Else Lasker-Schuler

A Life

Author: Betty Falkenberg

Else Lasker-Schuler, a pivotal figure in German Expressionism, presided over avant-garde cafe life in pre-World War I Berlin. Her life and work as a Jew, a woman and a writer and artist in Nazi Germany, and in other locations after Hitler's takeover, are chronicled in this book.

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Else Lasker-Schuler's life and work as a Jew, a woman, and a writer and artist in Nazi Germany and in other locations after Hitler's takeover are chronicled in this book. It begins with her flight to Switzerland, after receving Germany's top literary prize, and then goes back to her childhood and follows her life through to its end in Jerusalem, where she died five months before Germany surrendered to the Allies. It covers her marriages to Dr Berthold Lasker, brother of the world chess champion, and to Herwarth Walden, founder of the avant-garde periodical, gallery and publishing house "Der Sturm" (The Storm), and her friendships with Martin Buber, Karl Kraus, Franz Marc, Gottfried Benn and Gershom Scholem.

Critic Reviews

“"this book has many positive features...the first biography in English of this eccentric poet and artist...numerous notes...interesting"-- Choice ; "this biography opens the doors to a brilliant era of German cultural history...Falkenberg has taken Else Lasker-Schuler's complex personal life--handled here with sensitivity and finesse--and woven it seamlessly into the story of the many artistic milieus in which the poet played a part"-- Aufbau.”

“this book has many positive features...the first biography in English of this eccentric poet and artist...numerous notes...interesting”—Choice; “this biography opens the doors to a brilliant era of German cultural history...Falkenberg has taken Else Lasker-Schuler’s complex personal life—handled here with sensitivity and finesse—and woven it seamlessly into the story of the many artistic milieus in which the poet played a part”—Aufbau.

About the Author

The late Betty Falkenberg contributed many articles to German encyclopedias and books. She was a longtime correspondent of the International Herald Tribune, Partisan Review and The New Leader, and a member of the Biography Seminar of New York University. She lived in Lake Forest Park, Washington.