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German Life and Letters 40:4 July 1987 0015-8777 $2.00

THE BRITISH CONNECTION: ASPECTS OF THE BIOGRAPHY OF ERNST TOLLER

RICHARD DOVE

Of all the stations of exile, England was the country in which Ernst Toller felt most at home, according to his friend and publisher Fritz Landshoff. In his introduction to Seven Plays, dated 17 October 1934, Toller calls Britain ‘the scene of the author’s involuntary yet voluntary exile, the land which has become a second home to him’. The only collected edition of his plays to appear in his lifetime was published in English in London, his only marriage took place there and London was the destination of his last planned journey, forestalled by suicide. However, while Toller’s years of exile in the U.S.A. have been extensively documented by John M. Spalek, his corresponding years in Britain have received little attention. The purpose of this article is therefore to document the British connection in his life, particularly during 1933-36, and to place it in the overall perspective of his life and work in exile. One difficulty is that, while Toller published impressions of various countries he visited, he wrote virtually nothing on Britain. Consequently the main sources for this article are contemporary press reports and Toller’s own unpublished correspondence, some of which is only now coming to light.*

Toller had enjoyed a considerable reputation in Britain in the 1920s, though his direct contacts were confined to three short visits - in 1925, 1928 and 1929. He first announced plans to visit Britain in September 1924, shortly after his release from prison, and even accepted an invitation to come in spring 1925, only to postpone the visit on account of his projected tour of the Middle East.3 He did not finally come until November 1925 - and very nearly did not come at all. He was invited by the PEN Club to give lectures and readings from his work, but despite the literary purpose of his visit, he had difilculty in gaining entry. He was finally given a visa only after the intervention of Paul Lobe, who testified to the British Passport Office that Toller was ‘hervorragend geeignet . . . auf Grund seiner Werke und mit seiner Personlichkeit dem geistigen Zusammenschlud der Volker Europas zu dienen’. Toller wrote thanking Lobe for his intercession:

Ich habe jetzt wirklich ein Visum fur England - fur acht Tage - bekommen, sodaB ich rechtzeitig zu der Zusammenkunft des Pen-Clubs am 1. Dezember in London sein kann.+

The validity of his visa was later extended to four weeks. At the time of this first visit, Toller’s international reputation was already

established, his work already known in London through the Stage Society’s productions of The Machine Wreckers (1923) and Man and the Masses (1924). Some idea of his standing can be gauged from his engagements in Britain - he not only addressed the PEN Club, but lectured at Cambridge on ‘Contemporary

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Trends in German Theatre’ and ‘received an enthusiastic reception’ when he read from his lyric cycle D a s Schwalbenbuch to a large audience invited by the English Goethe Society in the Great Hall of King‘s C01lege.~ Toller called his stay in London ‘ungewohnlich reich . . , die Fiille der Eindrucke kaum bezwing- baJ; in fact, his impressions seem to have been somewhat superficial. He found the tempo quicker than in Berlin and men calmer (‘to me all your men seem calm’); the slums of Whitechapel ‘filled him with sadness’ and Cambridge was ‘like a return to the Middle Ages’.6

Toller’s visa difficulties re-occurred when he planned a second visit, again at the invitation of the PEN Club, in 1927:

Ich sollte in einigen Tagen einen Vortrag in London uber literarische Probleme halten. Mir wurde der PaB anfangs verweigert wegen meiner Rede auf dem Briisseler KongreB und mir in Aussicht gestellt, dafi ich wiederum auf die Schwarze Liste komme. Nach groBten Schwierigkeiten habe ich diesmal die Einreiseerlaubnis bekommen.’

He was in fact obliged to postpone and finally cancel this visit, due to pressure of work on Hoppla, w i r Men!. When he finally returned to London in 1928, interest in his work seemed to have waned. Performances of his plays were in any case limited by prevailing taste and censorship. The prudish nature of English society and the prevalence of censorship are both illustrated in the critical reaction to Brokenbrow (Hinkemann) when it was produced at the experimental Gate Theatre in 1926:

The central theme of the play, which in the existing circumstances would never be licensed for public performance by the censor is not one that I can more than hint at here. . , It was again the Gate Theatre which produced Hoppla in February 1929,

providing the occasion of Toller’s next visit to London, and it was censorship which dominated the visit. Toller also attended a production of the play at Terence Gray’s Festival Theatre in Cambridge the same month.g This production suffered severe cuts by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, a misfortune which the Gate Theatre had been able to avoid since it was organised on a membership basis. Terence Gray used the occasion to attack theatre censorship, both in the programme and in the actual production, the performance being punctuated by pauses, in which the actors froze on stage while a voice announced that the following passage had been censored. The blue pencil markings in the copy submitted to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office confirm that the cuts were extensive, relating to dialogue considered offensive or sexually explicit, and including an entire scene showing Lotte Kilman in bed with Count Lande.l0 Toller’s own account states that the introductory film, showing the suppression of a workers’ revolution by the army, was also cut.” Toller’s article deserves mention as the first and almost the last he wrote about Britain, but his account of British censorship practices remains rather superficial - for a more incisive survey one must turn to a source such as Ivor Montagu’s pamphlet ‘The political censorship of films’, also published in 1929. It is quite

ERNST TOLLER’S BRITISH CONNECTION 321

possible that Toller discussed the question of censorship with Montagu, who had actually been his host during his visit to London in 1928.’*

Hopplu was the last play of Toller‘s to receive a London production for several years; he himself did not return until September 1933. His contacts with Britain during the 1920s were therefore brief and, the evidence suggests, somewhat superficial: Britain was apparently just one more destination in the restless itinerary which he pursued after his release from prison.

When Toller finally returned to Britain in September 1933, it was in very different circumstances. He had already been forced into exile by the Nazis, his books banned and his German nationality revoked. He had spent the early months of exile in Switzerland, but in May 1933 had once more attracted attention with a speech denouncing the Nazi rCgime at the International PEN Congress in Dubrovnik, which was widely reported in the international press and which once more established him as an international figure.

