signal, shouted and sang Germany’s National Anthem, Deutschland, Deutschland über alles. 20 Under such conditions, critics, depending on their political outlook, found it easy either to praise or damn Toller. Those on the Right saw him as the corrosive Literat, repulsive to that “worthy feeling of Vaterlandsliebe,” as the appellate judge who reviewed the case of those accused of starting the Dresden riot so delicately put it. As a result of such attacks, critics sympathetic to Toller the politician at times found it necessary to praise him even when his literary works did not merit it. Nevertheless, Toller’s cultivation of controversy was hardly a help to him financially. The roughly two hundred productions of his work, notes Spalek, “are a surprisingly small number for a dramatist of Toller’s standing.” 21 This was due less to the quality of Toller’s work than to the quantity of upheaval it called forth. The Berlin Volksbühne, for example, refused further productions of Die Wandlung. The Deutsches Theater stopped Hinkemann, and Das Neue Theater refused Wotan. Particularly after the Dresden riot, producers, perhaps understandably, became notably reluctant to stage the controversial playwright’s work. In addition to his purely literary activities, Toller also found time to write various nondramatic works. All of this material consisted of short articles or letters; none were particularly long or developed a sustained argument. Some were published in that “organ of the intellectual Left,” 22 Die Weltbühne. Yet publications as diverse as Das Tagebuch, Die Glocke, and Vorwärts also served as outlets for much of his activity. Most of his essays and open letters were published before 1922, when prison authorities made it difficult for him to obtain permission for publication. Before this, avowedly political journals and papers such as Die Weltbühne and Der Kampf had printed much of his work; after 1922, however, he was confined to the more innocuous nonpolitical outlets, and of his twentyfour essays published while in prison, only three are exclusively political. The effect of prison on Toller was ambivalent. Letters of discontent complaining about poor conditions, letters expressing deep depression and pessimism about the future of Europe curiously alternated with feelings almost of contentment. At times, he felt his confinement helpful, a time that allowed him to gather his thoughts and to see the world more clearly. To Alexander Bloch, he wrote of Niederschönenfeld as an “island” where he could observe “the face of these times, see their outlines more clearly, more impressively, less blurred than if I were ‘outside,’ influenced by passing events which, although they seem important, obscure the outlook because their quality is not immediately recognized.” To Stefan Zweig, he again repeated, “Had I been ‘outside’ I don’t know whether I could have listened to the voices which I have been permitted to hear in this place.” 23 Toller may just have been attempting to make the best of a bad situation by transforming necessity into a virtue. Yet despite his complaints about prison life, its petty restrictions that could occasion-

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ally border on sadism, the injustices he and his fellow inmates had to suffer at the hands of authorities, the strain of emotional and sexual deprivation, 24 Toller came to feel himself “at home” in his cell. A genuine desire for freedom and the longing he felt for work unencumbered by high walls were intermixed with strong feelings of anxiety, as though he feared to leave the safe refuge of Niederschönenfeld for the harshness of outside life: Imprisonment has also bestowed upon me hours of fullness, of listening to the inner voice, of devotion to the multitude of little things whose character and inner meaning, whose beauty are only realized, divined, seen and felt by a man who lives the life of a monk. Beyond prison walls there is too much restlessness; we are blind, we do not love as brothers or with a great enough devotion. A man who lives in a cell learns to know the blessed depths of his power to love. . . . There are times when I feel deeply grieved for some of the free people outside. 25

It is of more than passing interest, then, to note that Toller was not only offered a pardon in 1920, but, two years later, he rejected the attempts of friends to obtain his release. His official explanation was that he refused to leave so long as other political prisoners were being held. 26 It would seem that however legitimate and firmly felt this reason was, Toller did not take the opportunity because he had become psychologically attached to prison life. In spite of the activist bluster of the poet as leader, Toller had accepted the role of revolutionary leader during the Bavarian revolution with some reluctance. His sense of duty would not allow him, as he put it, to leave “the masses in the lurch.” The utter failure to attain any of his goals was profoundly upsetting to someone of Toller’s temperament. Prison allowed him a safe haven; he could criticize freely (always subject, of course, to the censor), yet he did not have to take upon himself the burdens of leadership. The harsh facts of the outside world that had so forcefully clashed with the outlook of activist revolutions of love could, for a time at least, be forgotten. When the time came for this monastic life to end, Toller was overcome with feelings of fear. He already blamed himself for the failure of the Bavarian revolution. Indeed, the experience so depressed him that he had contemplated suicide. Toward the time of his release, the thought again seemed attractive: And now I would have to leave the sheltering walls and go into the world where new struggles awaited me. Would I be equal to it? I had received thousands of letters during my imprisonment; so many people were looking to me. They expected great things of me and I should only disappoint them. I felt myself weakening from day to day. The nights were darkened by thoughts of death and when death did not come I was lost in a confusion of horrible temptation. 27

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To such introspective musings were added increased disappointments. Toller, the intellectual and believer in class reconciliation, found a marked hostility between middle-class intellectuals and the uneducated proletariat, suspicious of both the middle class and intellectuals. With the maturing detachment provided by five years of self-reflection, Toller, the believer in millenarian politics, grew less hopeful of the future. Prison privations turned his fellow inmates not only against the authorities but also against each other. Political differences among prisoners only served to augment natural incompatibilities, and the split within German socialism was reproduced in the confines of prison walls, where doctrinal disputes were taken seriously and at times were expressed with an uncomfortable vehemence. Toller had always been an opponent of socialist dogmatism; although a member of the USPD, he had always considered himself an independent mind. He, therefore, became highly critical of ossified party politics and a revolution that had produced narrowminded functionaries and party “sergeant majors of the Potsdam observance” rather than independent and thinking men. 28 Toller, champion of leftist unity during the Bavarian revolution, saw with increasing despair “the spectacle of a feeble internecine conflict among socialists that only served to detract attention from genuine social problems.” 29 Toller’s sergeants major were found in both the KPD and the SPD, but even his own party held little attraction for him. By 1920, the mélange of individuals in Independent Socialism that had at one time ranged from Bernstein to his opponent, Kautsky, to Rosa Luxemburg, the opponent of both, began to fall apart without the unifying issue of opposition to the war. The party split into two parts over possible affiliation with the Third International and the acceptance of Moscow’s twenty-one conditions. Involved was more than mere association with the Soviet Union, for the issue touched upon the very independence of the party itself. The proponents of affiliation, seduced by Lenin’s success, wished to mold the USPD into an organization capable of revolution. As such, the Leninist model had a powerful attraction. Like Lenin, unwilling to work with other leftwing parties, they had little use for piecemeal reforms or the timid policy of the Majority Socialists. For their opponents within the party, however, the revolutionary wave set off in 1917 had ebbed: the party should reject subservience to Moscow and prepare itself for a period of parliamentary opposition. By October 1920, an extraordinary party congress met at Halle to decide the issue. The success of the Russian revolution and a speech by Gregory Zinoviev, head of the Comintern, aroused enough enthusiasm to enable the majority to vote for affiliation. 30 Such success as the intransigents had was particularly annoying to Toller, who, at the time of the Halle Congress, bitterly confessed:

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Chapter 6 The politics of the Independent Socialist Democratic Party have every quality except that of attractiveness. From all that I hear about the life of the party, I gather that the reign of the clap-trap is not yet over. It seems to be forgotten which stage of the revolution has now been reached, that what is left for us to do is practical, everyday work. Yes, that we may even be compelled for practical reasons, to draw up a program for the immediate future, a program which muddle-headed or malicious people might think was an abandonment of our revolutionary aims. First of all we must stand for the democratic Republic. We must work with other Parties in all questions of administration. Yes, we might, perhaps, in the near future, provided our independence is protected and secured, be obliged to co-operate for specific purposes with the Majority Socialists. Ours is the thankless task of defending even the slightest reform. We cannot, with a magnificent gesture, afford to stand aside because we are out for the whole program. 31

There is little that is radical here. No clarion calls for the workers to overthrow the state, or for immediate socialization, or for a purge of the opposition. His repugnance toward the SPD is clear, even if only implied. In spite of this, however, Toller was willing to advocate a coalition, possibly similar to the one that existed between Independents and Majority Socialists from November to December 1918. To be sure, his offer is not one based on enthusiasm. It is mixed with perhaps and maybe, subject to carefully qualified conditions. But even a guarded offer of cooperation is still an offer to cooperate. Toller showed himself a reluctant advocate of democratic republicanism and an apparent believer in reform. By the time of his release four years later, however, Toller had come to realize there was little possibility, given the realities of Weimar politics, of attempting genuine reform of German society. Moreover, he saw little hope of revolutionary action from outside the system. Communist revolts during 1921 in Central Germany and the Ruhr Toller denounced as a senseless policy of catastrophe that would drive the country into reaction; he compared them to the April days in Munich when the KPD called the workers to fight on the barricades, “a fight that had no sense and no prospect of success.” 32 The doctrinaire insistence that seemed so prevalent during the Weimar years—that politics should be a battle of principled extremes—left little place for someone of Toller’s temperament. “The dreariness of party-hacks,” he observed disappointingly, “the petty spitefulness which creeps like a worm through everyday life, repel a sensitive man.” 33 With the breakup of the Independents, Toller, like so many left-wing intellectuals, found himself politically homeless, unable to endure either the dogmatism of the communists or the politics of the Majority Socialists. Disillusioned with the politics of sectarian conflict, he gave up party politics altogether, “from a desire to feel clean,” and became what he always was, an adherent of the politics of humanity: “As

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an author I speak to all who can hear me, irrespective of their party allegiances. The idea means more to me than the catchword of the day; man more than the party-ticket.” 34 Toller’s rejection of party politics can, perhaps, be seen as a reassertion of an old habit of mind among many German intellectuals. Since the nineteenth century, if not earlier, German intellectual life, at least as seen by many educated Germans, was dichotomized into two realms: the higher level of Geist, Bildung, and Kultur, to be cultivated for its own sake independent of politics, and the lower more prosaic and sordid world of practicality, compromise, and politics. 35 It was this dichotomy between Geist and reality that Heinrich Mann and the activists had attempted to bridge. With the beginnings of revolution, Mann’s theoretical formulations suddenly attained the possibility of realization. With the failure of the revolution, many left-wing intellectuals found it difficult to involve themselves in a form of government, and hence of politics, from which they had expected so much and received so little. Observed Hannah Arendt, “George Grosz’s cartoons seemed to us not satires, but realistic reportage; we knew those types. They were all around us. Should we mount the barricades for that?” 36 Politics had moved from front room Utopia to the back room with its petty compromise and sordid political deals. There was, as Peter Gay, one of Weimar’s most astute observers, notes, a good piece of reality to this. The fragmentation of society that Toller saw with increasing despair was very real. Party presses did little to lessen division. Voters read their party paper and hardened attitudes already held. Republican politics seemed to be a succession of sterile coalition governments—there were seventeen of them—and political crises—these were innumerable. “Parliamentary debates, with their legalism and occasional vehemence, had a curious air of unreality about them: party hacks quibbled, orated and insulted each other while millions went hungry.” 37 This was Toller’s view of Weimar politics, 38 and he rejected its politics with all its jobbing, factionalism, and sterile debates in favor of the more rarefied, honorable, and clean world of devotion to pure humanity. Such a renunciation of party had both advantages and disadvantages. For those who shared Toller’s distaste, it assured that party politics would be controlled by just that unimaginative and sterile mentality Toller railed against. Also, since in modern society political power is party power, it assured the political powerlessness of the left-wing intellectual. Paradoxically, however, it was this very lack of party definition that gave the left-wing intellectual his greatest value. Unwilling to be a party member, he did not have to admit to party dogma. He was thus free to criticize society and to fulfill his role as an intellectual. It is in his role as a critic of Weimar that Toller’s activity between 1919 and 1933 should be seen. In spite of his advocacy of reform of the Weimar Republic, Toller was not ardently devoted either to the cause of reform or to Weimar. One might best characterize him as a leftist Vernuftrepublikan-

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er—one who supported the Republic less out of enthusiasm than out of realism. His reasons for giving it some measure of support clearly did not come from love but from pragmatism; not to support it, to encourage senseless leftist-inspired coups, would be to drive German society into “uncontrolled reaction.” Even this qualified acceptance had become considerably weakened by the late 1920s. Increasingly, Toller began to despair of any hope for genuine change within the system. His portrait of German society in the first play he wrote after his release from Niederschönenfeld, Hoppla, wir leben!, is one of almost unmitigated pessimism. By 1933, it was only the more disagreeable alternative of National Socialism that allowed him to make one last attempt, a vain one as it turned out, to rally some of Weimar’s die-hard leftist opponents around the falling Republic. For Toller, the Republic’s failure was the failure of the German revolution in whose ranks he had played so conspicuous a role. The war, in which he had both fought in and then fought against, was to be the midwife of a new society. “This war shall be the last, the era of perpetual peace, of democracy and social justice shall begin throughout the world.” 39 During the 1930s, with the insight supplied by almost one-anda-half decades of perspective, he looked sadly back on the optimism of those first revolutionary months and was forced to confess that it was all an illusion. 40 The revolution, started so hopefully, had ended in failure, “the tragedy of the German people.” 41 The bitterness of Toller’s words was symptomatic of the anti-Weimar mood that prevailed among the left-wing intellectuals. Kurt Tucholsky saw the Republic as the “complete victory for German reaction.” 42 Heinrich Ströbel, more picturesquely, saw the new government populated by “opportunists without character, pulpy mollusks, flat demagogues,” whose government was the “quintessence of the poverty of ideas.” 43 Toller could be equally as biting on the quality of the Republic’s leaders. Writing the same year as Ströbel, he noted that he agreed with Lloyd George: “It’s impossible to negotiate with German statesmen: they’re too mediocre.” 44 While awaiting his trial in Stadelheim prison in 1919, he complained that the Republic had changed little: “The ghosts of rottenness are more impudent than ever. Every day as I read the newspapers I can smell the stench of decay.” 45 Three years later, his views had not mellowed. As he confessed, “The revolution is defeated. Barbarism, moral and spiritual corruption, lies, hypocrisy and profiteering are triumphant.” 46 The lament was that of a disillusioned revolutionary embittered by the failure of a revolution in which he had taken part. To the men of the Left, the revolution had been a mere change of government, not the hoped for total reconstruction of society. Most were of the opinion that the new Republic had only reproduced the political and social environment of prewar Germany. As Tucholsky quipped, “We have not had a revolution in Germany, but we have had a counterrevolution.” 47 Far

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from being the victory of the revolutionary ideals for which Toller had fought, the Republic had actively fought against revolutionary change and, consequently, had embodied within it the most obnoxious and reactionary aspects of imperial Germany. Toller had good reason to indict a government that had so eagerly suppressed the Bavarian Soviet and other outbreaks of radicalism. For Toller, those the Republic’s leaders had killed represented the true spirit of democracy, and he bitterly indicted them for their action: “Immediately after the revolution they opened fire not on the enemies of the revolution—no, on their own most ardent pioneers. They harassed and persecuted them. . . . They hated the revolution. Ebert had the courage to say so openly.” 48 No one who follows Toller’s views can fail to be impressed by the disparity between his ideals for Germany and his disappointment with German reality. Much of this disappointment can be explained by Toller’s age and his actual participation in attempting to make his ideals reality. While all the left-wing intellectuals were hostile to the Republic and critical of the German revolution, few had actually taken part in revolutionary politics, and fewer still had fought in the revolution. Moreover, for those of Toller’s generation, the new social order that was to emerge from revolution was to be their responsibility. During the war, they had transformed their cultural rebellion against the father world into a political crusade. They demanded a new beginning and called for a Republic free from what they viewed as the corrupt values of imperial Germany. 49 Clearly, Weimar was not the kind of government for which Toller had fought in Bavaria. As a socialist and a democratic humanist, he demanded a society based on liberty, one that encouraged peace, did not glorify war, and actively promoted social justice. From his Niederschönenfeld cell, he could see little the Republic had done to guarantee his ideals. The actions of Gustav Noske, the SPD Minister of Defense, who had used the reactionary remains of the imperial army to put down radicalism during the revolution, led Toller to conclude that the new Republican government was far from committed to breaking with Germany’s militaristic and authoritarian past. The revolutionary idealism that had once existed had been broken by the rising tide of nationalist sentiment provoked by the harsh conditions imposed by the treaty of Versailles. Revolutionary desires for a break with Germany’s past had degenerated into the “jingo ecstasy” of many of his fellow countrymen who “defended the sins of the German past as German virtues.” 50 It was Toller’s view, as it was of most left-wing intellectuals, that the revolution had presented the Republic’s leaders with the opportunity to change German society and decisively to break with Germany’s past—an opportunity that the Republic’s leaders did not take to advantage. The new government had substituted new faces for the old regime, but it had not carried out a genuine revolution. The critique of the leftist intellectual was one of lost opportunities, a sense, as Toller noted, of “what might

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have been achieved in the world of social-economics, in finance, in politics, in culture after Germany had ceased to be a state of world political importance” but was not. 51 As Kurt Tucholsky regretfully observed in his essay Die Ebert-Legende: “The men of November did not accomplish what could have been accomplished: a reform of all branches of the state, abolition of militarism, democratic education of youth and, above all, the support of a new spiritual atmosphere.” 52 What Toller had fought for and what Tucholsky wished for was a social revolution. Ostensibly, the transfer of power from the Kaiser William to the Social Democrat Ebert may have heralded such a development. However, if democracy was not to remain a disastrous accident made possible by military collapse but was to become an integral part of German society, it was not enough just to achieve a new distribution of power from an unelected Hohenzollern Emperor to an elected President. It was equally as necessary to change the relation between capital and labor, between government and military, and between bureaucracy and society. Democracy could only be attained if the whole nexus of social relations was changed also. It was the failure to call forth such a transformation for which Toller, as well as subsequent historians, indicted the Republic. As historian Golo Mann observes: “The entire material structure of the Empire and the mentality it sustained were preserved—the civil service, the judiciary, the established universities, the Church, the economy, the military command.” 53 These “ghosts of rottenness” that Toller so despairingly noted still haunted the Republic. In few places were the consequences of Weimar’s failure to carry out a social revolution more apparent than in the administration of justice that Toller believed worse under the Republic than under the Empire. The type of justice that concerned him was less the administration of criminal law than the one-sided dissemination of political justice. Himself a political prisoner, he had firsthand knowledge not only of his own experiences but also of those of other political prisoners. He noted the lenient treatment the Republic’s court gave to those responsible for the Kapp Putsch, the comfortable prison conditions Eisner’s assassin, Arco Valley, enjoyed, Hitler’s light sentence for his attempted 1923 Putsch, and the release of Gustav Landauer’s murderer—all were in glaring contrast to the treatment received by left-wing political offenders. While censorship prevented him from giving full vent to his feelings during his time in prison, it is significant that the first articles written after his release in 1924 dealt with the failings of Weimar’s judicial and penal system. 54 The Republic’s courts were yet another example of the many social institutions with a predemocratic ideology that had survived under the surface of an apparently democratic state. 55 Weimar’s judges were largely made up of a mélange of conservatives and reactionaries, maturing under the authoritarian ethos of the imperial era, and they were hostile to the new forces of democracy and socialism on which the Republic was

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founded. Also, the supposed cosmopolitanism of the socialists contrasted with the nationalism of established social classes from whose ranks judges came. With the failure of the Republic to change the administrators of Germany’s judicial system, conservative and nationalistic judges, most in sympathy with the aims of the political Right, found themselves serving new masters but adhering to old patterns of thought. Appointed for life, the judiciary was independent of other government institutions, in theory, above parties and politics. While the policy of a judiciary independent of political control is laudable, during the Weimar Republic such a policy mitigated against the interests of impartial justice. In numerous cases, the judgments of German courts were characterized by one-sided views, unequal application of prison sentences for left- and right-wing political offenders, and questionable use of amnesty against avowed enemies of the Republic. It was with an unfortunately belated wisdom, attained through painful hindsight, that the SPD in 1934, at the time in exile in Prague, confessed the failure to alter the old apparatus of justice a major error. 56 There was much, therefore, to Toller’s presentation of Republican justice as a class system that discriminated against socialists and democrats. If convicted, a left-wing political offender could expect a penal system motivated by vengeance and at times bordering on brutality. Between 1919 and 1924, Toller had frequent occasion to view closely the treatment of men of the Left unfortunate enough to fall into the hands of those allegedly charged with protecting the Republic. During the suppression of the Bavarian Soviet, left-wing leaders were shot with impunity by enraged white guards, tortured, and frequently “shot while attempting escape”—a euphemism for outright murder of political opponents. 57 The years of confinement and physical discomfort inflicted on Toller contrasted with the mild treatment given to those on the Right. After arrest and trial, the left-wing prisoner could not expect the pardons that seemingly were reserved for those on the Right. While the Weimar Republic issued amnesty laws for political offenders twice, once in 1920 and again two years later, Bavarian authorities refused the release of those on the Left arrested for their participation in the 1919 Soviet. 58 Toller’s criticism of Republican justice was subjective; yet subjective criticism is not necessarily evidence of invalid criticism, and even a superficial survey reveals the unequal treatment of political crimes by Weimar’s courts. In 1921, Emil Gumbel reported that after the establishment of the Republic in November 1918, 314 politically inspired killings by the Right were punished with a total of thirty-one years and three months imprisonment. The thirteen killings by the Left were met with eight death sentences and a total of 176 years and ten months in prison. 59 Toller’s view that the Republic protected its enemies so long as they were on the Right was unfortunately not just the rhetorical outburst of an emotional poet.

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Toller, at first an eager fighter for a Republic, had soon become one of the Republic’s sharpest critics. There were many reasons why Toller and the left-wing intellectuals were hostile to Weimar. As early as 1919, Carl von Ossietzky, editor of Die Weltbühne and future Nobel Peace Prize winner, reflecting on the failure of the German revolution, trenchantly summed up the reasons for leftist discontent. “There are three areas in which we had a right to expect an absolute break with old methods and reconstructions: in the purely political, the economic, and the spiritualethical area.” 60 It was in the last two pragmatic areas of Ossietzky’s triarchy that Toller had criticized the Republic for its suppression of left-wing radicalism, its toleration of antidemocratic groups, its failure to reform the bureaucracy and institute socialism, the sterile mentality of the Republic’s politicians. However, Ossietzky’s third area, the spiritual-ethical, indicates that beneath this undeniably pragmatic and rational critique of Weimar by the left-wing intellectuals, there existed also an undercurrent of Idealism that rejected the Republic as spiritually rotten. Ossietzky demanded a break in the spiritual-ethical area, Tucholsky a new spiritual atmosphere, Kurt Hiller a renewal of spirit. Ludwig Marcuse spoke for many left-wing intellectuals when he rejected the Republic as “a state without Geist.” 61 In addition to his pragmatic criticism of Weimar, Toller believed a major reason for its failure was the lack of Geist he saw in the German revolution. While in prison, he wrote of German society unable to find “spiritual recovery” and rejected Republican institutions “that deny the spirit.” 62 In later years, his critique of the Nazi regime was to be based on its most terrible of all crimes—the betrayal of the spirit. What Toller and the left-wing intellectuals wished was less a political state than a state without politics. Earlier, Toller had repudiated party politics and wished a Gemeinschaft “freed from the politician as a professional type.” Profoundly antipolitical, he wished to see a penetration of society by Geist and believed his role as an intellectual lay outside normal politics, beyond social affairs yet relevant to it. 63 Such a view was already seen in Heinrich Mann’s essay “Geist und Tat,” and the left-wing intellectual carried much of Mann’s thought with him into the 1920s. For the intellectuals of those years, the demands for a just society were linked with a vision standing above any established form of government. Germany was a society encumbered by an intellectual tradition, that of Idealism. Oversimplified, it was one that decreed that every great institution needed a great foundation of systematic thought, that government had to be supported by a profound theory, that religion had to be supported by a subtle theology. As Friedrich Meinecke noted, this was the tendency to elevate even the primarily practical into a universal world view. 64 During the Bavarian revolution, for example, it was not enough for Kurt Eisner, strongly influenced by the neo-Kantian idealism of Herman Cohen, to justify revolution by an appeal to pragmatism. Rather than merely being a government formed as a result of military collapse,

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the revolution was to give the world an example of the unification of the Idea and Reality. In an essay on Kant written in 1904, Eisner had asserted the primacy of ethical ideas. It was necessary for the man of ideas to organize reality, not by rearranging political forms but by basing political reality in accord with the higher demands of ethics. When this was done, the world was to be transformed. 65 Through Eisner, Toller had acquired the notion of the intellectual as spiritual mentor whose function it was to present his vision of the good society to the population and to help them attain it. Like many intellectuals, Toller looked to the German revolution to provide such a society through spiritual renewal and Wandlung. What was desired was the overcoming of Macht with Geist, the establishment of the ethical state, eternally good and just. René Schickele gave expression to such hope when he wrote of November 9, 1918, as “the most beautiful day” of his life and called for a “new world,” a “liberated man-kind” and the creation of the “man of modern times.” 66 Toller’s Friedrich in Die Wandlung was scarcely less ecstatic when he was left standing on the stage, surrounded by enthusiastic and sobbing crowds, regenerated through Friedrich and ready for spiritual revolution. Any government would have had difficulty fulfilling the revolutionary expectations of the left-wing intellectuals. As historian George Mosse notes: This idealism was bound to have a negative effect on their relationship to the Weimar Republic, for that state could not live up to their image of the good society, could not even offer hope of approaching such a paradise. It was forced to operate on the basis of realities, and it was precisely the exigencies of real situations which were constantly displaced in the thought of these intellectuals by their idealism. Where, in a parliamentary Republic based on majority rule, was the categorical imperative to be found—that moral impulse so necessary to inspire the right actions” 67

Hopes for the union of spirit and power, for moral transformation and the ethical state, were bound to be frustrated. No form of government could possibly live up to such expectations. As a government of men, Weimar had to work on the level of politics and not Geist. This, of course, was not the only reason for the left-wing intellectuals’ discontent with postwar Germany. Certain concrete actions of the Republic also made intellectual accommodation difficult. Toller could hardly be expected to have much love for a government that had sent him to prison. But the leftist critique was more than just political, and the influence of Geist strongly colored their views and helps explain the particular distaste with which the Republic was viewed. Its critique was made by that most critical species of intellectual—the offended idealist. 68 It was this dual failure of Weimar to change on the level of politics and the level of Geist that made the left-wing intellectuals’ criticism so bitter. The gap

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between the expectations for Weimar and the reality of Weimar was enormous. Their hopes were so momentous—after all, nothing less was at stake than the entire reformation of mankind—and the actual results so paltry by comparison and so marginal as to appear nonexistent. By assigning to the Weimar Republic the fulfillment of the high ethical considerations of Geist, the left-wing intellectual was guaranteeing that the reaction against Weimar would be as intense as it could be. It was, then, with profound pessimism that Toller noted the state of Germany in 1922 and confessed that: Men have learned nothing, nothing at all from the fate of those years; have gained no insight and have no strength to plan sensibly; that they remain barbarous in feeling and that the more barbarous they are, the more heroic they believe themselves to be; that parties have failed that had a world to win; that catastrophes will destroy Germany, destroy Europe. 69

Such pessimism was bound to be reflected in Toller’s dramatic work. Never again to attain the ecstatic outlook of Die Wandlung, his plays became streaked with despair. His works after 1919 were not briefs for social optimism. While they did not reject the efficacy of social reform, they reveal a burden of suffering no reform can eradicate. As Toller wrote in the preface to the English edition of his work, “The plays collected in this volume are social tragedies. They bear witness to human suffering and to fine yet vain struggles to vanquish that suffering.” 70 Unlike Nietzsche and Kafka, who saw the universe supremely unconcerned with man and who did not deal with the explanation of suffering, Toller blamed society for the misfortunes that befell individuals living in a world without transcendence. Hence, there frequently remains a note of weak optimism (except in Hinkemann) in even his most tragic works, the recognition of The Woman in Masse Mensch that, although man is not good, he can at least try to become so. Never nihilistic, his work was a protest against the absence of social justice and the hope that the world could try to become just. As a character at the end of his play Die Maschinenstürmer says, “We must love one another.” From the retrospective comfort of a half a century, it was inevitable that expressionism with its calls for a new man and regeneration, would suffer a decline after the political events of the German revolution had worked themselves out. It was this that allowed Kurt Pinthus, writing in the same year Toller confessed the failure of parties that had a world to win, to view expressionism as ultimately tragic and not hopeful, a mocking testament of “deepest suffering” of those who thought a “paradise would spring immediately from ruins.” 71 This, in part, explains the decline in the number of expressionist periodicals that in 1919, the zenith of revolutionary expectation, had reached a height of forty-four, but drastically fell three years later to only eight. 72 The one-time expressionist Iwan

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Goll, writing in a 1921 literary obituary on the death of expressionism, observed that the expressionist Weltanschauung had conquered nothing. The optimism of Leonhard Frank’s novel Der Mensch ist Gut (Man is Good) was dismissed as only a phrase, attainable perhaps in a thousand years but hardly suited to contemporary reality. 73 The emotional effusions of expressionist ecstasy were no longer in tune with the disillusion and cynicism of the times. Brecht’s abrupt dictum, “Glotzt nicht so romantisch!” (Don’t be so romantic!) 74 had already reflected the fashion of a more sober genre of literary productivity that found an outlet in Neue Sachlichkeit, the “new objectivity.” A “group of the disenchanted and disillusioned, Neue Sachlichkeit became what most of those recruited from the ranks of disillusioned optimists become—cultural pessimists who saw little hope for salvation and much for catastrophe. In contrast to the “simplifying pathos-mongers” (abstrahierenden Pathetiker) 75 of expressionism, they were society’s embittered critics. The sober Neue Sachlichkeit was first seen in Toller’s work with his second prison play, Die Maschinenstürmer, a historical drama of the Nottingham Luddite riots of 1815. Like his earlier play, Masse Mensch, Die Maschinenstürmer reflects the less optimistic outlook Toller had acquired after the failure of the Bavarian revolution. By now, Toller had largely given up expressionist declamation, staccato phraseology, and ill-defined staging in favor of a more realistic presentation of both characters and plot. Although bordering on realism, the play has been compared to Hauptmann’s Die Weber and Zola’s Germinal. 76 Nevertheless, Toller worked into his play many of the themes of Masse Mensch—the difficulty of revolutionary activity, the gap between the intellectual leader and his following, the instability of the masses. The play’s hero is Jimmy Cobbett, a wandering journeyman whose travelling has made him more urbane than his fellow workers. He can also read and write, qualities that further alienate him from those he wishes to lead. When he returns to his native city, Jimmy finds the weavers, thrown out of work by machines and suffering from the trade depression caused by Napoleon’s trade blockade, without food and desperate. They can expect little help from their employers, who have no sympathy with their plight, nor can they expect aid from the government. The play opens with a debate in the House of Lords between Lord Byron and Castlereagh. It is significant that Toller, the activist and believer in the poet as leader, causes Byron to plead the cause of the poor workman and castigates the Lords for their contemptuous attitude toward worker demands. The poet-champion of the oppressed is rebutted by the unsympathetic aristocratic ogre, Castlereagh, and, over Byron’s lone objection, a bill is passed making the destruction of machinery a capital offense. The weavers, driven on by economic hardship, have decided, however, to take direct action against the hated machine. Tempers are high and “blacklegs” have been imported to run the factories when Jimmy, who

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believes the proper use of machinery can benefit the workers, remonstrates with them. In Die Wandlung, Friedrich delivers a great speech at the end; in this play, Jimmy calls on the workers to unite and realize their dreams. They must, he asserts, organize themselves and nonviolently fight oppression. With the power of their unity, not only will they be able to fulfill their just demands, but they will also be able to make the machine into an instrument of increased productivity and higher living standards. Like Friedrich, Jimmy convinces his audience and, rejoicing in their new hopes, they carry their new leader away on their shoulders. However, it is important to note a major difference between Friedrich and Jimmy Cobbett. It is a measure of how far Toller had progressed that Friedrich’s call ends Die Wandlung, while in Die Maschinenstürmer, Jimmy’s speech occurs fairly early. Friedrich never experiences the difficulties of Jimmy Cobbett when he attempts to put his ideas into practice. While Jimmy is preparing for nonviolent coercion, John Wible, the former organizer of the weavers, now incensed that his position of leadership has been taken away, is conspiring with Mr. Ure, a factory-owner, to seek ways of stopping Jimmy. In response to Jimmy’s action, Ure fires seventy-five percent of the male factory-workers, employs women and children at low wages, and institutes a series of industrial fines designed to lower wages further. In the last act, the treacherous John Wible has assembled the workers and harangues them, urging them to destroy the hated machinery, “the demon steam,” and incites the crowd against Jimmy, branding his nonviolent ideas treason. Incensed, the crowd attacks the machinery. Jimmy, having heard of Wible’s action, comes and rebukes the weavers for their action. Unlike his earlier speech, however, his words have no effect on the angry workers, and, under Wible’s instigation, Jimmy’s one-time followers turn their wrath on him. Surrendering themselves to violence, they kill their former leader, a victim of their uncontrolled rage. Too late do they realize that their action has provided the state with the excuse needed to suppress their organization. Christ-like in his martyrdom, Jimmy’s lifeless body is taken off by repentant workers to be buried. 77 Traces of expressionism are still to be found in Die Maschinenstürmer. Jimmy’s first speech, for example, with its calls for brotherhood and its plethora of exclamation points, could easily have come from Die Wandlung or Masse Mensch . Yet in other ways, Toller’s later work shows a clear evolution away from expressionism. Gone are the “dream pictures” and the semi-reality of Masse Mensch. The social scene is presented in a stark realism, and misery is everywhere. The play is replete with beggars, drunkards, and starving children who live in domestic squalor while government and industry are in an unholy alliance directed against society’s outcasts. Yet, like Etienne Lantier’s struggle at Monsou in Zola’s Germinal, that at Nottingham is not simply a revolt of the oppressed and

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innocent against the wicked and tyrannous. All are victims of a system they do not fully understand. If the play, like Zola’s novel, ends with failure, it is not because of man’s innate wickedness. It is a wickedness born of hunger and ignorance that allows the weavers to murder their leader, destroy the machine, and thus to bring upon themselves the opportunity the authorities need noted, to call on the army and suppress their protest. Yet their revolt is not without meaning. At the end, Toller expresses the hope that others, more experienced and knowledgeable, will continue the fight of the weavers until they are victorious. If Toller’s Die Maschinenstürmer, like Masse Mensch, ends on a faint and unconvincing note of optimism, his last prison play, Hinkemann, is totally without hope. Its bleak outlook probably was the result of the cumulative effects of years of imprisonment on Toller’s personality. A man of great emotional energy, his appeals for brotherhood indicated his equally great need for human companionship. Denied such needs through his confinement, he became pessimistically introspective. This, compounded with the restrictions, both physical and mental, prison life imposed, allowed him to become absorbed in his own misfortunes and transfer them to his dramatic work. 78 At the time of his trial and during the early part of his imprisonment, Toller comforted himself with the thought that revolutionaries could be silenced but not their ideas: “But socialism is not beaten. One can throw revolutionaries in prison, but the idea for which they fight—is that slain by such methods?” 79 By the time of Hinkemann, Toller had begun to have nagging doubts about the efficacy of socialism. Like Masse Mensch, which he had written as a catharsis to his feelings on mass revolution, Hinkemann served a similar function. It was written, Toller recalled, at a time when with sorrow I recognized the tragic limits to any chances of happiness under a socialist revolution. . . . There will always be suffering individuals to whose suffering there is no solution. And if there is an individual whose suffering cannot be cured, then his tragedy is also the tragedy of the society in which he lives. 80

Like Toller, Hinkemann is an individual alone in a hostile world he had once thought capable of change. Men are strangers to each other; they have not discovered their true selves and are, therefore, unregenerate. Hinkemann, an intelligent sufferer in such a world, suffers because of his lucidity and views social struggle with despair. His world, like Toller’s, is one he would gladly change but cannot, one from which he would willingly escape but one to which he is irrevocably bound. The social order against which Hinkemann vainly struggles turns on him, beats him down, and imposes its harsh domination. As Toller wrote in one of his letters, “There is no bridge from man to man,” 81 and Hinkemann, who knows this only too well, acutely feels the futility of his protest and his anguished despair.

