SEARCH MOVEMENTS: LITERATURE AND POLITICS BETWEEN THE WARS AND A CASE STUDY OF ERNST TOLLER'S I WAS A GERMAN (1934)

Abstract

The Weimar Republic opened up a new chapter for society within the borders of what was then called Germany. Ongoing financial difficulties due to the Treaty of Versailles overshadowed and stalled the development of the newly formed republic. But the democracy was not doomed to fail from the beginning. The search for orientation and perspective in a radically changed political, social, economic and cultural environment is reflected, for example, in the works of Ernst Toller. A closer inspection of his autobiography Eine Jugend in Deutschland from 1933, translated into English under the title I Was a German and published simultaneously in England and the United States only one year later, offers insight into his thinking and his writing. It is well designed to fit the purpose of democratic education through literature – but without simply telling its readers how they should think – and illustrates the various searches for a new beginning characteristic of the period, i.e. the longing for a new, non-totalitarian form of community.