The purpose of his visit to London that September was to testify to the Legal Commission of Inquiry into the Burning of the Reichstag, an event organised by the publisher and propagandist Willi Munzenberg. The Commission was conceived as a counterpart to the official Reichstag Fire Trial, about to open in Leipzig, and formed part of a campaign to secure the release of Torgler, Dimitroff and the other principal defendants: as the DaiCy Worker wrote, it was ‘the trial of a trial’.13 The Commission was made up of eminent lawyers, drawn from eight different countries and chosen for their liberal reputation, under the chairmanship of the Labour barrister D. N. Pritt. The hearings took place in the court room of the Law Society, a small room which was packed throughout the proceedings by members of the press and public.

Toller was one of a series of well-known witnesses who included Grzesinski, the former Police President of Berlin, Georg Bernhard, sometime editor of the Vossische Zeitung, and Reichstag deputies Rudolf Breitscheid, Paul Hertz and Wilhelm Koennen. Toller testified on the final day of the hearings, recounting the attempt to arrest him and other leading writers: ‘I do not know what I was to be charged with. There are thousands of people in concentration camps today who do not know what they are charged with‘. He stated his belief that the Fire was part of a pre-arranged plan and closed his address rhetorically:

I refuse to recognise the right of the present rulers in Germany to rule, for they do not represent the noble sentiments and aspirations of the German people.

Isobel Brown, secretary of the Organising Committee, recalled that Toller also addressed many meetings organised around the Commission and spoke of his ‘untiring efforts on behalf of Dimitroff and his fellow-prisoners’.

Sceptics like Tucholsky thought Toller was wasting his time:

Schmeckt Ihnen der GegenprozeD in London?. . .Was sol1 das? Wen verhort man da? Was kann Toller aussagen? Das ist doch Blodsinn! Er weid doch gar nichts uber die Sache. (Es ist sehr tapfer von ihm - er riskiert sein Leben.)14

322 ERNST TOLLERS BRITISH CONNECTION

Toller, however, recognised that the purpose of the Commission was to discredit the official trial and bring pressure to bear on its verdict. The findings of the Commission, which exonerated the principal defendants, were accordingly presented on September 20, ensuring that the news appeared the following morning to coincide with the opening of the actual trial in Leipzig. There were many on the Left who hailed the eventual acquittal of Dimitroff as a defeat for the Nazis and a triumph for the international campaign which had been conducted. Toller himself was in no doubt:

Even dictators bow before public opinion. If world opinion had not made a strong demand, if men who were true to the great traditions of their nations had not lent their aid, would the innocent Dimitroff have been saved from the ~caffold?’~

The Reichstag Fire remained an event charged with emotional and symbolic significance for Toller: it formed the theme of his last published poem, ‘Die Feuerkantate’ (1938), in which the Fire is both a symbol of the political repression by the Nazis and a beacon lighting the future generations which will supersede them. l6

Following the Inquiry, Toller remained in Britain to carry out a lecture tour under the auspices of the PEN, doubtless facilitated by Hermon Ould, the International PEN secretary and a long-standing friend, who had translated Hofiplu (1928) and Which World, Which Way?(1931). At this time, Toller must also have concluded an agreement for the publication of the English version of his autobiography, which was to appear in February 1934, the month in which he finally settled in Britain. He lived in London until September 1936, though continuing to travel widely abroad. One reason for his decision to settle in Britain was certainly the freedom from the publishing restrictions imposed on the literary exile in Switzerland, but he none the less seems to have felt a genuine affinity with England. Interviewed by a Finnish newspaper in October 1934, he affirmed that the concept of justice was more alive in Britain than anywhere else. He had been amazed that even conservative papers had called for the release of the KPD leader Thalmann, but in England, he said, this was nothing unusual, which was why a refugee could feel at home there.”

It was in London that the typical pattern of his life in exile began to emerge, a pattern wich exemplifies his conception of the committed writer. ‘Arbeite ich, bin ich von der Arbeit besessen, aber ich weiO, daO wieder Entscheidungen fallen konnen, in denen personlicher Einsatz wichtiger ist als Kunst’.’* These words, written in 1930, were prophetic of his life in exile, in which all his work was subordinated to the overriding purpose of exposing the true face of Nazi Germany. In consequence, he turned increasingly to lecturing and public speaking: during the six years of his exile, he gave more than 200 recorded speeches and lectures, though the actual figure is probably much higher. His second public concern was the extensive relief projects he undertook, firstly on behalf of fellow-refugees and later to feed the civilian population of Spain - campaigns consciously planned in a political context of advancing Fascism.

Toller’s campaigning commitments undoubtedly distracted him from purely


literary work, but his literary production during the three years he lived in London was none the less considerable. He wrote the ‘Chorwerk’ Weltliche Passion, the drama No More Peace, compiled an edition of prison letters, in collaboration with Hermann Kesten, wrote various arficles and essays, and began work on the two film scripts - Der Weg nach Indim and Lola Montez - which he was to complete while under contract to MCM in 1937-38.

The greatest problem for most exiles was to turn their back on the past and find a social foothold in their adopted country; Toller‘s public activities document his remarkable success at integrating himself into British society. From 1934 his work achieved an astonishing popularity for a foreign writer. His autobiography was published in 1934, his collected plays in 1935 and his prison letters in 1936, while several of his plays were also printed or re-printed in separate editions. When his autobiography appeared in English translation, it was reviewed in over a dozen publications, including the Manchester Guardian, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Statesman, and The Spectator.

Toller was once more lionised in British literary circles. he was elected an honorary member of the English PEN Club, invited to lecture to university audiences in London and Manchester and to address various cultural organisations, such as the Young PEN Club, the British Drama League and the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR. His activities were reported in the press, his essays published in the New Statesman, The Bookmun and Time and Tide. He engaged in public controversy with H. G. Wells, corresponded with Ethel Mannin, J. B. Priestley, John Lehmann and others. In short, he soon became scarcely less of a literary celebrity than he had been in Germany.