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Eugene Hinkemann is an unemployed ex-soldier, returned to peacetime society, sexually impotent as a result of a war wound. To compensate his wife, Grete, for the missing pleasures of sex, Hinkemann attempts to provide her with the pleasures of material comfort and goes out to find work. Unskilled, he can only find one job: that of biting the throats of live mice at a carnival for the amusement of an audience curious for the unusual. Hinkemann, basically a gentle man who refuses even to set mousetraps at home for fear of torturing innocent animals, accepts the revolting job, viewing it as a form of self-sacrifice that will reward his wife for her love. Grete, however, frustrated in her marital life, has been seduced by Paul Grosshahn, a crass but virile and muscular laborer. They go to the carnival, where, unknown to Grete, her husband is working at his new job. Remorseful at the sight, she realizes that the tender Hinkemann overcame the horror of his work only for her sake. She is overcome with guilt—guilt for her adultery, guilt for the job her husband has taken, guilt for allowing him to go to war. Like Jimmy Cobbett and the Woman in Masse Mensch, Hinkemann has become a martyr, and, through his sacrifice, Grete realizes her husband’s true nobility. Directly after this act, Hinkemann goes to a tavern and becomes involved in a discussion on the efficacy of social revolution. Here, Toller attempted to show the basic injustice of existence independent of any form of government. As one character exclaims, “Even if there were a hundred revolutions, it wouldn’t matter. Revolution can’t change anything.” Through Hinkemann, Toller uses the scene as an occasion to attack both the naïve idealism of believers in social Utopia and the excessively crass and materialistic outlook of many socialists. To Hinkemann’s question whether man will be happy under socialism, he is told that the material benefits of socialism will automatically make for personal happiness. To his further question of what will happen to those “who have something wrong with them—in their souls, if you know what I mean,” he is told such people will not exist. Besides, it is not the business of revolution to worry about problems of spiritual health or, in Hinkemann’s case, sexual potency. At this moment, Paul Grosshahn arrives, piqued that Grete has decided to return to her eunuch husband. Maliciously, he tells Hinkemann of his wife’s infidelity, and, in an emotional outburst, Hinkemann vents his wrath and disillusion with theories of social betterment: “You have nothing but fine words, holy words of eternal happiness. Words are for healthy people. You do not see your limits. There are people which no state, no community, no family, no government can bring happiness to. There, where your panaceas end, suffering begins.” Hinkemann stumbles out of the tavern, haunted by visions of the society in which he must live. Maimed war veterans unable to find a place in society, newspapers shouting the latest catastrophe, victims of anti-Semitism, prostitutes, and

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pimps are all woven together in Hinkemann’s deranged mind. Angrily, he confronts his wife, but he soon comes to realize that she, too, is a poor tormented victim of society like himself. However, he refuses her emotional and sobbing plea that she be forgiven her infidelity and refuses to live with her any longer. Unable to face life without her husband, Grete commits suicide. Hinkemann, now alone, surrenders to utter despair and sees nothing but the endless suffering of a world without spirit. He muses on the sins of mankind, their denial of spiritual unity and the futility of existence: The war came and took them and they hated their leaders and obeyed their orders and killed each other. And it’s all forgotten. They’ll be taken again and hate their bosses again and obey orders again and kill each other. Again and again. That’s how people are. They could be otherwise if they wanted. But they don’t. They mock at life. They scorn and spit and crucify life. . . . In all ages there’ll be men like me. But why me? Why should it fall on me? It doesn’t pick and choose. It hits this man and that. And the next and the next go free. . . . Any day the kingdom of heaven may arise, any night a great flood may rise up and swallow the earth. 82

The play ends with Hinkemann preparing a noose to hang himself. Hinkemann was perhaps Toller’s most powerful play. Its overcharged action may be explained not only by the stress under which it was written but also because the action of the work derives from Büchner’s Woyzeck, which had been recently revived during Toller’s imprisonment with great success. 83 Although Woyzeck can be seen as a proto-expressionist work, with Hinkemann Toller had largely given up expressionism. In this process, he had gone through the development from expressionist form types, dream scenes and endless rhetorical outbursts, to a new realism in dialogue and plot. 84 More important than these stylistic nuances, Toller had given up the expressionist ideology. At least in Masse Mensch, The Woman could comfort herself with the possibility that man could strive toward regeneration. Toller’s Hinkemann is not even left this. He is an expressionist antihero. No character is more pitiful than the sick man in Die Wandlung who painfully cries, “No one has ever loved me.” Hinkemann is that most tragic figure—one who cannot love. With his powerful indictment of society, he cannot love the world in which he lives, and, with his inability to love his wife sexually, he commits a spiritual suicide that balances his wife’s death at her own hands. He is, moreover, a symbol of the lost hopes of Toller’s war generation who, with the conclusion of peace, had wished a new society to emerge. Hinkemann can neither fight against the world nor call forth a new generation. Emasculated, there is no hope, as in Die Maschinenstürmer, that a future generation will carry his hopes into reality. The inability to create a new world is dramatically symbolized by Eugene Hinkemann’s impotence. By a perverse log-

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ic, war, which was to be the preparation for a reformation of society, has prevented it from being born. Hinkemann cannot regenerate, he cannot create a new man in his own image, he cannot love; for the activist, his is a dual tragedy of physical and spiritual impotence. The play certainly struck a strong nerve in Weimar Germany, becoming the great theater scandal of 1924. The clashes of modernity in Weimar often were expressed as a crisis of masculinity reflected in castration. After its defeat, Germany, once the great power in Europe, had been castrated militarily, reduced to an army of 100,000. Men were reduced in political power and authority. The Weimar constitution was a revolutionary document for women, granting them legal equality with men for the first time in history. There was an allegorical equivalence between Germany and Hinkemann’s plight; it played into Germany’s humiliation of defeat and its loss of mastery. Writes its most thoughtful commentator, Richard McCormick, “If this quest for mastery depends on denial of the threatening consequences of modernization and the recent war in the Weimar Republic . . . then Hinkemann embodies an especially disturbing threat to such a denial, as a living reminder of the power of modern warfare to wound masculine pride at the site of its symbolic identity.” There is a powerful poignancy in Toller’s disillusion with his hopes for social change, one which led the noted critic Pierre Loving, at the end of the 1920s, to call Toller’s Hinkemann “the finest tragedy of the postwar years.” 85 It was through plays such as Die Maschinenstürmer and Hinkemann that Toller had become, during his five years in prison, one of Germany’s best-known playwrights. Toller was released from prison on July 16, 1924, one day earlier than expected. Bavarian authorities had heard a rumor that there was to be an attempt the following day on Toller’s life, probably by one of the region’s numerous right-wing groups. Yet it seems equally as likely that Bavarian officials were equally as concerned to avoid any pro-Toller demonstrations that might greet the popular author whose dramas had become so well-known. As prison authorities told him, “We have chosen the route of deportation from Bavaria especially to avoid big towns and industrial areas where workers might conceivably want to demonstrate.” 86 Such concern was not unwarranted, for Toller had acquired fame not only in Germany but also beyond her borders as a result of translations of his work. In Berlin, he was greeted with acclaim, and even in Serbia it was noted that he was met “with wild enthusiasm” by Serbian youth during a trip to Yugoslavia. 87 He was at the height of his career and still a figure of controversy. Toller, not averse to such fame, obviously relished the acclaim and attention he received. 88 As early as 1925, there were disruptions when Toller appeared on stage. 89 Right-wing organizations frequently attempted to prevent his speaking, personal threats alternated with calls for boycotts against organizations sponsoring an individual so clearly offensive to German values. Nor was

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concern limited to nongovernmental groups. In 1924, during his first trip to Switzerland, Toller was forced to sign a pledge promising not to make any attempts to overthrow the Swiss government. 90 During the early 1930s, the German Foreign Office suppressed speeches he made from Spain. In 1936, he was detained by the American government for three months on Ellis Island when the Theatre Arts Guild and the International Labor Alliance invited him to the United States. In 1935, the Irish Free State refused him permission to come to Dublin and address the Irish Labor League against Fascism, and in 1938 Queens College in New York City cancelled a proposed lecture by Toller. It was feared his militant antifascist stand might offend New York’s German community. Even as late as 1939, the Gestapo expressed concern about Toller’s activities. 91 While known as a dramatist, it was not until 1927 that Toller wrote his first post-prison play, Hoppla, wir leben! Although his poem Das Schwalbenbuch was well received, Toller also did not write any new poetry before 1933; he had come to feel poetry too introspective and personal a genre to effect meaningful social change. 92 The dearth of dramatic work is, in part, explained in a letter Toller wrote to Walter Fabian a year before his release, in which he expressed doubt that he would have time to write a serious work of literature. As he explained: “It’s life I’m looking forward to and the conflicts of a free man, to man who don’t live in unending fear, whose eyes are not always bent to the ground (after a few days or months all prisoners look like that), and to forests and twilight and night and sound and innumerable contacts.” 93 Toller was true to his word, and the attention he received probably was in conflict with the time needed to write a substantial dramatic work. Ernst Niekisch, who was active along with Toller in the Bavarian Soviet, confirmed that Toller did what he had promised: “He hungered and thirsted for the active life (pulsierenden Leben); it was as if he wished to recover quickly and make up for the years he had lost. Admirers, male and female, came to him and made it easy for him to enjoy fully those long denied experiences, activities and pleasures.” 94 Toller’s five years of confinement may explain the amount of time he spent travelling after his release. Although his family was in Berlin, Toller never established a permanent home there, and between 1924 and 1933 he became peripatetic, a wanderer, not only in Germany but also in Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, North Africa, the United States, Palestine, Russia, and Spain. It is, therefore, not surprising that many of his works were reportage of his experiences and descriptions of the countries he visited. Much of his time was also spent writing essays, mostly for Die Weltbühne. Literary critics, familiar only with Toller’s plays, have frequently argued that Toller suffered from a decline in his creative powers after 1924. However, such an evaluation is based exclusively on his plays and overlooks the numerous essays and articles he published after his release. Indeed, during the 1930s, such work became more important to

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him than his belletristic writing. Although many critics have asserted Toller’s decline of dramatic prose a result of a sudden and unexplained loss of talent, such a quantitative decline was less the result of a loss of ability than a loss of opportunity to have his plays staged. As has been noted, producers became reluctant to run the risks of riots and demonstrations associated with Toller’s controversial themes. Increasingly, his plays were boycotted, and, as a result, he was coerced to earn money from lectures and essays rather than from production royalties. 95 It is significant that Toller’s first lecture after his release was given on November 8, 1925, the eve of the seventh anniversary of the German revolution, when he addressed a gathering of workers in Berlin’s Grosses Schauspielhaus on the achievements of the Republic during its seven-year existence. The speech was less an optimistic glorification of Republican accomplishments than a dismal catalogue of Republican failures, with the contrast between the revolutionary ideas Toller held in 1918 and the postrevolutionary reality he confronted in 1925 providing a stark and depressing contrast: revolutionary hopes of destroying militarism had been destroyed by a militaristic state; hopes for socialization had given way to timid bourgeois policies; rather than being dismantled, the old bureaucracy continued to exist; the attempt to create a genuine democracy of workers and peasants had degenerated into an oligarchy controlled by industrialists and aristocrats. Toller could only conclude that it would be better to confess the failure of the German revolution than to celebrate its victory. Particularly disturbing to Toller, the believer in left-wing unity, were the fatal divisions in German socialism that had allowed the revolution to die. During his years in prison, Toller came to the conclusion that the Left in Germany had forgotten everything and learned nothing from the internecine conflicts of 1918 and 1919 that had so paralyzed revolutionary activity. He came back to this theme and bitterly lashed out against the doctrinaire “egoism of parties, groups and persons” concerned more with party dogma than Geist. The Right, on the other hand, had manifested a firmness and resolution lacking among their opponents: “Today we see a firm, organized bourgeoisie, conscious of its goals and a proletariat paralyzed by disappointments, misery and treachery.” Although not mentioned by name, Toller’s speech was an indirect indictment against intransigent doctrinaires in both the SPD and KPD who failed to unite in the face of what he saw as a clear danger from the forces of the Right. Only the recognition by the workers, Toller concluded, of the lost ideals of socialism and left-wing unity could save the revolution. 96 From the content of his speech, it seemed as if Toller had recovered from the unmitigated pessimism of Hinkemann. His address frankly recognized the failure of the revolution to fulfill his ideals. Yet it appeared that Toller had found a position between the naïve revolutionary optimism of Die Wandlung and the dark outlook of Hinkemann. Neither a

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bleak pessimist or an uncritical optimist, Toller held a more complicated attitude toward the revolution. While he rejected Weimar as a failure, he did not advocate its overthrow, a solution Toller recognized as impracticable. However, neither did he advocate resignation. Rather, he advanced a “third way.” While cognizant of the contrasts between dreams for Germany and German reality, conditions could still be changed, provided there were enough individuals willing to want change. 97 Like his friend French writer Henri Barbusse, whom he so admired, Toller had the consciousness of “one who knows the melancholy of man’s history” but who, nevertheless, still has a belief in the possibility of significant social change. During one of his darker moments in prison, Toller had written of the futility of social struggle, the seemingly endless cycle of revolution and apathy, and it was to this theme that he again returned after his release. In “Heimarbeit,” he contrasted the poverty of German rural workers with the description given in Hauptmann’s Die Weber. Many individuals, Toller asserted, could console themselves with the comforting thought that the conditions so realistically set forth in Hauptmann’s play concerning social conditions of the 1840s had changed. Yet from what Toller had seen in his travels through Germany, such consoling illusions were invalid. The squalor and filth of Hauptmann’s descriptions unfortunately still held true. Most depressing was that, after initial enthusiasm during the revolution of 1918 to change such conditions, the workers had again sunk into apathy and resignation: Before the revolution most were politically indifferent. They were inclined to sectarianism and hungered for hopes of a better existence. In the first days of revolution they were all radicals and communists. Today, only a small part still fights. Most are again sectarian, overworked men with bent backs whose will has been gnawed away. 98

That Toller, in spite of the lack of progress he saw, considered himself a part of the small minority that still fought is vividly seen in his play Hoppla, wir leben!, his first drama since Hinkemann. Staged in September 1927 by the noted German producer Erwin Piscator, it was Piscator’s first production in his newly acquired baroque theater on Berlin’s Nollendorfplatz. Here, according to his wife, “The plays he proposed to do were plays of active protest, a deliberate ‘j’accuse,’ a reportage and montage, a warning, history marching on, political satire, morality plays and court trials, purposefully shocking.” 99 If Piscator wished purposefully to shock and to cultivate controversy, his choice of the controversial Toller and his plays was well-suited for his goal. The Right was scandalized and repulsed by Toller, his play, and Piscator’s production. Toller was denounced as a “Bolshevik” who had no love of fatherland, a cheap political agitator who preached class hatred; the play was dismissed as a communist feuilleton that should be

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removed as soon as possible from the “holy halls” of German art; and the production was decried as “trashy,” more suited for communist indoctrination than legitimate theater. 100 For one unfamiliar with Weimar’s politics, it might be expected that those on the Left would be generous in their defense of a work so clearly offensive to their opponents. However, the lack of political solidarity Toller had noted on the Left was dramatically seen in the vehement denunciations by communist reviews that lashed out at Toller’s “pacifist-anarchist tendency,” his “salon communism,” and his defeatist, counterrevolutionary “ideologically confused” and “obviously decadent” play. 101 In spite of such controversy, or perhaps because of it, Toller’s Hoppla, wir leben! became a significant theatrical success. Between 1927 and 1930, it was performed in Hamburg, Leipzig, Essen, Vienna, Frankfurt, Moscow, Copenhagen, Leningrad, Stockholm, Mannheim, Tiflis, Estonia, London, Dublin, Cambridge, Rostow, Helsinki, and Tashkent. 102 Hoppla, wir leben! is the story of Karl Thomas, who, at the opening of the play, is one of six political prisoners awaiting execution for their part in an abortive revolution. Locked up together for ten days, the prisoners have begun to turn on each other. Wilhelm Kilman, a party functionary who, despite his revolutionary oratory, had managed to avoid actually fighting on the barricades, makes fun of one of his fellow inmates, who wants to see a priest before he dies. Eva Berg, in love with Karl Thomas, is unable to reconcile herself to the thought of death. The male prisoners quarrel among themselves, and two even attack each other physically. At this point, an army officer comes and informs them that their sentences have been commuted; all, with the exception of Kilman, who has been given an unconditional pardon, will be given prison terms. After ten days of expected execution, Karl Thomas goes insane at the thought of further imprisonment. Eight years later, Thomas is released and finds Kilman, much to his surprise, Minister of the Interior, controlling the same office that had helped preside over the liquidation of the revolution in which they had both taken part. Moreover, Kilman has become the willing tool of bankers, industrialists, and Junkers. The one-time revolutionary is embarrassed by his former friend’s sudden appearance. Kilman would like to forget his early participation in proletarian politics. The former defender of the workers now uses his office to suppress strikes and lengthen hours of work and rejects Karl Thomas as a “hot-headed dreamer.” Kilman has given up the Utopianism of revolutionary activity for the practical responsibilities of governing. As he explains, “Later on—in ten years—a hundred years—with education, with evolution, things will alter. Today we must govern.” Disenchanted with Kilman, Thomas meets Eva Berg, who, unlike Kilman, has not given up her ideals and is still active on behalf of the workers. He also finds Albert Kroll, a former political prisoner with whom

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Thomas had shared a cell while awaiting execution. Also unlike Kilman, Kroll has not given up revolutionary activity, but he does advocate working through the parliamentary system as the best means of assuring a better future. Karl Thomas, however, finds Kroll’s attitude repulsive and has little patience with working through the system. “It all stinks of bureaucracy,” he explains. His views on the futility of electoral politics are soon confirmed. Kilman has managed to disenfranchise most of the workers; Eva Berg is arrested, and news comes that a reactionary Minister of War has been elected president of the Republic. Karl Thomas eventually finds a job as a waiter at a large hotel and sees more closely the type of society in which he must live. The microcosm of society he sees at the hotel fills him with disgust and further disillusion: Kilman dining with bankers while his daughter sleeps with a nobleman, sycophantic employees afraid of losing their jobs, loud American jazz music that symbolizes the cheap materialism and commercialization of society, ineffectual intellectuals who abstractly discuss the intellectual salvation of the proletariat, news from the radio bringing only stories of death, famine, and war. The total effect of the experience is to make Karl Thomas resolve to assassinate Kilman, the corrupt servant of such a system. Before he can carry out his ideas, however, a reactionary antiSemite, working for a right-wing organization, manages to shoot Kilman, “because he is a Bolshevik, because he is a revolutionary, because he has sold our country over to the Jews,” as he explains. Mistakenly arrested for the murder, Karl Thomas is examined by a psychiatrist and found sane. It was here Toller returned to the tradition of Büchner’s Woyzeck and Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer’s Caligari, of the madman who knows the sane world to be insane. 103 From the experiences he has had since his release, Thomas begins to realize, “I’m gradually coming to the conclusion that I’m in a mad house.” Much like Hinkemann, Karl Thomas is left alone in a world without meaning and without hope: Are they all here again? All here again. Is it really so? Waiting once more—waiting, waiting. . . . I can’t. Don’t you see? What is it that drives you on? Have done with it all! Nobody hears, nobody hears. Nobody. We speak and do not hear one another. We hate and do not see one another. We murder and are unaware of one another. Must it always be so—always? . . . Everything to no purpose. 104

Unable to endure a world obstinately refusing to change, Karl Thomas makes a rope from his bed sheet and hangs himself—just after news arrives that the real assassin of Kilman has shot himself as he was about to be arrested. “There are only two choices,” says one character at the end of Piscator’s production: “to hang oneself or change the world.” 105 This is

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a chilling pronouncement when one knows that Toller committed suicide in 1939 by hanging himself in his New York hotel room. Toller’s Hoppla, wir leben! is the dramatic counterpart to Tucholsky’s essays and Grosz’s sketches. 106 Together, they are documents of the disillusion of left-wing intellectuals with Weimar society. For Piscator, another disillusioned radical, Toller’s play was the perfect medium into which he could work his own ideas on staging. 107 Piscator sought to add a series of visual connections in his productions that were to supplement the logical continuum of traditional plot and speech. Seeking a “simultaneous stage,” he sought to order scenes in spatial terms rather than relying exclusively on dialogue to move the normal action of the play. 108 The hotel in Hoppla, for example, was a visual symbol of the vertical hierarchy of Weimar’s social order, where Piscator placed proletarians in the cellar who were “stepped” on by the higher social ranks of guests above their heads. The use of spotlighting darkened areas of the stage allowed him to present relationships not explicit in the text. Moreover, Piscator sought to combine the techniques of film with the tradition of drama. Thus, in his production of Toller’s play, movie projectors showed newsreels of marching revolutionaries, and films of processions of earlier potentates were an oblique critique of Kilman’s views. All these techniques allowed Piscator to discard temporal relationships and use his ideas to integrate scenes or alter their meaning according to his own desires. Many critics felt the production unsatisfactory, asserting that Piscator’s injection of filmstrips and other devices did little to add to the play. 109 Partly in response to this, Piscator later claimed that had he better material with which to work, he would not have embellished the production so much. 110 However, as John Spalek notes, this assertion is open to some doubt since Piscator frequently fell into the habit of altering plays to suit his needs. 111 Moreover, it is most unlikely Piscator would have chosen a work he felt weak for his opening performance. It is significant in this connection that Toller’s own version of the play, produced in Leipzig without the benefit of Piscator’s additions, was received favorably while many of the reviews of the Berlin production were negative. 112 It is tempting to make a literal comparison of Karl Thomas and Ernst Toller: both revolutionaries, both political prisoners, both released and disillusioned with the world to which they have returned. Even though many reviewers made the mistake of a literal equation of Toller and his tragic hero, 113 such a comparison is not totally valid. Karl Thomas’s readiness to resort to violence, for example, vividly contrasts with Toller’s pacifism. Equally as important is that Karl Thomas represents the intransigent revolutionary, one hostile to all who disagree with him, one who regards his opponents with hatred and contempt. Toller, on the other hand, advocated cooperation among all varieties of socialists and was willing to discuss political issues with any group willing to listen, even Nazis. 114 There is much to the view that it is not so much Karl

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Thomas who shares many of Toller’s views, but Albert Kroll. He stands for a cautious but, nevertheless, revolutionary policy; he is willing to wait while doing whatever he can to realize his ideals, one who fights for social justice but attempts to control others, more inclined toward unrealistic and hasty action. He is, in short, one who possesses that quality of which Toller wrote of recognizing limitations yet being willing to continue to fight. This is given further support by the fact that Piscator’s ending was not Toller’s. Piscator frequently rewrote scripts or, when possible, worked closely with an author rather than accepting finished plays. So high-handed were his “revisions” that he was fired from the Volksbühne after playwright Ehm Welk complained that Piscator had made a travesty of his play, Gewitter über Gottland (Storm over Gottland). Piscator practically rewrote Alexei Tolstoy’s Rasputin, adding nineteen scenes to Tolstoy’s original eight. His invariable reply to those who accused him of violating authors’ rights was the curt injunction, “Write better plays.” 115 Karl Thomas’s suicide was one of Piscator’s many “improvements” in Toller’s play, 116 and, in Toller’s own Leipzig production, Thomas’s suicide was left out. Writing in 1930, Toller regretted allowing Piscator to use the conclusion in which his hero kills himself, explaining that in the original version Karl Thomas comes to realize that, even though the revolution is over, working for the “Idea” is not without hope. 117 Yet there is much to Karl Thomas that was also Ernst Toller, and to deny the similarity of their disillusioned views toward society is as fallacious as to equate literally both author and character. Even with Toller’s ending, however, Hoppla, wir leben! is not an optimistic work. If Albert Kroll represents continued struggle in adversity and Karl Thomas revolutionary intransigence, both are ultimately frustrated. Albert Kroll’s policy of electoral participation is shown valueless. Workers are disenfranchised, their leaders arrested, and, in the end, the most reactionary minister of all comes to office as the Republic’s leader. Karl Thomas’s policy of active revolution is equally ineffective. The power of the entrenched forces he sees at the hotel is too powerful to be fought by such means. It was to the power of these reactionary forces and the rising tide of the right-wing sentiment that he believed threatened whatever small progress the Republic had made that Toller returned a year after Hoppla. In an article written on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the German revolution, he frankly confessed the deception of those who once believed the revolution would introduce an era of international peace and establish a “social paradise on Earth.” 118 Particularly disturbing to Toller was the utter failure of the European Left to combat effectively the dangers of fascism. Victorious in 1918, the Left had allowed itself to collapse in the face of the forces of fascism and national dictatorships. In a 1929 speech given in memory of Kurt Eisner, he asserted: “No one should underestimate the attractive power of this victory. The reaction, which in 1918 had lost its self-confidence, has won back its self-reliance thanks to

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the thoughtless and frankly criminal mistakes of socialists and republicans. In 1918, he continued, it was the Left that was self-confident and united. Ten years later, however, split into numerous factions, the Left lacked the power to challenge the resolute unity that characterized its opponents: “What the right once lacked—self-confidence, organization, will to power—they have won. How things will develop in Germany in the next years, whether through legal or illegal channels, we do not know. But one thing we do know: we stand before a period of imminent reaction.” 119 Looking back from a vantage point of over four decades, Toller’s comments appear notably perspicacious, his prediction of a period of reaction all the more remarkable when it is remembered that at the time he was writing, the socialist Müller government of 1928 had brought an end to the period of conservative coalitions that had governed Germany for several years. The political outlook for the Left seemed better than it had been for quite some time. Socialists had just won a striking victory in the 1928 elections, receiving 29.8 percent of the votes, a larger percentage than at any other time during the 1920s. The Republic seemed secure. The domestic political situation appeared more stable than ever. Stressmann’s adroit foreign policy had allowed the Reich to become a respected member of the international order, and the German economy had reached new production heights. Such stability, however, was fragile and camouflaged the weaknesses of a system of government that large sections of the population regarded with hostility. Political stability rested on a compromise, and, given the balance of political forces, radical social change was out of the question. Such compromise was possible only so long as a flourishing economy concealed political and class antagonisms. The first economic signs of crisis began to appear in 1929 with the onset of a worldwide depression that hit Germany hardest of all European countries. The national income first stagnated and then fell, industrial investment sank by 25 percent of 1928 levels, unemployment rose by 35 percent. 120 By 1930, the period of reaction of which Toller spoke had become reality. The breakup of the Müller government brought in Heinrich Brüning who, under pressure from the conservative Right, depended less on the confidence of the Reichstag than on the support of the President under Article 48 of the Weimar constitution. Brüning, who intended to restore the Hohenzollerns, 121 further strengthened the forces of reaction, the aristocracy, the army, and industry. His government signified the victory of the conservative-bourgeois groups over the forces of the Left. In the face of this clear defeat over the Left, Toller attempted once more to set into motion the ideals of the revolution of 1918 in Feuer aus den Kesseln (Stop the Engines), his last play before Hitler came to power. Toller, who would later during exile spend a short time in Hollywood, had been thinking of writing a documentary filmscript rather than a play. Nothing came of this plan, and Toller decided to write an historical play

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on events leading to the German revolution of 1918. 122 Predictably, as with all his plays, Toller’s Feuer aus den Kesseln was denounced by both Right and Left, characterized as “sentimental” and “confused” by the first and as “insulting to the fatherland” by the second. Toller’s play, historically accurate, 123 deals with the naval mutinies of 1917 and 1918, which formed a prelude to Germany’s revolution. The drama opens with a meeting of the Reichstag’s 1926 committee, which had investigated revolutionary unrest in the navy, and the following eleven scenes of Toller’s play represent a visual portrayal of their findings. During the only significant naval battle of the war at Jutland in 1916, the sailors in Toller’s drama fight bravely, but haughty officers are shown completely lacking respect for their men. The action of the play abruptly shifts to the German Reichstag. Two of the Jutland sailors, Willy Sachse and Max Reichpietsch, have gone to complain about the poor treatment at the hands of callous officers and a prohibition against socialist papers on board ship. Scheidemann, a Majority Socialist, councils caution but asserts that “the matter shall be properly inquired into.” More forcibly, the Independent Socialist Dittmann promises that his party will find a formula for ending the war and will present the sailors’ feelings at the International Socialist Conference to be held in Stockholm. Onboard ship anchored at Wilhelmshaven, men of the German navy must endure the insults of their officers. Issued poor rations, they are outraged that officers receive an abundance of food and expensive wine. An ad hoc committee, including Sachse and Reichpietsch, is formed to check further into the question of unequal rations. When the sailors are later denied shore leave and told instead to assemble for coaling, they protest, and some secretly leave the ship. For their action in leaving their posts, a number of sailors are randomly arrested. Under the leadership of Reichpietsch and his friend, Albin Kobis, a protest meeting is held that results in the arrest of five sailors: Johann Beckers, Wilhelm Weber, Sachse, Köbis, and Reichpietsch. Each is questioned by an ambitious prosecutor, anxious to advance his career by attempting to build a case of treason against the five. Reichpietsch, exhausted by three weeks of repeated examination, signs a statement falsely implicating himself and Dittmann in plotting the overthrow of the government. At trial, the evidence presented against the accused is hearsay and supposition. The court, clearly biased against the seamen, overrules every defense motion that could be favorable to the prisoners. Forbidden to call witnesses and refute the damaging testimony of the prosecution, the five are convicted and sentenced to death for treason. In their cells, the prisoners debate the advisability of suicide. Köbis objects, feeling that their cause might better be served if they allow themselves to be executed and thus become martyrs to their ideas. Reichpietsch, knowing that their execution will not be public, believes their deaths will accomplish little. Later, an officer enters with an order from

