On 28 May 1933, eighteen days after the book burnings in Germany, the annual congress of the international PEN Club took place in the Yugoslav town of Dubrovnik (Ragusa). The German PEN members had at this time already been “cleansed”, in the Nazi sense, of Jewish and politically unwelcome writers.

At the invitation of the English delegation, Ernst Toller took part in the congress as the only exiled German writer. During the run-up, there had already been internal discussions between the German delegates and other participants who wished to prevent open criticisms of Nazism. Nonetheless, when the president H. G. Wells gave the floor to Ernst Toller, German, Austrian, Dutch and Swiss delegates demonstratively left the room. Toller’s angry speech against the persecution of writers and the book burnings in Germany was widely reported in the press. Ernst Toller became an intentionally symbolic figure of the exile struggling against Nazism. At the same time, the speech laid the foundations for the political position of PEN the following year in Edinburgh, and for the establishment of a German Exile PEN.

In his letter to Klaus Mann, Toller, who during the summer was on a lecture tour in Yugoslavia, reports on these events. At the same time, he reacts to Mann’s invitation to work together on his magazine Die Sammlung (The Collection). His Open Letter to Joseph Goebbels, which he had offered to Klaus Mann for publication, nonetheless appeared elsewhere.