Lasker-Schüler, Else

Else Lasker-Schüler (1869-1945) was a German-Jewish poet, playwright, illustrator, and essayist affiliated with the Expressionist movement and seen as a pioneer of avant-garde modernism. Her 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. Her literary work, bohemian lifestyle, and alter-ego Prinz Jussuf reflect a fascination with ‘orientalism’ of the time and she is often situated within the context of German-Jewish cultural memory under conditions of persecution and exile.