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Admiral von Scheer, commander of the High Seas Fleet; the death sentences of Sachse, Weber, and Beckers have been commuted to fifteen years imprisonment. Sentences on Köbis and Reichpietsch are confirmed, and both are executed. Toller’s play ends with the naval mutiny at Kiel in November the following year. Preparations are being made by the officers for a suicide encounter with the English fleet. Refusing to die for the misplaced honor of their officers, the men mutiny. Boiler-room stokers whose job it is to fuel the ships refuse their orders, and the cry is raised: Feuer aus den Kesseln! (roughly, “draw the fires,” that is, don’t fuel the ships). Other members of the fleet follow the first mutineers; news comes in of revolts in the army and that the Kaiser has fled to the Netherlands. Red flags are hoisted by other craft in the fleet. Into this revolutionary excitement, a foreboding note is injected by a sailor: “I don’t like the way they’ve given in, without any scrapping. You don’t get something for nothing: It isn’t right. The revolution will have to pay for it sooner or later. You’ll see. . . . It fell into our hands like a rotten apple. I tell you, I don’t like it a bit.” 124 Such pessimism, however, is drowned out by the ceaseless cries of the men of the fleet—Feuer aus den Kesseln! Feuer aus den Kesseln!—and the sound of the ship’s band as it marches triumphantly through the dockyard gates. The dissonant note struck by Toller’s nameless sailor during the final act of the play was not included in the original German version of the drama, which just ended with the enthusiastic cries of the sailors. 125 In retrospect, however, Toller’s later addition was particularly apt. Not only had the presidential government of Brüning brought an informal end to Weimar democracy, 126 but, equally as alarming, was the large increase in National Socialist votes, the party most committed to overthrowing the “November criminals” and their system. Acquiring only fourteen Reichstag seats in 1928, they had dramatically increased their total to 137 in the 1930 election and had become the Reichstag’s second largest party. The following year, the height of their success before 1933, they were the most powerful force in Germany, receiving over 15 percent more votes than any other party. Curiously, most left-wing intellectuals remained unaware of the potential dangers of Nazism. Many writers for Das Tagebuch, for example, next to Die Weltbühne a major organ for left-wing intellectuals, dismissed Hitler as an unreal danger. Intellectually inferior and lacking in culture, his movement was sure to be defeated by rational discussion. Heinrich Mann, writing in the same periodical, saw the Nazis as creatures of the industrialists, without an independent will. Even should they attain power, Mann asserted, they would call forth a civil war and be defeated. Unlike 1918, democracy would be attained through struggle. 127 Most Weltbühne writers expressed similar attitudes. As early as 1925, Heinz Pol, an associate editor of the Vossische Zeitung and frequent Weltbühne

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contributor, pronounced Hitler’s ideas dead in a 1925 obituary on “the end of the völkisch movement.” 128 Clearly, by 1930, Pol’s notice of the death of National Socialism was premature. However, most left-wing intellectuals still failed to understand Hitler’s movement. For the leftist intellectual who felt the Republic full of reactionary officers, aristocrats, and industrialists, it was logical to see Hitler in similar terms. The danger, it was asserted, came not from National Socialism but from monopoly capitalism or the ubiquitous industrialists, corporate CEOs, and Junkers. Hitler and his party were no more than tools of these larger forces. As Ossietzky saw it: “Hugenberg will never let his Golem become too independent. When Hitler will no longer fit his plans, he will cut off his resources and the National Socialist movement will disappear as mysteriously as it mushroomed during the past two years.” Tucholsky spoke of fascism in Germany, but he directed his attacks not so much against the Nazis, whom he dismissed as unworthy of attention, as against “the others,” that is, the conservatives and military who controlled Hitler. Few left-wing intellectuals took Hitler seriously. Some may have recognized him and his party for what it was—a group of the mentally unstable—but many failed to see that in few countries has this been an insurmountable handicap for political office. Indeed, in the Germany of the 1930s, it seemed to be a prerequisite rather than a liability. Nor had the failure to see the danger from Hitler expressed itself very much by February 1933. Writing in Die Weltbühne on February 14, Ossietzky, for example, was apparently unconcerned and expressed little fear of Germany’s new Chancellor. Tucholsky turned Hitler into a comic character, not quite realizing his ruthless qualities. Toller took him very seriously, showing as early as 1930 a prescient succession of predictions that he outlined step by step: take over Germany, a policy of terror against opponents, dissolve institutions hostile to the new State, impose fascism on other European countries, and end up with war. Toller showed real leadership here. Only a few intellectuals such as Erich Mühsam, Kurt Hiller, and Fritz Sternberg were fully aware of the real dangers of National Socialism. Toller had first heard of Hitler from one of his cellmates who had served in the same regiment with him. In early 1924, after news of Hitler’s lenient treatment at the hands of Republican judges for his part in the beer hall Putsch of the previous November, Toller rhetorically asked whether the Republic wished to win Hitler over by kindness: “He will (and rightly) take the kindness as weakness. The Republic which does not take seriously her most dangerous enemies proves by it that she does not take herself seriously.” 129 In 1932, Toller expressed his concern over Hitler by going to hear him speak in Berlin’s Lustgarten during the presidential elections. Toller was warned not to go. It was feared he would be recognized. Undeterred, Toller took for protection a copy of Goebbels’ paper, Der Angriff.

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Toller, who had lived in Bavaria until 1924, had ample time to observe not only National Socialism but also other völkisch groups that seemed to thrive so well in the reactionary air of South Germany. In 1923, he had written one of his last prison plays, a farce entitled Der entfesselte Wotan. Its hero, an awkward barber, Wilhelm Diedrich Wotan, is commissioned by the ancient Germanic God Wotan to lead Germany into new heights of Teutonic greatness. Barber Wotan conceives the idea of establishing a German colony in Brazil to which all those dissatisfied with the Republican government will emigrate. Soon he collects a motley group of individuals ranging from a retired army officer to a nationalistic Jew who is a member of a Teutonic Bund and a former leader of a right-wing militia. Wotan quickly obtains a popular following. While absorbed in his plans to save Germany, however, Wotan discovers that the Brazilian government has warned German officials of his plans. Wotan’s fall, as meteoric as his rise, results in his arrest, and the luckless leader finds himself being led to jail contemplating the memoirs he will write, Der Dolchstoss kurz vom Ziel (The Stab in the Back Just before Success). Whether this play is directed against the emerging Hitler has been argued both ways. Since Hitler is never mentioned, it may have been more a commentary not about National Socialism as much as right-wing völkisch groups that thrived in Bavaria. 131 There is some good evidence, indirect but compelling, that this is probably not accurate and, if accepted, makes Toller probably the earliest left-wing intellectual to recognize the rising right-wing Austrian politician. Toller had spent much time in Bavaria at a time when the Nazi Party was just beginning to organize under Hitler. This was accompanied by large public displays of National Socialist support. In 1920, there was a large right-wing march that included Nazis in the Bavarian city of Coberg: in Munich the same year, on November 30, five mass demonstrations and, on December 13, ten. In January 1923, the National Socialists held their first Reichparteitag, complete with parades and fully uniformed S.A. marching about Munich. As one analyst notes “these were so well known and infamous that it would have been amazing had Toller not thought about it.” 132 More decisive are

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the play’s characters referring to “Our great Führer” and the crowd shouting “Heil!” Der entfesselte Wotan of 1923 made fun of Hitler. Some left-wing intellectuals continued to do so until Hitler assumed power. By 1933, it was not funny anymore. While clearly aware of the danger of Hitler early, it was in1930, the year of the spectacular success of the Nazis in the Reichstag elections, that Toller turned further attention to Hitler’s rising movement. He was asked to participate in a radio debate with Alfred Mühr, a prominent National Socialist and editor of the Deutsche Zeitung. 133 While Weimar politics was becoming increasingly polarized and irrational, the discussion between Toller and Mühr was notable for the lack of acrimony and the respect both men accorded each other. This was expressed in a rather ironic way by Mühr, who mentioned toward the beginning of the discussion that “You need not fear, Mr. Toller, that we will come to a fist fight or that I have a hand grenade in my pocket.” Each agreed that political opponents should be able to discuss their differences without mutual vilification and argue, as Toller put it, “With fair means.” 134 Nevertheless, it is not surprising that Toller opposed many of Mühr’s ideas. Toller’s Jewish background, his revulsion against war, his belief in democracy, his attachment to the cause of humanity rather than to the cause of narrow nationalism all assured his hostility toward National Socialism. Both Toller and Mühr, therefore, disagreed on a number of points. Toller spoke of a cosmopolitan society, Mühr of the German nation. While Mühr saw a conflict between socialist internationalism and loyalty to Germany, Toller recognized the value of the nation but saw its true goal as an international union of free peoples. Toller wished to eliminate all social classes, while Mühr wished to preserve what was of value in the traditional class structure. Mühr asserted that members of the lower class could attain important positions in society and was of the opinion that failure of a worker to advance was due to his own lack of talent. Toller, on the other hand, objected that, given the almost insurmountable handicaps society imposed, it was difficult for workers to rise out of their class. That the National Socialist Mühr and the pacifist socialist Toller found much to argue about is to be expected. What is unexpected, however, was on how many points they agreed. Both were in favor of socialization, although Toller wished a totally socialized society, whereas Mühr was content with only partial socialization. Both expressed their anticapitalism and their mutual desire for a genuine integration of society (Völksgemeinschaft). Both opposed political parties, cliques, and political corruption. Like Toller, Mühr expressed great hope that youth would be able to effect social change. Significantly, from the very beginning of their discussion, both agreed that the bourgeoisie was culturally bankrupt, timid, and no longer had the will necessary to lead society. Twice when Mühr launched into a castigation of the cowardice and hypocrisy of bour-

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geois culture, Toller was surprised that Mühr appeared to be supporting Toller’s own views. As Toller put it, “On our critique of bourgeois culture, we are both in agreement.” 135 Their common views allowed both to give approval of revolution, although Toller wished a total revolution while Mühr, more cautious, asserted his desire to save what was useful of old values. What is the reason for this apparently notable agreement? It is possible that Mühr was just a congenial Nazi, odd as such a term may sound. A well-educated individual, his discussion with Toller was not bitter and never descended into the ideological crudities of many of his fellow National Socialists. There was, for example, no talk of blood and soil, the peculiar mission of the German Volk or racial purity. This may have allowed Mühr rationally to discuss with Toller their differences as well as their areas of agreement. However, this is only a partial explanation. That the left-wing Toller and the right-wing Mühr seemed to find so much in common can hardly be due exclusively to the accident of personality. In a study of the left-wing intellectuals during the Weimar Republic, George Mosse has argued that both Left and Right were united by the search for a “third force,” “the attempt to solve the problems of the modern age by creating a force that could eliminate the unpalatably capitalist and materialist present.” 136 While, of course, aware of the issues separating right- and left-wing intellectuals, Mosse believed too much of a dichotomy between the two camps was misleading. The range of vision embraced by both was bounded by the common horizon of German idealism. 137 As idealists, they criticized the type of society they saw around them and rejected “bourgeois society and materialism on behalf of an idealistic commitment that stood above and beyond present reality.” 138 Right- and left-wing intellectuals, of course, had much they did not share. For the Right, the emphasis was on Volk and race: for the Left it was injustice and war. Equally as important, the intellectuals of the Left did not totally surrender themselves to irrationalism and attempted to maintain a balance between reason and spirit. Different as their premises were, however, German society was criticized for basically the same reason: its failure to live up to the idealistic expectations of Geist. As Toller put it in his talk with Mühr, “We want the unity of the Ideas and life.” 139 This underlying spiritual affinity was the common ground from which right- and left-wing intellectuals launched their attacks against the materialism of German society, the acquisitive bourgeoisie and a corrupt system of government that represented material interests rather than those of Geist and spiritual revolution. 140 In their debate, Mühr seemed to have no clear idea how his ideal future society would look. Toller, on the other hand, was more concrete and drew on a Marxist outline of a future social order. However, whatever Marxist theory Toller had acquired, he had received largely while in prison. Was there really any great difference

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between Toller’s vilification of the father world before 1919 and his messianic expectations of a vague apocalypse and Mühr’s equally vague and Messianic National Socialist state? Both rejected a corrupt, materialistic present for the ambiguous future of the “Peoples State,” a form of government that presumably was to transcend the bankrupt bourgeois state of Weimar. How much Toller shared with right-wing intellectuals is seen when it is remembered that he had written articles for the neoconservative Die Tat, a journal that also sought to find a third way between capitalism and socialism; railed against the bankruptcy of the German middle class; and agreed with Toller that in the struggle of generations, the future belonged to the young. 141 Equally as important, Toller shared in the elitism of the Right. While he apparently rejected Mühr’s praise of a system that allowed the strong to attain positions of leadership in society and asserted instead his own vision of an egalitarian social order, Toller lived precariously on the border between elitism and social democracy. As a socialist, he desired social justice, and this implied equality. As an activist, he wished to lead, and this implied subordination to an elite. Toller had only limited patience with the elitist views of Kurt Hiller’s Logokratie, the leadership of society by intellectuals. Writing to Hiller in 1923, he asserted: You assume that every intellectual (Geistige) is endowed with a higher faculty of judgment. . . . Remember what sort of judgment the “intellectuals” showed during the war! You wish to set up a Logokratie: the reign of the intellect. But where would you take your power from? . . . Do you know Napoleon’s dictum? “Men who changed the world did not get results by securing the support of the leaders, but by setting the masses in motion.” 142

Ten years later, however, the leader had asserted himself over the egalitarian: Socialism certainly demands equality of opportunity: everybody has the same right to food, shelter and education. But in other ways socialism must create its own classes. Men who are politically, socially and culturally able will form an aristocracy, not of birth but of spirit (des Geistes), an aristocracy of duty, not material privilege. 143

Whatever their shared assumptions on the role of Geist in social life, two years after his debate with Mühr, Toller was forced to confess that the opposite of Geist, Ungeist, had taken control of German society. Discussion had been replaced by violence; parliamentary institutions had broken down; books, films, and speeches were being censored; editors were being thrown into jail; the ruling class was growing increasingly rich while unemployment increased; no adequate welfare measures had been taken to deal with the situation; children were overworked, underpaid, and undernourished. Toller warned: “Into this situation there threatens the onset of fascism, which the ignorant, unknowing petite bourgeoisie

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sees as its last hope. If fascism comes to power, it will use the constitution to take possession of the bureaucracy, the army, the police, and all military means to abrogate the constitution.” Revolt, continued Toller, was useless. The days of individual heroism on the barricade were over, and only romantics could believe in their efficacy. While communists and socialists were vilifying each other, Toller, true to his ideals of left-wing unity, attempted to rally the Left into an antifascist front that he believed might be able to stop fascism in Germany. Only a Kampfblock, he concluded, “the creation of a unified organization of the workers with clearly outlined, concrete goals” could stop a fascist government. “If this Kampfblock is not created, fascism has a free hand. We are going into a period of fascism which will last years.” 144 If Toller hoped for a united front during 1932, he was as disappointed as he was in 1918 when he had first put the idea forth during the Bavarian revolution. The communists were busily engaged in labeling the SPD as “social fascists” and had convinced themselves that they, not the National Socialists, were the main danger. Indeed, it was thought by the KPD that if Hitler came to power, he would unwittingly serve the interests of communism by intensifying capitalism’s inherent contradictions and thus bring on the communist revolution. Many left-wing intellectuals expressed related, although not identical views. Many persistently expressed the opinion that National Socialism could never maintain itself in power and that it might be better to allow the Nazis the chance to enter the government and thus give them the opportunity to discredit themselves. 145 In October 1930, one month after the Nazi delegation had become the second largest in the Reichstag, Toller had warned against such a view: Let no one be deceived into thinking that a period of fascism be it ever so temperate and subtle will be transitory. They [the left-wing intellectuals] are forgetting that the National Socialist party is characterized by its will to acquire and sustain power. The NSDAP will luxuriate in a power legally acquired, but once on top, it will never surrender that power at the behest of democracy.

None of the institutions of the Republic, he continued, would be capable of frustrating Hitler’s ambitions. The time to act against the threat was now, not at some unforeseen time in the future: Unless we act now, we will have to face an age of European fascism where all social, political, and intellectual freedom will disappear: an age that will culminate in a horrible and bloody war and in chaos. The calendar shows . . . that the phrase one minute before zero hour is no idle one. 146

Toller’s exhortation was in vain. “Even my democratic friends laughed at it and thought it was the fantasy of a poet. Nobody took Hitler and his movement seriously.” 147 Moreover, if Toller had hopes that a Kampfbund

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of workers would be formed to stop Hitler, his expectations were soon proven incorrect. One month after his article on the German situation, Franz von Papen deposed the legally elected socialist government of Prussia. The solidarity German workers had shown in 1920 when their general strike had brought down the short-lived Kapp regime was not repeated. Toller may have received inspiration for his Kampfbund from the formation in November 1931 of the “Iron Front,” an organization of SPD delegates, free trade unions, and worker sports organizations established in response to the “Harzburg Front” of the anti–Republican Right. Formed by young socialists dissatisfied with the passive policies of the SPD leadership in the face of fascism, it was possible that the party could have used these young men in conjunction with a general strike to oppose Papen’s coup d’etat of July 20, 1932. However, cautious party leaders and trade union officials justified inaction by pointing to the poor economic situation and the mass unemployment that made a general strike difficult. 148 As Julius Leber, a young socialist Reichstag deputy from Lübeck, sadly noted in June 1933, the response of the Left to the July 20 Putsch “had laid bare the whole inner weakness and indecision of the Weimar front” and prepared the way for January 30, 1933, the day of Hitler’s appointment as Reich chancellor. 149 Toller had long been pessimistic about the future of the Weimar Republic. As early as 1921, he had written of Germany’s surrender to the forces of irrationalism and violence and had predicted an inevitable catastrophe. It would be easy to dismiss Toller as a German Cassandra, one whose predictions and warnings went unheeded, were it not for the fact that Toller suffered the fate of all true Cassandras—he lived to see his worst visions become reality. With the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Germany’s chancellor, Toller began his life as an exile, the tortured victim of an era where German politics had begun in mystical nationalism and had ended in catastrophe. NOTES 1. Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), xiv. See also Jochen Hung and Godela Weiss-Sussex, eds., Beyond Glitter and Doom: The Contingency of the Weimar Republic (Munich: Judicium, 2012). 2. Eberhard Kolb, The Weimar Republic (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 84. 3. For an interesting discussion of possible reasons for such confluences of creativity, see Frans Johansson, The Medici Effect (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006). 4. Ernst Toller, Eine Jugend, in Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowolht, 1961), 99. Hereafter referred to as PBDG. 5. Hoetzsch , quoted by Annelise Thimme, Flucht in den Mythos: Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei und die Niederlage von 1918 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969), 9–10. 6. Maurice Baumont, La Faillité de la Paix (1918–1919) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967), 1.

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7. For a commentary on the period of euphoria that greeted the German revolution, see Klemens von Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism: Its History and Dilemma in the Twentieth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 76–77. 8. Toller, Letter to Mr. F. P. 1921, in Look Through the Bars: Letters from Prison, Poems, and a New Version of “The Swallow Book” (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937), 85. 9. Ernst Toller, “Schlusswort vor dem Münchener Standgericht. 16 July 1919,” in Quer Durch: Reisebilder und Reden (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1930), 214–15. 10. Toller, Letter to “Tessa,” 20.3.1922, in Look Through the Bars, 147. 11. Peter Gay, Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 77–78. 12. Toller, Letter to Tessa, June 1920, in Look Through the Bars, 36. 13. The last in particular became an object of attention to prison authorities. Toller had written the poem after two swallows built their nests in his cell. The companionship was a psychological relief to Toller, whose confinement was becoming increasingly burdensome. Allusions to politics and prison conditions caused prison authorities to forbid publication of the poem. Observed the unsympathetic fortress governor, “The book is so full of propagandist material that its whole effort is provocative.” (See Toller, Letter to the German Reichstag 19.9.23, in Look Through the Bars, 267). The manuscript was eventually smuggled out, much to the chagrin of prison authorities. The literary and intellectual life of Weimar is best seen in Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper & Row, 1968). See also Keith Bullivant, Das literarische Leben in der Weimarer Republik (Königstein: Scriptor, 1978) and Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977). See also Richard Sheppard, Expressionism in Focus (Blairgowries, Scotland: Lochee, 1987); Anthony Phelan, The Weimar Dilemma: Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985); Gerhard Fischer, “Engagierte Literatur als historisch-kritische Darstellung der Gesellschaft: Zum Zeit der Weimarer Republik,” in Engagierte Literatur zwischen den Weltkriegen, edited by Stefan Neuhaus, Rolf Selbmann, and Thorsten Unger (Würzberg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002). 14. Toller, Quer Durch, 288. 15. John Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics: A Bibliography (Charlottesville, Virginia: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1968), vii. 16. “Die Weigerung der Tribune,” Vorwärts, October 17, 1919. For Toller’s reply, see “Toller gegen den Kurfürstendamm,” Vorwärts, October 18, 1919. 17. “Politik in Theater,” Vorwärts, December 3, 1920; “Widereinschmusselung der Theaterzensur,” Vorwärts, December 18, 1920; “Tollers Drama Masse Mensch,” Vorwärts, February 3, 1921. 18. Alfred Wien, “Bolshewistentheater: Tollers Maschinenstürmer in Grossen Schauspielhaus,” Deutsche Zeitung, July 12, 1922. 19. “Toller Skandal in Dresden,” Deutsche Zeitung, January 19, 1924. 20. Heinrich Hannover and Elisabeth Hannover-Drück, Politische Justiz, 1918–1933 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fisher, 1966), 255–57; Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 177–78. Several persons were arrested, among them four college professors, and charged with “Erregung ruhestorenden Larms.” All were eventually found not guilty, since Toller’s play was found to be an attack on “vaterländische Empfinden.” The controversy over Toller’s work was not limited to Germany. Czech authorities banned Masse Mensch in Olmütz; in England, both Die Maschinenstürmer and Masse Mensch had to be given in closed performances, and a 1924 production of the latter play in Australia was the cause for a parliamentary debate. Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics, viii. 21. Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics, vii. 22. Alf Enseling, Die Weltbühne: Organ der Intellektuellen Linken (Münster: C. Fahle, 1962). 23. Toller, Letter to Alexander Bloch, 5.1.23; to Stefan Zweig, 13.6.23, in Look Through the Bars, 189, 209. 24. See Ernst Toller, introduction to Joseph Fishman, Sex in Prison (London: John Lane, 1935).

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25. Toller, Letter to Hans Wesemann, 26.12.21; to Romain Rolland, he wrote, “I would not miss these years,” 15.12.21, in Look Through the Bars, 130, 132. 26. Toller, Letter to Hans E. P. Tal, 14.2.22, in Look Through the Bars, 145. 27. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 182. 28. Toller, Letter to Tessa, 30.1.22, in Look Through the Bars, 138; W. A. Willibrand, Ernst Toller and His Ideology (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1945), 23. 29. Toller, Letter to S. G., 26.6.23, in Look Through the Bars, 211. 30. Richard Hunt, German Social Democracy, 1918–1933 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970), 200–202. 31. Toller, Letter to K., October 1920, in Look Throuqh the Bars, 62–63. 32. Toller, Letter to Tessa, 2.4.21, in Look Through the Bars, 80. 33. Toller, Letter to E., 1920, in Look Through the Bars, 35. 34. Toller, Letter to Paul Z., in Look Through the Bars, 303. 35. Four works are particularly relevant here: Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), chapter 1; Hajo Holborn, “Der deutsche. Idealismus in sozialgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung,” Historische Zeitschrift 174, no. 1 (1952): 359–84; Fritz Stern, “The Political Consequences of the Unpolitical German,” in The Failure of Illiberalism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 3–25; and Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), chapter 4, passim. 36. Quoted by Beth Irwin Lewis, George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), 8. 37. Gay, Weimar Culture, 75. 38. See Toller, Letter to Tessa, June 1920, in Look Through the Bars, 36–37. 39. Ernst Toller, “The Twentieth Anniversary of the War,” 6 of typed Manuscript. Special Manuscript Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University. 40. Ernst Toller, “Rede im Englischen jungen PEN-Club,” in Deutsche für Deutsche (Leipzig: Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1935), 7. 41. Ernst Toller, “Wer schafft den deutschen Revolutionsfilm?” Die Welt am Montag, November 5, 1928. Cf. René Schickele’s lament one year after his grandiose hopes for the German revolution had been shattered: “Today, not even a year later, I would have to confess an indescribable disappointment. It may have been easier for me to get over it than many of my comrades, who yesterday were still excited by rumors of war and had imagined themselves to be placed with one leap from hell to heaven.” René Schickele, Der neunte November, 86. 42. Kurt Tucholsky, “Die Ebert-Legende,” in Gesammelte Werke, edited by Mary Gerold-Tucholsky and Fritz J. Raddatz (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1960–61), 2:322. 43. Heinrich Ströbel, “Führer,” Die Weltbühne 5 (1919): 492; “Tollhauslerei und Erzbergerei,” Die Weltbühne 6 (1920): 25. 44. Toller, Letter to Tessa, 12.19.20, in Look Through the Bars, 31. 45. Toller, Letter to Fritz von Unruh, 1919, Look Through the Bars, 19. 46. Toller, Letter to Henri Barbusse, 1922, in Look Throuqh the Bars, 151. 47. Gerold-Tucholsky and Raddatz, eds., Gesammelte Werke, 1:407. 48. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 99. 49. István Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and Its Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 16–18. 50. Toller, Letter to Mr. F. D., 1921, in Look Through the Bars, 86. 51. Toller, Letter to Mr. F. D., 1921, in Look Through the Bars, 86. 52. Gerold-Tucholsky and Raddatz, eds., Gesammelte Werke, 2:324. 53. Golo Mann, Deutsche Geschichte des neunzehnten und zwanzigten Jahrhunderts (Munich: S. Fischer, 1958), 670. 54. See Ernst Toller, “Dokumente bayrisches Justiz,” no. 1–XIII in the [6 October 1924–20 January 192] issues of Die Weltbühne. These were later collected and published as a book, Ernst Toller, Justiz: Erlebnisse (Berlin: E. Laubsche, 1927).

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55. The problem is treated in Heinrich Hannover and Elisabeth Hannover-Drück, Politische Justiz 1918–1933 (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fisher, 1966), and Emil Gumbel, Vier Jahre politischer Mord (Berlin-Fichtenau: Verlag der neuen Gesellschaft, 1922). 56. Hannover and Hannover-Drück, Politische Justiz, 34. 57. While he was at Stadelheim, similar plans were being made for Toller. He was warned of an attempt to shoot him as an “escapee” while walking in the exercise yard. See Ernst Toller, “Erschiessung auf der Flucht,” Die Weltbühne 22 (1926): 174. 58. See Toller, “Amenstie? Amenstie!” Der Klassenkampf, October 15, 1927. 59. Hannover and Hannover-Drück, Politische Justiz, 19. 60. Quoted by Raimund Koplin, Carl von Ossietzky als politischer Publizist (Berlin: Annedone Leber, 1964), 28. 61. Quoted by Henry M. Pachter, “The Intellectuals and the State of Weimar,” Social Research 39 (1972): 232. 62. Toller, Letter to Romain Rolland, 15.12.21; to Kurt Tucholsky, 1921; and to Fritz von Unruh, 1919, in Look Through the Bars, 132, 81, 19. 63. This is George Mosse’s analysis of the antipolitical nature of Weimar’s left-wing intellectuals. See “Left-Wing Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic,” in Germans and Jews, by George Mosse (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1970), 199. 64. Friedrich Meinecke, The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950), 14–15. 65. Karl Vorländer, Marx and Kant (Tübingen: Mohn, 1926), 210–11. 66. Schickele, Der neunte November, and “Nachwort,” Die weissen Blätter, October 1919, 433, quoted by Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals, 74. 67. Mosse, “Left-Wing Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic,” 202. 68. This was Tucholsky’s characterization of himself. See Gerold-Tucholsky and Raddatz, eds., Gesammelte Werke, 2:75. 69. Toller, Letter to Walter Fabian, 2.12.22, in Look Through the Bars, 185. 70. Ernst Toller, Seven Plays (London: John Lane, 1935), ix–x. 71. Kurt Pinthus, ed. Menschheitsdämmerung: Ein Dokument des Expressionismus (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1959), 245. 72. Figures given in John Willett, Expressionism (New York: McGraw Hill, 1970), 133. 73. Iwan Goll, “Der Expressionismus stirbt,” in Expressionismus: Der Kampf um eine literarische Bewegung, edited by Paul Raabe (Munich: Deutschen Taschenbuch, 1965), 181. 74. Cited in Richard Beckley, “Ernst Toller,” in German Men of Letters, 5 vols., vol. 3, edited by Alex Natan (London: Oswald Wolf, 1964). Quoting from Brecht’s Trommel in der Nacht. 75. The phrase is Hermann Kesten’s in “Brutstätte allen Unheils,” Die Zeit, September 22, 1961; Alfred Döblin, Schicksalreise (Frankfurt am Main: J. Knecht, 1949), 165. Both quoted by Gordon Craig, “Engagement and Neutrality in Weimar Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 2 (1967): 55. 76. Beckley, “Ernst Toller,” 95. 77. Toller, Die Maschinenstürmer, in PBDG, 331–89. 78. Beckley, “Ernst Toller,” 97. 79. Toller, Letter to Henri Barbusse, 1922, in Look Through the Bars, 151. 80. Toller, Letter to Stefan Zweig, 13.6.23. See also his letter to the producer of the Dresden Theater, 1.2.24, in Look Through the Bars, 209–86. 81. Toller, Letter to Tessa, June 1920, in Look Through the Bars, 37. 82. Ernst Toller, Hinkemann, in PBDG, 424–35. This ending is the original version of the play premiered in September 1923. Toller, bending to criticisms that the play was too pessimistic, rewrote the ending. Grete and Hinkemann talk at the end in their apartment. Grete does not understand Hinkemann’s aspirations for a better world. She sadly leaves the apartment, and, shortly after, Hinkemann learns Grete has jumped from a window to her death. The play ends with Hinkemann and Grete’s dead body.

