Abstract

The Passion of Ernst Toller

The article presents a discussion of the book "I Was a German. The Autobiography of Ernst Toller." This autobiography, which Ernst Toller has recently published as his declaration of faith in the teeth of National Socialism, is likely to leave some readers a little bewildered. It starts plausibly enough. It tells of a typical middle-class German-Jewish boyhood characterized by the usual German-Jewish racial amnesia, of a youth in the trenches and a long convalescence which permitted him to meditate on the meaning of what he saw and to write poetry which attracted the attention of Thomas Mann. Continuing, it tells how at the close of the war he came in contact with the German revolutionary movement, and how he came to play an active role in the revolution.