ÌÇÐÄTV

Tara Windsor (Trinity College Dublin)

Weimar Writers and the International Politics of Culture: The Case of Ernst Toller

Although Ernst Toller’s busy travel itinerary in the 1920s and early 1930s is familiar to Toller experts, his lecture and reading tours in these years have received comparatively less scholarly attention than his international activities after 1933. The geographical scope of his travels in Europe and beyond in the Weimar years was extensive, while the cultural and political organisations and institutions under whose auspices his readings, lectures and speeches abroad took place were equally diverse. The paper will explore selected examples of Toller’s role as international activist and cultural ambassador in the Weimar era, placing these in the context of wider intellectual and institutional efforts in the field of European and international exchange. In doing this, it places Weimar Germany’s heated cultural debates in an international context – looking beyond their usual national setting – and enhances our understanding of the myriad ways in which the Weimar Republic was connected with other nations and societies, both in Europe and beyond.

4-6pm, in H2.02 (2nd floor Humanities Building)