This study shows how politics and art intermingled in the life and works of one of the most renowned playwrights of German Expressionism, a man who was in many senses paradigmatic of the non-communist Left in the Weimar Republic. Toller sought to preserve the sanctity of the individual against collectivist assaults from the Right and from the Left, but at the same time to meet the needs of a complex society. Ossar demonstrates that the playwright arrived at solutions that were anarchist in nature, deriving from a long European tradition. This is the first in-depth book-length study of Toller and his plays published in English.

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?

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.

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.

Political changes between 1918 and 1939 had important implications for German writers. The essays in this volume focus on questions such as the writers' relationship to political parties and ideology, their treatment of the legacy of World War I, and their response to the rise of fascism.

Originally published in 1978. When compared with socialist and communist systems in other nations, the impact of radicalism on American society seems almost nonexistent. David DeLeon challenges this position, however, by presenting a historical and theoretical perspective for understanding the scope and significance of dissent in America. From Anne Hutchinson in colonial New England to the New Left of the 1960s, DeLeon underscores a tradition of radical protest that has endured in American history—a tradition of native anarchism that is fundamentally different from the radicalism of Europe, the Soviet Union, or nations of the Third World. DeLeon shows that a profound resistance to authority lies at the very heart of the American value system. The first part of the book examines how Protestant belief, capitalism, and even the American landscape itself contributed to the unique character of American dissent. DeLeon then looks at the actions and ideologies of all major forms of American radicalism, both individualists and communitarians, from laissez-faire liberals to anarcho-capitalists, from advocates of community control to syndicalists. In the book's final part, DeLeon argues against measuring the American experience by the standards of communism and other political systems. Instead he contends that American culture is far more radical than that of any socialist state and the implications of American radicalism are far more revolutionary than forms of Marxism-Leninism.