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.
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“A Youth in Germany was first published in 1933 in Amsterdam, shortly after Hitler came to power. Its author, the politically committed Jewish poet and dramatist Ernst Toller, had already left Germany, never to return. More than simply an autobiography or a moving picture of the early twentieth century, the book is a masterwork of German literature that centers on one of the most prominent cultural protagonists of the Weimar Republic. The translators and editors have made it available again in an excellent translation and rich edition.” — Liliane Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania
“This wonderful new translation restores both the original text and the rich historical, social, and cultural contexts that inform the work of a writer and activist who was as polarizing as he was inspiring. Nationalist then socialist and pacifist, politically engaged and then viciously persecuted for his politics, Toller writes of his experiences in World War I, in the Weimar Republic, and as an exile in the United States. These make for gripping reading indeed. As Christiane Schönfeld and Lisa Marie Anderson note in their engaging introduction to this work of stubborn remembrance, Toller’s A Youth in Germany cannot help but resonate with contemporary culture wars and what now passes for politics.” — Neil Christian Pages, Binghamton University
“As the story of Ernst Toller finds renewed attention in our own moment of resurgent fascism and debates over the role that art and literature and culture should play in politics, this excellent new translation of his most important work in prose (and the superb contextual resources that accompany it) is essential reading for a new generation. We are fortunate to have this new edition of A Youth in Germany as a text for our consideration and meditation.” — Richard Byrne, Playwright
