Introduction to “Poems of the Prisoners” 1918-1921 (Gedichte der Gefangenen)
Ernst Toller was a well-known German stage author in the 1920’s. As a soldier, writer and short time statesman, he experienced events first hand. His tragic transformative experiences as a soldier in World War One and later as a participant in the tumultuous events afterward, marked his message and expressionistic style. Toller was a man who sought to understand the forces unleashed by war and in telling his story he became a prophet of truth.
After the assassination of Prime Minister Eisner, Toller took over the chairmanship of the Bavarian Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD) in March 1919. The Bavarian Soviet Republic was crushed and Toller was jailed but not executed. Offered a pardon which he refused he was sentenced to five years imprisonment in Niederschönenfeld near Augsburg. It was during his jail time that he began to write “Gedichte der Gefangenen” or Poems of the Prisoners, a set of powerful poems in sonnet form that expressed the universal pain of freedoms lost and the profound disillusionment brought by death and struggle. His first play in 1919 “Die Wandlung” or Transformation expressed the horror of war. In this Toller was not alone in his generation.
The “coming to grips” with war was a painfully transformative experience for Ernst Toller. He was in contact with the leading thinkers of the time in Munich where Adolf Hitler and the far right were active in determining the fate of the post World War One Germany. There Ernst Toller studied with thinkers such as Max Weber, Thomas Mann, Rainer Maria Rilke and literary scholar Artur Kutscher.
He worked alongside perhaps the most famous European “Anarchist” Gustav Landauer (7 April 1870 – 2 May 1919) who held the office of Commissioner of Enlightenment and Public Instruction in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic. After the collapse of the Republic, Landauer was brutally murdered. Rudolf Rocker, a leading Anarchist wrote of his death:
Refusing to flee, Landauer was captured and led away. Freiherr von Gagern, hit Landauer over the head with a whip handle. This was the signal to kill the defenseless victim. An eyewitness later said that Landauer used his last strength to shout at his murderers: ‘Finish me off – to be human!’ He was literally kicked to death. When he still showed signs of life, one of the callous torturers shot a bullet in his head. This was the gruesome end of Gustav Landauer – one of Germany’s greatest spirits and finest men.”
Ernst Toller lived on to created plays, poems and writings that exposed the horrors of the First World War; a war that created places like Verdun, a battle scripted by the German High Command “to bleed France white.”
At Verdun, the German commander Falkenhayn attempted to entice the French to “bleed white” in defending a position he believed the French would never surrender. As the German Burgfrieden began to crumble, German leaders sought to win the war of attrition. By 1915, members of the Reichstag like Karl Liebknecht were openly voting against extending war credits calling the war a “capitalist war of expansion.” Millions perished in muddy trenches that never advanced more than a few miles wither way.
Germany and her opponents had become locked in a Materialschlacht – a ghastly war of attrition and starvation thanks to a tightening British blockade intent on denying Germany food.
A century later some argue our world looks surprisingly like before World War One. Gas warfare still exists in the 21st century. Vera Brittain, a nurse who experienced the loss and horrors of war, wrote in her book “Testament of Youth” how profound the idealism of WWI generation was shattered seemingly never to be recovered. Indeed, it now appears that the First World War set the standard for brutality in the 20th century. Its blood-soaked fields lie silent, but the pain and experiences that were recorded by artists like Ernst Toller remain.
Many of his works have been untranslated and inaccessible in the West until this day. Toller’s work in the early twenties has been overshadowed by novels and a few writers who were marketed with works like Rilke’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque. In his lifetime he witnessed the waning interest in pacifism and his all too real portrayal of the horrors of war. He predicted the brutality of the Nazi regime and was deported, tried to maintain his pacifism and struggle against inhumanity. He ended his own life in New York in 1939 with pictures of children killed in the Spanish Civil War spread at his feet.
Ernst Toller’s Heiterkeit or essence is brought forth in his poems and plays with heart-rending detail. His “Poems of the Prisoners” was written in prison and paint a picture of universal suffering amidst the sublime beauty of nature. His play “Transformation” (die Wandlung) depicts monumental history being questioned and the role of the individual in overcoming the tragedy of the past. Toller among all other expressionist artist, leaves a record of his journey as he moved from enthusiastic front-line soldier to revolutionary statesman, playwright, poet and exile. His death in 1939 left no doubt that Toller’s vision of the darkening world took all his powers and proved too much in the end.
But there is much more to be learned from the last century. This compilation of his 1919 expressionist poems and his first play “Transformation” has been translated and presented at the centenary of their creation. Perhaps his works can remind us once again of the devastation cause by the 20th century, the rise of National Socialism and Communism — the two blocks on which Ernst Toller foundered, caught between these two very powerful movements that change the history of our world.
Nietzsche, an expressionist philosopher and writer, once wrote that “we know good but we do not do it, because we also know the better and cannot do it.” He added that perhaps first natures are stronger than second natures. But first natures were once second natures too. The nature to fight and destroy surely must be one of the first things Toller can teach us to recognize if we are willing to listen and build a better world.
Ernst Toller’s Main Works:
Drama
1919 – Die Wandlung
1922 – Die Maschinenstürmer
1923 – Der deutsche Hinkemann
1939 – Pastor Hall
Prose and Lyric
1924 – Das Schwalbenbuch
1930 – Feuer aus den Kesseln
1933 – Die blinde Göttin
1936 – Eine Jugend in Deutschland
1934 – Nie wieder Friede
1935 – Briefe aus dem Gefängnis
Additional Information
Ernst Toller: The Playwright as Revolutionary (translated by David Grunwald)
Jacqueline du Pre & Daniel Barenboim – Elgar Cello Concerto
Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85, his last notable work, is a cornerstone of the solo cello repertoire. Elgar composed it in the aftermath of the First World War, when his music had already gone out of fashion with the concert-going public. In contrast with Elgar’s earlier Violin Concerto, which is lyrical and passionate, the Cello Concerto is for the most part contemplative and elegiac.
The complete set of Ernst Toller’s “Poems to the Prisoners 1918-1921” is available in a book in English
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