This is the first critical, contextualized edition in English of Eine Jugend in Deutschland (1933), the remarkable autobiographical account of Ernst Toller (1893–1939), one of the most important German writers of the first half of the twentieth century. Toller was a celebrated poet and, along with Bertolt Brecht, the most significant and innovative playwright of the Weimar Republic. Completed at the beginning of Toller’s exile from Nazi Germany, Eine Jugend in Deutschland gives a remarkable account of his childhood as the son of Jewish merchants in Eastern Prussia under Kaiser Wilhelm II, his studies in France, his eager service at the Western Front during World War I, his conversion to pacifism, his activism in the German Revolution of 1918–19 and leadership in the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, his trial for high treason, and his incarceration as a political prisoner of the Weimar Republic. Toller’s work, both acclaimed and controversial, left its mark on his contemporaries and is still inspiring writers today.
Featuring a vibrant new translation, thorough annotation, and appendix materials on the literary, political, and biographical contexts of the work, this edition will make Toller’s great work of autofiction accessible to contemporary readers.
