Else Lasker-Schuler

Else Lasker-Schuler, a pivotal figure in German Expressionism, presided over avant-garde cafe life in pre-World War I Berlin in much the same way Gertrude Stein did in Paris around the same time. While her work is not yet very well known in the English-speaking world, it has been enjoying a critical and popular revival in Germany. This full-length biography of Lasker-Schuler--the first in English--explores her poems, plays, prose and graphic works in light of her life. It begins with her fleeing to Switzerland after Hitler's accession to power in 1933, looks back at her childhood in Wuppertal, then follows her life through to its end in Jerusalem in January 1945. As a Jew, a woman and a bohemian, Lasker-Schuler defied every category. Her two marriages--first to Dr. Berthold Lasker, then to Herwarth Walden, founder of the leading avant-garde periodical, gallery and publishing house, Der Sturm (The Storm)--as well as her interactions with Karl Kraus, Franz Marc, Gottfried Benn, Martin Buber and Gershom Scholem, are documented in letters and poems, many included here both in the original and in translation.