THE LATE ERNST TOLLER

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 120, 24 May 1939, Page 20

THE LATE ERNST TOLLER

Ernst Toller, the German playwright whose death was announced from New York yesterday, was! one of the bestknown figures in modern German literature. He was born in Samolschin in 1893, and educated at Grenoble, Munich, and Heidelberg Universities. In 1914 he joined the German army as a volunteer, but was invalided out in 1916. The following year he carried on propaganda against the war and was arrested. A friend of Kurt Eisner, and a Socialist, he played a prominent role in the Bavarian revolution of 1919, for which he was sentenced to five years imprisonment in a fortress, lii 1924, when he emerged, he became &■ member of the Bavarian Diet. On the rise of Hitler he escaped from Germany and went to the United States. He won celebrity in England and elsewhere for his revolutionary dramas. "Masses and Man'" and "Brokenbrow" (which were published by Francis Meynell, of the Nonesuch Press) and "The Machine Wreckers," a play of the Luddites, achieved particular fame. His "Masses and Man" was credited with much influence on the Russian theatre. Other works included two volumes of lyrics written in prison, "Which World, Which Way?" "I Was a German," "The Blind Goddess," and "Letters From Prison."