Ernst Toller
Ernst Toller
Ernst Tollerwas a German left-wing playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, and was imprisoned for five years for his actions. He wrote several plays and poetry during that period, which gained him international renown. They were performed in London and New York as well as Berlin. In 2000, several of his plays were published in an English translation...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth1 December 1893
CountryGermany
This vast life - the real, interior one in which we remain linked to the dead (because the dream inside us ignores trivialities like breath, or absence) - this vast life is not under our control. Everything we have seen and everyone we have known goes into us and constitutes us, whether we like it or not. We are linked together in a pattern we cannot see and whose effects we cannot know.
There are no people who are whole" he says. "Everyone has issues of their own to deal with. Mine might be a little harder, but the main thing is how on deals with them.
I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.
But before my transfer came through I fell ill. Heart and stomach both broke down, and I was sent back to hospital in Strassburg.
My head was in a whirl, and I was trembling with excitement, surrendered to the passion of the moment like a gambler, like a hunter.
My hands shook and my heart pounded wildly. The air was filled with a sudden high-pitched whine, and a brown cloud of dust dimmed my field of vision.
Later we learned that it was one of our own men hanging on the wire. Nobody could do anything for him; two men had already tried to save him, only to be shot themselves.
And the spirit of revolution will not die while the hearts of these workers continue to beat.
After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now?
Each had defended his own country; the Germans Germany, the Frenchmen France; they had done their duty.
Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.
We thrust our fingers into our ears to stop its moan; but it was no good; the cry cut like a drill into our heads, dragging minutes into hours, hours into years. We withered and grew old between those cries.
The French got enough from the Germans to save them from starvation; but many a woman sold herself for a loaf or a chunk of sausage.
How happy I am to go to the front at last. To do my bit. To prove with my life what I think I feel.