Ernst Toller's Poems 1918-1921 contain his complete ""Poems of the Prisoners"" and his first play ""Die Wandlung"" (Transformation). Ernst Toller was born in Samotschin, Province of Posen, Prussia in 1893 into a Jewish family. At the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for military duty, spent thirteen months on the Western Front, and suffered a complete physical and psychological collapse. His first drama, Transformation (Die Wandlung), was to be inspired by his wartime experiences.
This book is the fullest and most detailed study yet published in English of Ernst Toller's plays and their most significant productions. In particular the productions directed by Karl-Heinz Martin, Jurgen Fehling and Erwin Piscator are closely analyzed and the author demonstrates how, brilliant though they were, they obscured or even distorted Toller's intentions. The plays are seen as eminently stage-worthy while worth lies in Toller's use of language, both in prose and inverse. The neglected puppet-play The Scorned Lovers' Revenge is analyzed from a new perspective in the light, both of its language and its sexual theme, so important in Toller's writings as a whole. The reader is led to appreciate why Toller was regarded as the most outstanding German dramatist of his generation until, after his death in 1939 his reputation was overlaid by that of Brecht. This book should do much to restore Toller to his proper place in theatre history.
During the years of Weimar and the Third Reich, Toller was one of the more active of the "other Germany's" left-wing intellectuals. A leader of the Bavarian Soviet of 1919, he had in addition won the Kleist prize and was recognized as one of Germany's best playwrights. Indeed, during the years of the Weimar Republic, the popularity of his works was unquestioned. His first play, Die Wandlung, was soon sold out and required a second edition; his dramatic works and poems were translated into twenty-seven languages. During the 1920’s it was said that he "dominated the German and Russian theatre" and that he was the "most spectacular personality in modern German literature." It was common for contemporaries to classify him as one of the foremost German writers of the Weimar era. During the 1930s, as an exile, he popularized to foreign audiences the idea of “the other Germany”and became a leading spokesman against Hitler. However, it is Toller the social critic rather than Toller the dramatist with which thisbook is concerned, his ideas, his visions for Germany and Europe as transmitted in his works of fiction and prose. The book reflects on the responsibility an intellectual-critic has when writing about a democratic society (the Weimar Republic) that is unsuccessfully balancing between survival and annihilation. Toller was furthermore a Jewish intellectual. How did his religious traditions shape his views? He was also German and this raises a whole host of specifically Germanic patterns of looking at the world. He was also a left-wing intellectual and Toller is set in the broader context of left-wing intellectuals in Weimar and the Nazi era. A related reflection is to ask: so what? What difference did it make? How much of an influence do intellectuals have in the development of society? What is the relationship between intellectuals and their readers in a troubled society?
'Nowhere, beloved, can world be but within us' Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the leading poets of European Modernism, and one of the greatest twentieth-century lyric poets in German. From The Book of Hours in 1905 to the Sonnets of Orpheus written in 1922, his poetry explores themes of death, love, and loss. He strives constantly to interrogate the relationship between his art and the world around him, moving from the neo-romantic and the mystic towards the precise craft of expressing the everyday in poetry. This bilingual edition fully reflects Rilke's poetic development. It contains the full text of the Duino Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus, selected poems from The Book of Images, New Poems, and earlier volumes, and from the uncollected poetry 1906-26. The translations are accurate, sensitive, and nuanced, and are accompanied by an introduction and notes that elucidate Rilke's poetic practice and his central role in modern poetry. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Designed to provide English readers of German literature the opportunity to familiarize themselves with both the established canon and newly emerging literatures that reflect the concerns of women and ethnic minorities, the Encyclopedia of German Literature includes more than 500 entries on writers, individual work, and topics essential to an understanding of this rich literary tradition. Drawing on the expertise of an international group of experts, the essays in the encyclopedia reflect developments of the latest scholarship in German literature, culture, and history and society. In addition to the essays, author entries include biographies and works lists; and works entries provide information about first editions, selected critical editions, and English-language translations. All entries conclude with a list of further readings.
A dictionary of playwrights which contains 485 entries, each of which includes biographical information on the playwright, complete lists of published works (with dates of performance) and a bibliography of critical studies on the playwright.
Playwright, socialist revolutionary, and political activist and organizer, Ernst Toller was one of the most celebrated German authors known to the English-speaking world from the 1920s to the Second World War.
