Spring
by Ernst Toller. Written in 1915.
In spring I go to war
To sing or to die.
What do I care for my own troubles?
Today I shatter them, laughing in pieces.
Oh, Brothers, know that young spring came
In a whirlwind.
Quickly throw off tired grief
And follow her in a host.
I have never felt so strongly
How much I love you, Oh, Germany,
As the magic of spring surrounds you
Amidst the bustle of war.
Corpses In The Woods
by Ernst Toller. Written in 1916.
A dung heap of rotting corpses:
Glazed eyes, bloodshot,
Brains split, guts spewed out
The air poisoned by the stink of corpses
A single awful cry of madness.
Oh, women in France,
Women of Germany
Regard your menfolk!
They fumble with torn hands
For the swollen bodies of their enemies,
Gestures, stiff in death, become the touch of brotherhood,
Yes, they embrace each other,
Oh, horrible embrace!
I see and see and am struck dumb
Am I a beast, a murderous dog?
Men violated
Murdered.
Prose & Poetry - Ernst Toller
Updated - Sunday, 12 May, 2002
In France when war broke out , Ernst Toller (1893-1939) returned to Germany and enlisted. Despatched to the Western Front in March 1915 Toller was initially pleased at the notion of being able to "do my bit."
Toller served at Bois-le-Pretre and then at Verdun. His initial enthusiasm for the war underwent a radical change. Now shocked and appalled by the scale of carnage and the nature of mechanised warfare, he questioned the motives of those who declared war and wondered what made a French mother any different from her German equivalent.
After the war Toller's poetry took on a political tone and he was increasingly regarded as a dangerous political revolutionary.
Toller was found guilty in 1919 of high treason in supporting the Spartakist rising. He was sentenced to five years imprisonment, during which time he continued to write poetry and a number of plays (including Transformation, The Machine Wreckers and Masses and Man).
Scene from "Transformation," Berlin, 1919.
This image represents one of the play's more grotesque scenes, the "Dance of the Skeletons."
Scene from "Man and Masses" by Toller, Berlin, 1921. This play presents the enlightened, idealistic hero leading the masses, who come finally to be aware of their crude materialism. The play confronts the problem of force being utilized in the establishment of a community of love.
Toller was fortunate to escape the death penalty and was the beneficiary of intervention on his behalf by Max Weber and Thomas Mann.
Upon his release from prison in 1924 Toller continued to publish further works, including Once a Bourgeois Always a Bourgeois (1927) and became a prominent figure within the League for Human Rights and the Group of Revolutionary Pacifists.
Toller's Jewish background further ensured his political alienation. The publication of his war memoirs I Was a German - which stressed his belief in worldwide humanity over his own German nationality - was similarly anathema to those now in power.
Toller was obliged to seek exile first in Britain and then in the U.S. where, after a short-lived career writing film scripts (of which only one, Hangmen Also Die, was produced) he committed suicide in New York on 22 May 1939.
http://www.firstworldwar.com/poetsandprose/toller.htm
Recent Comments