Who is Ernst Toller

Ernst Toller (1 December 1893 – 22 May 1939) was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, after which he became the head of its army. He was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Bavarian Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlin. While in prison Toller wrote several plays that gained him international renown. They were performed in London and New York as well as in Berlin.

In 1933 Toller was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power. He did a lecture tour in 1936–1937 in the United States and Canada, settling in California for a while before going to New York. He joined other e...
Read Full Biography

---

Ernst Toller Poems

• Corpses In The Woods
  A dung heap of rotting corpses:
  Glazed eyes, bloodshot,
  Brains split, guts spewed out
  The air poisoned by the stink of corpses ...
• Sentry
  Starry sky.
  To restrain the beast
  my rifle glows,
  to fix the black barrel ...
• Twilight
  In early evening the cell flares up.
  Thin shadows slide down the gray walls.
  He who cries out in mutiny exhausts into a dream.
  The brown stillness sweeps over like a gentle wave. ...
• November
  Cities are so far away, humans live there.
  The knot chokes at your throat, a gray
  horror caresses your limbs. Who will freedom behold?
  When, at last, will the grubs rise up?...
• Nightmare
  The people's conscience squats
  on a worm-eaten pole.
  Around the pole dance the bones of three children.
  From the young mother's belly it ruptures forth: ...

Read All Poems

---

Ernst Toller Quotes

Read All Quotes

---

Comments about Ernst Toller

• Tyger_tone: been reading some ernst toller atm and it's kind of depressing reading old avant garde plays and seeing how unstageable they would be considered in the uk, simply because they do not fit into the formula of what's either considered profitable or fundable.
• Antimusicala: first reformed is a movie brimming with the tough ideological and theological questions of our time, such as: why did they call this guy ernst toller?!?
• Aa_damilola: "man can't be noble if he is hungry. you have to give him food and shelter first and a little bit of beauty before you can ask him to be virtuous." — ernst toller, hinkemann
• Mptacharya1: in the 1940s-50s, acharya's friend kate ruminoff worked as a secretary to ruth fischer and ernst toller, and even sought out her old friend angelica balabanoff to ask for work as a typist.
• Sorryimaleo: when i get my own dog i’m naming him reverend ernst toller

Read All Comments