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83. Beckley, “Ernst Toller,” 98. See also Eugene Egert, “The Disassociated Man in Büchner’s Woyzeck and Toller’s Hinkemann” (unpublished MA thesis, University of British Columbia, 1961). 84. Kurt Pinthus, “Life and Death of Ernst Toller, Books Abroad 14, no. 1 (1940): 5. 85. Richard McCormick, Gender and Sexuality in Weimar Modernity (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 67. Loving quoted by Willibrand, Ernst Toller and His Ideology, 68. 86. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG, 183. 87. Letter from Hermann Kesten to Oskar Fontana, 17 June 1933, in Deutsche Literatur im Exil: Briefe europäischer Autoren 1933–1949, edited by Hermann Kesten (Vienna: K. Desch, 1964), 87. 88. Ernst Niekisch, Gewagtes Leben (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1958), 103. 89. See Alfred Kerr, “Die Toller Sperre,” Berliner Tageblatt, February 7, 1925. 90. John Spalek, “Ernst Toller: The Need for a New Estimate,” German Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1966): 586; Ernst Toller, “Ankunft in Amerika,” Die Weltbühne 26 (1929): 5. 91. See “Geheime Staatspolizei und das Polizeiprasidium Aktenverwaltung Műnchen,” in Rehse Collection, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress. 92. Toller, Quer Durch, 279. 93. Toller, Letter to Walter Fabian, 6.12.23, in Look Through the Bars, 276. 94. Niekisch, Gewagtes Leben, 103. 95. See letter from Betty Frankenstein, Toller’s secretary, to Landesbildungsausschuss der Sozialdemokratischen Partei für Ober Österreich, December 18, 1926, in Collection of Dr. Harold Hurwitz, Free University of Berlin. For a rebuttal of the assertion that Toller’s talent had ebbed by 1924, see Jacqueline Bloom Rogers, “Ernst Toller’s Prose Writings” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1972), 77–78, passim. 96. Ernst Toller, Deutsche Revolution (Berlin: E. Laubsche, 1925). 97. See Jost Hermand, “Ernst Toller: Hoppla, wir leben!” in Unbequeme Literatur: Eine Beispielreihe (Heidelberg: Stiehm, 1971), 147–49. 98. See Toller, introduction to Henri Barbusse, Tatsachen (Berlin: UniversumBücherei für Alle, 1929), 9. 99. Quoted by Otto Friedrich, Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920’s (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 272. 100. Erich Metzger, “Piscators Gluck and Ende. “Hoppla, Wir leben noch!” in Bolschewistentheater,” Kreuzzeitung, September 5, 1927; Werner Fiedler, “Berliner Theater,” Die deutsche Rundschau, October 1927; Paul Fechter, “Eröffnung der Piscatorbühne: Ernst Toller, Hoppla, Wir leben!” Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung, September 6, 1927; Hugo Kubsch, “Hoppla, Wir leben! Piscator Weltbühne,” Deutsche Tageszeitung, September 5, 1927. 101. Alexander Abusch, “Noch einige Bermerkungen,”Die Rote Fahne, September 7, 1927; Luca von Jacobi, “Zur Diskussion ber die Piscatorbühne. Hoppla, Wir sterben!,” Die Rote Fahne, September 9, 1927; Frida Rubiner, “Zur Toller Aufführung bei Piscator: Grosses Konnen am untauglichen Object,” Die Rote Fahne, September 7, 1927, Beilage. For Moscow’s unfavorable view of the play, see “Moskauer Kritik an Tollers Hoppla, Wir leben!’’ Leipziger Volkszeitung, September 29, 1927. 102. See reviews in Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics, 609–73. 103. Friedrich, Before the Deluge, 272. 104. Ernst Toller, Hoppla, wir leben! (Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1927). 105. Erwin Piscator, Das politische Theater (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963), 147. 106. Cf. Tucholsky’s poem “An einen Bonzen,” with Toller’s Kilman: “Einmal waren wir beide gleich. / Beide Proleten in deutschen Kaiserreich. / Beide in derselben Luft, / beide in gleich verschwitzer Kluft; / derselben Werkstatt—derselbe Lohn— / derselebe Meister—derselbe Fron— / beide dasselbe elende Kuchenloch . . . / Genosse, erinnerst du dich noch? / Heute ist das alles vergangen. / Man kann nur durchs Vorzimmer zu dir gelangen. Du rauchst nach Tisch

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die dicken Zigarren, / du lachst über Strassenhetzer and Narren. / Weisst nichte mehr alten Kameraden, / wirst überall eingeladen. / Du zuckst die Achseln Beim Hennessy, / du vertrittst die deutsche Sozialdemokratie. / Du hast mit der Welt deinen Frieden gemacht. / Horst du nicht manchmal in dunkler Nacht / eine leise Stimme, die mahnend spricht: / Genosse, schämst du dich nicht?” Gesammelte Werke, 1:1125. 107. See C. D. Innes, Erwin Piscator’s Political Theater: The Development of Modern German Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972), and Maria-Ley Piscator, The Piscator Experiment (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970). 108. Innes, Erwin Piscator’s Political Theater, 100. 109. See Heinz Eisgrüber, “Das neue Theater: Zur Eröffnung der Piscatorbühne,” Leipziger Volkszeitung, September 10, 1927; Erich Franzen, “Tollers Hoppla, Wir leben!’ Die literarische Welt, September 16, 1927; Manfred Georg, “Ernst Toller: Hoppla, Wir leben! Eröffnung der Piscatorbühne,” Berliner Volkszeitung, September 4, 1927; Walter Steinthal, “Die Eröffnung der Piscatorbühne: Hoppla, Wir leben!” 12 Uhr Blatt, September 5, 1927. 110. Piscator, Das politische Theater, 146–60. 111. Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics, 628. 112. Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics, 609–35. 113. See, for example, H. H. Bormann, “Piscator-Bühne: Ernst Toller, Hoppla, Wir leben!” Germania, September 5, 1927; Hans Siemsen, “Piscator—Premiere,” Die Weltbühne 23 (1927); Ludwig Sternaux, “Kommunistischsozialistisches Theater: Hoppla, Wir leben!” Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger, September 5, 1927. 114. Willibrand, Ernst Toller and His Ideology, 73. 115. Piscator, writing in Theater Heute, October 1964. Cited by Innes, Erwin Piscator’s Political Theater, 144. 116. Although Toller later objected to the liberties producers took with plays by adding scenes without consulting the author, Toller was informed of Piscator’s intentions. See Piscator’s letter to Toller, August 10, 1927, in Collection of Professor John Spalek, State University of New York at Albany. Ernst Toller, “The German Theatre Today,” Manchester Guardian, February 17, 1934. 117. See Toller, Quer Durch, 291–94. It is odd that the English version of Hoppla, published in 1935, when presumably Toller could have included his own version, contains Piscator’s ending. See Ernst Toller, Seven Plays. 118. See Ernst Toller’s article in Die Menschenrecht, November 11, 1928, 7–9. 119. Ernst Toller, “Aus verbrannten Büchern,” Die neue Weltbühne 29 (1933): 1049. 120. W. G. Hoffmann, et al., Das Wachstum der deutschen Wirtschaft seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Springer, 1965). 121. See Heinrich Brüning, Memoiren 1918–1934 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970). 122. See Thomas Blow, “Feuer aus den Kesseln!” in Zu Ernst Toller: Dramen und Engagement, edited by Jost Hermand (Stuttgart: E. Klett, 1981), 179. 123. Cf. Daniel Horn, The German Naval Mutinies of World War I (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1969). 124. Ernst Toller, “Draw the Fires,” in Seven Plays, 384. 125. Ernst Toller, “Draw the Fires,” in Seven Plays, 384. 126. This, incidentally, is why Arthur Rosenberg’s history of the Weimar Republic ends not with 1933 but with Brüning’s 1930 government. See Arthur Rosenberg, Entstehung und Geschichte der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstat, 1955). 127. “Der Nationalsozialismus,” Das Tagebuch, 1930; Heinrich Mann, “Die deutsche Entscheidung,” Das Tagebuch 12 (1931). Both cited by Mosse, “Left-Wing Intellectuals in the Weimar Republic,” 203, 209. 128. Heniz Pol, “Das Ende der voelkerischen Bewegung,” Die Weltbühne 21 (1930): 40. 129. Toller, Letter to B., 2.1.24, in Look Through the Bars, 283.

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130. Ernst Toller, “I saw Hitler,” Toller Collection, Department of Historical Manuscripts, Yale University Library, Box 6, 4. See also his untitled manuscript, “Today in America,” Toller Collection, Box 6. Both are in English and probably were written while Toller was living in the United States. 131. Both assertions are advanced by Willibrand, Ernst Toller and His Ideology, 80. Toller received the idea for his play not from Mein Kampf but from a fellow prisoner who served as a model for Toller’s Wotan. See Toller’s statement in Die Szene, Blätter für Bühnekunst, 1926, Heft 1, 26–27. Kirsten Reimers seems to imply a commentary not on Hitler but a “demasking of society’s anti-democratic tendencies.” Kirsten Reimers, Das Bewältigen des Wirklichen (Würzberg: Königshauser & Neumann, 2000), 134. Cordula Grunow-Erdmann, Die Dramen Ernst Tollers im Kontext ihrer Zeit (Heidelberg: Winter, 1994), sees hints in the play of the National Socialist movement but adds as a caution that the play was written before the Hitler Putsch of 1923. 132. Stefan Neuhaus, “Strategien der Entmythologiserung in Ernst Tollers Komödien Der entfesselte Wotan und Nie wieder Friede!” in Engagierte Literatur zwischen den Weltkriegen, edited by Stefan Neuhaus and Rolf Selbmann (Würzberg: Koenigshauser & Neuman, 2002). 133. See Ernst Toller and Alfred Mühr, Nationalsozialismus: Eine Diskussion über den Kulturbankrott des Bürgertums zwischen Ernst Toller und Alfred Mühr (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1930). 134. Toller and Mühr, Nationalsozialismus, 7. 135. Toller and Mühr, Nationalsozialismus, 26. 136. Mosse, Germans and Jews, 5. 137. It was this, for example, that allowed Kurt Hiller to praise right-wing intellectuals so far as they could be identified with the type of idealist socialism Hiller so admired. See Wurgaft, “Kurt Hiller,” 345. It was, incidentally, Hiller who coined the term “Leftists of the Right” to express the intellectual affinity he felt for many rightist intellectuals. See Kurt Hiller, “Links Leute vom Rechts,” Die Weltbühne, February 8, 1932, 153. 138. Mosse, Germans and Jews, 5. 139. Toller and Mühr, Nationalsozialismus, 30. 140. Cf. Fritz Ringer: “Above all there was this conclusion to be drawn from the orthodox polemics (of the right-wing academic intellectual): that the social and political life of the Weimar period was so hopelessly corrupt that only a violent emotional wrench, a ‘spiritual revolution,’ could possibly save the nation.” Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins, 226. 141. See von Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism, 129–30. 142. Toller, Letter to Kurt Hiller, 15.9.23, in Look Through the Bars, 272. 143. Toller, Eine Jugend, in PBDG. An excellent analysis of the shared attitudes of right- and left-wing intellectuals is given by Lewis Wurgaft, “Kurt Hiller and the Activist Program” (unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1970), 328–43. 144. Ernst Toller, “Zur deutsche Situation,” Information (Zurich), no. 1 (June 1, 1932). 145. Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals, 182. 146. Ernst Toller, “Reichskanzler Hitler,” Die Weltbühne 26 (1930): 538. 147. Toller, “I saw Hitler,” Toller Collection, 5. 148. See Erich Matthias, “Der Untergang der alten Sozialdemokratie,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, July 1956, reprinted in Von Weimar zu Hitler, edited by Gotthard Jasper (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1968), 281–316. 149. Quoted by Matthias, “Der Untergang,” 283.

SEVEN The Critic as Exile

The artist must keep free of the idiotic fictions of his time. He must serve not nationalism but the union of nations. Not war, but peace, not war but human kindness, not hatred but understanding. The invisible motto of his books ought to be: To be honest, one must know. To be brave, one must understand. To be just, one must not forget. Whoever is silent and hides the truth betrays his human mission. —Ernst Toller, “Unser Kampf in Deutschland”

At the end of 1933, a second edition of Toller’s autobiography, Eine Jugend in Deutschland, appeared, a reproduction of the first in every word, with one small exception. Toller put in a dedication: “To the Germany of Tomorrow.” Thus began Toller’s new career as one of the premier spokesmen for this “other Germany.” The Nazis, of course, hated him while he was in Germany and feared him when he was not. One of their seminal publications, edited by the prestigious Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question in 1936, singles him out as “today one of the worst agitators against Germany in a foreign country.” 1 Three years earlier, on the tenth of May 1933, Ernst Toller was, fortunately, outside of Germany, about to spend the rest of his life in exile. In Germany, on that evening at 10 PM under a cloudy sky, a thick crowd assembled outside in Berlin to burn the books of Toller and other unwanted authors, uncomfortably offensive to the values of the newly appointed government. An hour later, a contingent of eager students from the university arrived, holding torches and trucks loaded with books. A small fire was started. The students threw their open torches into the flames. Wind and smoke and sparks fell on the crowd. A jubilant cry went up as books were thrown into the bonfire, their charred pages swept by the wind and flame up into the German air. The growing flame, fueled now by the hundreds of books, cast a sinister light. A writer from the French journal Nouvelles 179

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littéraires was there. He heard a young girl whisper to herself: “It’s German intellectual life that’s burning.” Another cried, “See the black soul of the Jews fly away.” 2 Toller was lucky to be out of Germany. Others of his acquaintance who participated in Bavaria’s revolution were not, and Toller would have surely shared their fate: Felix Fechenbach, Toller’s adjutant, shot “while attempting escape” at such close range his chest was blown apart; Erich Mühsam, another of Toller’s associates, branded with a swastika on his forehead, beaten unconscious, forced to dig his own grave, but the Nazis pulled back from killing him—it added to the torture. He was later mercifully executed. Three months later, after the Nazi Book Fest of May, Toller had the distinction to be among those on the first list of Germans stripped of citizenship. 3 It was not a happy time, but the life of exile is seldom happy, and discussions of political emigration almost inevitably become essays on frustration and despair. It is little wonder that the exile experience is taken up with reluctance. When confronted with the choice of exile or death, Socrates selected the latter. Shakespeare’s Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, banished by Richard II, laments his fate and expresses his preference for death over exile. Echoing Shakespeare’s hapless Duke, Boris Pasternak, himself a translator of the English poet, wrote that to leave the borders of his native Russia “is for me the equivalent to death.” 4 Of course, upon occasion, the achievements of the émigré can counterbalance the sorrows of exile: the Divine Comedy, the Koran, the Septuagint, and Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus were all penned by exiled authors. Yet exile often brings more casualties than successes. Particularly for the Weimar intellectual, forced to flee from Germany after 1933, a happy adjustment was difficult. As Toller wrote, there was little reason to write optimistic works in a world where “a ‘happy end’ is not foreseeable today.” 5 Nor was the lack of a happy end confined to the works of the émigré author. It was all too often reflected in the personal fate of exiled German writers, many of whom either drank themselves to death or, like Toller, committed suicide. Toller, had he been in Germany, would certainly have been thrown into a concentration camp. On the night of the Reichstag fire, in February of 1933, police came to his Berlin home to arrest him. His apartment was ransacked, papers strewn about the rooms. It was only by luck that Toller was in Switzerland, where he had given a talk, rather unexpectedly, not on his own writing but on Flamenco dancing. 6 Toller was a bit more prepared than many who were precipitately forced to leave. At least he was legally out of Germany. The majority of exiles fled illegally, courting perhaps death, often without passport or job. The Nazi government did everything within its power to make life miserable for exiles and pursued them with great vigor. Nazi agents intimidated booksellers in England, Spain, Italy, and Poland for selling works by German refugees. They abducted those whose planes had to make emergency landings in Ger-

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many and even spirited away refugees in foreign countries. The most celebrated among the latter was the Jewish journalist Berthold Jacob, a Toller acquaintance who had written for Die Weltbühne, the publication that had printed many of Toller’s essays. In 1935, Jacob was kidnapped at night by the German secret police and brought back to Germany. More ominously, the writer Theodor Lessing was assassinated in his exile home at Marienbad. Even in the relatively safe capital of England, Toller, justifiably, felt unsafe, and, it was reported, fear of Nazi agents caused Toller furtively to move about residences in London. 7 Although tragic, the exile group of intellectuals to which Toller belonged was a distinguished array, “the greatest collection of transplanted intellect, talent, and scholarship the world has ever seen,” as Peter Gay has characterized them. 8 The exile experience of German left-wing intellectuals may be better understood as twofold, metaphorically rather than merely geographically. Exile was more than a change of physical location. In many respects, it was a type of continuation of existence rather than a break, although an extremely painful one. Like all intellectuals, those on Germany’s left, even when physically present in Germany, were already separated from most of their countrymen in their ideas before 1933. Particularly in an era dominated by fascism and extreme conservatives, Germany’s left-wing intellectuals were already in a type of exile from the mainstream of Germany’s citizens. Physical exile was, in some ways, an attenuation of this first intellectual exile. Within the first years of Hitler’s Chancellorship, a whole generation of Germany’s intellectual elite had physically withdrawn to foreign lands. Arthur Rosenberg, himself a leading left-wing intellectual, justifiably noted that the largest part of “thinking and intellectually creative Germany” had been lost to exile. 9 With the exceptions of the elderly Gerhart Hauptmann and Gottfried Benn, no major writer remained for very long in the new Third Reich. Nearly all who remained were of small repute and meager talent. The new Nazi state had replaced Brecht and Toller with the forgettable Hans Grimm, author of Volk ohne Raum, celebrating Teutonic joy in South Africa, and the now obscure Erwin Kolbenheyer. This was the best the Nazi literature could do, among those who stayed. There is not a single author during the twelve years of the Hitler Reich that is remembered today. Germany from 1933 to 1945 is remembered for many things—war, mass murder, aggression, taking over foreign countries—but no one remembers its writers. The Third Reich did not produce any lasting literature. The only valuable literature during those twelve years came from German exile authors. These included Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Hermann Broch, Robert Musil, Lion Feuchtwanger, George Grosz, Walter Hasenclever, Georg Kaiser, and others of Toller’s generation. All had been marked out as opponents of the new regime because of their humanity, political views, or religion. Even though scattered across the globe in places as diverse as South America, Russia, and

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England, most of the exiled group, at one time or another, ended in New York. Schoenberg and Kurt Weill, Grosz and Max Beckmann, Gropius and Mies van der Rohe, Mehring, Brecht, and Toller—all added to New York intellectual life during the 1930s. It was little wonder that another exiled author, Hermann Kesten, greeted New York City as “Berlin revivius!” 10 Yet for the exiled author, change of country, even if he did meet familiar faces, was more than just the inconvenience of a change of residence. It was frequently accompanied by painful readjustment to a new situation. In a world of bellicose nationalism, they were separated from their country, a small coterie of intellectuals with no power except the doubtful one of the pen. Forced to flee, many times without their families, they were strangers in a foreign land. Deprived of their property by the new German government, they were financially insecure. However much we can debate the influence that Weimar left-wing intellectuals had on Weimar society, once they left Germany their influence came to an end. Of course, they did enable the true nature of National Socialism to become known abroad. They could publish, they could give talks—in Toller’s case, even speak with Eleanor Roosevelt—and maintain that another Germany did exist. Yes, it did, but so what? In their desperate struggle to inform the world of this other Germany, the war of words they fought never managed to put the Nazi government in danger. It did not at all dispel, for the ordinary German in the Third Reich, Hitler’s great popularity during the 1930s, a popularity that still existed even as late as 1945, after most of Germany had been reduced to ash by Allied bombing. The exiles are to be commended for their upholding of the dignity and traditions of Goethe and Schiller and of German culture before 1933—and after 1933 also. However, they were impotent before the dictatorship. But this martyrdom, of course, is what should force our admiration. 11 Toller was forced to confront all these frustrations, and the last years of his life were not happy. His final years held few triumphs, and they brought him only the most uncertain artistic recognition. After leaving Europe for the United States, he found himself in a strange country for which he had seldom shown much sympathy. Toller shared the view of many European intellectuals who rejected the United States as moneymad, vulgar, philistine, and bigoted. The sketches of America in his Quer Durch were far from flattering. His descriptions of exploited workers, rundown prisons, Ku Klux Klan members, Southern lynching of blacks, and a visit to the Chicago stockyards as gruesome as Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle made Toller feel little love for American civilization. 12 Furthermore, his militant anti-Nazism alternated with Weltschmerz mixed with the despair of one who believes himself not heard. Acutely aware of being a representative of the “other Germany,” he found that many did not share his intensity for the problems of mankind.

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Like all intellectuals, Toller was caught between love of an ideal and contempt for reality. Occasionally, what seemed important was not alienation from society in general or from the ubiquitous bourgeois but, more specifically, from these phenomena as represented in Germany. The leftwing intellectuals of Weimar had spoken for a class that saw German justice represented in Toller’s observations of Weimar’s courts, German respect for the Reichstaat represented in toleration of antidemocratic groups, German culture represented in Grosz’s sketches. Few were more critical of Germany than Kurt Tucholsky in his biting Deutschland, Deutschland über alles. Even Toller, more charitable than Tucholsky in his judgment of his fellow countrymen, saw Germans imbued with the “slave spirit,” its population “passive and lethargic,” waiting for a dictator to take from them the responsibilities of self-government: “military discipline, complete physical and mental subordination—that sounds good to Germans.” 13 While Toller may have been disillusioned with his countrymen, he remained dedicated to his country. His criticism never sprang from hatred of Germany, but from a genuine love. Unlike Tucholsky, Toller was never able to confess that Hitler represented Germany: “We love Germany and we hate Hitler . . . Hitler is not Germany.” 14 Fondly, Toller clung to the illusion of two Germanys, the one peaceful and democratic, composing the majority of the population, and the other, the minority, violent and aggressive, tyrannizing over their fellow Germans: The hard-working, peaceable and peace-loving German people has not vanished from the earth. . . . I am not speaking against the German people, but against those who have the audacity to identify themselves with Germany but who have nothing in common with the noble ideals of the minds of that country. 15

Like the self-exiled Heine, who castigated his countrymen while loving his country, Toller was to dream of his beloved fatherland, its austere pine-woods, the cadences of its speech. Like Heine, Toller was also to come to the conclusion that “it was a dream” and that the Germany for which he yearned, the “other Germany,” was a chimera. A democratic socialist and pacifist, he discovered that the ideals of socialism and pacifism were unable to combat those of fascism and war. An idealist, he saw with increasing lucidity that the power of Geist was insufficient to overcome the harsh realities of the European world during the 1930s. A believer in “the power of the word,” he tirelessly addressed organizations and wrote essays and political pieces d’occasion, only to have his warnings go ignored and his writings go unread in refugee periodicals. If Toller sought to be the conscience of humanity, he went unheeded. If he wished to be the voice of the silent and suffering “other Germany,” his exile showed the frustrations of the activist poet-leader who remained cut off from whatever popular following he had once enjoyed.

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Only a year before, addressing a meeting of the PEN Club in Budapest, Toller had morosely observed the increasing supremacy of Macht over Geist and the contempt of the men of power for the men of ideas: “Today nothing is more despised than Geist, no one has a more questionable place than the intellectual (der geistige Mensch). . . . Perhaps in the next years, I and my friends will not be able to speak, perhaps our voices will be silenced. 16 Toller’s speculations of 1932 had become fact by 1933. In April, he was thrown out of a leading writers association, the League for the Protection of German Writers, as a “traitor to the Fatherland.” In May, his works were included in the book-burning in front of Humboldt University. In August, he was deprived of his citizenship, and, two months later, the reading of his work, along with that of other exiled authors “publishing the most slanderous lies and incitements to war against Germany,” was declared treason. 17 Toller’s life as an involuntary exile, so hastily cut off from his native soil, was the result of a swift sequence of tragic events. As an activist, it was not enough for Toller just to meditate on such events; he needed to find a role for the writer in response to such a tragedy. While not denying the attractions of quiet contemplation, far removed from the disquieting events of the 1930s, Toller’s activist heritage forced him to renounce abstract meditation in favor of engaged commitment. “We too love the quietness of the study . . . but . . . a time in which the ideals of mankind are betrayed, force us to stigmatize and fight the betrayal wherever freedom is threatened.” 18 National Socialism, so clearly opposed to everything for which Toller stood, was well designed to bring out all the emotional fervor and moral indignation of an outraged humanitarian. An upholder of the betrayed ideals of humanity, Toller saw himself also as a devotee of truth. He saw National Socialism a denial of truth and, thus, dedicated himself to lay bare its mendacious foundations. It was the duty of the exiled writer “to expose lies wherever they appear” and by this to undermine and help overthrow a deceitful system. 19 Fondly, Toller quoted Shelley’s quip that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world and asserted his own view that the modern dictator lived in fear of “the judgment of the world.” “And who creates that judgment? We writers.” 20 Toller’s views on engaged literature and the role of the writer were nothing new but merely an intensification of his earlier opinions. Concern of writers for political affairs, however, was not limited to one-time activists. Before 1933, it was possible for many German authors to establish the dichotomy the activists had rejected, one that made the task of the writer and development of political life seem mutually exclusive. After 1933, the writer who found himself an exile was forced to confront political issues, not surprising since politics was the main reason for their emigration. Noted writer Else Lasker-Schüler, for example, was severely criticized by many exiled German writers for her apparent indifference to

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political events. Even Thomas Mann, who came as close as any German author to an art-for-art’s-sake view of literature, was forced into a political stance. Censured by some of his fellow authors for his refusal to associate himself with Die Sammlung, an anti-Nazi periodical founded by his son Klaus, Mann was publicly challenged by Wieland Herzfelde to declare his open hostility to National Socialism. That Mann, in all his studied reserve, did eventually commit himself was a measure of how difficult it was to be unconcerned with current history. 21 The problems of engagement and neutrality in literature not only touched German writers; it also began to extend during the early 1930s into the PEN Club, an international organization of authors founded in 1921 by the British author Catharine Dawson-Scott. Officially apolitical since its founding, PEN was not associated with any particular party, nor did it exclude any political view. Carefully avoiding contemporary issues, most of its members had given little attention to political affairs, and Toller’s assertion at the 1930 meeting in Poland that “to meet and ignore political and social questions is an illusion” had not yet found wide acceptance. In 1932, for the first time in the Club’s history, Toller had raised the question of the writer’s political responsibility, and his views were the occasion for much debate. 22 In part, the reluctance of PEN to deal with such issues was due to the policy of the group’s eleven-year president, John Galsworthy, who had, with increasing difficulty, attempted to avoid political controversy. With Galsworthy’s death in 1933 and his replacement by H. G. Wells, however, conditions for a radicalization of PEN had been prepared. If Galsworthy had attempted to ignore political controversy, Wells, it seemed, was prepared to cultivate it. On March 28, 1933, at the annual PEN Congress in Ragusa, the new German government announced that Toller and nine others were communists and had been expelled. A motion was introduced that condemned the recent book-burning and censorship in Germany. After heated discussion, a conciliatory atmosphere prevailed, and the text of the resolution was modified to a vague statement that even the Nazi delegation was able to accept. 23 Fearing an attack by their enemies, the German representatives had stipulated that there was to be no discussion of the weakened motion, and when Toller, with accustomed theatricality, suddenly jumped up demanding to speak, the result was uproar. Suspicious Nazis “generally asserted that Toller had been brought secretly to Ragusa by the English in an automobile in order to make his appearance and carry out his attack on the German delegation.” 24 Whether this conspiratorial view was true or not, H. G. Wells, who had done little to disguise his hostility toward the PEN Nazis, recognized Toller’s request and allowed him to address the meeting. Toller began his address by asserting that many had advised him to remain silent. 25 This he rejected as incompatible with the demands of Geist:

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Chapter 7 The writer is obliged only to Geist. He who believes that next to power there must also rule moral laws of life cannot be silent. . . . We live in a time of raging nationalism, of brutal racism. The intellectuals are isolated, they are threatened and oppressed by the nations who use power, who despise reason and who shame Geist.

In a string of rhetorical questions, Toller indicted the German division of the PEN Club for its failure to speak out against censorship and the persecution of writers “who must now live abroad, in exile, away from their work and can no longer serve Germany and humanity.” Anticipating that many Nazis might accuse him of treason, Toller made it clear he was not attacking Germany but was speaking out against the methods of the men who are now ruling Germany, but who have no right to equate themselves with Germany. Millions in Germany cannot speak and write freely. When I speak here I am speaking for the millions who have no voice of their own. The masters of Germany claim to be the heirs of the great spirits, but how can they reconcile the spiritual teachings of Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Herder, Wieland and Lessing with the persecution of millions of human beings?

As men of ideas and representatives of Geist in a time of intolerance, it was inevitable that writers who spoke the truth would be unwelcome among the men of power. Toller concluded: Let us not deceive ourselves. Politicians merely tolerate us and they begin persecuting us if we cause discomfort. But the voice of truth was never comfortable. In every century . . . men of truth were attacked, persecuted and killed because they did not bow down but preferred death to falsehood, because they believed in a world of freedom, justice, and humanity.

Toller said to his German colleagues: I shall be accused in Germany of having spoken against my country. That is untrue. What irks me are the methods of those men in power today in Germany who have no legitimate claim to substitute themselves for the country. Millions of people in Germany no longer have the right to speak and write freely. When I speak here, I speak for these millions who no longer have a voice. I doubt whether we will often have the opportunity, in this Europe, to meet and talk together. Anyone who defends rebels today is threatened. What are we to do? Overcome the fear that demeans and discourages us. We are struggling on several paths. It may be that on some of these we meet face to face. But in all of us there is the idea of a humanity freed from barbarism, from lies, from social injustice and oppression.