Toller’s literary standing was, as always, inseparable from his political reputation. His speech in Dubrovnik had established him as a symbol of German opposition in exile. He was able to move freely in progressive political circles, numbering among his contacts journalists like Kingsley Martin and Wickham Steed, Socialist intellectuals like Harold Laski and D. N. Pritt, Lady Oxford, the doyenne of liberal causes, and Fenner Brockway. The latter, then secretary of the I.L.P., recalled that Toller had close links with the Party, providing advice on the illegal work it tried to carry out in Germany.Ig

It was of course Germany to which Toller still looked. He participated in many of the anti-Fascist initiatives launched by the various exile groups, such as Munzenberg‘s ‘Braunbuch’ and the campaign for the release of Thdmann. In 1934, he was elected to the managing committee of the German Freedom Library in Paris, a collection of all works proscribed by the Nazis and others dealing with the phenomenon of Nazism. Alfred Kantorowicz recorded Toller’s enthusiasm for this venture and his crucial role in providing contacts (notably Lady Oxford), which led to the establishment of a Society of Friends of the Burned Books in England.*O

Toller was particularly active in the Free Qssietzky campaign on behalf of the former Weltbiihne editor, who was a prisoner in the concentration camp of Papenburg-Esterwegen, and who had been so badly mistreated that there were real fears for his life. Early in 1934, the German League for Human Rights in exile launched an international campaign for his release, in which Toller was


assigned the task of gaining the support of the Munchester Guardian and other English newspapers. In June 1934 the League began a new campaign to secure the Nobel Peace Prize for Ossietzky.

Toller was a forceful and astute lobbyist, persuading Harold Laski to nominate Ossietzky to the Nobel Committee and winning the support of the influential Times journalist Wickham Steed. Lion Feuchtwanger recalled an occasion in 1935 when Toller, newly married and living in a picturesque but tumbledown house in Hampstead in which nothing worked properly, enter- tained an English journalist to enlist his support for the campaign. Toller’s charm and eloquence prevailed all too well:

Der Mann, der fur Ossietzky gewonnen werden sollte, war langst gewonnen, er hatte gehen sollen, aber er blieb und der arme Toller mul3te noch herunterlaufen und irgendwo in der Stadt den Kaffee auftreiben, der nicht da war.21

The campaign for Ossietzky gained wide international support, transcending its immediate objective and transforming Ossietzky himself into a symbol of the ‘other Germany’ the exiles so often sought to evoke. In November 1936 the Nobel Prize Committee finally announced the award of the Peace Prize for 1935 to Ossietzky, news which Toller greeted as further proof that even dictators bowed to world opinion. In fact he was sadly mistaken. The Third Reich ignored international opinion, refused Ossietzky permission to travel to Oslo to receive the prize and only released him in order that he could die in hospital in May 1938.

The increasing convergence of literature and politics in the thirties is aptly illustrated by events within the International PEN in 1933-34. Toller’s speech in Dubrovnik had set the scene for a rapid politicisation of the PEN; in its aftermath, Toller made strenuous efforts to have the German section expelled from the organisation for violation of its basic principles. In November, the German section finally resigned and the following month Toller, Feuchtwanger and Rudolf Olden formed a PEN centre of German writers in exile, which was to be ‘a centre of free German literature’, aiming to counter the propaganda of official Nazi culture, to relieve the isolation of writers in exile and to offer practical help where possible.**

When the International PEN Congress reassembled in June 1934 in Edinburgh, politics dominated the agenda. The President, €3. G. Wells, set the tone of the proceedings in his opening address:

When politics reaches up and assaults literature and the liberty of human thought and expression, we have to take notice of politics. If not, what will the PEN Club be? A tourist agency, introducing respectable writers to useful scenery.23

The Congress gave official recognition to the German PEN centre in exile, acknowledging exiled writers as the true representatives of German thought and culture. Toller received a particularly warm welcome when he rose to address the Congress. Speaking ‘as a writer to writers’, he made a long plea


on behalf of German authors still imprisoned without trial and for that part of Germany, ‘das leidende Deutschland’, of which the papers said nothing. ‘If we really believe in the power of the word’, he declared, voicing a constant theme of his years in exile, ‘we ought not to be silent’. At the end of the Congress, he proposed a resolution attacking the Nazi government and calling for the release of writers imprisoned without trial, which was passed with only one dissenting voice.24

During 1934-35 Toller was much in demand as a speaker and lecturer, activities which may initially have been a necessary source of income, but which soon came to take precedence over his literary work. He spoke on both literary and political topics, though the dividing line was one which was increasingly eroded by events. In a lecture at Manchester University on ‘The German Theatre Today’ he discussed the stylistic innovations of Expressionism and ‘Neue Sachlichkeit’ - and their suppression by a political ideology which denounced ‘all modern experiments as cultural Bolshevism’. His address was greeted by prolonged applause which, always conscious of his representative stature, he took as a tribute ‘not only to myself, but to all free writers who are not living in the Third Rei~h‘ .*~

Toller’s activities were regularly monitored by the German Embassy, being no doubt a source of some embarrassment; in January 1935 he began a series of lectures which finally provoked the Embassy into direct intervention. On January 10 a diplomat called zu Putlitz requested a meeting at the Foreign Office at which, according to the official memorandum, he raised the ‘question of German refugees - he was thinking particularly of Ernst Toller - who travelled the country giving speeches against the German government’. He asked that the government should insist that refugees should refrain from anti- German activities during their stay in Britain, and that if they failed to do SO,

they should be deported.26 The Foreign Office politely refused, but other efforts to silence Toller were more successful. In the same month, he was invited to address a rally of the Irish Labour League against Fascism on ‘National Socialist Germany’, but was refused permission to enter Ireland following representations by the German Embassy in Dublin.27

The publication of so much of his work in Britain had given Toller relative financial independence, which he now used to launch a major campaign to alleviate the plight of fellow-refugees in Britain and France. Some 8,000 German refugees had settled in France, representing the largest concentration in Europe. While the French admitted them quite freely, most were refused work permits and were therefore forced to live off the generosity of friends or the charity of relief committees. In the spring of 1935 Toller visited France to study the situation of refugees there, and on the basis of his findings made a series of proposals to improve their lot. By skilful lobbying, he gained the support of human rights organisations, trades unions and politicians ‘ranging from the extreme Right to the extreme Left’. He then submitted his proposals to the French government and conducted discussions with the Ministry of Labour.

