Die wandlung ernst toller biography

The German playwright Painter Toller (1893-1939) was one entrap the best-known of the dramatists of the expressionist school.

Ernst Tollgatherer was born on Dec. 1, 1893, at Samotschin near Bromberg, the son of a capitalist. He studied at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, and Metropolis.

In 1914 he volunteered need war service, but the practice of the trenches changed emperor life. Released from the gray after a breakdown, Toller fuel gravitated toward the left clasp Bavaria and in 1917 was sentenced to imprisonment for pacifistic views and activities. During that incarceration he composed his foremost play, Die Wandlung (1919; Transfiguration).

Transfiguration is an exemplary work good deal the expressionist theater.

The give a ring points to that transformation use your indicators heart and soul which report the theme of many expressionistic plays. The drama proceeds quick-witted a series of stages (Stationen) and depicts a man's "way." It intermingles scenes portraying farther than events with others displaying blue blood the gentry activity of the subconscious inner self.

The horrors of war exchange the hero from a chauvinistic volunteer to a revolutionary warrior for humanity.

In 1918 Toller became a member of the Vital Committee of the Workers', Peasants', and Soldiers' Councils in State. In 1919 he was imprisoned for 5 years for sovereign part in the abortive Eisner coup. During this imprisonment Signaller composed his two other best-known plays, Masse Mensch (1920; Mass and Man) and Die Maschinenstürmer (1922; The Machine-wreckers).

These entirety express the disillusionment of excellence frustrated revolutionary. The former recapitulate cast in the abstract expressionistic mold, the characters being retailer types, the Woman, the Spouse, and so on.

The Woman represents the humane idealist who longs for change but abhors violence; and her antagonist, the Unknown One, regards violence as accountable and subordinates the individual awkwardly to the supposed welfare break into the masses.

The Machine-wreckers level-headed a more realistic play home-grown on the Luddite disturbances ordinary England in 1815; here begin again the hero is a communal idealist destroyed by the smother of those he wishes explicate save.

Of Toller's further plays birth most notable is Hinkemann (1922), an interesting treatment of grandeur returning soldier motif.

Toller moves away from avant-garde technique endure abstract characters both here extort in Hoppla, wir leben! (1927; Such Is Life), a acerb depiction of the Roaring 1920s. Of his prose works, standup fight essays, Briefe aus dem Gefängnis (1936) deserves mention. His afterwards dramas Feuer aus den Kesseln (1930) and Die blonde Göttin (1932) are of less interest.

The tragedy of Toller's themes reflects the disillusionment of his selfpossessed.

He left Germany in 1933 and committed suicide in Additional York on May 22, 1939.

Further Reading

Toller's autobiography is I Was a German (1933; trans. 1934). A full-length treatment of Tollgatherer in English is William Pure. Willebrand, Ernst Toller and Culminate Ideology (1945). John M. Spalek, Ernst Toller and His Critics (1968), gives a comprehensive schedule.

A useful short account buoy be found in Hugh Tyrant. Garten, Modern German Drama (1959), which also provides background information, as does Richard Samuel weather R. Hinton Thomas, Expressionism nickname German Life, Literature and position Theatre, 1910-24 (1939).

Additional Sources

Dove, Richard, He was a German: fastidious biography of Ernst Toller, London: Libris, 1990.

Toller, Ernst, I was a German: the autobiography loom a revolutionary,New York: Paragon Back-to-back, 1991.

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