DANIEL BELL
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What Toller wanted was approval of a proclamation which
called, among other things, for the rule of Eros in the world and for
the abolition of poverty . Weber was aghast "at this confused and un–
realistic program" (as Marianne Weber writes), yet when Toller was
arrested for agitating for a general strike , Weber requested that he
be allowed to testify and he secured Toller's release.
In
February 1919, the several Socialist parties of Bavaria, led
by Kurt Eisner, combined to proclaim an independent Socialist re–
public. The famous economist Lujo Brentano and the young
Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath were put in charge of a "full
socialization" program in order to check the growing Communist
movement. They failed , and in April a more radical coalition, in
which Toller and the Anarchist essayist and philosopher Gustav
Landauer were the most prominent, proclaimed a new Soviet
republic only to have an even more radical Bolshevik faction, led by
Eugen Levine, proclaim a Communist regime.
Eisner had been murdered in the early turbulences. When the
government troops returned in May, Toller, at age twenty-six, be–
came the commander of the Red Army and led the workers' detach–
ments in the brutal street fighting. When the Soviet republic was
smashed, Landauer was assassinated and Neurath and Toller were
put on trial for treason.
Weber appeared in court for both. He testified to the integrity
of Neurath and spoke particularly "in behalf of Toller, of whose
idealistic thinking he was certain as he was of his political immatur–
ity ." During the court hearing, (as Marianne Weber continues) ,
Max Weber characterized Toller as a
Gesinnungsethiker
[a man guided
by an ethic of ultimate ends] who was
weltJremd
[visionary] in the face
of political realities and who had appealed, unconsciously, to the
hysterical instincts of the masses. "In a fit of anger," Max Weber
said, "God made him a politician ."
Toller was sentenced to the prison fortress of Niedersch6nenfeld
where, in October 1919, in a feverish period of two and a half days,
he wrote his famous expressionist play
Masse-Mensch
(or, as the title
is given in the Nonesuch Press edition of 1923,
Masses and Man : A
Fragment
of
the Social Revolution of the Twentieth Century) .
Masse-Mensch
is a morality play, as stark and simple as
Jedermann,
but its theme is the dilemma of the use of violence for a
just cause . The leader of the revolution is a woman, Sonia, who
desires a revolution by the
Masse
but also has reverence for
individuality,
Mensch.
The revolution begins in blood and is