After the apparent success of his campaign in France, he published similar proposals in Britain. In July 1935 he reported that his preliminary proposals


had already been accepted by the reiief committees, by different churches and by politicians of all parties. Reading his proposals, it is impossible to overlook their practical, even pragmatic nature. They are concerned with the problem of work permits and identity papers, urging countries to help refugees as a matter of enlightened self-interest. He readily conceded that his proposals could only provide a partial solution to tht problem and suggested that a real solution lay in establishing a special office of the League of Nations, citing the example of Fridtjof Nansen, the League’s first Commissioner for Refugees.28 Toller’s campaign rcvealed great commitment and a talent for publicity which was noted by Alfred Kantorowicz.

Ernst Toller ist hier, voll von Plancn, Ehrengast verschiedener kultureller und politischer Institutionen. Er diniert oft zu seinen Ehren, spricht oft, und ist mit seiner Publicity vollauf bes~haf t ig t .~~

Toller concluded his proposals in Britain by stressing that the refugee question was not an isolated one, but merely ‘part of the whole struggle for the victory of humanity over barbarism’. He increasingly defined the coming struggle in Europe as one between civilisation and barbarism, democracy and dictatorship, peace and war. The problem of peace in the context of burgeoning Fascism became an obsessive concern: the ltrynote of his lectures and speeches and the theme of his anti-war play No More Peace.

The two and a half years which Toller spent in Britain were crucial for the development of his political views, particularly his attitude to pacifism. This development, apparent in all inis speches and lectures, can be documented in the successivc versions of a lcc~ure originally given under the evocative title ‘Masses and Man. The Problem of Non-violence and Peace’. The lecture was probably written and translated in 1933 and certainly no later than 13 February 1934, when it was delivered at a ‘Idunch hour meeting on peace and inter- nationalism’ at the Friends’ House, London; it was later published as a twopenny pamphlet by the Friends Book Centre. Tolleds preoccupation with the problem of peace is shown by his repeated FI. visions to the text of this speech:John M. Spalek lists no frwer than five verswns, one of which is published in Toller’s Gesammelte Werk~ .~O A brief cornpdrkon of the earliest published version with the one most recently published is instructive.

The former i s very much a discastion of the conflict between private morality and public necessity, summarised in one crucial passage:

Whoever today fights on the political plane, in the hand-to-hand conflict of economic and human interests, must recognise that the laws and con- sequences o f his struggle are determined by other forces than his good intentions, that often the means of offence and defence are forced upon him, means which he cannot but feel as tragic, upon which in the deep sense of the word he may bleed to death.31

This reflection, first formulated in identical words in 1925, documents the consistency of Toller’s views over the intervening decade, restating the position of ‘revolutionary pacifism’ which he had adopted after 1924.


Toller goes on to propose the crucial importance of education for peace, once more repeating a long-held c o n v i c t i ~ n . ~ ~ Asking ‘how is peace to be enforced?’, he finds the answer in ‘the banishment of the spirit of violence and war from schools and universities and from the history books’. Though he was concerned to reconcile public and private morality, he also wished to place his argument in a framework of international relations, proposing a form of collective security in which the great powers would make peace proposals and impose economic sanctions on any nation not conforming to them. Toller may well have been thinking of French requests for British cooperation in economic sanctions against Germany, but significantly he nowhere mentions Nazi Germany by name. He concludes by praising ‘the adventure of peace’, advocating the inspiration of personal example: ‘There is no middle way for the man of action. The world needs examples and exemplary lives.’

Toller’s attitude shifted considerably in 1935-36 under the impact of political events - the re-occupation of the Rhineland, the Rome-Berlin axis, the outbreak of civil war in Spain - changes which are reflected in the substantial revisions and additions made in the later versions of the lecture ‘Masses and Man’. The version published in Gesammelte Werke was probably written in 1936 in the U.S.A.: it was certainly revised for American audiences, since the title was changed to ‘Man and the Masses: the Problem of Peace’, to correspond to the title of the American translation of Masse Mensch. The new title was also abbreviated, suggesting what the revisions to the text confirm, namely that a problem originally posed largely in individual terms is now translated onto the plane of international relations. The section advocating education for peace has disappeared: the urgency of the international situation imposed a shorter perspective. Toller specifically cites Nazi Germany as a threat to world peace. He repeats the question, ‘how is peace to be enforced?’, but now answers it by insisting that the democracies must be prepared to use force against Hitler, a conviction echoed in other speeches and lectures he gave at this time.33

The differences between these two versions indicate the change in Toller’s attitude during the three years which separate them. His growing conviction that the democracies would have to defend themselves by force of arms is echoed in his private correspondence: ‘the final fight between the Fascist and the democratic blocks in Europe will be inevitable’, he wrote in July 1936.34 Toller’s change of attitude had therefore crystallised before he left London in October 1936, though he gave it public expression only later that year in his lectures in the U.S.A.

The problem of peace in the face of European Fascism is also the keynote of Toller’s literary work in the years of London exile, notably the ‘Chorwerk’ Weltliche Passion and the drama No More Peace. Weltliche Passion35 (written 1933-34) is a ‘Sprechchor’ or poem for mass declamation, a form which Toller had pioneered as early as 1920. ‘Sprechchore’ had enjoyed wide popularity in the German Labour Movement at that time, but had declined after 1925, as Socialist theatre groups had turned to other forms such as revue or agitprop. That Toller should return to the genre in 1934 therefore seems a stylistic anachronism; thematically, too, the work seems dated in its celebration of Karl


Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, whose stature as Socialist martyrs in the 1920s had been distanced by more recent events. Both figures had long fascinated Toller, who in 1926 had actually written an unpublished play dealing with the events surrounding their murder;36 he had dedicated one of his earlier ‘Sprechchore’ to Liebknecht, whose opposition to the war he now likened to the courageous opposition to the Nazis within Germany.

Weltliche Passion is narrated by a chronicler, the story being interspersed with choral parts which provide illustration and commentary. It opens with a celebration of revolution, symbolised by the hammer and sickle, representing productive labour and fruitful harvest - and contrasted with the destruction of war. Opposition to the war, indeed to war itself, is personified by Liebknecht: ‘Und mit klarer/Allen vernehmbarer/Stimme rief er: /Krieg dem Kriege’ (p. 174). His message inspires the struggle for social justice, ‘fur ein DeutschlandiDer schaffenden Handei Fur ein Deutschlandf Der Gerechtigkeit’ (p. 176). The forces of reaction put a price on the heads of the two revolutionary leaders, who are betrayed and murdered. But though their voices are silenced, their memory will continue to inspire commitment: ‘Denn die Toten ehrt/Wer dem Lebendigen dient’ (p. 181).

