Else Lasker-Schüler (1869–1945)

Else Schüler was born into a prosperous Jewish family in Elberfeld, Germany. She married Berthold Lasker, a physician and writer, and kept the surname Lasker-Schüler even after their divorce nine years later. She was part of a lively literary circle in Berlin in the late 19th century. In 1903, she married Georg Lewin, who took the pen name Herwarth Walden. Else was the editor of Walden's Expressionist magazine Der Sturm (The Storm) for several years and recruited other writers to it. Her first and most important play, Die Wupper, was published in 1909 and received its premiere performance in 1919 at the Deutsches Theater. In 1912, Else and Walden divorced, and she lived a bohemian life in Berlin with many friends among the Expressionists. She illustrated her books of poetry and prose with her own drawings. She won the prestigious Kleist Prize for Literature in 1932, but the following year, after the Nazis came to power, she was banned from publishing. She fled to Switzerland, and then settled in Jerusalem in the British Mandate of Palestine in 1937. She formed a literary salon there that opened in 1942 at the French Cultural Center.