The response to Toller’s speech was enthusiastic, the applause that greeted it overwhelming. 26 As a result of his address, not only was a stronger statement passed condemning Nazi persecution of writers, but, a few months later, under the direction of Toller and Wells, the Club took

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an unprecedented step when it expelled the Nazi delegation and extended official recognition to the non-Nazi Deutsche Autoren im Ausland, an exiled group of German writers. 27 Toller’s enemies were quick to vilify him after his Ragusa speech, the Nazi press lashing out against “the Jew Toller” and accusing him of being a communist. Toller emphatically denied that he had spoken for any particular party. As he explained it: “It was a question of nothing other than the cultural demands of intellectual freedom, the struggle for the rights of man. It was the duty of all writers, no matter where they live, to make this fight for the rights of man their own.” 28 Toller’s speech was a reflection of his own personal values but also served, through the publicity it received, to bring international attention to the problems of the exiled author and to underscore the nature of the new German regime. Moreover, for the first time, it was made clear that the Nazi government did not represent all Germany, but only a minority and that it was the task of the exiled intellectual to represent the interests of the silent and suffering majority of the “other Germany.” 29 As Toller put it in an address the following year at the Edinburgh meeting of the PEN Club: “If we believe in the power of the word—and as writers we do believe in the power of the word—we cannot be silent. . . . We represent a Germany one never hears about in official newspapers. The suffering Germany, the Germany secretly struggling, that is greater than you suspect.” 30 Toller’s Ragusa speech also stated views that Toller repeated throughout the 1930s. Not only had the Nazi leaders repressed the silent and unnamed millions who opposed them; they also had, as Toller’s allusions to Goethe and Schiller indicated, betrayed German culture. At a time when he saw Germany seduced by brutal usurpers, Toller emphasized the humanistic ideals of Germany’s “great spirits” and accused Germany’s leaders not only of robbing the nation of its freedom but also of dishonoring its intellectual traditions. It would be hard to select a statement more characteristic of Toller’s view of Germany. Besides emphasizing his humanism, Toller also disclosed his commitment to the German nation. It was an idealized nation, a malady to which many émigrés are prone but one to which Toller, in spite of his cosmopolitan outlook, was deeply attached. In his rejection of German politics, Toller clung all the more strongly to German culture. To his way of thinking, the two should be merged. The connection between politics on the one side and culture on the other was the moral effect of the second, which was to alter the first. Next to power, Toller reminded his Ragusa audience, there must also rule Geist, the moral laws of life that oblige the writer to speak out. As his critique of Weimar had rested on two bases, the one pragmatic and the other abstract, so Toller’s rejection of National Socialism harked back to earlier themes. In both cases, he could point to certain concrete actions: Wei-

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mar’s failure to change and its reliance on undemocratic forces on the one side, Hitler’s brutality and his suppression of freedom on the other. On a more abstract level, he also rejected both for the same reason: in neither had moral laws become a part of political life; in neither had Geist merged with Macht. In what may have been his earliest critique of the Nazi government, written after the Reichstag fire, Toller characterized Hitler’s policy as a campaign against the spirit and approvingly quoted Heinrich Mann’s argument that the Nazis “had indeed attacked the Jewish spirit, but that their aim was above all the spirit itself.” 31 In such an age, Toller asserted a few years later, “when the times betray the spirit,” 32 it was the duty of the intellectual to be the conscience of humanity, to make society aware of the dangers of National Socialism and not allow the world to overlook Hitler or forget his actions. As Toller explained, “to forget is the sin against Geist.” 33 Destitute of material power, the exiled writer who sought a role for himself in the fight against National Socialism was coerced to rely on “the power of the word” and the abstractions of Geist and “the Idea.” 34 In a eulogy to Toller one month after his death, Thomas Mann spoke of the decisiveness of the spirit and comforted his audience that the power of Geist was sure to conquer over Hitler: We who are assembled here are only workers in the realm of the spirit, without immediate influence on the happenings of the world. Our words and common admonitions should not on that account be underestimated. The spirit, destitute of material power, has a quiet, yet irresistible, annihilating as well as formative effect on earth and its decisions carry force. 35

In a similar manner, Toller spoke of the omnipotence of “the Idea” and attempted to console those writers who had nagging doubts about their impact on society: I know only too well the doubts of the writers who live in such times and in such a world. They ask: “What good is my work? Why write poetry, novels, dramas? What good will it do?” For the men of power a new tank, a new poison gas has a thousand times higher value than a great work of art. But whoever says this is short-sighted. Facts triumph only a short time. In the end they are without power before the power of the Idea. 36

If Toller had learned as early as 1918 that poetry and drama alone could not fight war, 37 he also knew that exclusive reliance on “the Idea” was insufficient to overcome National Socialism. An opponent of Hitler and a pacifist, Toller attempted to reconcile his desire to see fascism overthrown with his desire to see war prevented. As late as 1936, he had made a special point to correct The New York Times when it misquoted him as advocating a war against Germany. What he did say, Toller wrote in a letter to the paper, was that “the democracies must unite together to

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preserve peace. That is the only way to fight the danger of war which threatens the world today.” 38 Rejecting a war against Hitler, Toller at first saw only one way to help the victim of Nazi persecution: “the incessant voice of public opinion in free democracies.” 39 Through the force of public opinion, set in motion by the exiled intellectuals, Toller hoped to give support to what he believed to be a growing opposition to Hitler within Germany. He estimated that there was a minority “of at least five million” 40 within Germany actively opposed to Hitler and a majority opposed to Hitler’s bellicose foreign policy. Concessions in foreign affairs given Hitler by the European democracies, Toller asserted, could only serve to weaken this group and delay the time when the German people, sufficiently enlightened about the true nature of National Socialism, would revolt: Do not forget that every concession which is given Hitler not only weakens the power of the democracies, but also the opposition within Nazi Germany. An opposition which is there, which lives—an opposition which has not only the Left, but also the Conservatives, Protestants, and even high officers. The opposition—indeed, I can say the majority of the German people—wishes no war. An army of peace and freedom awaits—in Germany. 41

Illusions Toller may have held on the degree of internal opposition to Hitler were unfortunately misplaced. Had the revolt of Toller’s deceived majority against their rulers occurred, it would have made the conception of the “other Germany” more than just a consoling phrase. Such an uprising, of course, did not take place and only shows how Toller had overestimated the amount of resistance to Hitler. He failed to realize that those Germans not manipulated by Nazi propaganda found themselves subject to an apparatus of terror that effectively suppressed most of the regime’s opponents. Moreover, Hitler’s foreign policy successes and the rising standard of living that resulted from the increased needs for armaments further reconciled many to the National Socialist government. 42 Toller, once wishing to be an exiled poet-leader who from across the border would encourage an army for peace and freedom, had now become a General without a following. If Toller could comfort himself for a time that internal resistance and the power of “the Idea” could both prevent war and overthrow Hitler, he was eventually forced to the conclusion that only violence and, by implication, war could stop Hitler. Writing in 1937, Toller confessed: We all, and particularly those who have seen and felt the horror of the last war, hate war and love peace. But we do not want a peace as Hitler understands it. We want a true, genuine peace. This peace rests on freedom and justice. But when a government uses brutal force against its own people, robs it of their human rights and raises terror to a law,

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Chapter 7 must one then not assume that it will also follow the same principles in its foreign policy? If the world does not succeed in forcing Hitler to peace, he will transform Europe into ruins and destroy civilization. He only understands one language, the language of power. One must teach him and his supporters that each infraction of international law, each armed attack will be met by the united opposition of democracies. 43

A pacifist since 1917, Toller had come to realize by 1938 the necessity of force and the failure of pacifism when confronted with the realities of European politics during the 1930s. “I was a convinced pacifist,” he sadly noted, “but reality set me right.” 44 The problems of war and peace were not new for Toller. His experience as a soldier had turned the one-time warrior into a pacifist. War revealed the necessity for peace, while expressionist calls for regeneration ecstatically indicated its solution. 45 Unlike many pacifists, however, not only had Toller at first joyfully participated in war, but even after his conversion to pacifism, he was forced into violence. It was the paradox of Toller’s role in the Bavarian revolution that the nonviolent antimilitarist not only became caught up in civil war but, for a time, was “General Toller,” divisional commander of the Red Army, who unexpectedly distinguished himself at the battle at Dachau, where he defeated the forces of the Hoffmann regime. “The socialist revolutionary hates violence,” wrote Toller; he abhors it, and, when he uses it, he experiences a terrible means of tragic necessity.” 46 The tragic necessity of violence was unknown to Toller when he wrote Die Wandlung. Friedrich’s revolution is nonviolent, and Toller’s work was the response of the activist to the experience of war. In this respect, Toller was typical of the connection among war, activism, and pacifism. In Frank’s Der Mensch ist Gut, for example, individuals are tragically uprooted and roused to action by their disgust with war. From the brutality of war, it was but a short step to denounce, as did Toller’s Friedrich, the materialistic society that made war possible. The only hope for a new world, freed from the greed of the old, was through love, brotherhood, and nonviolence. Pacifism thus was to be a major part of the new revolutionary order. It was, therefore, the duty of the intellectual to see that he did everything in his power to stop war. As Toller put it: “It is the writer’s duty to awaken and to deepen the spontaneous feeling for humanity, for freedom, for justice, for beauty. The artist must serve not nationalism, but the alliance of nations, he must not strive for hatred, but for understanding; he must advocate not war but peace.” 47 Throughout the 1930s, however, Toller remained convinced that war was imminent. If he held hope that such a conflict could be prevented, he had little hope such an ambition could be achieved through the League of Nations, an organization Toller saw as a league of governments, controlled by the bankers and the rich bourgeois. A cynical observer at the

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1932 disarmament conference in Geneva, Toller felt, “One needs only to observe this conference for a few days. Can one really believe: here war will be prevented?” 48 Only through the education of youth in the ideals of pacifism, Toller asserted in 1934, could a genuine peace be established. 49 Toller’s faith in youth was a reflection of the influence of the youth movement and of Toller’s own views that only the idealism of youth could overcome “that duality that the Realpolitiker defends: that the demands one wishes, the demands of justice, the demands of human brotherhood can only find fulfillment in the realms of art and philosophy, while in the ‘real’ in ‘practical’ life things must be done more prosaically.” 50 In short, only youth could unite Geist and Tat and bring forth a genuinely just society founded on brotherhood and pacifism. However, the revolutionary pacifist of the 1920s had come to realize by the late 1930s that the pacifist society he so ardently wished had ended in failure. In a 1937 essay, “The Failure of Pacifism in Germany,” Toller indicted the Republic for failing to take advantage of the restlessness and longing for peace that he believed characterized German youth at the end of World War I. In rebellion during the war to change society as well as to make peace, the young pacifist revolutionaries found that after 1918 those who had managed the war also managed the peace. Betrayed by corrupt politicians, youth, asserted Toller, turned in disgust from politics and by their action unwittingly left the state in the hands of belligerent reactionaries who encouraged militarism. “Nowhere in the German Republic,” Toller lamented, “did youth find any glorification of the idea of peace.” Rather than holding up the ideals of social justice and pacifism, the Republic had surrendered itself to chauvinism, denouncing the attempts of youth to change society as insubordination and cultural Bolshevism. Here, concluded Toller, was the task of the political exile: “To remain true to the Idea” of those young revolutionaries of 1918, to bury the old and discredited values, and to create in their place new and living ones. 51 Toller’s essay was deeply permeated with the idealism of the prewar youth movement and with his own disillusion with the failure of the German revolution. So deep were Toller’s own hopes for that revolution and for his own generation—who, in their rebellion against the stale and corrupt father world, were to inaugurate the debut of a new age—that Toller overlooked the other alternatives toward which German youth had turned. The searching and discontent of German youth, Toller observed, more often could end not in revolutionary pacifism but in the discovery of an organic philosophy of life finding outlet in one of the Republic’s right-wing groups. Toller’s personal transformation from warrior to pacifist in 1917 had had such a profound effect on the twenty-fouryear-old writer that Toller uncritically assumed that most of those of his generation who had fought shared his revulsion to war and chauvinism.

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This was certainly not the impact of the war, for example, on Ernst Jünger, three years younger than Toller, but whose war memoirs, In Stahlgewittern, with their nihilistic celebration of the camaraderie of the trenches, revealingly contrasted with the revulsion to trench warfare Toller had expressed in his autobiography. 52 Moreover, Toller had overestimated the amount of pacifist thought in Germany even in 1918. That most Germans were tired of the war and wished for its end is undeniable. However, Toller tended to confuse the negative feeling of war weariness, shared by many Germans, with the positive feelings for revolution and pacifism shared by few. Whether objectively true or not, Toller, nevertheless, felt acutely that the failure of pacifism in 1918 was directly related to the rise of Hitler and that for this the former Entente powers bore a major responsibility in their vindictive actions toward Germany after the war. Addressing an international congress of writers gathered in Paris in 1937, Toller reminded his audience: At that time [1918 and 1919], Europe missed a great historic opportunity. The German people, instructed through hard experience of war, were repelled by war and had recognized the spirit of peace. Had the Entente at that time not made the people responsible for the sins of the Kaiser, the Generals, the Junkers, had they at that time not encouraged reaction out of fear before the will of the German people for a socially just order and discouraged the Republic, had they conceded to the Republic only a fraction of what they later conceded to Hitler, Europe would look differently and the world would not need to tremble before a new war. 53

Toller’s view of traditional democratic government had, in part, been colored by Germany’s treatment at the hands of England, France, and the United States. As early as 1919, he had censured them for their hostility toward a defeated and defenseless Germany. 54 He was profoundly disillusioned by the Wilsonian rhetoric of a new world order and the postwar reality established by Germany’s enemies. A self-proclaimed radical socialist, Toller indicted not only their actions but also their forms of government as façades of democracy under which hid the sinister forces of capitalism and imperialism. Toller’s experience during the 1930s as a persecuted exile, however, caused him to change his views toward nations he had once rejected. He came to feel England “a second home” and the United States a refuge for those fleeing Nazi tyranny. 55 Their democratic forms of government he came to see as a partial embodiment of freedom and social justice. While he confessed that many times the ideals of democracy had been betrayed and had degenerated into a capitalist oligarchy, he refused to agree with those who repudiated a democratic form of government:

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Democracy is a milestone in man’s evolution. The best of mankind have fought for democracy for centuries. . . . The ideals of democracy which were formulated in America before being swept through Europe by the French revolution have not failed. But we need an intensification of democracy: that means freedom plus social justice. 56

Toller saw in the qualities of reason and individual responsibility the basis of democratic government. Without such qualities, democracy ran the danger of degenerating into fascism. Fear of responsibility, argued Toller, the desire for “a leader, a Caesar, a Messiah who will perform miracles, who will assume responsibility, who will banish anxiety, abolish misery, create an empire of splendor” 57 had allowed Hitler to take the burden of thought and responsibility from a nation that wished neither to think for itself nor to take the responsibility democracy demanded. 58 At a time when democracy was increasingly succumbing to the forces of dictatorship, it was more than ever necessary to defend “this most precious possession of mankind”: “common front must be created where all those come together who are willing to defend civilization regardless of their different religions and political views. We may have different opinions, we may work for different political aims; but in this deadly danger those differences are not important. 59 No one familiar with Toller’s ideas can fail to see the consistency of his views. From the youthful revolutionary of 1919 to the disillusioned critic of Weimar to the unhappy exile of the 1930s, the theme of unity in the face of the dangers from the Right is a persistent motif in Toller’s political thought. A champion of left-wing unity during the Bavarian revolution, Toller also called for unity of all socialists during the Weimar Republic and hoped to stop Hitler by a Kampfblock of democratic forces. But such a call for left-wing unity was not a realistic option. Even if the German Left had been united and had fought the Nazi government, it is extremely improbable that left-wing unity would have been effective. Events in the Austria of 1934 tend to bear this out: a unified and potent labor movement was unable to prevent destruction by the power of police, army, and a fascist state. Nevertheless, during the 1930s, Toller again reiterated the need for what became known as a popular front. Toller’s views of left-wing unity were echoed by an abrupt turn in Communist Party dogma. The decision of Moscow in 1937 to favor an alliance with socialist and nonsocialist radicals represented a hasty about-face. While Toller was calling for a united front to stop Hitler in 1932, German Communists were engaged in vilifying the German Socialist Party, the only significant organization that supported the Republic, as social fascists and, hence, the real enemy. Indeed, for a time, demented party dogma was that Hitler’s coming to power would represent a decisive stage of world communism since National Socialism was a manifestation of the death throes of monopoly

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capitalism. During the latter part of the 1930s, the realization became slowly prevalent in communist circles that National Socialism had perhaps been wrongly analyzed. While it was obviously too late to overthrow the Third Reich, it was possible for Moscow to give its approval to communist support for the French Third Republic and to order French communists to halt their attacks on socialists, emphasize the antiracism of the communists, and enter a coalition government composed of communists, socialists, and radicals. Such sudden shifting of the party line was, of course, pure opportunism on the part of the Soviet Union, a desire to avoid the nightmare of an internationally isolated Russia facing a belligerent and powerful Germany. From his experience during the Bavarian revolution, when the German Communist Party first denounced the Council Republic and then supported it, opportunism on the part of the communists was familiar to Toller. Moreover, Toller’s relation to communism had always been hostile. In Die Wandlung, Masse Mensch, and Hinkemann, communist materialism in political ideology and communist ruthlessness in political practice were portrayed unflatteringly. Curiously, however, Toller always remained sympathetic to the Soviet Union; indeed, he remained silent on its shortcomings. Although Toller had called on all socialist parties to support the ailing Weimar Republic in the face of the dangers from National Socialism, there is no criticism in his writings of Moscow’s policy to denounce the German Socialist Party as social fascists or its encouragement that the Weimar Republic be overthrown. In Quer Durch, based on his travels through Russia and the United States, Toller had unfavorably contrasted America with the Soviet Union, “the land of the future.” 60 During the 1930s, he saw the defense of the Soviet Union as “the duty of all those who have preserved the belief in the historic mission of the working class.” 61 The enormity of the danger he saw in fascism as well as his own left-wing views, had considerably dulled Toller’s critical faculties when he came to analyze Soviet society. Writing in 1934, he noted that “My strongest impression in Russia was that while in fascist countries intellectual freedom is ever more closely circumscribed and writers who do not slavishly obey the orders of the dictators must go into exile, in the U.S.S.R. on the other hand, intellectual freedom is growing.” 62 This is one of the few times in Toller’s evaluation of politics that he was naïvely and drastically incorrect. The best that can be said is that while the Russia of Stalin was as hostile to Toller’s view of a free, democratic, and humanistic society as the Germany of Hitler, Toller’s support went to those who opposed fascism, and he refused to recognize any enemies on the Left. For most antifascist intellectuals during the 1930s, it was the Spanish Civil War that represented the struggle of the forces of democracy against those of fascism, a clear example of good versus evil. As Toller wrote: “He who does not participate in this fight encourages and strengthens the

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oppressors. He who participates in this fight encourages and strengthens the oppressed.” 63 No cause in the twentieth century has exercised a greater degree of commitment from writers than Spain’s civil war. Many on the Left willingly exchanged their overheated pens for rifles and joined the fighting on the Republican side. Those on the Left, unable to be there in body, were there in spirit. While the civil war produced Spanish Republicans, not all who supported the cause were Spaniards. The cause of Spain was also that of André Malraux, George Orwell, Ludwig Renn, Arthur Koestler, Alfred Kantorowitz—and Ernst Toller. Toller had been to Spain as early as 1932 and in March 1936, when he and his wife Christine spent six weeks touring Spain. Toller went there to observe the civil war and threw his considerable talents to the support of the republic. In a Weltbühne article of 1938, Toller denounced the domination of Italian fascists and German National Socialists supporting Franco. A victory for the fascists would not only mean a victory of fascism in Spain but would also mean a European war. Spain was important in understanding Toller’s politics during the 1930s. It clarifies his views as a committed, although nondogmatic socialist and illuminates, although with some explanation, the views he held as a believer in democracy, at least as Toller defined it. Toller formed the hypotenuse of the two points of Spain and the Soviet Union, joining them together in a political triangle. Committed to revolutionary socialism, he naturally supported the Spanish Republic. He was also a supporter of the Soviet Union but, like many intellectuals in post–World War I Europe, badly misjudged its social and political system. He remained a supporter of Russia, although at times veering between enthusiasm and mild concern. He gave voice to the first in Quer Durch: The people of Russia should go their own way. Nowhere else in the world do we see such a self-unfolding of energy and action. If the experiment were not to succeed it would still be in world history a heroic example of the creative human spirit. If it is succeeds and many speak for it a world regeneration of culture will begin whose manifold effects we today can only suspect. 64

This now appears an odd conclusion about a state that sacrificed more of its citizens to ideology than Hitler. Toller remained from 1919 to his death a firm supporter of the Soviet Union, even when its victims were those with whom he might be expected to sympathize. Toller did express great dissatisfaction with the Moscow show trials but did not speak out against them, even when he knew their unfortunate victims personally, such as Karl Radek, who died in a Soviet gulag. Many intellectuals made the same error. During the 1930s, Sidney and Beatrice Webb were absolutely delighted by Stalin and his Five Year Plan, touring the Soviet Union, proclaiming it a new civilization. This was naïveté, of course. Less credulous was André Malraux, who in private showed little sympathy for

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Russian communism but in public was a firm supporter because he did not want to undermine the antifascist cause. Toller’s views were not as naïve as the Webbs’ and not as Machiavellian as Malraux’s. One of Toller’s leading chroniclers writes that Toller was as critical of communism as he was of National Socialism. 65 This is inaccurate. Richard Dove asserts that Toller was forced to moderate his views on socialism during the 1930s. This may only be partly true. Toller moderated his language, not his views. He did this to avoid alienating a middle-class audience he needed to oppose fascism, an audience that would find the vocabulary of socialism unfamiliar and repellent in a person who was supporting the virtues of liberal democracy verses National Socialism. 66 Part of the problem is semantic. As early as 1930, in his speech “Reichskanzler Hitler,” Toller urged the formation of a unity front (Einheitsfront) of unions, the German Socialist Party, and the German Communist Party. 67 This would have been a shrewd policy that might have prevented torchlight parade celebrations in Berlin after January 1933. However, German Socialists preferred legal methods of struggle. They were conservative and opposed to the extra parliamentary action called for by Toller. German Communists were more creative. Communism then was centrally controlled by Moscow, and, taking their marching orders from Russia’s capital, German Communists attacked German Socialists, not Nazis, as the real fascists. This now sounds extremely strange, but it was followed with great energy and devotion, leading to the astonishing display of communists participating with Nazis to remove Prussia’s socialist government in 1932. Toller, so often dismissed as an impractical dreamer, showed a hardheaded realism in his views of National Socialism and how to defeat it. He called for working-class solidarity because he believed fascism was a result of the capitalist system. And he believed in the need of the lower middle class (Kleinbürgertum) to have a party (the Nazis) that would defend them against Bolshevism and organized labor. For Toller, it was clear the struggle was indistinguishable from the logic of capitalism. What was needed was a unity of the working class and trade unions: a unity front (Einheistfront). But in 1935, the Popular Front (Volksfront) became the Soviet’s new approach to fascism. Stalin, in spite of his later pact with Hitler, was under no illusions that the Soviet state would eventually have to fight Nazi Germany. He was also under even fewer illusions about the hostility of the West to Russia and the Soviet Union’s international isolation from the rest of Europe. Stalin attempted to allay British and French fears, turning toward the West in a common cause to oppose fascism, guard freedom, and advocate a broad antifascist alliance. He had finally given up the idea that central European socialists were a tool of fascism.

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This appealed to Toller. He was not naïve. He knew the popular front dance was tightly choreographed by Moscow, but he also knew the Soviet Union was a major power, the largest land mass against fascism, and that if the Soviet Union could combine against Germany with Britain and France, Nazism could be not only fought but defeated. This was a way of overcoming the left-wing political divisions the Soviets had formally encouraged, and Toller had an active part in operations set up by the Comintern, Russia’s bureaucratic organ to promote communism. 68 It seemed the former dreamer and leader of the revolution of love had finally become a Realpolitiker. Although Toller may have had reservations, not publically expressed, about what was going on in the Soviet Union, like an oyster absorbing irritating grains of sand and transforming them into a pearl, he lacquered this discomfort into something of value. The new Volksfront was not a partisan or political movement. It was the attempt to unite all, Catholics and Protestants, socialists and liberals, Trade Unionists and intellectuals, “all men of good will in which the feeling for justice lives.” It was consistent with Toller’s nonpolitical views of what he wanted as far back as 1919. Where previously he had been at best ambivalent about traditional forms of democracy, speaking out against Yankee, French, and British Imperialism, he defended Western solidarity in the Volksfront, if only not to offend opponents of National Socialism. Toller never was a traditional liberal democrat in the sense of approving of traditional parliamentary and elections. He was never as critical of Russian communism as he was of German National Socialism. The Volksfront was in harmony with his support of what the Soviet Union was attempting to do: stop Hitler. In his 1932 trip to Spain, Toller had the opportunity to view the newly established Republic. While sympathetic to Republicans, he held little hope for a Republic he felt unviable and unable to withstand recurrent periods of dictatorship. Moreover, Toller saw alarming similarities in the development of the Spanish Republic and the Weimar Republic. In both, members of the old order still held positions of power, parliament excluded the interests of workers, and the government persecuted those it believed too radical. “Where have I seen that before?” 69 Nevertheless, by 1938, Toller had come to see the Republic as the embattled outpost of world democracy, a microcosm of the European struggle between the ideals of fascism and those of democracy and a place where the fate of Europe was being decided. 70 In addition, Toller was attracted to the Republic for other reasons. He viewed the Republic as an attempt to create a society based on freedom and justice, a state above parties and petty personal conflicts, a true democracy: “all work together, there are no selfish interests . . . All work for one goal: for the freedom and independence of Spain, for the protection and solution of fundamental moral principles which alone make possible a life of humanity and dignity.” 71

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In short, the Spanish Republic was attempting to build the same society Toller had sought for Germany during the Bavarian revolution. In a trip to Spain from July to September 1938, Toller had been shocked by the suffering of the civilian population, the true victims of any war. When he found little being done to alleviate the hardships of innocent noncombatants, he took upon himself the task of organizing a civilian relief plan. His last humanitarian action before his death, Toller’s idea to aid the victims of Spain’s civil war transcended narrow political lines. As he explained in a speech: “Neither death nor suffering are partisan. There must remain in our humanity some realm where we forget the controversies of the day and come back to the basic principles of charity and solidarity.” 72 Singlehandedly, he sought to obtain fifty million dollars’ worth of food to feed the starving millions of Spain. Tirelessly, he travelled throughout Europe at his own expense, wrote numerous letters, had innumerable conversations in his attempt to secure government support for his plan. Because he was still known as a radical, it was easy for Toller’s Nazi opponents to refer to his revolutionary past, denounce him as a communist, call his nonpartisan motives into question, and discredit his humanitarian ideals. In spite of Nazi calumny, Toller managed to receive considerable support for his plan. Observed Christopher Isherwood: He had contrived, somehow, to reach audiences outside the circles of the Left. He had touched the heart of a huge, apathetic Public. He had caught the ears of the right people, the Powers, and the powers behind the Powers. They invited him to their houses, as an honoured guest. Even the conservative press spoke well of him. He was in the process of becoming a respectable institution. 73

By the end of 1938, Toller had a hearing for his ideas in Washington. In touch with Eleanor Roosevelt, he was invited to the White House in December and assured that the President had been informed of his plans. Three days later, at the instigation of Franklin Roosevelt, a committee was formed to ship 600,000 barrels of flour to Spain. 74 With the imminent success of his relief plan, Toller ostensibly had good reason to be happy as the new year of 1939 approached. However, Toller was confronted by major personal problems. Toller’s income during the 1930s had been insecure. Unlike some exiled writers, Toller was unable to obtain large royalties through translations. Translations of his work, particularly Quer Durch and his autobiography, did not sell well, and his last play, Pastor Hall, which Toller believed his best, was refused production. 75 As a German playwright, Toller had unusually hard financial problems during his years in the United States. In contrast to the novel, there was almost no market for German drama. Particularly on the New York stage, German plays had traditionally been over looked. 76 Although Toller’s Draw the Fires, for example, was a hit in England and

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his Blind Man’s Bluff had a record run in Ireland, he had no success in producing his works in New York. Nor was that all. Weimar-exiled intellectuals had a hard time with America and its mass culture. Their triangular cultural references to Geist, Kultur, and Bildung were both elite and avant-garde. As Arnold Schoenburg once wrote in a letter: “If it is art, it is not for the masses. If it’s for the masses, it’s not art.” 77 German culture was high culture, not American mass culture. There was in Germany a sufficiently educated population, cultural panoply of opera houses, concert halls, and intellectual magazines, which did not exist in the United States. What the émigrés found in America was to them a vast, dry, money-grubbing desert of popular kitsch and superficial entertainment. Their reaction to this was frustration, incomprehension, and bewilderment, mixed with despair. Rejected by their homeland, in America they could not find a home. Hollywood scriptwriting provided relief for some German writers. Toller had had some prior experience in film when he worked with Walter Hasenclever on dialogue for the German version of MGM’s The Big House in 1931. Both Warner Brothers and MGM allowed a number of authors to come to California by assuring them of contracts. Toller had, through his contacts, sent two film plans to a Hollywood agent, one on building the Suez Canal, the other on Ireland. He was also thinking about a film on the mistress of Ludwig I of Bavaria, Lola Montez. 78 This actually became a script entitled Heavenly Sinner, written in collaboration with Sidney Kaufman but never filmed. Toller realized none of his scripts would be shot and in disgust left Hollywood for New York in 1939. Rather predictably, the relation between Weimar intellectuals and the Hollywood film world was not warm. Reaction to the tinsel and celluloid world of Hollywood ran the gamut from condescension to outright bitterness. Kurt Hiller gave expression to the latter sentiment when he angrily wrote that Toller “had worked hard for six or seven months [actually from the Spring of 1937 to the Spring of 1939 when he was under contract with MGM to write film scripts]. Hollywood, true to its Kitsch tradition, did not appreciate anything he did.” 79 Moreover, while Toller lyrically wrote of the power of the word, certain conditions made that power considerably less potent. Like all German exiled authors, Toller was confronted with an increasingly smaller audience as Hitler extended his influence in Europe. 80 Although English became his adopted language, as a writer Toller was always painfully aware of his stylistic shortcomings. In 1934, he had asserted that the émigré could only defend German culture if he remained true to the German language. 81 Yet Toller was forced to use English as German periodicals became closed to him. Problems of effective self-expression were frustrating. While Toller could speak English fairly well, he never mastered writing, and the unpublished letters he did write in English betray an unfirm grasp of the language. In a questionnaire by the British Labour

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Monthly, Toller struggled with the written reply: “As long as the struggle for peace attacks only the symptoms it is bound to be inefficient. He will shipwreck who is unable to realize that the antagonisms of capitalist society will always make for warlike solutions and that it is necessary to remove the causes . . .” 82 As Toller lamented, “What is an author who is not heard in his own language and who cannot write in another?” 83 Toller was a man of undoubted courage and deep sincerity, but the suffering he endured and the brutal events of the 1930s of which he had been victim left their mutilating mark on his life. Any suicide is the ultimate private act of a wounded creature whose life has lost meaning. When meaning is lost and all hope vanished, the soul dies and the body frequently follows. Depression is to the mind as Kryptonite is to Superman—a slow wasting-away of body and spirit. Profound suicidal depression, once it has captured a mind, lays it waste. It is always there, one’s constant most unwanted companion from which there is no escape. The act itself, however, is highly impulsive and sudden, like the crack of thunder during a midsummer storm. No suicidal person wants to die, although he may have told himself so hundreds of times. But after carrying about, perhaps for decades, the grotesque horrid baggage of hopes lost and dreams shattered, the pain of life simply becomes unbearable, and its victim will do anything to avoid the horror of awakening to yet another day without hope or meaning. Nothing has meaning. Ordinary pleasures slowly dim. Going outside on a warm spring day or cuddling with a loved one not only does not help but makes depression’s victim even more upset at being unable to feel the joy everyone else seems to feel. Everything becomes colored in the awful penumbra of a darkness that seems never-ending, dooming the unfortunate tortured toward an unwanted end. It is not death that is longed for. What is wished for is the terrible escape from the perceived horror of a life now seen as unbearable. The creative connection between manic depression and creativity has been well studied. In ancient Greece, poets communicated with gods through divine madness and states of possession. Socrates in Phaedrus said madness comes from God. Aristotle may have been the first to make a connection between depression—he called it melancholia—and creativity. It is particularly virulent among prose writers and, even more so, among poets, coming, as Dante wrote in The Inferno, “to ferry you across the tide / To endless night, fierce fires and shramming cold.” It can strike suddenly and with great unexpected and overwhelming force. In Toller’s case, depression went back to his years in World War I when he was discharged for psychological reasons. Five years in prison probably only compounded his condition, and his wife had seen his struggle with depression, Toller frequently spending days of incapacitation in a dark room, brooding on his feelings of literary failure. His mood changes, typical of manic depression, moved violently. Days of somber foreboding

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suddenly gave way to obsessive conversation and a compulsive need for companionship. 84 As an émigré, Toller was not alone in following the tortured path of self-destruction. The exile road was littered with the bodies of authors. The list is formidable: Walter Benjamin, Walter Hasenclever, Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, Klaus Mann, Kurt Tucholsky, Carl Einstein, and others. By January 1939, Toller had little money and was completely exhausted by his work for Spain, perhaps already suffering from the “leftwing melancholia” that affected other Weimar intellectuals. 85 Toller had plunged himself into his work with Spain in this, his last spasm of energy. With its failure, Toller’s life now became a flight from memory and grief. What time left remaining was a frantic attempt to beat back death. While he had hoped the Republic would win the civil war, it was becoming increasingly clear that the new society Toller wished for Spain would meet the same end as the Bavarian revolution. As he had blamed himself for the failure of the Bavarian revolution, so Toller also blamed himself for the Spanish Republic. “But it is we who are to blame,” he cried out: “because our voices were faint; we are terribly to blame.” He wrote to Stephen Spender in January: I have been so completely tied up with the action for Spain that I have simply had no private existence at all. It was necessary to get the interest and sympathy of hundreds of newspapers and people, to obtain interviews, to get in touch with official functionaries, with different governments and so on. As you know the result was a very good one; but with things that are happening now in Spain, one feels that all this ought to have been done ever so much earlier, that all of us have somehow failed. 86

It was with a crippling sadness that Toller heard of the fall of the Republic in March 1939. Not only was the defeat a triumph for fascism, but Toller feared that the supplies that had reached Spain had fallen into Franco’s hands and had been sent to Germany in exchange for arms. 87 This was a problem that affected all émigrés: their inability to affect history. The exiles did their best to fight this. Long before exile, Toller was perhaps the first in his play Die entfesselte Wotan to point out the dangers of National Socialism. No one believed his predictions. He continued to warn after 1933. It was terribly frustrating for them all. They warned America against Hitler. Their warnings went unheeded. They were viewed as Cassandras, the prophetess whose unwelcome predictions, while always true, was herself blamed for the misfortunes that she so tellingly foretold. The predictions of German émigrés were believed only by fellow German exiles—and these exiles were themselves powerless, unable to act on the course of history, living in a foreign land, their only weapon exile publications read predominantly by other exiles.

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If Toller had been able to rely on friends, he could perhaps have overcome his depression. Yet Toller’s intense dedication to the cause of humanity made many uncomfortable in his presence. For the sake of his work, he made extravagant demands on friends and acquaintances, who preferred to avoid him rather than meet the tasks Toller had so gratuitously set for them. 88 During his last months, he was virtually friendless. To this was added a poor marriage. He had married the German actress Christiane Grautoff, twenty-four years younger than he, in 1935. By 1938, they had separated, and it was only Toller’s lack of money that prevented a divorce. 89 Toller had become a knotted pretzel of dashed hopes, anguish, and despair. Friends who saw him in New York City tell of a prematurely aged man, slowly losing a battle against paralyzing sadness. He had degenerated into a tragic simulacrum of his former self. Wildly famous in Germany, the man who in 1925 could once fill a huge auditorium of thousands to hear him read poetry could now barely fill a small room in New York. 90 Christopher Isherwood noted the change that had occurred in Toller during his last two years. In 1937, when Isherwood first met Toller: He was all that I had hoped for—more brilliant, more convincing than his books, more daring than his most epic deeds. It was easy enough to see him on that cinema platform, fifteen years ago, when he told the workers “You must occupy the factories. You must resist.” I could picture him at that magnificent moment of defeat, crying out to his judges: “You can silence me. You can never silence history.” I watched him pace his cell, five years long, in the mountain fortress, aloof and dangerous as the untamed tiger. Yes, he had done all that. And he could do it again—tomorrow, if need be. The years which had cloaked him with authority had left the vital spark untouched. The man of forty was as undaunted as the boy of twenty-five.

