FRIENDSHIP, LOVE AND LOSS IN THE POETRY OF ELSE LASKER-SCHÜLER (1869–1945)

Abstract

Else Lasker-Schüler was the leading woman poet of the Expressionist movement and a key member of a network of poets and artists centred on Berlin. Her charismatic persona is reflected in a deeply personal mythology, and people are an inspiring force in her work. The poems collected in ?Die gesammelten Gedichte' (1917) address and commemorate family members such as her beloved mother, and friends including Georg Trakl, George Grosz, Gottfried Benn and Franz Marc. Her love poetry expresses intense eroticism, while other poems poignantly evoke the loss of loved ones, and more religiously oriented poems open out into an affirmation of love for all humankind. Lasker-Schüler's evocative imagery is grounded in a poetics of the heart that gives the imagination full reign in exploring human passions.

Keywords:

• Else Lasker-Schüler
• ‘Menschheitsdämmerung’
• imagination
• bohemianism
• Georg Trakl
• Franz Marc
• George Grosz
• Gottfried Benn

Notes

1 See Else Lasker-Schüler, Werke und Briefe. Kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Norbert Oellers et al., 11 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Jüdischer Verlag/Suhrkamp, 1996–2010). The edition gives the poems in the form of their first publication, and offers a limited commentary focused on explanations concerning people and biblical references. In the following, this edition will mostly be used as the basis for quotations, with the source abbreviated as Werke with a roman numeral for the volume number. A different version is sometimes used where Lasker-Schüler adds a dedication; in such cases, this is indicated. Where she revises her poems for later versions, changes tend to affect mainly punctuation and spelling while the substance generally remains relatively stable.

2 See Sigrid Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler. Biographie (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004).

3 See Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler (2004), pp. 85 and 138, and Lothar Schreyer, ‘Was ist der Sturm’, in Expressionismus. Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen der Zeitgenossen, ed. by Paul Raabe (Olten: Walter, 1965), pp. 203–09 (p. 204).

4 See for example her letter of 17 May 1911 [?] to Karl Kraus, which she signs ‘Tino die Prinzessin’ (Werke, vi, 196), echoing her role in the narrative volume Die Nächte Tino von Bagdads (Berlin: Juncker, 1907); in a further letter to Kraus written shortly after 17 May 1911 she signs herself ‘Joseph von Egypten’ (Werke, vi, 197), forerunner of Jussuf, Prince of Thebes, her most enduring alter ego featured for example in Else Lasker-Schüler, Der Prinz von Theben. Ein Geschichtenbuch (Leipzig: Verlag der Weißen Bücher, 1914). For a discussion of the figure of Jussuf, see Andrea Henneke-Weischer, Poetisches Judentum. Die Bibel im Werk Else Lasker-Schülers (Mainz: Grünewald, 2003), pp. 123–30.

5 See Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler (2004), p. 30.

6 Menschheitsdämmerung. Symphonie jüngster Dichtung, ed. by Kurt Pinthus (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1920), p. 294.

7 Some critics have analysed the role of fantasy in Lasker-Schüler’s life and work primarily in terms of ‘escape’, see for example Hans W. Cohn, Else Lasker-Schüler: The Broken World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), esp. pp. 59–80. This ignores the importance of the imagination for her poetics as a positive, creative force, and fails to take account of the role of fantasy in poetics since Romanticism.

8 See Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler (2004), pp. 19–20.

9 See the poem ‘Dem Barbaren’, in Werke i/1, 133–34.

10 Claire Jung, ‘Erinnerung an Georg Heym und seine Freunde’, in Expressionismus, ed. by Raabe, pp. 44–50 (pp. 44–45).

11 See Sigrid Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler. Ihr Werk und ihre Zeit (Heidelberg: Stiehm, 1980), p. 88.

12 Oskar Kokoschka, Mein Leben (Munich: Bruckmann, 1971), p. 110.

13 Else Lasker-Schüler, Mein Herz. Ein Liebesroman mit Bildern und wirklich lebenden Menschen (Munich and Berlin: Bachmair, 1912). A key feature of the work are the 21 drawings.

14 See Else Lasker-Schüler – Franz Marc. Eine Freundschaft in Briefen und Bildern, ed. by Ricarda Dick (Munich: Prestel, 2012), and Else Lasker-Schüler, Der Malik. Eine Kaisergeschichte mit Bildern und Zeichnungen (Munich: Cassirer, 1919).

