Else Lasker-Schüler

Else Lasker-Schüler,born in 1869 in Elberfeld, was and still is probably the best known visitor to Atara. Calling her an expressionist poet reduces the  scope and diversity of her work and personality. She was unique not just in her writing for which she won the Kleist prize in 1932, but in the way she lived.

Early on in her career she draped her alter ego in the clothes of Prinz Yussuf, and danced through the streets of Berlin and later Jerusalem. She always lived on the precipice of possibility, staring down into the abyss and up into the endless sky at the same time..Despite the recognition and acclamation that she enjoyed , she was never able to support herself with her writing and painting. There were always others - in particular Salman Schocken - who guaranteed her existence.  Her book ‘Im Hebräerland’ (‘In the Land of the Hebrews´) is one of the most beautiful evocations of the dream of return. She tried to love the new old Jewish world of Palestine, but living there was still more necessity than choice. She was part of ‘Brit Schalom’ and ‘Ichud’ for as long as they existed.  Both were organisations that sought to find the best possible way to live and cooperate with the Palestinian Arab population. She was one of many who suffered greatly under the loss of the German language and the connection to German culture, as the following quotation demonstrates clearly:

“Desperate, she begged the rabbi of the German synagogue in Jerusalem to allow her to use his place of worship once again:

‘Wherever I've been, you're not allowed to speak German. I would like to arrange the last Kraal evening for an already broken poet to recite from his translations of a great Hebrew’.

Erez-Israel became for her Erez-Miesrael (Land of Miserael).

Else Lasker-Schüler died on January 22, 1945, in Jerusalem.