Ernst Toller’s text, Open Letter to Joseph Goebbels, which was produced under the impression of the book burnings of 10 May 1933, appeared at the end of July 1933 in the Braunbuch über Reichstagsbrand und Hitlerterror [Brown Book about the Reichstag Fire and the Hitler Terror].  At the same time it appeared in the biweekly Prague magazine Aufruf. Zeitschrift für Menschenrechte (Call Up. Magazine for Human Rights). Toller also offered Klaus Mann the opportunity to publish it in his magazine Die Sammlung (The Collection) and sent him in the middle of July this manuscript, which differs in some small respects from the version published later. It never came to be printed, however, in Die Sammlung, whose first issue appeared in September 1933. 

Toller’s Open Letter to Joseph Goebbels is an indictment of book burning, the aggressive cultural politics of the Nazis and their brutal treatment of artists, intellectuals and free-thinkers after seizing power. In its form, and in its stylistic and rhetorical means, it resembles the speeches that Ernst Toller gave at this time, such as that at the PEN Congress in Dubrovnik. Toller had the nearly legendary reputation of being a brilliant speaker who reached his audience with utmost immediacy.