Else Lasker-Schüler's Visual Artwork

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Else Lasker-Schüler is regarded as one of the major poets and writers of the early twentieth century avant-garde in Germany. Having been forced into emigration by the Nazis, her texts and images having been banned, burnt, and declared 'degenerate', Lasker-Schüler was 'rediscovered' in the 1950s. Since then, her lyric, prose, and dramatic works have been published in numerous forms and a vast body of secondary literature has been produced. Lasker-Schüler's drawings, prints, and collages - which she herself regarded as integral to her artistic output - are, however, far less well documented. So far, about 200 works, mostly undated, are known. In addition, there are more than 100 illustrations, frontispieces and cover illustrations for her books, which partly became 'originals' when they were hand-coloured and collaged by Lasker-Schüler herself. Although a few exhibitions have been mounted, there is, to date, no comprehensive list (Werkverzeichnis), nor a monograph that seriously examines Else Lasker-Schüler's artworks. The monograph/catalogue that I am co-authoring with Ricarda Dick, aims to fill that gap. My contribution, an extended essay (25 000 words), will explore the importance of Lasker-Schüler's visual work in understanding the artist's oeuvre as a whole. It will closely examine Lasker-Schüler's boldly outlined drawings coloured in with chalks and pencils or collaged with metallic paper and consider the multiple interrelationships between the work and that of contemporaries such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Franz Marc, Gabriele Münter, Marianne von Werefkin, Jacoba van Heemskerck, and others. My particular interest lies in Else Lasker-Schüler's Orientalism, which was in accordance with the fashion of her time. She did not only use orientalist and biblical motifs in her drawings and writings, but actually staged herself - a German Jewish woman - in work and life as Prinz Jussuf von Theben, an Egyptian (male) prince. How might a reading of Lasker-Schüler's visual works in relation to her writing and public cross-dressing expand our understanding of the ways in which her diverse creative practice destabilised fixed categories and embodied her difference? Informed by writings on Orientalism in general (Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Lisa Lowe, Ali Behdad, Reina Lewis) and in modern German culture in particular (Jill Lloyd, Nina Berman, Shulamith Behr, Sylke Kirschnick), my essay will explore how Lasker-Schüler's specific appropriation of the Other as Self - while being shaped by contemporary colonial Eurocentric discourses - both confronted the German stereotype of the Jew as Oriental and called into question the Jews' desire to assimilate into German culture. In this context, I shall also probe possible links between Lasker-Schüler's Orientalism and that of the artists working in early twentieth century Jewish Palestine, which was an important site of the artist's fantasies and became her abode in the last years of her exile from Nazi Germany. Furthermore, I shall explore whether Lasker-Schüler's involvement with the Brit Shalom circle (Arthur Ruppin, Martin Buber, and others), which advocated a common bi-national homeland for Jews and Arabs in Palestine, influenced her choice of motifs and style. How might an examination of Lasker-Schüler's appropriation of the Oriental Other help us gain more nuanced insights into the challenges she posed to both German and Jewish society?