Ernst Toller was one of the most celebrated German authors known in the English-speaking world from the 1920s to the Second World War. His plays were more performed in Britain in that period than those of any other German playwright.

This biography is the first full-length portrait of Ernst Toller in any language. It presents him and his influential work in historical and literary context, from his birth into a German-Jewish family in the Polish part of the German Empire, through his political awakening and coming of age in the First World War and the ensuing defeated German Revolution, following which Toller served five years in prison.

The author shows how Toller became one of the Weimar Republic’s leading playwrights, with a lasting influence on the European (including the British) theatre, as well as a tireless and not always welcome early Cassandra warning of the rise of fascism from the early 1920s.

Compelled to leave Germany in 1933, Toller spent his exile years mainly in England, travelling to Soviet Russia and to the USA. He remained a key figure in the growing exile community, and continued to work as a playwright until his death in 1939.

Published by Libris in 1990