Two years later, Isherwood was surprised when he met an overwhelmed melancholic: “I was struck by the change in his appearance and in his manner. He looked older, yellower, thinner. The black eyes were somber.” 91 Toller was now in mean and woeful circumstances. His soul had withered, his eyes were now deadened, his heart and spirit fearsomely tired, his mood soured by what he had experienced since exile. He had never been physically or emotionally strong, and the experience of exile only increased his stress; since 1937, he had been under psychiatric care. While in Hollywood, he was subject to severe depression and insomnia. By April 1939, Toller was again complaining to his doctor: “It is the same situation all over again as you have known me in. Not quite as deep but painful enough. The worst is the incapacity to work. What that means for an emigrant depending entirely upon his daily work

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needs no comment. . . . The question is how to pull myself out of this state.” 92 A sense of melancholy had encroached like that of a cloudy late afternoon in winter, bleak and grey and cold. His physician suggested creative work to keep busy and fight off depression. Toller frets and broods with a sense of oncoming doom, slumping into morose musings: It’s quite all right to suggest creative work but that is just where I am hampered. The thought that again and again such a breakdown has to happen will not enter my hand [sic] I am willing to undergo any treatment if there is but the slightest chance to get rid of it for good. It seems to me that in a good state I am building up life and work and then I am thrown back and have to start all over again. Human relations are going to pieces. I am unable to help others as I try to do in good times. The uncertainty of my whole existence is growing. All this drives me to sheer despair. 93

Toller, who breathed life in great draughts as he walked through the turbulent decades of the twenties and thirties, from the heated excitement of revolution through the chilled vestibule of exile, was now traversing the chasm between mournful melancholy and deep depression. He had reached the dead end of hopelessness, living in a state of chronic destitution. He now looked increasingly vacant, spent, all hopeful emotions smoothed away, about to enlist the tragic army of those coerced to destroy the self. Isherwood saw Toller just before his death. He was chainsmoking. Isherwood noticed his hands tremble a little as he lit one cigarette after another: “You know,” he told me, “I long very greatly to return to Europe.” “You don’t like it here?” “I hate it. Look,” he pointed. “Over there is the Zoological Garden. You have seen the Sea Lions?” “Yes, I have seen them.” “When I’m lying in bed at night I can hear them. And sometimes it seems to me that they are angry, that they are crying aloud to demand the destruction of this city.”

Isherwood suggested Toller write about the city. He shook his head. The finality of his refusal was the last memory Isherwood was to carry away: “No, Isherwood. No I shall never write about this country. I have come here too late.” 94 Toller was scheduled to leave the United States on Tuesday, May 21. He had written to friend and fellow writer Hermann Kesten that he wanted to meet in Normandy and then go to England together if France fell to the Germans. 95 The idea of suicide was not new to Toller. In 1919, after the failure of the Bavarian revolution, he had contemplated it, and shortly before his release from prison, he had toyed with the idea of taking his own life. It may be of significance that he dedicated his book about his life, I Was a

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German, to “my nephew Harry who shot himself at age 18 in 1925.” Many of Toller’s plays include suicidal characters. On the evening of May 21, however, in a conversation with Ludwig Marcuse, Toller had vehemently rejected the idea of suicide. 96 Just a few days earlier, Franco had a triumphal parade in Madrid, celebrating his victory in the Spanish Civil War. On May 22—a New York afternoon, appropriately, of dark, overcast clouds and sprinkles of rain—shortly after 2:30, Ernst Toller was found in the bathroom of his New York hotel, The Mayflower, across from Central Park. He had taken the cord from his bathrobe and walked into the bathroom. There he had carefully placed a chair. He tied the cord to a firm fixture, then around his throat, stepped on top of the chair and jumped off, quickly slipping away from life. 97 Like Karl Thomas, the hero of his play Hoppla, wir leben!, a character Toller would have preferred to have seen continue to fight rather than to die by his own hand, like Eugene Hinkemann in his eponymous play, who kills himself, the forty-fiveyear-old Toller, unable to endure a postwar world lacking a sense of humanity, took his own life. “There are only two choices left,” wrote Toller in Hinkemann, “to hang oneself or to change the world.” Left-wing intellectuals, including Toller, had commented on the materialism of America. The New York Times account of his funeral on May 24 noted: “he died comparatively poor.” NOTES 1. Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question, Die Juden in Deutschland (Munich: Nazi Party publication, 1936), 202. 2. Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar in Exile: The Anti-Fascist Emigration in Europe and America (London: Verso, 2006), 46. 3. Harold Poor, Kurt Tucholsky and the Ordeal of Weimar Germany (New York: Scribner, 1968), 204. 4. Quoted by Harry Levin, “Literature and Exile,” in Refractions: Essays in Comparative Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966), 63. 5. Ernst Toller, “Rede im Englischen jungen PEN-Club,” in Deutsche fűr Deutsche (Leipzig: Verlag für Kunst und Wissenschaft, 1935), 3. 6. N. A. Furness, “Ernst Toller and the Exigencies of Exile,” in German Writers and Politics 1918–1939, edited by Richard Dove and Stephen Lamb (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 180. 7. Northampton Chronicle and Echo, June 26, 1935, cited in Furness, “Ernst Toller and the Exigencies of Exile,” 182, 190. 8. Peter Gay, Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), xiv. 9. Arthur Rosenberg, “Zur Geschichte der politischen Emigration,” Mass und Wert 2 (1938): 371. 10. Hermann Kesten, Der Geist der Unruh (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1959), 126, quoted by Robert Cazden, German Exile Literature in America, 1933–1950: A History of the Free German Press and Book Trade (Chicago: American Library Association, 1970), 138. 11. Palmier, Weimar in Exile, at 900 pages, is certainly the most comprehensive study of German exiles.

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12. It was only when Toller came to consider the United States as a refuge from Nazi tyranny that he began to feel more sympathy toward America. However, the land of gaudy Hollywood movies, vulgar society, and dollar worship always held little appeal for Toller. 13. Ernst Toller, Letter to B, 28.6.23, in Look Through the Bars: Letters from Prison, Poems, and a New Version of “The Swallow Book” (New York: Farrar & Rinehart, 1937), 212. 14. Ernst Toller, “Unser Kampf in Deutschland,” Das Wort (Moscow) 2 (1937): 52. 15. Ernst Toller, “The Cultural Consequences of the Reichstag Fire,” Typed Manuscript, Toller Collection, Department of Historical Manuscripts, Yale University Library, 8. Hereafter referred to as TC. 16. Ernst Toller, “Rede in Budapest,” Die Weltbühne 28 (1932): 853–54. 17. Dietrich Strothmann, Nationalsozialistische Literaturpolitik (Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1960), 73; Wilhelm Sternfeld, “Die Emigrantenpresse,” Deutsche Rundschau, April 1960, 250. 18. Toller, untitled speech of 11/10/33, TC, 4. 19. Ernst Toller, “Rede auf dem Pariser Kongress der Schriftsteller am 25. Juli 1938,” Das Wort (Moscow) 3 (1938): 126. 20. Ernst Toller, “The Modern Writer and the Future of Europe,” TC, 7. 21. William Pfeiler, German Literature in Exile: The Concern of the Poets (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1957), 54, 41. 22. See Toller, “Rede in Budapest,” and Alexander Marai’s comment, “Ungarische Antwort: Warum lohnt es sich zu leben,” both in Die Weltbühne 28 (1932): 853–56. “PEN Kongress in Polen,” Die Weltbühne 26 (1930): 51. 23. Ernst Toller, “Rede auf dem PEN-K1ub Kongress,” Die Weltbühne 29 (1933): 741–44. 24. Wladimir von Hartlieb, “Zum PEN-Klub Kongress in Ragusa,” Die literarische Welt, quoted in “The P.E.N. Club and the Nazis,” 445. 25. Ernst Toller, “Rede auf dem PEN-K1ub Kongress,” 741. 26. A Nazi observer of the Congress was less sympathetic. Wladimir von Hartlieb, a self-proclaimed opponent of “the bombastic ideology of freedom,” noted: “I had never overestimated his [Toller’s] intellectual qualities; I had considered him a real fanatic. But the man I saw and heard was nothing but a poseur, a routine comedian to whom nothing seems genuine because he is a literateur in the worst sense of the word and thinks only of the effects of applause. The content of his speech was pathetic and parts of it were ridiculous. Nothing would be easier than to reduce his statements to absurdity. Of course, he was overwhelmed with applause.” “The P.E.N. Club and the Nazis,” 446. 27. It was not until 1957 that PEN expelled its second delegation, the Hungarian, for its approval of the Hungarian regime’s measures against those involved in the 1956 revolt. 28. Interview of Toller by Victor Rubcic, Sarajevo, June 8, 1933, copy in Akademie der Kunst, West Berlin. 29. John Spalek, “Ernst Tollers Vortragstatigkeit und seine Hilfsaktion in Exil” (unpublished paper read at Washington University Conference Center Symposium). “Opposition and Resignation: German Writers in Exile,” April 14–16, 1972, 12. I wish to thank Dr. Spalek for allowing me to see a copy of his paper. 30. Ernst Toller, “Ernst Tollers Anklage,” Deutsche Stimmen, 10 August 1934, 9. 31. Toller, “Cultural Consequences of the Reichstag Fire,” TC, 1, 7. 32. Toller, “Rede in Englischen-jungen PEN-Club,” 3. 33. Toller, “Ernst Tollers Anklage,” 9. 34. See Thomas Mann, “Writers in Exile,” in Twice a Year (N.P., 1939), 37–38. 35. Mann, “Writers in Exile,” 37. 36. Toller, “Rede in Englischen-jungen PEN-Club.” 37. See chapter 5. 38. See New York Times, October 19, 1936, 18:5.

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39. Ernst Toller, “The Meaning of the Andre Trial,” New Republic 89 (1937): 331. 40. Ernst Toller, “A Minority Hitler Never Mentions,” Tribune (London), October 14, 1938, 13. 41. Ernst Toller, “An England,” Die neue Weltbühne 34 (1938): 1296–97. 42. See David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1967), 100–101; Werner Link, “German Political Refugees in the United States during the Second World War,” in German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler, edited by Anthony Nicholls and Erich Matthias (London: Allen and Unwin, 1971), 242. 43. Toller, “Unser Kampf in Deutschland,” 51–52. See also Toller, “Rede auf dem Pariser Kongress der Schriftsteller,” 122–26. 44. “Man and the Masses: The Problem of Peace,” TC, 1. 45. W. A. Willibrand, Ernst Toller and His Ideology (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1945), 31. 46. Ernst Toller, Quer Durch: Reisebilder und Reden (Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1930), 99. 47. Toller, “Radio Speech of September 16, Anti-Nazi League,” TC, 5. 48. Ernst Toller, “Menschliche Komodie in Genf,” Die Weltbühne 28 (1932): 397. 49. Ernst Toller, “The Twentieth Anniversary of the War,” Special Manuscript Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University, 11–12. 50. “Ernst Toller an die Jugend,” Vorwärts, 8 May 1922, 2. 51. Ernst Toller, “Das Versagen des Pazifismus in Deutschland,” in “Ernst Tollers amerikanische Vortragsreise, 1936/37,” by John Spalek and Wolfgang Frühwald, in Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch im Auftrag der Görres-Gesellschaft, N.F. 6 (1965): 305–11. 52. For a psychological explanation of the effects of the war and its profoundly unpacifist influence on Germany’s “youth cohort,” see Peter Loewenberg, “The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Youth Cohort,” American Historical Review 76, no. 1 (1971): 1457–1502. 53. Toller, “Unser Kampf in Deutschland,” 50–51. 54. See Ernst Toller, “Die Friedenskonferenz zu Versailles,” Neue Zeitung, April 1, 1919. 55. See Toller, introduction to Seven Plays (London: John Kane, 1935), x. 56. Toller, “Are We Responsible for our Times?” in “Ernst Tollers amerikanische Vortragsreise,” by Spalek and Frühwald, 298. 57. Toller, “Are We Responsible for our Times?” in “Ernst Tollers amerikanische Vortragsreise,” by Spalek and Frühwald, 297. 58. Toller’s reaffirmation of democracy allowed him to give even the Weimar Republic a positive aspect. Although Hitler denounced the Republic, wrote Toller, “He has not created a fraction of the creative administration to which the Republic can point. The Republic built achievements which were models for the world. Its social policies, its hospitals and rest homes . . . its cultural achievements, the freedom of thought which characterized it, have inspired the admiration of the world.” Toller, “Unser Kampf in Deutschland,” 47. 59. Toller, “Are We Responsible for our Times?” in “Ernst Tollers amerikanische Vortragsreise,” by Spalek and Frühwald, 301. 60. Ernst Toller, Which World—Which Way? Travel Pictures from America and Russia (London: Sampson Low, 1931), x. 61. “Schriftsteller stellen sich űber die Sowjetunion and über Sowjetliteratur,” International Literatur (Moscow) 5, no. 3 (1934). 62. Toller, writing in New Statesman and Nation, November 3, 1934, 615; Toller’s italics. According to Ilya Ehrenburg: “Abroad Toller always defended the Soviet Union, even the things he did not like about our country. He had friends in Moscow with whom he had long frank talks. At our last meeting he said to me that the one hope he had was Moscow.” Ilya Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 1921–1941, translated by Tatania Shebunia (Cleveland: World Publishing, 1964). 63. Toller, Letter to Dean of Canterbury, August 18, 1938, TC.

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64. Quoted in John Fortheringham, “From Einheitsfront to Volksfront: Ernst Toller and the Spanish Civil War,” German Life and Letters 52, no. 4 (1999): 434. 65. Spalek, “Ernst Toller: The Need for a New Estimate,” 591. 66. Richard Dove, Revolutionary Socialism in the Work of Ernst Toller (New York: Peter Lang, 1986), 435. 67. Fotheringham, 331. 68. Ernst Toller, Gesammelte Werke, 5 vols., edited by John Spalek and Wolfgang Frühwald (Munich: Hanser, 1978), 1:206; Fotheringham, Ernst Toller, 334. 69. “Am Sender von Madrid,” Die neue Weltbühne, September 1938; Ernst Toller, “Das neue Spanien I: L’Espana es Republica,” Die Weltbühne 28 (1932): 553. 70. See speech by Toller, “Few People . . . ,” TC, 6. 71. Ernst Toller, “Am Sender von Madrid,” Die Neue Weltbühne 34 (1938). 72. Toller, YMCA Speech, “In every modern war…” TC, 3. 73. Christopher Isherwood, Exhumations: Stories, Articles, Verses (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966), 127. 74. See “Spanish Civilians get U.S. Flour,” New York Times, December 30, 1938. 75. See Toller’s letter to Barrett Clark, December 17, 1938, TC. 76. Cazden, German Exile Literature in America. 77. Palmier, Weimar in Exile, 499, 148–49. 78. Jawaharlal Nehru, A Bunch of Old Letters Written Mostly to Jawaharlal Nehru (London: Asia Publishing House, 1960), 205–206, 229; John McManus, “Mr. Toller in the Cinema,” New York Times, November 1, 1936, X, 5. 79. Kurt Hiller, Köpfe und Tröpfe: Profile aus einem Vierteljahrhundert (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), 294. 80. The problems of publishing “emigrant literature” in Europe were touched upon by Toller at the Edinburg meeting of the PEN Club. See “Ernst Tollers Anklage,” passim. 81. Ernst Toller, “The German Theatre Today,” Manchester Guardian, February 17, 1939, 13. 82. Fürness, “Ernst Toller and the Exigencies of Exile,” 186. 83. Toller, quoted by Kurt Pinthus, “Life and Death of Ernst Toller,” Books Abroad 14, no. 1 (1940): 7–8. 84. Dove, Richard, Revolutionary Socialism in the Work of Ernst Toller, 218. See also Kay Redfield, Touched by Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament (New York: Free Press, 1993. 85. The term is Anthony Phelan’s. See his “Left Wing Melancholia: Kurt Tucholsky’s Humanism,” in The Weimar Dilemma: Intellectuals in the Weimar Republik (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985). 86. Toller, quoted by Harry Slochower, “Ernst Toller,” Twice a Year 3, no. 3/4, 133. 87. To1ler, Letter to Stephen Spender, January 28, 1939, TC; Pinthus, “Life and Death of Ernst Toller,” 6. 88. Isherwood, Exhumations, 129. 89. See Toller, Letter to William Meloney, December 9, 1938. 90. Stephen Lamb, “Activism and Weimar Politics: The Case of Ernst Toller and His Contemporaries,” in Expressionism in Focus, by Richard Sheppard (Blairgowries, Scotland: Lochee, 1987), 116. 91. Isherwood, Exhumations, 125–26, 131. 92. Toller, Letter to Dr. Ralph Greemspohm, April 8, 1939, Collection of Professor John Spalek, Albany: State University of New York at Albany. Hereafter referred to as SC. 93. Letter of Toller to Ralph Greemspohm, April 14, 1939, SC. 94. Wolfgang Frühwald and John Spalek, eds., Der Fall Toller (Munich: Hanser, 1979). 95. Harold Hurwitz, “Opfer oder Held,” in Dramaturgische Blätter Berlin, May 1947. 96. See Ludwig Marcuse, “Ernst Tollers letzter Abend,” Rhein-Neckar Zeitung (Heidelberg), July 5, 1949.

208 97. New York Times, May 25, 1939, 3.

Chapter 7

EIGHT Conclusion What the Shadow Said

“The powerful command,” noted Duclos in his Considérations sur les moeurs, “the intellectuals govern, for in the long run they form public opinion.” 1 The verdict is that of an intellectual, and historians should be careful when dealing with attempts at self-justification. The influence of the intellectual may be greatest in the long run, but the cynical will surely recall Keynes’s quip that, in the long run, we are all dead. In the short run, intellectuals can either advise the powerful or criticize them. In the first case, the intellectual runs the danger of becoming a courtier who must defer to the men in power who actually make decisions. His dilemma is either to speak out and risk destroying his influence or compromise his beliefs. As an outside critic, on the other hand, the intellectual can hope to influence public opinion, and thus government. While the outside critic does not have to run the risk of compromising his views, he does run the risk that his views will be ignored. At the beginning of the postwar period, Toller’s views briefly found an echo and affirmation, perhaps unknowingly. In 1947, Group 47 became a significant part of German literature for the next two decades. Its best-known member was Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass. Ambiguously left-leaning in views, they were, after twelve years of the subversion of German literature, ready to re-create their work based on the inner vision of the artist and his awareness of social and political issues, in this case somewhat similar to Toller’s situation immediately after the war. They acknowledged their moral duty to become politically involved and were occupied with the themes of the engaged writer as a force for social change. Grass in particular echoed Toller in his view that the writer had to give up the traditional purity and high-minded eminence of the Dich209

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ter, remote from everyday concerns, and embrace participation in the political. 2 Toller’s view of the engaged political writer started with his creative life as a dramatist. Toller never wrote a novel. This may not be entirely accidental, for, in juxtaposition with the novel, drama in Germany had been associated with social purpose from the days of Schiller. It was Schiller who, long before Toller, conceived the theater as a moral institution, existing not merely to entertain but also to instruct. Many of his plays in the eighteenth century elaborated the underlying theme of the corrosive influence of power and were echoed in the plays of Büchner, Hebbel, and Hauptmann in the nineteenth and Toller in the twentieth. Schiller’s plays present stark contrasts, like Toller’s, between ideal and real, harmony and discord; his heroes champion the ideal of humanity but themselves are tortured beings. In his plays, Schiller viewed his protagonists’ tragedy not solely as a result of circumstances. The salvation of his heroes, like the heroes of Toller, is not in their surrender to fact but in a moral triumph, overlaid with themes of regeneration and self-sacrifice. Toller was a symbol of a certain type of German intellectual. In his death, Toller represented precisely this type, just as he did during his lifetime. His end, observes one writer three months after Toller’s suicide, “symbolizes the fall of the democratic-pacifist ideology; his end coincides with the end of the illusions once concentrated in the slogan ‘Never again war!’” 3 But how effective were Toller and Germany’s left-wing intellectuals, all of them outside critics? For some historians, they were highly effective and bear a clear responsibility for the fall of the Weimar Republic and the subsequent rise of National Socialism to power. Gordon Craig, for example, sees their criticism of the Republic as “a grave one” since Weimar “needed all the friends and supporters it could find.” 4 Kurt Sontheimer sees the Republic “hopelessly squeezed in between a literary Left and a nationalistic Right” that allowed “no breathing space.” 5 In a similar manner, historian Golo Mann is also highly critical of the left-wing intellectuals’ failure to rally to the Republic. 6 Understand what Mann is saying here: leftist-intellectual criticism of Weimar’s democracy in pre-Nazi Germany frequently turned out to be an active commitment to its dissolution; Weimar intellectuals did not fully recognize this political logic. Yet such touching faith in the efficacy of the left-wing intellectual is singularly misplaced, for what is implied is that the Right could not have overthrown the Republic without the aid of the leftist intellectual. Leftwing intellectuals were hardly the caryatid on whose head the Weimar Republic was supported. Their influence on the political beliefs of fellow Germans beat as heavily as the wings of butterflies. While left-wing criticism was bitter, it was also largely ineffective. As Walter Laqueur observes: “The struggle proceeded in the streets, the political assemblies, the beer halls, the party headquarters, anywhere but the places frequented by intellectuals.” 7 Justifiably, it has been pointed out what should

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have been clear from the beginning: it was not the intellectuals who destroyed the Republic, but the Nazis and their right-wing allies. The left-wing intellectuals of Weimar have remained prophets without honor in their own country. It has been argued, or at least implied, they were failures, although I argue that this needs reexamination. The argument runs as follows: unlike the eighteenth-century philosophes or the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia, left-wing Weimar intellectuals failed to influence the views of following generations. The members of the German resistance to Hitler, for example, drew their strength not from the views of left-wing intellectuals but from conservative revolutionary or Catholic philosophies. In addition, neither the following Bonn Republic nor certainly not East Germany nor the present Germany has any similarity to the aspirations of the left-wing intellectuals. At best a small and misunderstood minority, their positions were unpopular and their programs unattainable. The triumph of Hitler was at the same time a symbol of their failure. Yet if they failed, it was not because they did not try to succeed. Their organizing efforts were notable, the Deutsche Liga für Menschenrechte, Rat Geistiger Arbeiter, Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund. Their periodicals were well written and coherently argued. However, in the end, all their efforts were seemingly failures and all their ideals frustrated. Toller was perhaps one of the best examples of the frustrated leftwing intellectual, alienated from society because his sensibilities were in conflict with an insensitive age, one seeking a home but unable to find it. Throughout his life, Toller dragged about an entourage of demons. He was, as the poet Auden said at Toller’s funeral, “chased by . . . shadows.” Ernst Toller was a sickly child and adolescent. As an adult, he was manic depressive, with numerous psychiatric hospitalizations and he possessed an acute sensibility—all were an integral and compelling part of this gentle genius. His further tragedy was his homelessness. Tearing himself from his Jewish heritage, he found himself equally as alienated from the German. The themes of wandering in search of an elusive harmony and of the wanderer’s loneliness at being unable to find it, the alienation of the wanderer from society and his frantic attempts to seek a lost Gemeinschaft are common themes in all his work; from Die Wandlung to his last letters, they consistently recur. Beneath the shell of his faith in humanity, there lurks Yeats’s ever-present beast slouching toward Bethlehem. In many of his plays, its heroes involuntarily watch the coming apart of a world to which they are emotionally bound. Unsympathetic to radicalism, they lay bare the sources of its power. Alien to its style of life, they penetrate its central dilemmas in both experience and ideology. Despite his humanitarian outlook, much of his work betrays a streak of pessimism and even futility. The literary image of the romantic rebel inspired by a search for a noble and uncorrupted society that causes the fighter to be misunderstood, mocked and, in the end, driven to death by

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those he wishes to save is a dominant motif. Unwittingly, his heroes find their own damnation. Desiring to do great deeds of kindness in the face of an unkind society, they meet with frustration. In the attempt to abolish cruelty, they must themselves become cruel; as men of ethics, they are weighted down by the guilt of violence. 8 Toller was prescient in his analysis of Germany, probing its social and political entrails with the hands of an adroit haruspex. But he was more than this, much more. In his life, he faced the unknown, the never done before, and the unprecedented. He was a rebel, an iconoclast— sometimes the solitary figure on a far shore, sometimes the lauded writer, but always a bit apart from the majority of his countrymen, always, like all writers, a bit of a loner. In his plays, his reportage, his documentaries of the judicial system of Weimar, his speeches and poems, Toller looked at the world from his perspective, not the conventional wisdom of others. This can be a lonely calling, as any biblical prophet might attest. This ancient simile of the prophet as outcast, or at least as misunderstood, has its analogy in an American context. At one time, only a year removed from Toller’s death in 1939, the decade 1940s and early 1950s, solitary figures like Toller—saviors, soldiers, survivors, who followed their own codes—were acknowledged heroes in film noir. It may not be an accident that so many German refugee directors—Fritz Lang, Max Ophüls, Fred Zinnemann, Otto Preminger—defined film noir’s distinctive style. Pictures of Piscator’s production of Toller’s plays reveal what was to become film noir’s classic staging and camera angles. These reflect the heritage of Toller’s German expressionism, showing oddly lit and angled shots, chiaroscuro frames with shadowy illumination, and truncated foreground objects. Standing alone, the heroes of film noir became protectors, righters of wrongs, often misunderstood but a force for good. Under pressure and against odds, they attempted to correct society, fight for justice, and achieve small victories in a murky world that threatened to overwhelm a single solitary voice. From the hardened detectives Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe in The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep to the lone Marshall in High Noon, they are the walking wounded, but they live by their own code, standing up for justice against opponents more overwhelming than they in power and number. Like them, Toller, whose whole life could have come from a film noir script, heard what others did not, saw when others preferred not to, and courageously acted when so many others were spectators. 9 Toller was what John Kennedy spoke about himself, an idealist without illusions. After his disappointing flirtation with revolutionary politics, he became a realist but never gave up his idealism. More than any other intellectual, he was unique. He did not merely theorize about activism but became active in a direct and violent way, taking on the government office in Bavaria and even leading troops into battle for that government. In this case, he was different from German intellectuals of the

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post–World War I era. None of his Weltbühne intellectual colleagues had done this, been politician, General, and writer. They did not have to make this choice. When Toller is criticized as a fuzzy-minded romantic (which he was before entering the crazed, cruel, and chaotic storm of Bavaria in 1919), he elected to make a choice his fellow intellectuals never had to make. This is precisely his merit, Toller’s distinguishing quality, one not shared by others. He demonstrated, in extreme form, the choice, ethically, morally, historically, that confronts each of us. Toller’s idealism was not in his admittedly fuzzy-minded naïveté before 1919. Before existentialism, before Sartre and Camus, Toller showed that, while we may not always make the correct choice, we must make a choice. In making this choice, we step out of the dream world of idealism into the hard world of reality and the creation of a future, perhaps better world, perhaps not. It really does not matter. What matters is the choice, for one thing in this uncertain world is certain: if we do nothing, it is certain that the hoped for reality will not appear. 10 This is idealism without illusions. This view of Toller turns the one-time idealist into something unusual during the Weimar years: a hard-headed pragmatist who knew rhetoric, moral speeches, and articles printed in intellectual publications read by other intellectuals were not going to do very much. It may be well to remember that the young Toller had been acquainted with the great German sociologist Max Weber. In his 1918/1919 Munich lectures, “Politics as a Profession,” Weber noted two types of intellectuals: Ideologists (Gesinnungsethiker), dominated by adherence to theory and absolute moral principles based on that theory, and pragmatists (Verantwortungsethiker). Most of the expressionists were in the first category, more concerned with Geist and personal redemption, with eschatological yearnings for salvation rather than practical politics. Toller was not. His was a sober, sometimes wrong but more often right, assessment of what should be done, what could be done, and a plan on how to do it. This was particularly so in his views of the völkish Right, including at first the reactionaries he so tellingly satirized in Die entfesselte Wotan and, later, the more sinister National Socialists. Only someone like Toller, the converted revolutionary romantic, could write so tellingly about the minatory dangers from the radical Right. We have already seen this, above, in his essay Reichkanzler Hitler. But it was also seen in his Weltbühne article of October 1930. This, written after Nazi success in recent elections, warned against the dangers his fellow intellectuals ran when they dismissed Hitler as someone not to be taken seriously, and to be made fun of. Toller knew this was a formula for disaster. He knew the Nazis were ruthless, would quickly eliminate any institution opposed to them, and establish a reign of terror, and then it would be too late to remove them from the power they had seized. 11 While Toller had not been successful as a political leader in 1919, he certainly was a great success in seeing dangers of rightwing trends before others and warning against them. He continued in

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this leadership role throughout the 1930s, helping the helpless, working for the preservation of the Spanish Republic, giving his time, his energy, and what little money he had to tell the world the reality behind National Socialism. This was no small accomplishment and should be acknowledged. Successful leaders grow from experience and can radically change their thought based on reality. It is useful to look at Toller as leader from this critical perspective. In 1917, when Toller was associating with the publisher Eugen Diederichs, who had drawn together a group of outstanding thinkers, including the historian Frederich Meinecke, the poet Richard Dehmel, the economist Werner Sombart, and sociologists Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, Toller had written the goals for Cultural and Political Union of Youth in Germany. Weber was shocked at the wrong-headedness and unreality of the program and of Toller’s words. 12 A few months later, when Toller was in Munich in January 1918 organizing a munitions workers’ strike, his audience wanted food, peace, and better working conditions. Toller, who was writing Die Wandlung, and probably in a state of goofy euphoria, contributed to this by handing out copies of his unfinished play. 13 One might wonder what agrarians and industrial workers might have thought about the role of this young man. A playwright seeking an audience? An audience seeking entertainment or wisdom? What would they have thought, gazing in woolly bewilderment with round wondering eyes, frozen in a paralysis of confused astonishment, and dumbstruck in sudden confrontation, with the fantastical apparition of—an expressionist playwright hawking copies of his latest drama? But the remarkable quality Toller had was to transform himself, between that cold Munich winter and the end of spring, from the sophomoric actions of an as yet unpublished playwright into a mature leader who reflected profoundly about the consequences of power and leadership. One way of looking at both is based on the navigation of paradox. By May 1919, Toller knew good laws frequently have unintended consequences that create new problems; conservatives wish to maintain existing evils, liberals would replace them with others; seeking to do good results in implementing the good using unethical means. Ernst Toller was, more than any other intellectual of the time, aware of the delicate interplay of intellectual and moral alternatives in politics. Toller’s life and writings keep coming back to this. In Toller’s case, the paradox upon which all the others rested was that leaders frequently wield power for idealistic reasons and then become corrupted by it. Seeking to ameliorate suffering, they unintentionally cause it; seeking to end war, they kill. But Toller had discovered the forbidden fruit in this tree of knowledge. As Toller poignantly cries out: “Men grope for goodness. Even the evil doings wear the mask of goodness.” 14 He asks the central question of ethical leaders: “Must the man of action always be dogged by guilt?” 15 He saw

