22. Mai 1939. Ernst Toller erhängt sich in seinem New Yorker Hotelzimmer, in dem er, der jüdische Autor („Masse Mensch“, „Hoppla, wir leben“) und Antifaschist nach der Flucht aus Nazi-Deutschland und geplagt von Depressionen seit einem Jahr lebt. Der „Völkische Beobachter“ höhnt „im Mayflower-Hotel baumelt ein Mann“, W.H. Auden schreibt ein Epitaph:
In memory of Ernst Toller
The shining neutral summer has no voice
To judge America, or ask how a man dies;
And the friends who are sad and the enemies who rejoice
Are chased by their shadows lightly away from the grave
Of one who was egotistical and brave,
Lest they should learn without suffering how to forgive.
What was it, Ernst, that your shadow unwittingly said?
O did the child see something horrid in the woodshed
Long ago? Or had the Europe which took refuge in your head
Already been too injured to get well?
O for how long, like the swallows in that other cell,
Had the bright little longings been flying in to tell
About the big friendly death outside,
Where people do not occupy or hide;
No towns like Munich; no need to write?
Dear Ernst, lie shadowless at last among
The other war-horses who existed till they’d done
Something that was an example to the young.
We are lived by powers we pretend to understand:
They arrange our loves; it is they who direct at the end
The enemy bullet, the sickness, or even our hand.
It is their tomorrow hangs over the earth of the living
And all that we wish for our friends; but existing is believing
We know for whom we mourn and who is grieving.
Yupedia 