The history of the publication and performance of Weltliche Passion is eloquent of the situation of the exiled writer. The poem was first published in the Moscow- based journal Internationale Literutur immediately after Toller’s appearance at the Soviet Writers Congress (17 August - 1 September 1934); it appeared three months later in the literary journal Die Sammlung, a conjuncture illustrating its place as a literary document of the emerging Popular Front. An English translation of the poem entitled Requiem was completed in 1935 by Alexander Henderson, but apparently never published. Toller mentions this translation in a letter to the English composer Christian Darnton, whose collaboration he was seeking for both Requiem and the ‘gallantes Puppenspiel’ T i e Scorned Lover’s- Reve~zge.~’ Toller’s earlier choral works had been recited to musical accompaniment, and his correspondence with Darnton confirms that he envisaged Requiem being performed in the same way. Darnton declined to collaborate, however, and Requiem was performed in Britain without musical accompaniment, none the less enjoying a remarkable popularity with Socialist theatre groups. It became indeed his most frequently performed work, prompting the poet Randall Swingler to write ‘there will be many in England who have been moved by his Requiem, so often performed in translation by Unity Theatre’.3*

Weltliche Passion is both an indictment of war and an incitement to the revolution which will make war obsolete; it therefore restates the ‘revolutionary pacifist’ argument that war could be prevented only by removing the causes of war. The comedy No More Peace is ideologically more ambiguous. No More Peace was the first of two dramas Toller wrote in exile. The fact that he wrote no more than two is often cited as proof of his creative decline: it is much more a consequence of the material conditions of exile. The practical and financial difficulties facing all exiled writers were undoubtedly greatest for the dramatist. The practical difficulties of bringing together actors, a stage and an audience in the conditions of exile were almost insuperable. As the opportunities for

ERNST TOLLERS BRITISH CONNECTION 329

production in German-speaking countries steadily declined (from early 1934 censorship made it impossible to produce left-wing or anti-Nazi plays in Austria), the exiled dramatist was obliged either to write for a small group of fellow-exiles, or if he wished to reach a wider audience, to have his work translated and adapted to suit the tastes and conventions of his adopted country. Even then, his work might be travestied or misunderstood. Both the plays Toller wrote in exile exemplify this situation. Both were written in German, but first published in English translation. No More Peace was revised and adapted for the English stage, but was misinterpreted by the London critics. Pastor Hull was rejected for production in the U.S.A., allegedly because of the unsuitability of the translation. Neither play was published or produced in German during Toller’s lifetime.

No More Peace (the title pointedly inverts the name of the No More War movement) is a satirical musical comedy, a genre Toller had already tried un- successfully in Bourgeois bleibt Bourgeois. Toller wrote the play in 1934-5, though he later revised it for English production. The sole surviving German version is a typescript now in the Yale University Library which Spalek dates ‘auf die Zeit zwischen Ende 1934 und Friihjahr 1936‘.39 Toller’s unpublished correspondence suggests he began the play somewhat earlier, probably in October 1934, after his return from the Soviet Union:

Ich arbeite, was konnte ich Ihnen besseres sagen. . . Im Januar inszeniere ich Feuer aus den Kesseln in Manchester . . . Bis dahin hoffe ich, mein neues Stuck fertig zu haben.

He had completed the first draft of the new play by the end of the year: ‘Schrieb ich Ihnen, daf3 ich eine neue Komodie beendet habe? Ich schicke sie Ihnen, sobald ich ein Exemplar frei habe’.4” Though Toller does not name his new comedy, he can only be referring to No More Peace, the first scene of which had just been published in an exile per i~dica l .~~ He first refers to the play by name in July 1935:

Das Manuskript, auf das Mr Tysser Walter Leigh aufmerksam machte, ist eine Komodie, die ich in England geschrieben habe, ‘No More Peace’. Sie enthalt etliche Songs, Tanze und ein kleines Ballett. Ich sandte es heute an Mr T y s ~ e r . ~ ~

By the middle of 1935 at the latest, Toller therefore refers to what he considered a finished manuscript, which was certainly in German, though his reference to the English title suggests he was already thinking of an English version. He seems, in fact, to have made no effort to publish the play in German. Exile publishing houses published few plays because of the low sales anticipated, and according to Fritz Landshoff, Toller did not even offer the play to his publishers, Querido.H The play was produced in an English version at the Gate Theatre in June 1936 and was published the following year. The songs which punctuate and comment on the action were translated and adapted by W. H. Auden, whose acquaintance Toller had made only a few weeks earlier. In the spring of 1936 Toller and his wife had made a tour of Spain and Portugal,


where in Cintra in mid-April they met Auden and Christopher Isherwood. Auden had long admired Toller’s work and must have agreed at this meeting to translate the songs for No More Peace; indeed he must have begun work almost at once, as rehearsals for the production started barely a month later.

No More Peace deals with the fragility of peace and the problem of pacifism confronted with an aggressive and irrational ideology. Faced with the problem of writing for a British audience, Toller tried to universalise his theme by the choice of an imaginary setting. The scene alternates between Olympus and the imaginary republic of Dunkelstein, the scenes in Olympus outlining the play’s argument, which events in Dunkelstein then illustrate. In the opening scene, Napoleon strikes a bet with St Francis that despite the semblance of peace on earth, men will still answer the call of war. Dunkelstein is a haven of peace and stability, but no sooner has Napoleon despatched a bogus telegram announcing that war has been declared than the country is put on a war footing.

Despite this fantasy setting, Toller’s satire clearly has a factual target, the depiction of war fever in Dunkelstein revealing evident analogies with Nazism. Cain, a barber, is installed as Fascist dictator by Laban, the leading industrialist of Dunkelstein, a motif emphasising the link between capitalism and Nazism. Laban and his fellow-industrialists judge peace and war solely in terms of business opportunity, an opportunism summarised in the Financiers’ Song: ‘You must do the right thing at the right time’. As dictator, Cain appeals to the instincts of blind chauvinism and racial hatred, calling for the purity of blood and soil and forbidding marriage with foreigners. Disturbingly, he does not have to impose his will by force; it is a sobering aspect of mass psychology that the people actually endorse his dictatorship, echoing his demagogic slogans.

