Poets

Ernst Toller was a left-wing German playwright, best known for his Expressionist plays and serving as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, for six days.

Biography

Ernst Toller was born in Samotschin, Poland, on 1st December 1893. His father was a successful Jewish wholesale merchant. He was schooled in Bromberg where depsite describing it as a "school of miseducation and militarization", he was able to begin his literary career with the publication of a number of articles in the local newspaper and then poetry.

In 1914 Toller moved to France in order to study law at the University of Grenoble. However, within six months the onset of the First World War meant he had returned home and signed up for the German army. Within a year he was fighting on the front lines, but by 1916 he was taken ill, suffering from "physical exhaustion and a complete nervous breakdown". In January 1917, now lacking his initial enthusiasm for the war and instead shocked by the high level of carnage, he was discharged from the army.

Following this, Toller moved to Munich to return to his studies at Heidelberg University. Here he became friends with sociologist Max Weber. In May 1917 the pair took part in the first "Lauensteiner conference", where they cordially disagreed about the course of the war. Whilst Weber argued for the continuation of the war, Toller favoured a negotiated peace.

Following his discharge from the army, Toller also returned to writing poetry..