Frame and Preparation
Der Prinz von Theben
Conceptual Frames and Background
- Gender-bending
- Cross dressing
- Queerness
- Gender and sex
- Orientalism
- Zionism
- Jews in Germany
- Religion
- Fiction vs. reality in identity
- Expressionism
- Short stories
Introduction
Else Lasker-Schüler’s works are rich with religious and spiritual imagery often woven alongside explorations of love and sexuality. Much of her work is read as semi-autobiographical, though her numerous public personas play with notions of performance and identity.
This storybook collection, published in 1914, presents ample opportunities to explore narrative voice, temporality, and religion.
Preparation
Define and contextualize Expressionism as an aesthetic movement: its main characteristics, its conceptualization of the individual and identity, its relation to society vis-a-vis literature and the arts.
Since her fictional work is autobiographically and highly complex regarding the many different personas and personalities she adopted throughout her life, a biographical overview thereof will help comprehension.
It may be useful to go over the various discussions with the 19th/20th-century European/Germany Jewish community about Zionism: the various positions in the debate, the attitudes towards the Holy Land, the relationship between Judaism and the other Abrahamic religions, the place of Jews in Europe, etc.
Text and Discussion
Discussion
- Who are the various personalities and personas the narrator adopts throughout these short stories? How are they related to each other? How do we find continuities and ruptures between them?
- Who is the narrator in these stories, and how do we know? Is it the Prinz? Is it Lasker-Schüler? Both? Neither?
- Discuss the temporal mixing in the stories, in which the ancient past and its religion and myths are interlaced with the Middle Ages/Crusaders and modern objects, people, and places. What effect does this have in the text and on the reader?
- Relatedly, how does time influence the identity of the various characters? Can we decipher a message about the nature of the individual and one’s identity?
- In these stories, the characters flow indeterminately across genders, sexes, and sexualities. What the markers of these elements in the stories? How do we identify the characters—or can we?
- What is the relationship between gender, sexuality, and religion in these stories?
- Why is the story set in a mythologized and fictionalized Middle East/Holy Land? What is the function of this setting for the stories?
- How do the setting and the politics of the stories reflect on the modern German society in which these stories were written, specifically the situation of Jews and women?