Ernst Toller

German author, playwright, left-wing politician and revolutionary, known for his Expressionist plays. He served in 1919 for six days as President of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic, after which he became the head of its army. He was imprisoned for five years for his part in the armed resistance by the Bavarian Soviet Republic to the central government in Berlin. While in prison Toller wrote several plays that gained him international renown. They were performed in London and New York as well as in Berlin.

In 1933 Toller was exiled from Germany after the Nazis came to power. He did a lecture tour in 1936–1937 in the United States and Canada, settling in California for a while before going to New York. He joined other exiles there. He committed suicide on 22 May 1939 at age 45 in New York City. He hanged himself in his room at the Mayflower Hotel.

W. H. Auden's poem "In Memory of Ernst Toller" was published in Another Time (1940). In 2000, several of Toller's plays were published in an English translation.