12 Facts About Ernst Toller

Ernst Toller was a German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays.

Ernst Toller served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, after which he became the head of its army.

Ernst Toller was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Bavarian Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlin.

In 1933 Ernst Toller was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power.

Ernst Toller was born in 1893 into a Jewish family in Samotschin, Germany.

Ernst Toller was the son of Ida and Max Toller, a pharmacist.

Together with leading anarchists, such as B Traven and Gustav Landauer, and Toller's party, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, Toller was involved in the short-lived 1919 Bavarian Soviet Republic.

Ernst Toller issued numerous decrees, almost all of which remained unrealised: the press was to be socialised, the mining industry was to be socialised, and the eight-hour working day made legally binding.

Ernst Toller decreed that citizens could withdraw only 100 marks per day from the banks, and issued reassurance to the workers that these measures were directed against the major capitalists who were attempting to take money abroad.

Ernst Toller was sentenced to five years in prison and served his sentence in the prisons of Stadelheim, Neuburg and Eichstatt.

Ernst Toller was unable to see the plays he had written in prison performed until after his release in July 1925.

The literary rights to the works of Ernst Toller were the property of the novelist Katharine Weber until the copyright expired on 31 December 2009.