No More Peace must be seen as a dramatic counterpart to Toller’s public speaking. In the lecture ‘Das Versagen des Pazifismus in Deutschland’ (also written in 1934-35) he traced the post-war transition from pacifism to Fascism in Germany, a transformation suggested theatrically by the turn of a placard. In No More Peace Fascism is portrayed as intrinsically irrational. In the hysteria following the outbreak of war, no one is sure who the enemy actually is - even Cain can only say that it is the traditional enemy. Dunkelstein burns down its own cornfields, lest they should harbour spies; later, Cain orders an incendiary bomb attack which will destroy Dunkelstein itself ‘That is war, gentlemen. There will be destruction in any case. Better be destroyed by your own bombs than by the enerny’~’.~‘ Fascism is therefore seen to entail a reversal of rational values - it is systematic unreason, enacting Toller’s view of ‘einer Zeit, in der die Vernunft verachtet wird. . . Ja, die Unvernunft ist aufgestanden in Europa und sie verfolgt die V e r n ~ n f t ’ . ~ ~ The failure of pacifism in Germany was not, he suggested, a failure of reason so much as a collapse of the belief in reason. He gives this failure dramatic substance when Socrates, the personification of reason, returns to earth to proclaim the truth - but is stoned by the people.

Napoleon can affirm the success of his strategem, declaring that the sole purpose of peace is to prepare for renewed war. Men love the adventure and romance of war, the cult of the hero, and even the suffering of war does not

ERNST TOLLERS BRITISH CONNECTION 33 1

deter them: ‘Weren’t many of them perfectly happy? Happy to die?. . .Well, personally, I call the courage to fight and die, heroism.’ (p. 100) ‘Have so few men the courage to live?’, muses St Francis, asking a question Toller had already addressed in ‘Das Versagen des Pazifismus’:

Uberall in Schulen, in Buchern, in Filmen, in den Reden der republika- nischen Staatsmanner wurden den falschen Helden Denkmale gesetzt . . .Das einzige Verdienst dieser Helden war ein mehr oder minder heroischer Tod. Aber die Jugend hatte die Achtung und Bewunderung vor dem heroischen Leben lernen mussen. . . die Republik hatte dem Mut zum heroischen Leben Denkmale setzen mussen.

In this and other speeches Toller was concerned to draw a positive conclusion from his experience; No More Peace is more equivocal. The proponents of peace do not fare well: Socrates is derided as a madman and imprisoned, Rachel too is imprisoned for proclaiming ‘no more war’. Nor do the arguments for peace prevail, for peace is finally restored only through divine intervention.

The history of No More Peace is a powerful reminder of the practical problems facing the exiled dramatist, illustrating both the necessity and the difficulty of translation and adaptation. While Toller had completed the play by mid-1935, he was obliged to redraft it extensively for English production - according to his translator, Edward Crankshaw, he continued to rewrite parts of it during rehearsal.46 Even a brief comparison of the German and English texts confirms the extent of these changes. Some were to improve continuity, some to strengthen the analogies with Nazism for an English audience. The installation of Cain as dictator by Laban is, for example, much more explicit, while the poet who places his talents at the service of the dictator becomes, like Goebbels, Minister for Propaganda and Enlightenment. Auden’s lyrics are a free rendering of Toller’s original songs, showing formal differences which emphasise Auden’s facility with popular light verse. Significantly, it was they, rather than the play itself, which found favour with the critics, who seem to have judged it purely as entertainment - and found it wanting.

It was therefore not merely political activity which distracted Toller from literary work, but the necessity of translation and the search for suitable collabo- rators. How far his work was circumscribed by the material conditions of exile is also apparent from the pattern of his occasional writing. The tabulation at the end of this article records some twenty-five contributions of Toller‘s to British periodicals between September 1933 and September 1936, a total far exceeding his contributions to German exile periodicals in the same period. The nature of the texts is equally instructive. Five are extracts from longer works, printed in advance of book publication. The majority of the others are miscellaneous literary texts, including a story, book reviews, essays, travel sketches and aphorisms - the small change of literary production. Few of the texts directly address current political questions, even fewer focus on Britain itself. While Toller wrote and published a great deal during his stay in Britain, he wrote next to nothing about it: in this sense, he remained firmly in exile. Toller’s correspondence suggests that he took some trouble to place these contributions,


emphasising that they represented a small but necessary source of income. The failure of No More Peace seems to have strengthened Toller’s conviction

that the theatre was no longer the most suitable medium to convey his message. The cinema beckoned, promising larger audiences and better economic returns. When Toller left London for the U.S.A. in October 1936, he had already written the film scenarios on which he was to work for MGM.

Toller did not return to Britain until July 1938, when he stayed briefly in London on his way to the International Writers’ Congress in Paris. Following the Congress, he spent several weeks in Republican Spain, where his first-hand experience of the sufferings of the civilian population inspired him to launch the relief project to which he was to devote the last months of his life. He returned to London on 20 September to canvass international support for the plan: in the following weeks he addressed MPs at the House of Commons, spoke at public meetings and lobbied journalists and public figures. The progress of his campaign was recorded in a number of newspaper headlines: ‘Poet’s E l 0 million plan for Spain’, ‘Herr Toller’s Mission’, ‘Food for Spaniards: Lord Halifax supports Ernst Toller’s In October he visited Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo to enlist the support of the Scandinavian governments. On his return to London he held discussions with the Foreign Offke, finally securing the promise of British support for the project, provided the U.S. government took part.

Toller’s humanitarian concern had not blunted his political judgement. He found himself out of sympathy with the dominant mood of appeasement in Britain, warning of its dangers in a speech at the Conway Hall: ‘Have no illusions. . .every new concession to Hitler weakens not only the power of the democracies, but also the opposition inside Germany’.48 Ironically, the speech was delivered on 29 September, the day Hitler, Chamberlain and Daladier signed the Munich Agreement.

