ERNST TOLLER ELUDED ARREST until Monday, 4 February 1918, when the strike ended after repeated appeals from the Majority Socialist leadership. At noon he was taken from his room at gunpoint and held until trial at a military prison on Leonrodstraße. Upon reporting back to his garrison, Felix Fechenbach was interrogated at length by officers who had been apprised of his involvement with the strike. He was transferred to Passau on the Austrian border, where he was kept under close surveillance. Eisner was already resigned to a lengthy stay behind bars. On Tuesday he wrote to Else from Neudeck with detailed directives. His daughter Ilse was to bring him an array of a dozen prominent German, French, and Swiss newspapers every other day, taking care that no issue was skipped. In addition he asked for a number of books from his desk, including Marx and Engels's political works and correspondence, English and French dictionaries, and the manuscript of the play he had begun while incarcerated at Plötzensee in Berlin. Stationery, pens and ink, marking pencils, a soft shirt, vest, slippers, and teaspoon rounded out the list. He urged that she procure a ticket to the Court Theater's upcoming production of Beethoven's Fidelio, “the work for our days now.” The last directive signaled undiminished optimism. It must have been of no small consolation that Wilhelm Herzog had authorized payment of 250 marks a few days earlier for Eisner's work on Weltweg des Geistes, income that continued for the duration of his incarceration.

In response to Eisner's urgent request Hugo Haase sent word on Wednesday from Berlin that he would join Dr. Bernheim as counsel. Representation was being arranged for Eisner's codefendants as well. A week later the court rejected motions for release on bail. In his cell Eisner immersed himself in writing. Else's appeal to send him the requested items was granted on the twelfth. The next day she wrote that she would bring additional archival materials on her next visit and confessed that she was concerned about his wretched appearance. For solace she intended to read in the New Testament of “the struggle for truth by one who refuses to keep it to himself but rather speaks out against the world's lies….