Ostend by Volker Weidermann

Author:Volker Weidermann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2016-01-26T05:00:00+00:00

Finally the Tollers arrive too, from London, on the direct ship from Dover. Wherever they surface, they’re stars, with a nimbus of beauty and fame. The Socialist and his goddess, as people call them. The actress Christiane Grautoff is radiantly lovely and unbelievably young. A few days ago she was still on stage in London as Rachel in Ernst Toller’s play No More Peace, translated by W. H. Auden. She received good reviews and was loving her life as an actress in London. Toller is talked about all over Europe as a playwright and champion of revolution. He was the celebrated playwright of the Weimar Republic and the tribune of the Munich Soviet Republic, whose leadership of the revolution cost him five years in jail. He didn’t allow it to break him, either in the sweep of his writing or in his fighting revolutionary stance. In London he gave a speech as president of the International Association of Writers for the Defence of Culture at the opening of their congress, with the call: “No, no one can flee the present fight, particularly in a time when Fascism has raised the doctrine of the totalitarian state to the level of law. The dictator demands of the writer that he become the obedient mouthpiece of the ruling worldview. There is one good aspect to this claim of the dictators: it makes us reflect, it teaches us anew to treasure the spiritual values that we have come to undervalue because they were so often misused.” It is also his personal experience that he is pointing to in political terms when he cries, “Only he who has lost his freedom learns to love it truly.” And he closes with the acknowledgment that pulls together the lessons of his life and his life’s mission: “We do not love politics for politics’ sake. We take part in political life today, but we believe it is not the least significant aspect of our battle to free future mankind from the wretched competition of interests that goes by the name of ‘politics’ today. We know the limits of what we can achieve. We are plowmen, and we don’t know if we will be reapers. But we’ve learned that ‘fate’ is an excuse. We make fate! We want to be true, we want to be courageous, and we want to be human.”

Many battle-weary émigrés take new heart from Ernst Toller. From his clear-headedness, his bright face, his refusal to give up, his repeated appeals to the fighting spirit and to the optimism of those who are now landless. And his speeches of encouragement are all the more convincing because they are addressed first and foremost to himself. Ernst Toller is subject to severe depressions, is weary of life, and pessimistic to the point of self-abnegation. His lover and now for twelve months his wife, Christiane, will tell of this later and of how she always had to pack a length of rope in the top layer of his suitcase, so that he would have a final way to escape.

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