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that to live in a political world was always to live in a world of either ambiguity or misapprehension. Wisdom in politics is not in being certain. There are only thoughtful or not thoughtful ways of being certain, and not quite so certain; useful or useless ways of making thought become sometimes unwelcome reality. In seeking to find a relationship to power or, more specifically, to government power, to Germany, the left-wing intellectuals had a serious problem after 1919. Germany had once been the center of European Marxism. After 1917, the situation had become more ambiguous and forced the left-wing into a dilemma. They could support the newly formed Weimar government and, therefore, repudiate the Russian model. Or they could accept the Russian model and attempt to undermine the Weimar republic and substitute it with communism. There was a third, albeit theoretical solution, particularly attractive to Germans: to look to Marxist theory to elucidate past error and prepare for action in the future. 16 The critical issue was the relation between theory and practice or, to use Marx’s term, praxis. This whole way of looking at the world, what in German is called Weltanschauung, was extremely Teutonic in its approach. It recalls our discussion of the theory of Geist, an attempt to connect reality with theory in a purely theoretical way. Its most astute commentator has ironically described it as a “dialectical relation to theory.” One of the earmarks of praxis, as opposed to mere action, was its being mixed with theoretical considerations. “The goal of revolutionary activity was understood as the unifying of theory and praxis which would be in direct contrast to the situation prevailing under capitalism.” 17 It became a main supposition of the Frankfurt School. As far as the Frankfurt principles can be understood at all, that of theory and that of praxis were in some fashion to overcome the contradictions the School saw between Weimar and Moscow. Toller, although not a part of the Frankfurt School, was friendly with one of its leaders, Max Horkenheimer, arrested after the Bavarian revolution and mistaken for Toller. Horkenheimer had supported the revolution, and Toller’s role during the revolution can be seen as an exercise, perhaps unconscious, of the School’s attempt to combine Geist with politics and reach praxis. Toller was in a particular tradition of modern German thinkers. He sought to relate art and truth and then reconcile both with life. He bore both the mantle of prophet and advocate for action that went beyond his environment and was felt by the world at large. In this, he was an heir of a long array of German intellectuals: Nietzsche, Stefan Georg, Rilke, Mann, and Kafka. Each faced somewhat different problems, but their work has a commonality. They were concerned about the role of the writer and his effect on society and were artistically narcissistic, that is treating art and the artist with great seriousness and placing it in the center of their work. 18

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Toller was, like all intellectuals, alienated in the sense of a critic. He was uncomfortably out of step with the political and social direction of his countrymen. Alienation, however, is not Nihilism. It is rather something positive, a way of looking at the world without being attached to any program formulated by others as final. Nor is it unpatriotic, although many may see it as so. Toller shows that an intellectual can be a critic of his country and yet, as an upholder of the ideal of the “other Germany,” be an advocate of its promise. In spite of his pessimism and the fits of depression that so frequently assailed him, all who knew Toller attested to his extraordinary compassion for others. Even up to the last few months of his life, Toller was tireless in his efforts to help starving and tortured Spain, meeting with Catholic prelates to ask for help, meeting with the American Secretary of State, and, in December 1938, having lunch with the First Lady, who promised to bring Toller’s plans to the attention of the President. Two weeks before his death, Toller, himself in poor financial shape, was writing to the wealthy Prince Löwenstein, soliciting money for the writer Walter Mehring, one of Weimar Germany’s most satirical authors, whose books had also been burned along with Toller’s, because “he finds himself in great suffering and near to hunger.” 19 He was acutely aware of suffering humanity and saw himself as the self-proclaimed leader of man, the “poet of humanitarian warmth,” 20 one who would do battle for the forces of freedom, justice, and brotherhood against the evils of injustice, poverty, and reaction. Toller’s century was singularly unready for his ideas. As Thomas Mann noted in his novel Doktor Faustus, 1918 was clearly the end of the epoch “of middle-class humanism” in Germany. 21 The humanitarian rhetoric of Toller had little place in a society whose symbols were the Freikorps bullet and the martial ethos of the “Horst Wessel Lied.” Like all the left-wing intellectuals, Toller was isolated and lonely in opposition to his age. The humanism that characterized the leftist intellectual was hardly in accord with a society born from defeat in war, humiliated by what was viewed as an unjust peace, and expressed in a rising tide of nationalism that was the antithesis of what the activist meant by Geist. Reason had little place in a society increasingly dominated by irrationality. In his bleaker moments, even Toller recognized the dilemma: “I believed in the power of reason, believed in it so strongly that it seemed that whoever recognized reason must follow it. . . . How laborious it is to lead man; his opponents do not give him his hardest defeat . . . he gives it to himself.” 22 Toller saw himself as the poet in politics, the ethical man who, by the force of his personality and the justice of his ideals, would call forth a new Germany. In his poetical preface to Die Wandlung, he sees man as “heavy with dreams and blind”:

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With horror ringing in our ears. Mankind cried out. A man, a brother, Molded by suffering and joy, By mad illusion and disdain; A man, temple of the will, Of rapturous joy and holy sorrow. We heard the fierce and urgent cry: The Way! The Way! O poet, lead us. 23

We may commend such idealism, but as a leader Toller has been characterized as less than a success. Aspiring to be Germany’s leader, so the argument runs, the historian cannot say that he inspired a significant following. While Toller may have longed to become a poet of the people, his following was limited to the sophisticated. 24 George Grosz, whose work was the pictorial counterpart of what the left-wing intellectuals wrote, saw Toller’s view of himself as a leader destined to failure: He was not the type. . . . He visualized himself as another Lassalle, not one of those boring masses of anonymity who reported what was going on in the factories. He would stand beside a fluttering red flag, his eyes fixed on the great, the beautiful, the ideal. He stood above the people and among them at the same time. He was of a romantic and sentimental nature. He lacked all the essentials of a genuine leader: firmness of will power and—innate to all real leaders—contempt for the masses. He viewed both swallows and people poetically and confused poetry with politics. He knew no defiance. For him everything was precious to a certain extent. He should have learned that in order to control the masses, one must carry a whip, even if it is never used, but kept concealed in its wrappings. 25

“He was not the type . . . He lacked all the essentials of a genuine leader . . .” A quite different case can be made. In the Western world, particularly in America, success is lauded and awarded, admired and extolled. We love the rags to riches theme. We worship and celebrate those whose cause has triumphed—especially if they were the underdog, overcoming impossible odds and finally standing in unalloyed triumph amidst the raucous cheering of an awed, appreciative crowd. American films are replete with this theme, particularly sports films. One thinks of Sylvester Stallone in Rocky or Alfred Green’s The Jackie Robinson Story, Robert Redford in The Natural, Gene Hackman in Hoosiers, or Gary Ross’s Seabiscuit. All underdogs. All winners. In each, the victory is certainly not without travail; the hero suffers but survives to bask in the glory of achievement and ultimate success. It is difficult to imagine any culture that would not give accolades to such ostensible greatness.

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Yet there is one where success is defined in a different fashion. Japan has certainly had its share of the successful hero. But the tradition here is more nuanced and complicated than in the West, representing, as it does, something alien and unsettling. It represents the exact opposite of the culture of accomplishment. This is the person, alone and ignored and defeated, at least by Western standards, whose “sincerity” (sei jitsu, 誠) does not permit him to be successful the way we in the West understand it. At first, this person’s courage and determination may fling him rapidly upward (like Toller), but this is tragically followed by being cast into seeming defeat because he is aligned to the losing side. Redoubling his efforts, he defies convention and even common sense until, in final defeat, he is overcome by his enemy, the “successful one” who, through ruthlessness, imposes a new order on the world. 26 This is a different way of looking at the definition, at least the Western version, of success. The struggle has seemingly been in vain, the battle useless, the war lost. As one kamikaze pilot who survived his encounter recalled, “Is it true that self-sacrifice is the only thing that gives meaning to death? To this question the warrior is obliged to reply ‘yes.’ Knowing full well that his suicide has no meaning.” 27 The West certainly has had great men who have lost, but they become great despite their defeat. Napoleon is celebrated, but not for losing the battle of Waterloo. Hannibal is remembered for his victory at Cannae, not for his eventual destruction at Zama. The closest American comparison to the Japanese might be the celebration of the genius of Lee, despite his overwhelming defeat by Grant and Sherman, and Lee’s futile struggle against overwhelming force to preserve the Old South. There is a certain nobility and heroism that should be divorced from the achievement of goals. It is seen in Toller’s life and death and is illuminated by the Japanese example: during the second decade of the twentieth century, fighting to save the Bavarian revolution and striving to create a new humane political form; during the twenties, castigating Weimar for its weaknesses and its forced compromises with the forces of reaction; during the thirties, Toller, now fully aware of the danger of National Socialism, defending Germany’s frail democracy against the unstoppable force of evil and, finally, in a last gasp, attempting to save the unfortunate Spanish Republic. Few, if any, German intellectuals during the 1920s and 1930s fought so much with such dedication and tenacity and selflessness. As an individual, Toller was a product of the dual revolutions of 1918 and 1933. 28 A supporter of the lost ideals of the first, he died in exile, an opponent of the triumphant ideals of the second. His life is rather like an axial tomography of German mentality from Weimar to the Third Reich and conveniently falls into three main phases. The first ended with his war experience. His existence before was that of the adolescent, unsure of his ideas, rebelling against his religion, seeking security. In an attempt to

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become integrated into German society, he renounced his Jewishness and turned instead to nationalism. Barely twenty in 1914, he abandoned his studies at Grenoble, returned to Germany on the last train before the border was closed, and enthusiastically supported the war effort. He enlisted in the artillery and requested transfer to the front, where he fought for thirteen months before he was declared unfit for further duty. His second period began with his conversion from nationalism to humanitarianism and ended with his exile after 1933. Trench warfare opened his eyes to the futility of war and turned him into a pacifist. Opposing the war, he participated in strikes and was arrested for his activities, only to resume them upon his release. In an attempt to put his ideas on society into practice, he became one of the leaders of the Bavarian revolution. The failure of his political sojourn led to his trial and eventual imprisonment in Niederschöenfeld. Although his literary activity preceded his prison years, it was in Niederschöenfeld that his bestknown plays were written, and it was while in prison that he achieved his greatest success as a dramatist. Here, he polemicized against the complacent Philistine mentality, showed up the deficiencies of Weimar society, and fashioned the wrath of his literary bullets against the rising reactionary forces” 29 that threatened the democratic humanitarian society he so ardently sought to achieve. The year 1933 began the third phase of his life. Under the impact of Hitler, an increasing pessimism dominated his thoughts. It became difficult to plead for humanism in an age characterized by brutality. An individual who believed in freedom, he saw with despair the rearguard action fought by democrats against the forces of dictatorship. An advocate of world fraternity, he was unable to stop resurgent nationalism. A pacifist, he was forced to the conclusion that pacifism was an ineffective phantasm when confronted with the brute force and unsentimental ruthlessness of fascism. Like his eponymous character Hinkemann, Toller too was forced to the conclusion “that’s how human beings are. . . . They could be otherwise if they wished, but they don’t. They stone the spirit, they mock It; they disgrace and crucify life.” In his youth given to the wildest of political enthusiasm, he now surrendered himself to the depths of political despair. A homeless wanderer, cut off from his native soil, he became increasingly unhappy, yearning for and dreaming of an ideal and distant Germany that had never really existed. So curiously blended a disposition naturally made for a curiously blended dissonance of character. The peculiar Zerrissenheit that the German historian Koppel Pinson once observed as a common theme in German history and literature 30 stamped Toller’s personality; his two souls were held in uneasy balance. He was an embodiment of paradox. Historical circumstances, and Toller’s response to contemporary events, account in large part for these alluring complexities. Ernst Toller was always an outsider. As a child, he was a Jew among Christians; as a

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young adult, a German among Poles; in war, a pacifist among militarists; in peace, a left-wing intellectual in an anti-intellectual society; in exile, an emigrant among natives. Possessing an “enchanting simplicity,” he was of a complicated nature. 31 He was a frustrated man, sometimes desperately anxious to be accepted, despite his religion, sometimes forlornly wishing to stand alone, but always persuaded of the impossibility of either. An avowed socialist, he disdained the lifestyle of the proletariat. He loved humanity but remained on intimate terms with death and, as early as 1919, had contemplated suicide. A collectivist, he nevertheless maintained a respect for the individual that at times seemed to place him above the community. Seeking a home, he found it impossible to attach himself to any particular party. Striving for a revolution, he drew back with horror from its consequences. An antimilitarist, he attained fame as military commander of the Bavarian army. Wishing to be a leader, he was plagued by an inner discord that made him doubt his capacity to fulfill the exalted tasks that he set himself. Although a man of ideas, he approached the problems of his time from the perspective of a frustrated political thinker and was torn by an inner conflict between his ideals and political reality. He was intimately bound up with politics both as participant and critic. However, Toller was too much an intellectual to become a politician, too uncompromising to deal with a media resting on compromise. Yet as an individual, he could not stay away from politics. It alternately attracted and repelled him. Toward it, he felt every emotion— disillusion, hope, fear, love, hate—save one, apathy. Toller was too passionate in everything to be apathetic about anything. He was too immersed in political feeling to devote his whole time to literature and too much the engaged author to be divorced from politics. An intellectual, he was unable to place ideology above the daily concerns of humanity. Skeptical toward ideology, he was too genuine a humanist to try to force man into a rigid framework. A pacifist because he saw in it a way to save humanity, he became a socialist when he saw that pacifism was not enough and, in the end, took his own life when he realized that neither was really effective. If the measure of a man’s existence is his success in fulfilling his goals, Toller’s life is ostensibly disappointing. He failed to live up to the exalted goals he set for himself. His part in the Bavarian revolution can be seen either as a heroic disaster or a comic fiasco. In either case, it was not a success. Disappointed as a revolutionary, as a critic of Weimar he was unable to influence its politics or its policies. As an exiled opponent of National Socialism, he fought valiantly but unsuccessfully to overthrow a pernicious political system. Toller’s relief plan for Spain was an initial success, yet the defeat of the Spanish Republic turned this also into a disappointment. Paradoxically, the only area in which Toller was a sure success was in that which he hated most: war. During his period as a soldier in the World War, he was recognized as a courageous and brave fighter; as “victor of Dachau” in

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Bavaria’s civil war, his unexpected military abilities gave him even greater martial fame. But this was not Toller’s legacy. Rather surprisingly, much of Toller’s legacy in life lay not with his disappointments but because of them. Toller’s plays are a metaphor of Toller’s character and a contribution to understanding Toller’s legacy. This legacy ought not to be lightly dismissed. The Jewish religion has a fascinating interplay with two ostensible contradictions: the messiah that is awaited and the outcast who is present. 32 We see this already in the Book of Genesis. God casts out Adam from the Garden of Eden, Joseph is cast out by his brothers, Moses is cast out of Egypt, the prophets are cast out, their messages going unheeded. Yet each takes on the mantle of the heroic individual whose purpose is to save humanity and enrich it. Toller’s plays frequently return to the theme of the outcast taking upon himself the championing of a messianic belief in the primacy of the individual in the fight against injustice, who nurtures humanity in its dark nights of terror. 33 Toller practiced what he wrote. Cast out of Germany, persecuted by Nazis, fighting debilitating depression, an exile, he took upon himself an extraordinary role, a messianic one. Not only would he be the first writer to speak out against the Nazis during the 1920s in his play Wotan Unchained; he would continue to do so in the 1930s with his anti-Nazi play Pastor Hall. He then alerted Western countries to the danger of Hitler, predicted that National Socialism would not be something temporary, defended democracy, fought fascism, and attempted to save the Spanish Republic. He would also take on further, more personal, burdens during his exile. He collected money and circulated support for Erich Mühsam’s widow, whose husband had been shot for his participation in the Bavarian Soviet; for Carl von Ossietzky’s wife, whose husband had won the 1935 Nobel Peace Prize and later died a captive of the Nazis; for Ossietzky’s daughter; for German language periodicals. He supported a German Library of the Burned Books, and also sought help for a number of Nazi political victims in German prisons. Singlehandedly, he conducted a campaign to help his friends, feed the starving refugees scattered across Europe, help widows and children. He had almost become a character in one of his own dramas, championing the cause of humanity with repeated rescue operations for those unable to speak for themselves and too weak to resist, fighting, as Klaus Mann wrote, against “infamy in all its forms and with all his means, through literature, through essays, through speech.” 34 There are different types of leadership: political, intellectual, moral, revolutionary, heroic, opinion leadership, group leadership, party leadership, legislative leadership, executive leadership. No one is equally good at all. Most are good only in one and poor in the others. Toller was not good in executive leadership, nor was he much of a politician either (nor would he have wanted to be). Most who have studied leadership have

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really not looked at it all. They have observed pieces. They have examined intelligence, toughness, determination, and vision (all of which Toller had). They have looked closely at popularity, power, charisma. They have looked at pieces and not the whole. A great leader accomplishes his goal through the power of others, often in paradoxical ways. Think of the conductor of an orchestra. The orchestra’s purpose is to create sound. Yet—and here is the intriguing paradox—the musicians’ leader is the only person the audience sees during the whole performance who produces no sound. Silently and alone, he stands waving a mute baton while not he but the musicians make the sound. As one observer of leadership noted, a leader: may not possess or display power; force or the threat of harm may never enter into his dealings. He may not be popular; his followers may never do what he wishes out of love or admiration for him. He may not even be a colorful person; he may never use memorable devices to dramatize the purposes of his group or to focus attention on his leadership. As for the important matter of setting goals, he may actually be a man of little influence, or even skill; as a leader he may merely carry out the plans of others. His unique achievement is a human and social one which stems from his understanding of his fellow workers and the relationship of their individual goals to the group that he must carry out. 35

Daniel Goldman has called this emotional intelligence a key distinction, separating the outstanding from the merely adequate. The qualities are the soft skills of self-awareness, self-discipline, empathy, the ability to rally followers. Without these, having an incisive mind or being fecund in ideas will mean little. 36 Toller had all these attributes and was a leader in numerous ways— and an effective one. He was an intellectual leader. Die Wandlung remains one of the exemplary plays of German expressionism. During the 1920s, he continued this intellectual leadership and became a leading writer for Die Weltbühne, Weimar Germany’s leading organ of the Left. He was a main leader of the PEN Club, the major writers organization in the world. He showed his considerable organizational leadership skills, leading strikes and speaking to crowds in Munich during the turbulence of 1919. From nothing, he created a worldwide humanitarian aid effort for Spain. Indeed it was during the 1930s that Toller matured as a leader. Many, for example, during the 1930s thought National Socialism a domestic German issue and failed to see its dreadful and destructive future. And others supported Hitler as a bulwark against Russian communism. Many did not know, did not want to know, or were just ignorant of the pathologically aggressive character of the new Germany. Throughout the 1930s, Toller tirelessly explained to foreign audiences the nature of the Hitler regime. In 1936, he undertook a United States engagement, deliver-

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ing over fifty anti-Nazi addresses within four months, beginning in October 1936 and finishing on the West Coast the following February. 37 The tour also was the end of Toller’s exile in Europe, and he was now to remain permanently in the United States until his death, partly for financial reasons (Toller had been contributing what little he had to helping German émigrés). The schedule was grueling. He spoke at colleges. He spoke at universities; he spoke at magazine and book fairs; he spoke at anti-Nazi rallies and in major cities, including Boston, Montreal, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, where pro-Nazi groups demonstrated. 38 Toller represented exiled Germans to Americans as the good against the evil, the Germany of Beethoven, Goethe, and Schiller against that of Hitler, Goering, and Goebbels, “the best Germany” in the words of Heinrich Mann. 39 They were an elite, highly educated group, in that case totally unrepresentative of those who stayed in Germany. But they were articulate elite, able to explain to an ordinary audience the extraordinary threat Hitler represented. Toller, in his six years of exile, untiringly took every opportunity to speak out. Of course, he was not the only one to do so. But it can be said of all the exiles that Toller’s activity, compared to that of other immigrants, was more intensive and more effective. 40 Ernst Toller was in many ways an extraordinary leader. Wrote his friend, Hermann Kesten: He had many weaknesses. But he was fearless, indefatigable, undaunted in his desire to help humanity. He loved freedom as a brother, justice as a mother loves her son, the poor as one loves his beloved. . . . Courageous to the point of self-abnegation, he risked danger and even death out of love for humanity. He hated evil because he saw in it barbarism and the degeneration of man. He was a lover of knowledge who believed in the identity of reason with goodness. He loved the cheerful, the happy, the beautiful and fought for the poor, the oppressed and the weak . . . an unforgettable person, in his best moods so enthused, so full of hope, so poetical, so noble; a beautiful soul in the sense of Goethe, a beautiful man in the sense of Schiller. 41

Writing in 1874, Nietzsche foresaw the dilemma of twentieth-century Germany. “Who is there,” he asked, “to guard and champion humanity amidst the dangers of our period? Who will set up the image of man when men . . . have fallen to the level of animals or even of automatons?” 42 It was Ernst Toller’s concern for man in an age of animals and automata that at once was his misfortune and yet commends him to posterity. He had glimpsed humanity as a strange, suffering creature, alone below an indifferent and blazing universe. This alone would be enough to earn him a flawed but noble greatness. Perhaps his best epitaph comes from Toller’s own melancholy book of poems, Schwalbenbuch: “O my swallows you are like the poets / Man and

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his ways are the cause of their suffering / Man they love with inextinguishable fervor.” NOTES 1. Quoted by Peter Gay, Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist (New York: Vintage Books, 1965), 131. 2. See Gordon Craig, The Germans (New York: Putnam, 1982), Chapter 10. 3. Oscar Fisher “The Suicide of Ernst Toller,” New International 5, no. 8 (1939): 244–45. 4. Gordon Craig, “Engagement and Neutrality in Weimar Germany,” in Literature and Politics in the Twentieth Century, edited by George Mosse and Walter Laqueur (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 55. Kurt Sontheimer, Antidemokratischen Denken in der Weimarer Republik: Die politischen Ideen des deutschen Nationalismus zwischen 1918 und 1933 (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1962), 395. 5. Sontheimer, Antidemokratischen Denken, 395. 6. Golo Mann, “The Intellectuals: Germany,” Encounter 6 (1955): 47. 7. Walter Laqueur, “The Role of the Intelligentsia in the Weimar Republic,” Social Research 39, no. 2 (1972): 226. 8. This is Peter Heller’s excellent analysis. See Peter Heller, “The Masochistic Rebel in Recent German Literature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 2 (1953): 204–13. 9. See Anneli Rufus, Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press, 2003), chapter 3, for an analysis of heroes in film noir. This book, although not about Toller at all, was also useful in understanding Toller’s personality. 10. Michael Ossar makes a similar point in Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980), 157. 11. Kurt Hiller, Köpfe und Tröpfe: Profile aus einem Vierteljahrhundert (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959), 294. 12. Marianne Weber, Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild (Heidelberg: Mohr, 1950), 644. 13. Martin Kane, Weimar Germany and the Limits of Political Art: A Study of the Work of George Grosz and Ernst Toller (Tayport, Scotland: Hutton, 1987), 79. 14. Kane, Weimar Germany and the Limits of Political Art, 197. 15. Kane, Weimar Germany and the Limits of Political Art, 194. 16. Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 3. 17. Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 4. 18. See Hans Reiss’s excellent analysis of this in The Writer’s Task from Nietzsche to Brecht (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1978), 27 and 161–77. 19. Dieter Distl, Ernst Toller: Eine politische Biography (Munich: B. Bickel, 1993), 175. 20. Hiller, Köpfe und Tröpfe, 294. 21. Quoted by Klemens von Klemperer, Germany’s New Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 221. 22. Ernst Toller, Eine Jugend, in Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961), 177. Hereafter referred to as PBDG. 23. Toller, Die Wandlung, in PBDG, 240. 24. István Deák, Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the “Weltbühne” and Its Circle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 272. 25. George Grosz, Ein kleines Ja und ein grosses Nein (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1955), 269–70. 26. Ivan Morris, The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), xxi–xxii, and Toshokan Kokkai, “Tenraku-kei no Nihon Eiyuu-zoo” (“The Japanese Hero and the Pattern of Falling”) Shuukan Asahi 6–8 (1973): 114–17. 27. Morris, The Nobility of Failure, 312.

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28. W. A. Willibrand, Ernst Toller: Product of Two Revolutions (Norman, Oklahoma: Cooperative Books, 1941). 29. Solomon Liptzin, Germany’s Stepchildren (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1944), 196. 30. Koppel Pinson, Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 3–4. 31. Walther Victor, Ich kam aus lauter Liebe in die Welt: Lebensgeschichten und Gedichte (Berlin: Aufbau, 1965), 30. 32. Michael Lowy, “Jewish Messianism and Libertarian Utopia in Central Europe (1900–1933),” New German Critique 20 (1980): 105–15. 33. See Frank Trommler, “Ernst Toller: The Redemptive Power of the Failed Revolutionary,” in German Writers and Politics, 1918–1939, edited by Richard Dove and Stephen Lamb (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 69, 73. 34. Quoted by Ulwe Naumann and Michael Töteberg, Zweimal Deutschland: Aufsätze, Reden, Kritiken 1938–1942 (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1994), 119. 35. W. C. H. Prentice, “Understanding Leadership,” in Harvard Business Review on Leadership at the Top: The Mind of the Leader (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005), 151. 36. Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books, 1995). 37. See John Spalek, “Ernst Tollers Vortrragstätigkeit und seine Hilfsaction im Exil,” in Exil und Innere Emigration 2, edited by Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Egon Schwarz (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1973), and John Spalek and Wolfgang Frühwald, “Ernst Tollers amerikanische Vortragsreise1936/37,” in Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch der Görresgesellschaft, 1965, 267–311. 38. “Financiers Block Peace,” New York Times, February 1, 1937, 1, 5; “200,000 Words Credited to U.S.,” New York Times, November 10, 1936, 23; “Anti-Nazis Here Mark German Day,” New York Times, December 14, 1936, 13; “Peace Plane Made by Ernst Toller,” Boston Herald, October 19, 1936; “Appeal to Fight Fascism is Heard,” Montreal Daily Star, November 2, 1936; “Germany Is Brewing War,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 14, 1937, 5; “Ernst Toller Flays Nazism,” Anti-Nazi News, January 20, 1937, 1–2. The Yale Library lists eighty lectures, but Toller normally gave four versions using material from the eighty. 39. Heinrich Mann, Der Sinn dieser Emigration (Paris: Europäischer Merkur, 1934), 33. 40. Spalek, “Ernst Tollers Vortrragstätigkeit und seine Hilfsactionen im Exil,” 87. 41. Hermann Kesten, Meine Freunde die Poeten (Munich: Kindler, 1959), 164, 166. 42. Quoted by R. J. Hollingdale, Nietzsche: The Man and His Philosophy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1966), 12.

Selected Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL STUDIES Spalek, John. Ernst Toller and His Critics: A Bibliography. Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1968. Over 800 pages, fully indexed with cross references, Spalek’s work is a careful and excellently prepared annotated compendium not only of Toller’s work but also of the secondary literature on Toller.

UNPUBLISHED MATERIAL ON AND BY ERNST TOLLER Collection of Dr. Harold Hurwitz, Free University of Berlin. National Archives, RG 242, Washington, D.C. Rehse Collection, Manuscripts Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Special Manuscript Collection, Butler Library, Columbia University. Staatsarchiv für Oberbayern, St. Anw. München I, Nr. 2242/II. Toller Collection, Department of Historical Manuscripts, Yale University.

PUBLISHED TRANSCRIPTS AND COLLECTIONS ON THE BAVARIAN REVOLUTION Mitteilungen des Vollzugsrats der Betriebs—und Soldatenräte. Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen des Kongresses der ArbeiterBauern-und Soldatenräte vom 25. Februar bis 8. März 1919. Ursachen und Folgen vom deutschen Zusammenbruch 1918 und 1945 bis zur staatlichen Neuordnung Deutschlands in der Gegenwart, 8 vols. Berlin, 1958–1963. Verhandlungen des provisorischen Nationalrates des Volksstaates Bayern im Jahre 1918–1919. Beilagen-Band (Beilagen 1 bis 100). Verhandlungen des provisorischen Nationalrates des Volksstaates Bayern im Jahre 1918–1919. Stenographische Berichte Nr. 1 bis 10. 1. Sitzung am 8. November 1918 bis zur 10 Sitzung am 4. Januar 1919.

WORKS BY ERNST TOLLER NOTE: Only works cited in the endnotes are listed. A full listing of Toller’s work is in Spalek’s Bibliography, 2–194. See also Ernst Toller: Gesammelte Werke, 5 vols., ed. John Spalek and Wolfgang Frühwald (Munich: Hanser, 1978). “Am Sender von Madrid.” Die neue Weltbühne 34, no. 39 (1938): 1218–22. “ Amnestie? Amnestie!” Der Klassenkampf 1, no. 2 (1927): 33–34. “An die Jugend aller Länder.” Menschen Montagsblatt-Dresden, no. 25 (9 June 1919), 3.

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Selected Bibliography

“An England.” Die neue Weltbühne 34, no. 41 (1938): 1296–98. “Art and Life: From my Notebook.” London Mercury 32, no. 191 (1935): 459–61. “Auf dem Wege zur Kunst.” Das Programm der Piscatorbühne, no. 1 (1927). “Aus verbrannten Büchern.” Die neue Weltbühne 29, no. 34 (1933), 1049–50. “ Bemerkungen zu meinem Drama Die Wandlung.” Tribüne der Kunst und Zeit, no. 13 (1919): 46–48. “Bemerkungen zum deutschen Nachkriegsdrama.” Die literarische Welt 5, no. 16 (1929): 9–10. Briefe aus dem Gefängnis. Amsterdam: Querido, 1935. Deutsche Revolution. Berlin: E. Laub’sche, 1925. “Ein Wort für Finkelnberg.” Die Justiz 5, no. 6 (1930): 364–66. “Ernst Tollers Anklage.” Deutsche Stimme, 10 August 1934. “Ernst Tollers Antwortet auf E. Wollenbergs Angriffe.” Neue Bücherschau 7, no. 10 (1929): 543–44. “Ernst Toller über Ernst Toller.” Die Literatur 31, no. 7 (1929): 403. “Erschiessung auf der Flucht.” Die Weltbühne 22, no. 5 (1926): 173–75. “Erwiderung.” Heidelberger Zeitungen, no. 298 (20 December 1917). “Die Friedenskonferenz zu Versailles.” Neue Zeitung, 1 April 1919. Feuer aus den Kesseln, 2nd ed. Berlin: Oesterheld and Co. Buhnenvertrieb, 1930. “The German Theatre Today.” Manchester Guardian, 17 February 1934. “Heimarbeit.” Die Weltbühne 23, no. 26 (1927): 969–70. “Henri Barbusse.” Die Weltbühne 25, no. 11 (1929): 411–13. Hoppla, wir leben! Potsdam: Kiepenheuer, 1927. Justiz Erlebnisse. Berlin: E. Laub’sche, 1927. “Die Künstlerkolonie.” Die Weltbühne 24, no. 46 (1928): 754–55. “Leitsätze für einen Kulturpolitischen Bund der Jugend in Deutschland.” Dresdner Monatsblatt, no. 26 (16 June 1919). Look Through the Bars: Letters from Prison, Poems, and a New Version of “The Swallow Book.” New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937. “The Meaning of the Andre Trial.” New Republic 79 (13 January 1937), 331–32. “Menschliche Komödie in Genf.” Die Weltbühne 28, no. 11 (1932): 396–99. “A Minority Hitler Never Mentions.” Tribune (London), 14 October 1938, 13. Nationalsozialismus: Eine Diskussion über den Kulturbankrott des Bürgertums. Zwischen Ernst Toller und Alfred Mur. Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1930. “Das neue Spanien I: L’Espana es Republica.” Die Weltbühne 28, no. 15 (1932): 550–54. “PEN-Kongress in Polen.” Die Weltbühne 26, no. 28 (1930): 49–51. Prosa, Briefe, Dramen, Gedichte. Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1961. Quer Durch: Reisebilder und Reden. Berlin: Kiepenheuer, 1930. “Rede auf dem Pariser Kongress der Schriftsteller am 25. Juli 1938.” Das Wort 3, no. 10 (1938): 122–26. “Rede auf dem Penklub-Kongress.” Die Weltbühne 29, no. 24 (1933): 741–44. “Rede im Englischen jungen Pen-Club.” Deutsche für Deutsche. Leipzig: Kunst und Wissenschaft Albert Otto Paul, 1935. “Rede in Budapest.” Die Weltbühne 28, no. 23 (1932): 853–56. “Reichskanzler Hitler.” Die Weltbühne 26, no. 23 (1932): 537–39. “Ruckblick.” Berliner Tageblatt, 23 December 1928. “Schriftsteller stellen sick über die Sowjetunion and über Sowjetliteratur.” Internationale Literatur 4, no. 3 (1934): 146–53. Seven Plays. London: John Lane, 1935. “Unser Kampf in Deutschland.” Das Wort 2, no. 3 (1937): 46–53. “Vom Werk des Dramatikers.” Internationale Literatur 4 , no. 5 (1934). “We are Plowmen.” New Masses 21, no. 5 (1936): 5–6. “Wer schafft den deutschen Revolutionsfilm?” Die Welt am Montag, 5 November 1928. Which World—Which Way? Travel Pictures from America and Russia. London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1993. “Zur deutsche Situation.” Information (Zurich), no. 1 (1 June 1932): 3.

Selected Bibliography

229

“Zur Revolution der Buhne.” Die Rampe 1, no. 1 (1923–1924): 5.