15 Letter from Franz and Maria Marc to Lasker-Schüler, 7 April 1913, in Else Lasker-Schüler – Franz Marc, pp. 44–45; letter from Lasker-Schüler to Franz and Maria Marc, 12 or 13 April 1913, ibid., p. 46. Lasker-Schüler’s non-standard usage ‘auf seinen Rücken’ may be a spelling mistake.

16 Letters to Kurt Wolff, early May 1913 [?] and 5 August 1913, in Werke vi, 328 and 355.

17 The poems – addressed to ‘Giselheer’ – were published in journals between October 1912 and May 1914, and included in 1917 in Else Lasker-Schüler, Die gesammelten Gedichte (Leipzig: Verlag der weißen Bücher, 1917; henceforth ‘GG’) as a coherent cycle introduced by the dedication ‘Gottfried Benn | Der hehre König Giselheer | Stieß mit seinem Lanzenspeer | Mitten in mein Herz’ (p. 167). The cycle consists of the essay ‘Doktor Benn’, published in 1913 in Die Aktion (pp. 169–70) and eleven poems (pp. 170–82); see also the notes and references concerning this cycle in Werke i/2, 193–94. For an account of the relationship see Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler (1980), pp. 130–34; Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler (2004), pp. 203–10; and Andreas Meier, ‘Poetischer Magnetismus. Else Lasker-Schüler und Gottfried Benn’, in Else Lasker-Schüler-Jahrbuch zur Klassischen Moderne, 1 (2000), 167–79. Meier’s claim that the relationship is characterized by ‘“Verliebtsein” als eine Form gelebter Metapher für den dichterischen Prozeß’ (p. 169) explains the role of directly experienced emotion for Lasker-Schüler’s work in terms of an aesthetic abstraction – thereby obscuring the radical force of her poetics.

18 Gottfried Benn, ‘Rede auf Else Lasker-Schüler’ (1952), in Benn, Gesammelte Werke, 8 vols (Wiesbaden: Limes, 1968), iv, 1101–04 (p. 1102). Benn’s speech has been interpreted as an attempt to use his earlier friendship with the Jewish poet to clear his politically and morally compromised name; for a discussion of this issue see Joachim Dyck, ‘“Die völlige Verschmelzung des Jüdischen und des Deutschen”: Benns Rede auf Else Lasker-Schüler 1952’, in Else Lasker-Schüler. Ansichten und Perspektiven/Views and Reviews, ed. by Ernst Schürer and Sonja Hedgepeth (Tübingen: Francke, 1999), pp. 71–79. While Benn praises Lasker-Schüler as the greatest German poetess Germany has brought forth, preferring her to Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Sophie Mereau and Ricarda Huch, this comparison with a chronically under-represented group is perhaps more illuminating about Benn’s attitudes than Lasker-Schüler’s poetic talent. Comments by other contemporaries do not generally tend to foreground gender as a key criterion when discussing her work.

19 See Gisela Brinker-Gabler, ‘The Primitive and the Modern: Gottfried Benn and Else Lasker-Schüler. Woman/Women in Expressionism’, in Else Lasker-Schüler, ed. by Schürer and Hedgepeth, pp. 45–56. While this essay offers a thought-provoking discussion of criteria by which one might consider the role of women writers in Expressionism, it offers little on Lasker-Schüler, tending to assume – and replicating – a marginalization that is more typical of post-war criticism than of her perception by contemporaries. A sense of her contemporary reputation – albeit viewed in retrospect – can be gleaned from Expressionismus, ed. by Raabe, passim (the numerous entries under her name in the index (p. 415) indicate how central she was to the movement).

20 Karl Kraus, Die Fackel, No. 313–314 (31 December 1910), p. 36. See also Werke, i/2, 170–71.

21 Menschheitsdämmerung (1920). In his second, expanded edition Pinthus chose a new subtitle that established the canonical role of the anthology for the movement: Menschheitsdämmerung. Ein Dokument des Expressionismus (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1959). See also the further editions with expanded biographical and bibliographic information.

22 Das Kinobuch. Kinostücke von Bermann, Hasenclever, Langer, Lasker-Schüler [...]. Dokumentarische Neu-Ausgabe des ‘Kinobuchs’ von 1913/14, ed. by Kurt Pinthus (Zurich: Arche, 1963), pp. 9–10.