Toller brought with him to London at this time the manuscript of his last play, Pastor Hall, which was also concerned with the opposition inside Germany. He thought it ‘even more topical’ than No More Peace, and wished it could be performed in London, but doubted if ‘it would survive the protests of the German amba~sador’.~’ He was none the less anxious to have it translated, a task he assigned to the poet Stephen Spender, who was apparently a somewhat unwilling collaborator, agreeing to translate the play only as a personal favour. Spender completed the task well before the end of the year, but the play was rejected for production in the U.S.A., partly because of the alleged unsuitability of the translation. The subsequent fate of the play was closely linked with Britain: it was first published in London (June 1939), first produced in Manchester (November 1939), and later filmed by the Boultings (1940).

Toller left London for the last time on 12 November 1938. He planned to return to Britain with Fritz Landshoff in May 1939 and even appears to have anticipated a long stay, judging by a letter he wrote to Hermann Kesten. He suggested they should collaborate again on a play, thought war was inevitable, wanted to be in England when it came, and exhorted Kesten to join him there.50 Toller’s passage was already booked, his cases packed, but two days before the ship sailed, he committed suicide.


Toller’s publications in British periodicals and books (1 933-38) ‘Flamencos’, The Sackbut, 14/2 (September 1933), 39-40 ‘Three Cities. Sholem Asch‘, Time and Tide, 14/50 (16 December 1933), 1543-4 ‘The Montilla of Senor Cobos’, Weekend Review, 16 December 1933, 657-8 ‘It takes all sorts to make a revolution’, Time and Tide, 15/2 (13 January 1934),

32-5 ‘Swallows versus the State’, Time and Tide, 15/3 (20 January 1934), 64-6 ‘The Modern Writer and the Future of Europe’, The Bookman, 85 (January

‘Masses and Man: the problem of non-violence and peace’ (pamphlet), Friends

‘Spanish Sketches: Men and Women’, Time and Tide, 15/11 (17 March 1934),

‘Promenade in Seville’, New Statesman, NS 7/164 (14 April 1934), 544-5 ‘Two Vaults’, Lije and Letters, 10/57 (September 1934), 720-2 ‘A strange Prison’, Time and Tide, 15/40 (6 October 1934), 1220-1 ‘Stalin and Wells. A comment by Ernst Toller’, New Statesman, NS 7/193

‘A Man called Cervantes’, New Statesman, NS 8/199 (15 December 1934), 908 ‘Carl vom Stein’, in Great Democrats, ed. Alfred Baratt Brown, London 1934,

‘The Sexual Life of Prisoners’, introductory essay to Joseph Fishman, Sex Lije

‘Twenty Years After’, The Highway, 27 (January 1935), 11 1-3 ‘The Refugee Problem’, The Political Qwrterh, 613 (July-September 1935), 386-9 ‘Grabbed by the Tail’, New Statesman, NS 101234 (17 August 1935), 220-1 ‘Art and Life. From my Notebook‘, London Mercu?, 22/191 (September 1935),

‘No More Peace’ (Act 1 Scene l), Time and Tide. 17/2 (1 1 January 1936), 40-1 ‘Letter from Prison’, New Statesman, NS 11 (14 March 1936), 382-3 ‘The Word. Opening Speech at the International Writers Conference, June 19,

1936 in London’, Lije and Letters, 15/5 (autumn 1936), 34-6 ‘What means this liberty?’, Reynolds Illustrated News, 2 August 1936 ‘A British Free People’s Theatre’, New Statesman, NS 121290 (12 September

‘Three Poems. Songs from No More Peacd (adapted by W. H. Auden), London

‘Madrid-Washington’, New Statesman, NS 161398 (8 October 1938), 521-2 ‘A Minority Hitler never mentions’, The Tribune, 14 October 1938, 13

1934), 380-1

Book Centre, London 1934

342-3

(3 November 1934), 614-5

pp. 605-14

in Prison, London 1935

459-61

1936), 350-1

Mercury, 34/204 (October 1936), 484-5

NOTES

’ A welcome exception is the work of Professor Furness (Edinburgh), whose recent paper on Toller’s reception in Britain is due to be published in Exp7essionzsm in Focus (proceedings of the UEA Symposium on Exprissionism held in April 1986). I am grateful for his comments and suggestions on the first draft of this article.


I have referred to the following collections of Toller’s unpublished correspondence:

- letters to the PEN Club and other correspondents, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,

- letters to various correspondents in the ‘Sammlung Ernst Toller’, Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin; - letters to Betty Frankenstein, Deutsches Literaturarchiv, Marbach; - letters to Rudolf Olden, Deutsche Bibliothek, Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945, Frankfurt a.M.; - letters to P. C. Darnton, Department of Manuscripts, British Library, London (I am grateful

I have also made extensive use of contemporary newspapers, particularly the D a i b Herald, Daily Worker. News Chronicle. and Manchester Guardian. Further valuable sources. not always footnoted.

the University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A.;

to Ian Brunskill (Oxford) for drawing my attention to this collection).

were interviews with Fritz Landshoff (16 July 1982) and Fenner Brockway j19 Janua, 1983).

See The Plebs, September 1924, 337-38 and Toller’s letters to PEN Club, 24 January 1925 and

Lobe to British Passport Control Office, Berlin, 14 November 1925; Toller to Lobe,

Cf. ‘Ernst Toller in England’, Die Volksbiihne. 1 January 1926, PEGS, NS 3 (1926), 144. Toller to PEN Club, 24 December 1925; see also The Observer, 6 December 1925 and The New

Toller to Liga gegen koloniale Unterdriickung, 30 May 1927, Akademie der Kiinste

5 February 1925.

20 November 1925, Akademie der Kiinste.

Leader, 1 1 December 1925, 3.

’ The Speclator, 5 June 1926, 946

Theatre Cambridge from 25 February to 2 March 1929. lo Department of Manuscripts, British Library I’ ‘Zensur in England’, Berliner Tagehlatt, 6 June 1929

Cf. Toller to Per Lindberg, 18 May 1928, Akademie der Kiinste. For Ivor Montagu’s pamphlet, see Culture and Crisis in Britain in the Thirties, London 1979, p. 246 and passim.

l 3 0.4 Worker, 14 September 1933. This section is based on contemporary press reports and on correspondence with Isobel Brown, who was secretary of the organising committee for the Inquiry. I‘ Tueholsky to Walter Hasenclever, Auslewuhlte Bride 1913-35, ed. Mary Gerold-Tucholsky and Fritz J . Raddatz, Reinbek 1962. l 5 The Scotsman, 19 June 1934, 12. l6 ‘Die Feuerkantate’, Das Worf, 3/6 uune 1938), 35-36. Toller also submitted the poem, in an English translation by the American poet Muriel Rukyser, to the London Mercury: see his letter of 20 July 1938 to R. A. Scott-James, University of Texas. l 7 Dcr Fall Toller, ed. Wolfgang Friihwald and John M. Spalek, Munich 1979, pp. 204-05.