OTHER WORKS CONSULTED Anderson, Francis. “An Analytical Study of Techniques of Persuasion in the Plays of Ernst Toller.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Southern California, 1956. Arnold, Armin. Die Literatur des Expressionismus: Sprachliche und thematischen Quellen. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1966. Avrich, Paul. The Russian Anarchists. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967. Bahr, Ehrhard. Weimar on the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Baritz, Loren. The Servants of Power. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1960. Barnouw, Dagmar. Weimar Intellectuals and the Threat of Modernity. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988. Barzun, Jacques. The House of Intellect. New York: Harper, 1959. Baumont, Maurice. La Faillité de la Paix (1918–1919). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1967. Bein, Alex. “The Jewish Parasite—Notes on the Semantics of the Jewish Problem, with Special Reference to Germany.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 9, no. 1 (1964): 3–40. Benda, Julien. The Treason of the Intellectuals. New York: Norton, 1969. Benson, Renate. Deutsches expressionistisches Theater: Ernst Toller und Georg Kaiser. New York: Peter Lang, 1987. Bering, Dietz. Die Intellektuellen: Geschichte eines Schimpfwortes. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1978. Beyer, Hans. Von der Novemberrevolution zur Räterepublik in München. Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1959. Bialas, Wolfgang and Georg Iggers, eds. Intellektuelle in der Weimarer Republik. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1996. Bosl, Karl, ed. Bayern im Umbruch: Die Revolution von 1918, ihre Voraussetzungen, ihr Verlauf, and ihre Folgen. Munich: Oldenburg, 1969. Bramsted, Ernest. Aristocracy and the Middle-Classes in Germany: Social Types in German Literature 1830–1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Breines, Paul. “The Jew as Revolutionary: The Case of Gustav Landauer.” Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 12, no. 1 (1967): 75–84. Brombert, Victor H. The Intellectual Hero: Studies in the French Novel, 1880–1955. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Bruford, W. H. Germany in the Eighteenth Century: The Social Background of the Literary Revival. London: Cambridge University Press, 1965. Brüning, Heinrich. Memoiren 1918–1933. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1970. Bullivant, Keith. Culture and Society in the Weimar Republic. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977. ———. Das literarische Leben in der Weimarer Republik. Königstein: Scriptor, 1978. Carr, E. H. The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917–1923. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966. Carsten, F. L. Revolution in Central Europe, 1918–1919. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Cazden, Robert. German Exile Literature in America, 1933–1950: A History of the Free German Press and Book Trade. Chicago: American Library Association, 1970. Coper, Rudolf. Failure of a Revolution: Germany in 1918–1919. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1955. Cruickshank, John. Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960. Curtis, Michael. Three Against the Third Republic: Sorel, Barrès, Maurras. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.

230

Selected Bibliography

Curtius, Ludwig. Deutsche und antike Welt: Lebenserinnerungen. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1958. Dahrendorf, Ralf. “Die Intellektuellen und die Gesellschaft,” Die Zeit, 29 March 1963. ———. Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland. Munich: R. Piper, 1968. Darnton, Robert. “The High Enlightenment and the Low-Life of Literature in PreRevolutionary France.” Past and Present 51, no. 1 (1971): 81–115. Davies, Cecil. The Plays of Ernst Toller: A Revaluation. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic, 1996. Deák, István. “The World of Carl von Ossietzky: Germany’s Homeless Left in the Weimar Republic.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1964. ———. Weimar Germany’s Left-Wing Intellectuals: A Political History of the Weltbühne and Its Circle. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. Distl, Dieter. Ernst Toller: Eine politische Biographie. Munich: B. Bickel, 1993. Dorst, Tankred. Die Münchner Räterepublik: Zeugnisse und Kommentar. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968. ———. Toller. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968. Dove, Richard. He Was a German. London: Libris, 1990. ———. Revolutionary Socialism in the Work of Ernst Toller. New York: Peter Lang, 1986. ——— and Stephen Lamb, eds. German Writers and Politics, 1918–1939. Basingstoke & London: Macmillan, 1992. Droop, Fritz, ed. Ernst Toller und seine Bühnenwerke: Eine Einführung. Berlin: F. Schneider, 1922. Eagleton, Terry. Why Marx Was Right. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Edschmid, Kasimir, ed. Briefe der Expressionisten. Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1964. Egert, Eugene. “The Disassociated Man in Büchner’s Woyzeck and Toller’s Hinkemann.” Unpublished MA thesis, University of British Columbia, 1961. Ehrenburg, Ilya. Memoirs, 1921–1941. Translated by Tatania Shebunia. Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1964. Eichenlaub, René. Ernst Toller et l’expressionnisme politique. Paris: Klincksieck, 1980. Enseling, Alf. Die Weltbühne: Organ der intellektuellen Linken. Munster: C. J. Fahle, 1962. Escherich, Forstrat. Von Eisner bis Eglhofer: Die Münchner Revolution von November 1918 bis zum Zusammenbruch der Räteherrschaft. Munich: Heimatland, 1922. Fechenbach, Felix. Der Revolutionär Kurt Eisner: Aus persönlichen Erlebnissen. Berlin: Dietz, 1929. Fishman, Joseph. Sex in Prison. London: John Lane, 1935. Fishman, Sterling. “Prophets, Poets and Priests: A Study of the Men and Ideas that Made the Munich Revolution of 1918/1919.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1960. ———. “The Rise of Hitler as a Beer Hall Orator.” The Review of Politics 26, no. 2 (1964): 244–56. Fortheringham, John. “From Einheitsfront to Volksfront: Ernst Toller and the Spanish Civil War.” German Life and Letters 52, no. 4 (1999). Franz, Georg. “Munich: Birthplace and Center of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.” Journal of Modern History 29, no. 4 (1957): 319–34. Friedmann, Hermann and Otto Mann, eds. Deutsche Literatur im 20. Jahrhundert, 2 vols. Heidelberg: W. Rothe, 1961. Friedrich, Otto. Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. Frölich, Paul. Die bayerische Räterepublik. Frankfurt: Neue Kritik, 1971 (reprint of Paul Werner, Die bayerische Räterepublik. Leipzig: Kommunistische Internationale, 1920). Fuld, Werner and Albert Ostermaier, eds. Die Göttin und ihre Sozialist: Christiane Grautoffs Autobiographie—ihr Leben mit Ernst Toller. Bonn: Weidle, 1996. Fuller, Leon W. “The War of 1914 as Interpreted by German Intellectuals.” Journal of Modern History 14, no. 2 (1942): 145–60. Gay, Peter. The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism. New York: Collier, 1962.

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231

———. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966. ———. Voltaire’s Politics: The Poet as Realist. New York: Vintage Books, 1965. ———. Weimar Culture: The Outsider as Insider. New York: Harper & Row, 1968. Gerstl, Max. Die Münchener Räte-Republik. Munich: Verlag der “Politischen Zeitfragen,” 1919. Gerth, H. H. and C. Wright Mills, eds. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press, 1972. Gooch, G. P. Germany and the French Revolution. London: F. Cass, 1965. Graf, Oskar Maria. Wir sind Gefängene: Ein Bekenntnis aus diesem Jahrhundert. Munich: Drei Masken, 1927. Graña, César. Modernity and Its Discontents: French Society and the French Man of Letters in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Grautoff, Christiane. Die Göttin und ihr Sozialist. Bonn: Weidle, 1996. Gross, David Laverne. “Heinrich Mann: The Writer and Society, 1890–1920: A Study of Literary Politics in Germany.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1969. Grossmann, Kurt R. Ossietzky: Ein deutscher Patriot. Munich: Kindler, 1963. Grosz, George. Ein Kleines Ja und ein grosses Nein. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1955. Grüber, Helmut. “The Political-Ethical Mission of German Expressionism.” German Quarterly 40, no. 2 (1967): 186–203. ———. “The Politics of German Literature, 1914–1933: A Study of the Expressionist and Objectivist Movements.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1962. Grunow-Erdmann, Cordula. Die Dramen Ernst Tollers im Kontext ihrer Zeit. Heidelberg: Winter, 1994. Halperin, William. Germany Tried Democracy: A Political History of the Reich from 1918 to 1933. New York: Norton, 1965. Hannover, Heinrich and Elisabeth Hannover-Drück. Politische Justiz, 1918–1933. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fisher, 1966. Hatfield, Henry. Modern German Literature: The Major Figures in Context. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. Heller, Erich, ed. The Artist’s Journey into the Interior and Other Essays. New York: Vintage Books, 1965. Heller, Peter. “The Masochistic Rebel in Recent German Literature,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 11, no. 3 (1953): 198–213. ———. “The Writer’s Image of the Writer: A Study in the Ideologies of Six German Authors, 1918–1933.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1951. Hempel-Küter, Christa and Hans-Harald Müller. “Ernst Toller: Auf der Suche nach dem Geistigen Führer.” Literatur, Politik und soziale Prozesse, edited by Georg Jäger, et al. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997. Hermand, Jost. Unbequeme Literatur: Eine Beispielreihe. Heidelberg: Stiehm, 1971. ———. Von Mainz nach Weimar (1793–1919). Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1969. ———, ed. Zu Ernst Toller, Drama und Engagement. Stuttgart: Klett, 1981. Herzog, Wilhelm. Menschen, denen ich begegnete. Munich: Francke, 1959. Heym, Georg. A Reluctant Rebel. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1958. Hiller, Kurt. “Linke Leute vom Rechts.” Die Weltbühne, 8 February 1932. ———. Köpfe und Tröpfe: Profile aus einem Vierteljahrhundert. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959. Hofmiller, Josef. Revolutionstagebuch, 1918/19: Aus den Tagen der Münchner Revolution. Leipzig: K. Rauch, 1939. Hofstadter, Richard. “A Note on Intellect and Power.” American Scholar 30, no. 4 (1961): 588–99. ———. Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963. Hohendahl, Peter Uwe and Egon Schwartz, eds. Exil und Innere Emigration II. Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1973.

232

Selected Bibliography

Holborn, Hajo. “Der deutsche Idealismus in sozialgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung.” Historische Zeitschrift 174, no. 1 (1952): 359–84. Hollingdale, R. J. Nietzsche, The Man and His Philosophy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1965. Horn, Daniel. The German Naval Mutinies of World War I. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1969. Howe, Irving. “This Age of Conformity.” Partisan Review 21, no. 1 (1954): 7–33. ———. Politics and the Novel. Greenwich, Connecticut: Fawcett, 1967. Hübinger, Gangolf. “Eugen Diederichs und eine neue Geisteskultur.” In Kultur und Krieg: Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg, edited by Wolfgang Mommsen. Munich: Oldenburg, 1996. Hughes, H. Stuart. Consciousness and Society: The Reorientation of European Social Thought, 1890–1930. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958. Huimin, Chen. Inversion of Revolutionary Ideals: A Study of the Tragic Essence of Georg Büchner’s Danton’s Tod, Ernst Toller’s Masse Mensch, and Bertolt Brecht’s Die Massnahme. New York: Peter Lang, 1998. Hunt, Richard. German Social Democracy, 1918–1933. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970. Hüppauf, Bernd. Expressionismus und Kultukrise. Heidelberg: Winter, 1983. Innes, C. D. Erwin Piscator’s Political Theatre: The Development of Modern German Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972. Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question. Die Juden in Deutschland, Munich: Nazi Party publication, 1936. Isherwood, Christopher. Exhumations: Stories, Articles, Verses. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1966. Jäger, Georg, ed. Literature, Politik und sozial Prozesse. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1997. Jasper, Gotthard, ed. Von Weimar zu Hitler: 1930–1933. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1968. Johansson, Frans. The Medici Effect. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2006. Joll, James. The Anarchists. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1966. Kahn, Lothar. Mirrors of the Jewish Mind: A Gallery of Portraits of European Jewish Writers of Our Time. New York: T. Yoseloff, 1968. Kane, Martin. Weimar Germany and the Limits of Political Art: A Study of the Works of George Grosz and Ernst Toller. Tayport, Scotland: Hutton, 1987. Kanzler, Rudolf. Bayerns Kampf gegen dem Bolshewismus. Munich: Parcus, 1931. Kaufmann, Doris. “Science as Cultural Practice: Psychiatry in the First World War and Weimar Germany.” Journal of Contemporary History 34, no. 1 (1999): 125–44. Kaufmann, Walter. Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist. New York: Random House, 1968. Kaznelson, Siegmund, ed. Juden im deutschen Kulturbereich: Ein Sammelwerk. Berlin: Jüdischer Verlag, 1959. Kessler, Harry. In the Twenties: The Diaries of Harry Kessler. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971. Kesten, Hermann, ed. Deutsche Literatur im Exil: Briefe europäischer Autoren 1933–1949. Vienna: K. Desch, 1964. ———. Meine Freunde die Poeten. Munich: Donau, 1959. Klemperer, Klemens von. Germany’s New Conservatism: Its History and Dilemma in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968. Knütter, Hans-Helmuth. Die Juden und die deutsche Linke in der Weimarer Republik 1918–1933. Düsseldorf: Droste, 1971. Koch, Joachim H. Exil: Forschung, Erkenntnisse, Ergebnisse, edited by Edita Koch. Maintal: Koch, 1985. Kohn, Hans. The Mind of Germany: The Education of a Nation. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. Kolinsky, Eva. Engagierter Expressionismus: Politik und Literatur zwischen Weltkrieg und Weimarer Republik. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1970.

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233

Koplin, Raimund. Carl von Ossietzky als politischer Publizist. Berlin: Annedore Leber, 1964. Krispyn, Egbert. Style and Society in German Literary Expressionism. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1969. Lagarde, Paul de. Deutsche Schriften. Munich: J. F. Lehmann, 1937. Lamm, Hans, ed. Von Juden in München: Ein Gedenkbuch. Munich: Ner-Tamid, 1959. Landauer, Gustav. Aufruf zum Sozialismus. Berlin: Cassirer, 1919. Laqueur, Walter. Out of the Ruins of Europe. New York: Library Press, 1971. ———. “The Role of the Intelligentsia in the Weimar Republic.” Social Research 39, no. 2 (1972). ———. Young Germany: A History of the German Youth Movement. New York: Basic Books, 1962. ——— and George Mosse, eds. The Left-Wing Intellectuals between the Wars, 1919–1939. New York: Harper & Row, 1966. ———. Literature and Politics in the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Lepenies, Wolf. The Seduction of Culture in German History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Lepsius, M. Rainer. Interessen, Ideen und Institutionen. Darmstadt: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1988. Lerner, Paul. “Psychiatry and Casualties of War in Germany, 1914–18.” Journal of Contemporary History 35, no. 1 (2000): 13–28. Levin, Harry. Refractions: Essays in Comparative Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. Lewis, Beth Irwin. George Grosz: Art and Politics in the Weimar Republic. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971. Linse, Ulrich. Organisierter Anarchismus im deutschen Kaiserreich von 1871. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1969. Liptzin, Solomon. Germany’s Stepchildren. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1944. Lixl-Purcell, Andreas. Ernst Toller und die Weimarer Republik, 1918–1933. Heidelberg: Winter, 1986. Loewenberg, Peter. “The Psychohistorical Origins of the Nazi Cohort.” American Historical Review 76, no. 5 (1971): 1457–1502. Lunn, Eugene. Gustav Landauer: The Development of a Romantic Socialist. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968. ———. Prophet of Community: The Romantic Socialism of Gustav Landauer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Magill, C. P. “The German Author and His Public in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Modern Language Review 43, no. 4 (1948): 492–99. Malkin, Jenette and Freddie Rokem. Jews and the Making of Modern German Theatre. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010. Mann, Golo. Deutsche Geschichte des neunzehnten und zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts. Munich: S. Fischer, 1958. Mann, Heinrich. Essays. Hamburg: Claassen, 1960. Mann, Thomas. Reden und Aufsätze. Oldenburg: S. Fischer, 1965. Marcuse, Ludwig. “Ernst Tollers letzter Abend.” Rhein-Neckar Zeitung (Heidelberg), 5 July 1949. Marks, Martha Gustavson. “Ernst Toller: His Fight against Fascism.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1980. Massing, Paul. Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany. New York: Harper, 1949. Maurer, Charles. Call to Revolution: The Mystical Anarchism of Gustav Landauer. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1971. Mayer, Arno J. “Domestic Causes of the First World War.” In The Responsibility of Power: Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn, edited by Leonard Krieger and Fritz Stern. New York: Macmillan, 1967.

234

Selected Bibliography

———. The Political Origins of the New Diplomacy, 1917–1918. New York: Vintage Books, 1970. Meinecke, Friedrich. The German Catastrophe: Reflections and Recollections. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1950. Miesel, Victor, ed. Voices of German Expressionism. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970. Mitchell, Allan. Revolution in Bavaria, 1918–1919: The Eisner Regime and the Soviet Republic. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965. Moderwell, Hiram. “The Blood of Munich.” The Liberator, September 1919, 10–19. Molo, Walter von. So wunderbar ist das Leben. Stuttgart: Deutsche Volksbücher, 1957. Mommsen, Wolfgang, ed. Kultur und Krieg: Die Rolle der Intellektuellen, Künstler und Schriftsteller im Ersten Weltkrieg. Munich: Oldenburg, 1996. Mosse, George. Germans and Jews: The Right, the Left, and the Search for a “Third Force” in Pre-Nazi Germany. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1970. ———. The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964. ——— and Walter Laqueur, eds. Literature and Politics in the Twentieth Century. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Müller, Ernst. Aus Baÿerns schwersten Tagen: Erinnerungen und Betrachtungen aus der Revolutionszeit. Berlin: W. de Gruÿter, 1923. Müller, Richard. Der Bürgerkrieg in Deutschland: Geburtswehren der Republik. Berlin: Phöbus, 1925. Müller-Doohm, Stefan. Adorno: Eine Biographie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2003. Myers, Bernard S. The German Expressionists: A Generation in Revolt. New York: Praeger, 1966. Natan, Alex, ed. German Men of Letters, 5 vols. London: Oswald Wolff, 1964. Naumann, Uwe and Michael Töteberg. Zweimal Deutschland: Aufsätze, Reden, Kritiken 1938–1942. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1994. Neubauer, Helmut. München und Moskau 1918/1919: Zur Geschichte der Rätebewegung in Bayern. Munich: Isar, 1958. ———. Deutschland und die Russische Revolution. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1968. Neuhaus, Stefan, Rolf Selbmann, and Thorsten Unger, eds. Engagierte Literatur zwischen den Weltkriegen. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2002. ———. Ernst Toller und die Weimarer Republik: Ein Autor im Spannungsfeld von Literatur und Politik. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999. Nicholls, Anthony and Erich Matthias, eds. German Democracy and the Triumph of Hitler. London: Allen and Unwin, 1971. Niekisch, Ernst. Gewagtes Leben. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1958. Niewyk, Donald. The Jews in Weimar Germany. Baton Rouge: University of Louisiana Press, 1980. Ossar, Michael. Anarchism in the Dramas of Ernst Toller. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1980. Palmier, Jean-Michel. Weimar in Exile: The Anti-Fascist Emigration in Europe and America London: Verso, 2006. Paulsen, Wolfgang, ed. Der Dichter und seine Zeit: Politik im Spiegel der Literatur. Heidelberg: Stiehm, 1969. Peukert, Detlev. The Weimar Republic: The Crisis of Classical Modernity. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992. Pfeiler, William. German Literature in Exile: The Concern of the Poets. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1957. Pinson, Koppel S. Modern Germany: Its History and Civilization. New York: Macmillan, 1969. Pinthus, Kurt. “Life and Death of Ernst Toller.” Books Abroad 14, no. 1 (1940): 3–8. ———. “Zur jüngsten Dichtung.” Die weissen Blätter, December 1915, 1509. ———, ed. Menschheitsdämmerung: Ein Dokument des Expressionismus. Berlin: Rowohlt, 1959.

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235

———, ed. Menschheitsdämmerung: Symphonie jüngster Dichtung. Berlin: E. Rowohlt, 1919. Pipes, Richard, ed. The Russian Intelligentsia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Piscator, Erwin. Das politische Theater. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1963. Piscator, MariaLey. The Piscator Experiment. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970. Pollack, Fredrick. Ernst Toller: A Play in One Act. Branford Lit 1, no. 1 (1964): 31–66. Pongs, Hermann. Wilhelm Raabe: Leben und Werk. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1958. Poor, Harold L. Kurt Tucholsky and the Ordeal of Germany. New York: Scribner, 1968. Pörtner, Paul. “The Writers’ Revolution: Munich, 1918–19.” Journal of Contemporary History 3, no. 4 (1968): 137–52. Pulzer, Peter. The Rise of Political Anti-Semitism in Germany and Austria. New York: Wiley, 1964. Redfield, Kay. Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. New York: Free Press, 1993. Reimers, Kirsten. Das Bewältigen des Wirklichen. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000. Remak, Joachim. The Gentle Critic: Theodor Fontane and German Politics, 1848–1898. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1964. Reso, Martin. “Der gesellschafltlich-ethische Protest im dicterischen Werk Ernst Tollers.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Jena, 1957. Rieff, Philip, ed. On Intellectuals. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1970. Ringer, Fritz. The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970. Rogers, Jacqueline Bloom. “Ernst Toller’s Prose Writings.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Yale University, 1972. Rogger, Hans and Eugene Weber. The European Right. A Historical Profile. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Rosenberg, Arthur. “Zur Geschichte der politischen Emigration.” Mass und Wert 2 (1938). ———. Entstehung und Geschichte der Weimarer Republik. Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlags-Anstalt, 1955. ———. Geschichte der Weimarer Republik. Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlag-Anstalt, 1961. ———. Imperial Germany: The Birth of the German Republic, 1871–1918. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. Rosenthal, Erich. “Trends of the Jewish Population in Germany, 1910–1939.” Jewish Social Studies 6, no. 1 (1944): 233–74. Rothe, Wolfgang. Der Aktivismus, 1915–1920. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1969. Rothstein, Sigurd. Der Traum von der Gemeinschaft: Kontinuität und Innovation in Ernst Tollers Dramen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1987. Rühle, Günther. Theater für die Republik, 1917–1933, im Spiegel der Kritik. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1967. Rühle, Jürgen. Literatur und Revolution: Die Schriftsteller und der Kommunismus in Deutschland. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1960. Rupprecht, Kronprinz. Mein Kriegstagebuch. Berlin: E. S. Mittler, 1929. Ryder, A. J. The German Revolution at 1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967. Sagarra, Eda. Tradition and Revolution: German Literature and Society, 1830–1890. New York: Basic Books, 1971. Schäfer, Peter. Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco. Leiden: Brill, 1998. Schapkow, Carsten. “Judentum als zentrales Deutungsmuster in Leben und Werk Ernst Tollers.” Exil 16, no. 2 (1996): 25–39.

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Selected Bibliography

Schneider, Dieter and Rudolf Kuda, eds. Arbeiterräte in der Novemberrevolution: Ideen, Wirkungen, Dokumente. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973. Schoenbaum, David. Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933–1939. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1967. Schoenberner, Franz. Confessions of a European Intellectual. New York: Collier, 1965. Schouten, Frederick. “Ernst Toller: An Intellectual Youth Biography, 1893–1918.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, European University Institute, 2007. Schroter, Klaus. “Chauvinism and Its Tradition: German Writers and the Outbreak of the First World War.” Germanic Review 43, no. 2 (1968): 120–35. Shattuck, Roger. The Banquet Years: The Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I. New York: Vintage Books, 1968. Sheppard, Richard. Expressionism in Focus. Blairgowrie, Scotland: Lochee Publications, 1987. Slochower, Harry. No Voice Is Wholly Lost: Writers and Thinkers in War and Peace. New York: Creative Age Press, 1945. Soergel, Albert. Dichtung und Dichter der Zeit. Leipzig: R. Voigtländers, 1925. Sokel, Walter. The Writer in Extremis: Expressionism in Twentieth-Century German Literature. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959. ———, ed. Anthology of German Expressionist Drama: A Prelude to the Absurd. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1963. Sontheimer, Kurt. Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik. Munich: Nymphenburger, 1968. Spalek, John, Der Fall Toller: Kommentar und Materialien. Munich: Hanser, 1979. ———. “Ernst Toller: The Need for a New Estimate.” German Quarterly 39, no. 4 (1966): 581–98. ——— and Wolfgang Frühwald. “Ernst Tollers amerikanische Vortragsreise, 1936/37.” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch im Auftrag der Görres-gesellschaft, N.F. 6 (1965): 267–311. Stark, Michael. Für und wider den Expressionismus: Die Entstehung der Intellektuellendebatte in der deutschen Literaturgeschichte. Stuttgart: Metzler 1982. Stern, Fritz. The Failure of Illiberalism: Essays on the Political Culture of Modern Germany. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972. ———. The Politics of Cultural Despair: A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology. New York: Doubleday, 1965. Strothmann, Dietrich. Nationalsozialistische Literaturpolitik. Bonn: H. Bouvier, 1960. Thimme, Annelise. Flucht in den Mythos: Die Deutschnationale Volkspartei und die Niederlage von 1918. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969. Tucholsky, Kurt. “Die Ebert-Legende.” In Gesammelte Werke, edited by Mary GeroldTucholsky and Fritz Raddatz, 3 vols. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1960–1961. Victor, Walther. Ich kam aus lauter Liebe in die Welt: Lebensgeschichten und Gedichte. Berlin: Aufbau, 1965. Viesel, Hansjörg. Literaten an der Wand: Die Münchner Räterepublik und die Schriftsteller. Frankfurt: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1980. Waite, Robert G. L. Vanguard of Nazism: The Free Corps Movement in Postwar Germany, 1918–1923. New York: Norton, 1969. Wassermann, Jacob. My Life as German and Jew. New York: Coward-McCann, 1933. Watt, Richard. The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany: Versailles and the German Revolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. Weber, Marianne. Max Weber: Ein Lebensbild. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1926. Wette, Wolfram, ed. Der Krieg des kleinen Mannes: Eine Militärgeschichte von Unten. Munich: Piper, 1992. Willett, John. Expressionism. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1970. ———. The Weimar Years: A Cultural History. London: Thames & Hudson, 2011. Willibrand, W. A. Ernst Toller and His Ideology. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1945.

Selected Bibliography

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———. Ernst Toller: Product of Two Revolutions. Norman, Oklahoma: Cooperative Books, 1941. Wurgaft, Lewis. “Kurt Hiller and the Activist Program.” Unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University, 1970. Young, Harry. Maximilian Harden: Censor Germaniae: The Critic in Opposition from Bismarck to the Rise of Nazism. The Hague: Nijhoff, 1959. Zarek, Otto. Germany Odyssey. London: Jonathan Cape, 1941. Zettel, Philipp. “Fundamentalismus und offene Gesellschaft.” In Die Rote Republik, Schriften der Erich Mühsam Gesellschaft, Heft 25, edited by Sabine Kruse and JürgenWolfgang Gotte. Lübeck: Mühsam Gesellschaft, 2004. Ziemann, Benjamin. Front und Heimat: Ländliche Kreigserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern, 1914–1923. Essen: Klartext, 1997.

Index

Action Francaise, 11 activism, 78 Die Aktion, 66, 120 Aron, Raymond, 12 Auer, Erhard, 87, 101, 102 Barrès, Maurice, 11, 14, 86, 87 Bavaria, 85, 86, 94–95, 166 Bavarian Soviet, 85, 106, 110–113, 115, 119 Bayerische Volkspartei, 103 Beauvoir, Simone de, 11 Benda, Julien, 12 Brecht, Bertolt, 7 Die Brücke, 62 Bullivant, Keith, 5 Bürgwehr, 101, 103 Camus, Albert, 23 Chernoe Znamia, 13 Council Republic, 5, 106 Deák, István, 4, 5 Diederichs, Eugen, 45, 46 Dorst, Tankred, 4 Dostoyevsky, Feodor, 73 Dove, Richard, 5 Dreyfuss Affair, 13, 14 Duclos, Charles, 22 Eine Jugend in Deutschland , 179 Eisner, Kurt, 95, 98, 105 Die Enfesselte Wotan, 166 England and, 192; exile, 182; film noir and, 212; Germany and, 186, 187; Jewishness, 34–35, 36–37; as leader, 6, 217–218, 222, 223; left-wing intellectuals and, 210; Nazis and, 182, 184, 196; pacifism, 190; reputation, 2; role of writer, 188; as

social critic, 2; as speaker, 1; suicide, 200, 201, 202, 203, 204 Ernst Toller Society, 5 Expressionism, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65 Fackel, Der, 132 father-mother motif, 63 Feuer aus die Kesseln, 162–164 Flaubert, Gustav, 13 France, Anatol, 23 Freikorps, 116 Geist, 46, 55, 69, 70, 79, 85, 92, 169, 186, 191, 192 Gemeinschaft, 65, 74 German Communist Party (KPD), 103 German Independent Socialist Party, 100, 139 German Socialist Party (SPD), 20, 100 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 22, 55, 56, 74 Grass, Günter, 209 Grautoff, Christiane, 202 Group 47, 209 Heidelberg, Student Council at, 47 Heine, 34 Hermand, Jost, 5 Hesse, Hermann, 12 Hiller, Kurt, 4, 20, 56 Hinkeman, 38, 152, 153 Hitler, Adolf, 117, 144, 165, 167, 181, 188, 189, 193, 195 Hollywood, 199 Hoppla, wir leben, 3, 155, 157–161 Horkheimer, Max, 118, 215 Isherwood, Christopher, 198, 202 Jagger, Mick, 2 239

240

Index

Johst, Hanns, 22, 44

Quer Durch, 195

Kafka, 6 Kampfblock, 169, 170 Kapp Putsch, 135 Kesten, Hermann, 223 Kleist Prize, 2 Kokoschka, Oskar, 68 Kraus, Karl, 34 Kultur, 56 Kulturpolitischer Bund, 46

Rat Geistiger Arbeiter, 13 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 44 Ringer, Fritz, 56 Rolland, Romain, 13 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 198

Lagarde, Paul de, 35, 36 Lamb, Steven, 5 Landauer, Gustav, 48, 91–92 left-wing intellectuals, 143, 211 Leibniz, Gottfried, 24 Machinenstürmer , 149–151 Mann, Heinrich, 78 Mann, Thomas, 7, 12, 44, 57, 86, 122, 122–123, 180, 184, 216 Mannhein, Karl, 15, 37 Marxism, 215 Masse Mensch, 3, 65 Meinecke, Friedrich, 55 Mühr, Alfred, 167–168 Mühsam, Erich 2, 44, 86, 179 Nebenparlement, 98 Neue Sachlichkeit, 149 Neuer Geist, 77 Niekisch, Ernst, 110 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 1, 15, 19, 59, 138, 215, 223 Nolde, Emil, 62 Noske, Gustav, 107 Novembergruppe, 78 Old Testament, 68 Ossietzeky, Carl von, 7, 20, 146, 221 Other Germany, 2, 179, 182, 189, 216

Samotschin, 31 Schiller, Friedrich, 56 Schmeling, Max, 2 Schneppenhorst, Ernst, 109 socialism, 89 Spalek, John, 3, 4 Die Sturm, 60 Die Tat, 45 Toller, Ernst: controversy about, 3; early life, 31–32; education, 38, 39, 44, 47; views on literature and theater, 184, 210; views on Soviet Union, 181, 194, 195; views of Spain, 194, 197, 198, 201; World War I, 24, 39–42, 43–44; youth movement, 18, 63 Trommler, Frank, 5 Tucholsky, Kurt, 142 Vernunftrepublikaner, 132 Versailles, 23 Volksfront, 196 Vorwärts , 88, 137 Die Wandlung, 63, 66, 67, 74, 76, 87 Die Weber, 57 Weber, Alfred, 15 Weber, Max, 45, 213, 214 Die Weissen Blätter, 66 Die Weltbühne, 77, 137, 164, 165, 181, 195 Wessel, Horst, 2 Youth Movement, 63

Paléologue, Maurice, 12 PEN Club, 185 Picasso, Pablo, 73 Piscator, Erwin, 157 Pinthus, Kurt, 60, 69, 77

Zagreb, 2 Zarek, Otto, 88 Zentralrat, 108 Zweig, Arnold, 35

About the Author

Robert Ellis is executive director at the Institute for Leadership Studies and History, a consulting firm that uses history as a tool for executive and management development (www.ilsh.org). He received his PhD from Rutgers University with additional study in theology at Oxford University (Christ Church College) and music theory at The Juilliard School. He is the author of a number of articles dealing with international affairs, history, Jewish theology, American literature, and JapaneseAmerican relations.

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