23 ‘Zuvor (Berlin, Herbst 1919)’, in Menschheitsdämmerung (1920), pp. V-XIV (p. VIII). Pinthus himself was born in 1886. He elaborates on the concept of an Expressionist ‘generation’ in a retrospective essay about the anthology, in which he identifies 1910–14 as the period that marked the apotheosis of the movement (Kurt Pinthus, ‘Die Geschichte der “Menschheitsdämmerung”’, in Gedichte der ‘Menschheitsdämmerung’. Interpretationen expressionistischer Lyrik, ed. by Horst Denkler (Munich: Fink, 1971), pp. VII-XXVIII, esp. p. VII. Pinthus knew Lasker-Schüler’s work well, having been commissioning editor initially for Ernst Rowohlt’s (first) publishing house and then for Kurt Wolff, who took this over in 1912. Lasker-Schüler approached Rowohlt around March 1911, and by January 1913 Wolff had agreed to publish her works (see her letter to Rowohlt of late February or March 1911, and her letter to Wolff of 26 January 1913 [?], in Werke, vi, 188–89 and 287–88).

24 Menschheitsdämmerung (1920), p. 103.

25 Benn, ‘Rede’, p. 1103.

26 Kurt Hiller, ‘Begegnungen mit “Expressionisten”’, in Expressionismus, ed. by Raabe, pp. 24–35 (p. 29).

27 See the index, GG (1917), p. 219. For a discussion of the role of the Bible in Lasker-Schüler’s work, see Henneke-Weischer, Poetisches Judentum, passim. See also Vivian Liska, Fremde Gemeinschaft. Deutsch-jüdische Literatur der Moderne (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2001), especially the chapter ‘Die wilden Jüdinnen. Biblische Frauen in der Lyrik Else Lasker-Schülers’, pp. 92–112.

28 See GG (1917), pp. 220–24.

29 See GG (1917), pp. 222–23, and – for an explanation of the titles – Werke i/2, 179–80 (‘An den Prinzen Tristan’) and 214–16 (‘Senna Hoy’).

30 Werke i/1, 129. The poem is included in Menschheitsdämmerung (1920), pp. 60–61.

31 Gotthard Guder identifies blue as a key word in Lasker-Schüler’s poetry: ‘Blue [...] signifies the divine, the sublime, the eternal’ (‘The Meaning of Colour in Else Lasker-Schüler’s Poetry’, German Life and Letters, 14 (1960/61), 175–87 (p. 176)). This coincides with the meaning of this image in the work of Heym and Trakl; see Kurt Mautz, ‘Die Farbensprache der expressionistischen Lyrik’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift, 31 (1957), 198–240 (on the colour blue see pp. 221–26). The significance of such images is not however formulaic, but responsive to context.

32 Werke i/1, 180–81. See also the editor’s notes in Werke i/2, 218.

33 Letter to Georg Trakl, [11 April 1914], in Werke vi, 28; see also p. 346.

34 Letter to Georg Trakl [12 May 1914], in Werke vi, 38; see also p. 355; Georg Trakl, ‘Abendland’, in Trakl, Dichtungen und Briefe. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. by Walther Killy and Hans Szklenar, 2 vols, 2nd expanded edn (Salzburg: Müller, 1987), i, 403–08. The third version has the dedication ‘An Else Lasker-Schüler’ (pp. 409–10.) and the fourth version (pp. 139–40) returns to the dedication of the second version. Trakl evidently wrote the second version while in Berlin (see the editor’s comment in ii, 244), and on 16 April 1914 asked the publisher Kurt Wolff to add the poem to Sebastian im Traum, for which he was in the process of negotiating contractual conditions (see ii, 536, and the editors’ notes, pp. 611 and 797).

35 GG, p. 116 (epitaph) and p. 117 (poem).

36 Concerning Lasker-Schüler’s playing with names, see Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler (1980), p. 141.

37 Werke iii/1, 69; see also Werke i/1, 108 and the editor’s notes on the poem in Werke i/2, 146–47.

38 GG, p. 118.

39 See Trakl, ‘Abendland’.

40 See Vivian Liska, Die Dichterin und das schelmische Erhabene. Else Lasker-Schülers ‘Die Nächte Tino von Bagdads’ (Tübingen: Francke, 1998), esp. pp. 82–86.

41 See Werke i/1, 132, and i/2, 174–75. See also the account of a controversy in 1911 involving Kerr and Kraus in Bauschinger, Else-Lasker Schüler (1980), p. 129.

42 Lasker-Schüler, ‘Georg Grosz’, in Werke i/1, 187–88. See also the editor’s notes, Werke i/2, 226–27.

43 Wieland Herzfelde, ‘Zum Geleit’, in Pass auf! Hier kommt Grosz. Bilder, Rhythmen und Gesänge 1915–1918 (Leipzig: Reclam, 1981), pp. 9–13 (p. 10).