The production at the Gate Theatre ran from 19 February to 16 March, that at the Festival

Quer Durch, Berlin 1930, p. 296. Author‘s interview with Fenner Broekway

‘” Alfred Kantorowicz, Politik und Literatur im E d , Hamburg 1978, pp. 277-78 Lion Feuchtwanger, ‘Dem toten Ernst Toller’, Die Weltbuhne, 4/21 (24 May 1939), 730.

22 See Gabriele Tergit, ‘Die Exilsituation in England‘, in Die deutsche Exilliteratur, ed. Manfred Durzak, Stuttgart 1973. 23 The Scotsman, 19 June 1934, 1 1 .

*‘ The Scotsman, 19 June 1934. 12, and 21 June 1934, 12. For the German text of Toller‘s address, see Toller, Gesummelfe Werke, I. Munich 1978, pp. 173-78. The report in TheScofsman makes clear, however, that Toller gave his address in English. 25 Manchester Guardian, 1 7 February 1934.


26 See Exile in Creaf Britain. Rcjugcessfrom Hifln’r Germany, ed. G . Hirschfeld, London 1984, p. 36. ‘’ Der Fall Tolln, p. 209.

‘* ‘The Refugee Problem’, Polifical Quarterly, 6/3 Uuly-September 1935), 386-89. ” Alfred Kantorowicz to Rudolf Olden, 5 March 1935, Deutsche Bibliothek, Deutsches Exiiarchiv 1933-1945, Frankfurt a.M. This letter is cited in Wolfgang Rothe, Emf Toller, Reinbek 1983, note 232, where it is, however, wrongly dated. The date ia useful in establishing when Toller actually began his campaign in France. 30 ‘Masses and Man. The Problem of Non-violence and Peace’, London 1934; ‘Man and the Masses. The Problem of Peace’, Gcsammelfc Wnk , I, Munich 1978, pp. 78-85. A copy of the 1934 pamphlet is held in the Deutsche Bibliothek, which acquired it in 1981. The version printed in Cesammelfc Werke has an editorial footnote: ‘eine deutsche Fassung, auch ein Druck der englischeh Fassung sind bisher nicht bekannt geworden’ (p. 273). The pamphlet in the Deutsche Bibliothek is the published English version; I have been unable to find a corresponding German text. 3 1 Op. c i f . , p. 6. Cf. ‘Deutsche Revolution’, Berlin 1926. Toller had already repeated these words in his autobiography, see Gesammelfc Werke, IV, pp. 138-39. He used them again in ‘Das Versagen des Pazifismus in Deutschland’, Gesammelfc Werke, I, p. 183, where the perspective of revolutionary pacifism is explicit. 32 Cf. ‘An die Jugend aller Lander’ (1919), Gesammelfc Werkt, I , p. 48.

33 Cf. ‘Unser Kampf um Deutschland’, delivered in December 1936, Gcsammeltc Werke, I,

34 Toller to Jawahadal Nehru, 21 July 1936, in Nehru, A bunch of old .hers, London 1958,

35 ‘Weltliche Passion. Ein Chorwerk‘, Infcrnafiomlc Laferafur, 4/4 (1934), 3-8; Die Sammlung, 2/4 (December 1934), 174-82. Page references in the text refer to the latter publication. 36 Scenes from the play were published under the title Berlin 1919 in 1926-27.

37 Two typescript versions of the translation are in Yale University Library, as listed in John M. Spalek‘s bibliography (item no. 791), according to which neither is dated. The date can be roughly inferred from a letter of Toller’s to Christian Darnton dated 25 May 1935, in which he mentions ‘a puppet-play and a chorus-work for which I have written the words’. In a further letter, undated but apparently written in June 1935, Toller writes: ‘I have written three chorus-works, one has been translated. Mr Arthur Henderson, 31 Great St James Street, W.C.1, who has done the translation (he is also translating the puppet-play) will send you a copy of the chorus-work’. Toller has obviously mistaken the name of his translator, meaning Alexander Henderson, whose translation of The Scorned Lover’s Revenge was published in 8 New One-acf Phys of1935, ed. J. Bourne, London 1936.

38 Daily Workn, 24 May 1939. 39 Toller, Gesammelte Werke, 111, p. 328.

4a Toller to Betty Frankenstein, 30 November 1934 and 27 Deccmber 1934, Deutsches Literaturarchiv. 41 < Olympische Szene’, Dac ncuc Tage-Buch, 2/51 (22 Decun!nx 1934), 182Of. “ Toller to Christian Darnton, 13 July 1935, British Lihrmy. ‘3 Author’s interview with Fritz Landshoff. +4 No More Peace! A thoughtful comedy by Enist TdJcr, trans. E d w d Crankshaw, lyrics adapated by W. H. Auden, London 1937, p. 85. Subsequent page references in the: text are to this edition. ” Gesammelfe Werke, I, p. 191.

)6 See Malcolm Pittock, E m f Tolln, Boston 1979, p. ‘100 ” Dairy Herald, 15 October 1938, Daily Telegraph, Ptc C k t o l m acul29 Cict&:r 1938. A full account of Toller’s Relief Plan is contained in Spatck, ‘T;rn,st Tollern VortragstRtigkeit und seine

pp. 198-208.

p. 199.


Hilfsaktionen im Exil’, in Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Egon Schwarz (eds), Exil und Innere Emigration, 11, Frankfurt a.M. 1973, pp. 85-100.

The Tribune, 14 October 1938, 13. This publication was Toller’s last in a British periodical during his lifetime. ’’ TheStar, 19 October 1938, 7 .

Hermann Kesten, Meine Frcunde die Poeten, Frankfurt a.M./Berlin 1980, p. 153.

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