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Ernst Toller was born into a Jewish family on the first of December 1893 in the town of Samotschin (now Szamocin, Poland). He was the son of Max Toller (a pharmacist) and Ida (née Kohn). Both his parents ran a general store.

PRESIDENT, PLAYWRIGHT, AND PRISONER

At the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914, Ernst volunteered for the German Army. After serving just over a year on the Western Front, Toller suffered a complete physical and psychological collapse. His first drama, Transformation (Die Wandlung, 1919), was based on his wartime experiences.

Later on, Toller became a member of the newly-formed Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD). Along with leading anarchists such as B. Traven, writer Gustav Landauer, merchant Silvio Gesell, and playwright Erich Mühsam, Toller was involved in the short-lived, post-war Bavarian Soviet Republic.

A playwright himself, Toller described the revolution in the former kingdom as the “Bavarian Revolution of Love”. Among the café society of Schwabing, the new government became known as “the regime of the coffeehouse anarchists.” Beginning on April 6, 1919, Toller would serve as president of the republic for only six days! Even Communists in Germany were against the formation of a Communist republic. They agitated Toller and his councils by sending speakers into soldiers barracks to announce that the new republic did not deserve to be defended.

Toller himself issued numerous decrees. The press and mining industry were socialized, and the eight-hour work day was made legally binding. He also decreed that citizens could withdraw only one hundred marks per day from the banks. Toller issued reassurance to the workers that these measures were directed against the major capitalists who were attempting to take money abroad. A decree was also made against exorbitant rents.

Members of the Toller government were not always well-chosen. For instance, Foreign Affairs Deputy Dr. Franz Lipp (who had been admitted several times to psychiatric hospitals) declared war on Württemberg and Switzerland over the Swiss refusal to lend sixty locomotives to the Republic. He also claimed to be well acquainted with Pope Benedict XV and even cabled Vladimir Lenin that ousted Minister-President, Johannes Hoffmann, had fled to Bamberg with the key to the ministry toilet!

On April 13th, the German Communist Party (KPD) seized power in Bavaria with Eugen Leviné as the new leader. On May 3rd, the Bavarian Soviet Republic was soundly defeated by the Freikorps.

As for Ernst Toller, he was tried for his role in the revolution. The noted authors Max Weber and Thomas Mann testified on his behalf. Despite the attempts to clear his name, Toller was sentenced to five years in prison.

The former president of the Bavarian Soviet Republic served his sentence in the prisons of Stadelheim, Neuburg, and Eichstätt. From February 1920 until his release, Toller was in the fortress of Niederschönenfeld. There, he spent 149 days in solitary confinement… and twenty-four days on a hunger strike.

Toller wrote a number of plays in prison, but he did not see any of them performed until after his release in July 1925. That same year, the most famous of Toller’s later dramas, Hoppla, We’re Alive! (Hoppla, wir Leben!), premiered in Berlin. Directed by Erwin Piscator, it tells of a revolutionary discharged from a mental hospital after an eight-year stay. He then discovers that his former comrades have grown complacent and compromised within the system they once opposed. In despair, he kills himself.

EXILE AND DEATH

In 1933, Ernst Toller was exiled from Germany after the National Socialists came to power. He did a lecture tour in both the United States and Canada before settling in California for time. Soon, Toller moved to New York City, joined other exiles in the process.

Two of Toller’s early plays were produced in New York: The Machine Wreckers (1922) and No More Peace. The former had its opening night in 1937, and Toller was in attendance. No More Peace was produced by the Federal Theatre Project the same year… and premiered in 1938.

But with regard to both plays, the sense of immediacy was gone. The Machine Wreckers was related to the First World War and its aftermath. No More Peace focused on the earlier period of the rise of Nazism. Their style was outmoded for the New York stage… and the poor reception added to Toller’s discouragement.

Suffering from depression, separated from his wife, and struggling with financial woes after giving all his money to Spanish Civil War refugees, Ernst Toller committed suicide on May 22, 1939. After laying out photos of Spanish children killed by “fascist bombs” on his desk at the Mayflower Hotel, Toller hung himself in his room.

In 1941, the English author Robert Payne (who knew Toller both in Spain and Paris) wrote in his diary that Toller had said the following shortly before his death:

“If ever you read that I committed suicide, I beg you not to believe it.”

Payne then continued:

“He hanged himself with the silk cord of his nightgown in a hotel in New York two years ago. This is what the newspapers said at the time, but I continue to believe that he was murdered.”

Ernst Toller was forty-five years old