44 Werke i/1, 172–73. See also the editor’s notes, Werke i/2, 207. The work was published in Die weiβen Blätter in April 1914. In Die gesammelten Gedichte (1917), p. 182, ‘Höre’ was published without exclamation mark and with the subtitle.

45 Benn, Gesammelte Werke, ii, 388.

46 Benn, ‘Rede’, p. 1104.

47 See Gottfried Benn, ‘Antwort an die literarischen Emigranten’, in Benn, Gesammelte Werke, vii, 1695–1704. His call for Nietzschean ‘Barbaren’ and espousal of the community rather than individualism highlights certain continuities between Expressionism and National Socialist ideology, while demonstrating how the racist agenda and alignment of the community with the state transformed those motifs into a deadly policy of exclusion.

48 See the editor’s notes in Werke i/2, 169–71. The text of the version published in GG (1920) is identical with that published in Der Sturm and reproduced in Werke, except for some modifications of the spelling and punctuation, notably a question mark at the end.

49 Quoted after Werke i/2, 170–72.

50 See for example the following readings: Svantje Ehlers, ‘Ein Spiel von Form und Inhalt. Zu Else Lasker-Schülers “Ein alter Tibetteppich”’, in Gedichte und Interpretationen, vol. v: Vom Naturalismus bis zur Jahrhundertmitte, ed. by Harald Hartung (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1983), pp. 108–17; Gerhard Kaiser, Geschichte der deutschen Lyrik von Goethe bis zur Gegenwart, 3 vols (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1996), ii, 379–82; Christine Radde, ‘“Strahl in Strahl”. Else Lasker-Schülers Gedicht “Ein alter Tibetteppich”’, in Else Lasker-Schüler-Jahrbuch zur Klassischen Moderne, 1 (2000), 55–78; Henneke-Weischer, Poetisches Judentum, pp. 34–38. For an analysis of the reception of Lasker-Schüler’s work until the early 1990s, see Calvin N. Jones, The Literary Reputation of Else Lasker-Schüler: Criticism 1901–1993 (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1994); see the entries in the index for a discussion of the response to ‘Ein alter Tibetteppich’, p. 169.

51 Werke i/1, 96–97. See also the editor’s notes, Werke i/2, 134–37. The poem was first published in Lasker-Schüler’s collection Der siebente Tag (Berlin: Amerlang, 1905) and reprinted a number of times, notably in Der Sturm on 8 April 1911 and in Menschheitsdämmerung (1920), p. 269. In GG (1917), p. 11, Lasker-Schüler adds the dedication ‘(Meinem geliebten Sohn Paul)’, which is also part of the poem in Menschheitsdämmerung. For an interpretation of the poem see Henneke-Weischer, Poetisches Judentum, pp. 135–45.

52 Werke i/1, 128, and GG (1917), 10. See also the editor’s notes, Werke i/2, 166–68.

53 GG (1917), p. 217. See also Werke i/1, 190, and the editor’s notes, Werke i/2, 228–30.

54 GG (1917), p. 215. See also Werke iii/1, 413–14.

55 Werke i/2, 228.

56 Menschheitsdämmerung (1920), p. 277.

57 Pinthus, ‘Zuvor’, pp. VIII–IX.

58 GG (1917), p. 215. See also Werke iii/1, 413.

59 GG (1917), p. 215. See also Werke iii/1, 413–14.

60 See the handwritten version of the poem and the accompanying lithograph entitled ‘Theben mit Jussuf’ in Else Lasker-Schüler, Theben. Gedichte und Lithographien (Frankfurt a.M.: Querschnitt, 1923), reproduced in Else Lasker-Schüler, Sämtliche Gedichte (Munich: Kösel, 1966), pp. 268–69. See also Bauschinger, Else Lasker-Schüler (1980) on the association between the poem and the lithograph (pp. 214–15). It cannot however be assumed that ‘Theben’ was originally conceived as the biblical Jerusalem, or has that significance elsewhere.

61 Werke i/1, 131.

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Notes on contributors

Katrin Kohl

Katrin Kohl is Professor of German Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Jesus College. Her research focuses on literature and poetics of the eighteenth and twentieth century. Monographs include Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (2000), Metapher (2007), and Poetologische Metaphern. Formen und Funktionen in der deutschen Literatur (2007), and she has co-edited H.G. Adler, Andere Wege. Gesammelte Gedichte (2010).