Else Lasker-Schüler: Google Doodle Celebrates Jewish German Poet and Artist

Google Doodle celebrates Jewish German poet and playwright Else Lasker-Schüler, broadly viewed as one of the best lyricists to write in the German language.

Else Lasker-Schüler was a German poet and artist well known for her bohemian lifestyle in Berlin. She was one of the few women affiliated with the Expressionist movement. Lasker-Schüler fled Nazi Germany and lived out the rest of her life in Jerusalem.

On this day in 1937, a Swiss newspaper published her popular poem “Mein blaues Klavier” (“My Blue Piano”), which is referenced in the present Google Doodle artwork by the piano keys portrayed on the camel’s back, close by different symbols of Else Lasker-Schüler’s life and work.

Born in the western German town of Elberfeld, presently a district of Wuppertal on February 11th, 1869, Elisabeth Schüler was raised in a famous Jewish family. Homeschooled by her mom, Else Lasker-Schüler was urged to experiment and investigate her artistic interests, and in time, she started to build up her voice as a poet.

In 1894, Else Lasker-Schüler wedded the doctor and occasional chess player Jonathan Berthold Lasker and moved to Berlin with her him, where she prepared as an artist. She later published her first poems in 1899. She became a notable fixture in Berlin’s artistic circles, rubbing elbows in cafes with some of the city’s top literary figures. Bringing life into her vivid work, the eccentric Else Lasker-Schüler could be discovered wearing flamboyant robes, expecting the modify inner ego of one of her vibrant characters, “Jusuf, Prince of Thebes,” portrayed in the present artwork.

Else Lasker-Schüler’s first prose work, Das Peter-Hille-Buch, was published in 1906, after the demise of Hille, one of her closest friends. In 1907, she published the prose collection Die Nächte der Tino von Bagdad, trailed by the play Die Wupper in 1909, which was not performed until later. A volume of poetry called Meine Wunder, published in 1911, set up Else Lasker-Schüler as the leading female agent of German expressionism.

In the leadup to World War II, Else Lasker-Schüler had to escape her home nation and eventually settled in Jerusalem. She kept depicting “Jusuf, Prince of Thebes” and publishing various works from exile, including “Mein blaues Klavier.”

A productive poet, Else Lasker-Schüler established herself as a leading German Expressionist voice and a significant feature in the notorious Berlin literary journal Der Sturm (“The Storm”), with verses frequently investigating themes of fantasy, loneliness, romance, and religion. In acknowledgment of her effect, in 1932 Else Lasker-Schüler got the Kleist Prize, widely considered the highest German literary honor at the time.

The 20th-century Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid incorporated a translation of an extract from Else Lasker-Schüler’s work in his long poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, 1926.

The Else-Lasker-Schüler-Society was established in 1990 in Wuppertal by writer Hajo Jahn. Over 20 international symposias from Breslau to Tel Aviv, the works of the poet were acquainted and examined the relevance for the presence and future.

In 2007, Else Lasker-Schüler’s last days in Jerusalem were recognized in the BBC radio play My Blue Piano by the Scottish playwright Marty Ross (Radio 4 2007) which joined the facts of her dying days with the dreams of her inward life.

On February 7, 2020, Google praised Else Lasker-Schüler with a Google Doodle, outlined by Frankfurt-based visitor artist Cynthia Kittler.