Toller: Plays One: Transformation; Masses Man; Hoppla We'Re Alive!

(Paperback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Ernst Toller (1893-1939) is the most prominent of the German expressionist playwrights. Transformation (1919) is a poetic distillation in 'stations' of the author's conversion from patriot to pacifist in the First World War. In Masses Man (1920) utopian socialist realism clashes with Leninist revolutionary violence and triumphs in death, as real scenes alternate with dream sequences. With Hoppla We're Alive! (1927) Toller espoused 'new sobriety' and presented a contemporary political cross-section of Berlin.

Author Bio

Ernst Toller was a formative figure in the development of theatricaal modernism, yet his plays have not been available in English since the 1920s and 30s. He was also a revolutionary activist who experienced fully the unbearable cataclysms of his time: war, revolution, imprisonment, the chaos of Weimar life, Nazi persecution, exile and the Holocaust.