Toller, Ernst

Toller, Ernst
(1893-1939)
   Playwright. Toller was best known for strident, Expressionist-style plays that enjoyed a vogue in the early 1920s. Deeply scarred by his experiences in World War I (he suffered a nervous collapse and was released from service in 1916), he embraced Marxism as an antidote to German militarism. His participation in the Communist regime briefly established in Bavaria after the war landed him in prison, where he wrote most of his work. His Die Wandlung (The Transformation, 1919), with Fritz Kortner and Heinz Hilpert in the cast, created a sensation in Berlin among audiences genuinely convinced that revolution had arrived; similar plays followed, including Masse-Mensch (Masses and Man, 1922), Die Maschinenstürmer (The Machine-Wreckers, 1922), and Der deutsche Hinkemann (The German Hangman, 1923), along with a political comedy titled Derentfesselte Wotan (Wotan Unchained, 1923), but only Erwin Piscator's production of Hoppla, wir leben! (Hurray, We're Alive!, 1927) returned Toller to the public's eye. It, too, betokened the stridency characteristic of Toller's pessimistic outlook. He left Germany soon after the Nazis came to power and in 1939 hanged himself in a New York hotel room.

Historical dictionary of German Theatre. . 2006.

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