DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 “Ich, die Dichterin von Arabien” Else Lasker-Schüler’s Orientalism as an Ennoblement of Jewishness Julia Ingold Bamberg University, Germany Abstract: In early twentieth-century Germany, Orientalist imagery and stereotypes provided an important and successful repertoire for the entertainment industries. Cruel colonial practices such as ethnological exhibitions appeared side by side with dreamy art and narratives in the style of the Arabian Nights . Meanwhile, antisemitism was on the rise, particularly following Germany’s defeat in World War I. In the same decades, a certain taste for Jewish mysticism, namely the Kabbalah, appeared, along with the rise of esotericism and vitalism. This article considers Else Lasker-Schüler, a German-Jewish multimedia artist whose works comprise poems and prose as well as graphically elaborate letters, arabesque drawings, and performances in Orientalist settings within this historical context. Inspired by the surrounding Orientalist entertainment industry, Lasker-Schüler’s imageries and story worlds prove exceptional among German Orientalist initiatives because of the way she claims them for herself. Using the logic of mystification, alienation, and commercialization, Lasker-Schüler creates a certain image of herself as artist that allows her to become the other not only in terms of content but also through formal expressions. Keywords: graphic arts, classical modernism, German-Jewish literature, avant-garde performance art, othering The German-Jewish artist Else Lasker-Schüler debuted as a poet in fin de siècle Berlin’s esoteric and vitalist circles before she developed into a multitalented writer and graphic artist who played subversively with the stereotype of the Jew as Oriental. In my article, I first discuss a failed but nonetheless ambitious performance project of around 1910 to demonstrate that despite her formal 368 Julia Ingold DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 experimentation in the early years of her artistic career, her work’s Orientalist content followed colonial prejudices and hierarchies. I then trace how her Orientalism becomes more subversive in the 1910s when she begins to use her own Jewishness to fashion her image as an ingenious artist. I highlight here her alter ego Prinz Jussuf and the illustrated epistolary novel Briefe und Bilder as well as the illustrated collection of short stories Der Prinz von Theben , in which she develops this character. In conclusion, I show that even though Lasker-Schüler challenges antisemitic and sexist stereotypes, she ultimately reaffirms racist, colonial images. This is true for her texts as well as her graphics, even as her drawings are essential for the subversive dimension of her Orientalist art, which visually challenges classic traditions and hierarchies. In Germany, Orientalism has always been closely linked to antisemitism and anti-Judaism. In Orientalism (1978), Edward W. Said characterizes the eponymous phenomenon as a form of pejorative othering , albeit without using the term himself. Orientalism describes a form of structural discrimination and a certain group of cultural artifacts, both of which reinforce each other. The artifacts - be it paintings, movies, or novels - have a content related to what Western cultures imagine to be Oriental, with ‘Oriental’ 1 denoting a relatively timeless fantasy world related to countries and cultures encompassing the Iberian Peninsula under Islamic rule, the Maghreb, northern Africa, and the southern Mediterranean area as well as Eastern Russia, India, or China. As the biblical stories take place in this territory, Jews were and are also Orientalized and thus burdened by stereotypes and othering in European arts, discourse, society, and politics. What happens in this structure is that the imaginary Orient is idealized, even fetishized, while Orientalized fellow citizens are discriminated against. In twentieth-century Berlin and Germany, Orientalist imagery and stereotypes thus provided an important and successful fodder for the entertainment industries (Berman). Cruel colonial practices like ethnological exhibitions appeared alongside dreamy art and narratives in the style of the Arabian Nights . In Berlin, these include the Zoologischer Garten Berlin with its Orientalist buildings and Völkerschauen since 1878, the Deutsche Colonial-Ausstellung in Treptower Park in 1896, or the Lunapark running from 1909 to 1933, with its variety shows and sights, such as an Egyptian street imitation, to name just a few of the numerous Orientalist leisure facilities. Such artificial Oriental landscapes and settings were built for Berlin’s city dwellers. The rise of esotericism and vitalism corresponded to this taste for the so-called Oriental, which included Judaism (Mendes-Flohr 77, 80, 81). This led to the publication of many translations, digests, and compilations of Jewish mysticism, namely the Kabbalah, legends, wisdom, and literature in general (Gilman 270—86; Heschel 87; Mendes-Flohr 77—132), attesting to a certain popularity of Jew- “Ich, die Dichterin von Arabien” 369 DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 ish tradition and thought beginning around 1900, even though it was often driven by exoticism. Since obtaining full civil rights in 1871, Jews, or at least Jewish men, were to a certain extent normalized in German society. But these developments occurred concomitantly with growing antisemitism and fascist movements (Heschel 12). At this juncture, the multimedia artist Else Lasker-Schüler began creating imageries and story worlds inspired by Orientalist popular amusements and culture (Kirschnick). In the following, I examine Lasker-Schüler’s exceptional form of German Orientalism, which she claimed for herself as Jewess, rather than displaying through an exotic other (Körner 30—31). 2 At a time when other people of Jewish descent, such as Karl Kraus and Kurt Tucholsky, had themselves baptized in an attempt to integrate into the majority culture, Lasker-Schüler ostentatiously cultivated her image as an exotic Jewess (Bodenheimer and Kilcher). She therefore became an important representative of cultural Zionism (Körner), and its positive Orientalism (Körner 104—05). The artist was born in 1869 in Wuppertal and came to Berlin in the late 1890s, where she worked her way to the forefront of the avant-garde until she could rightfully be called the queen of Berlin’s Bohemians in the 1910s and 1920s. Early in 1933 she fled to Zurich and a few years later to Palestine; she died in January 1945 in Jerusalem. In addition to her poems, stories, novels, plays and essays, Lasker-Schüler also created a variety of graphics, including drawings and collages on any kind of paper (Schmetterling 180). 3 She was also a performance artist and even her letters often constitute graphic works of art in which she continues to take on the roles of her fictional characters. The content of her art evolved around her persona and alter egos: she was an author, narrator, and character all in one and her drawings mostly consist of self-portraits as an Oriental prince. Lasker-Schüler thereby mixes Jewish elements with references to Far Eastern or Arab religions and cultures, as well as a purely imaginary East (Al-Taie). Through her stories and illustrations, she invents a poetic parallel world, called “Theben.” Named after the ancient Egyptian city, Theben is ruled by Lasker-Schüler’s own alter ego, Prinz Jussuf. She performs this figure not only in fictional prose but also in her outfits, drawings, private letters, and other writings. As Donna K. Heizer writes, “The Orient became the space where she could define her role as an artist, a Jew, a unique individual - and be accepted by German society for it” (Heizer 32). In other words, Lasker-Schüler used the Orientalist logic of mystification, alienation, and commercialization to establish a certain image of herself as an artist. Amongst her first publications around 1900, mainly written in the style of classic fin de siècle texts, are poems in which Lasker-Schüler already - without ever having travelled to Palestine - evokes Oriental images of Judaism. 4 In Das 370 Julia Ingold DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 Lied des Gesalbten and Sulamith - two poems published in the cultural Zionist journal Ost und West: Illustrierte Monatsschrift für modernes Judentum - Lasker-Schüler fashions herself as a Jewish writer. With images linked to Western stereotypes of ‘the Orient,’ such as almonds and cedars (which read as Oriental, even biblical, plants and food), the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, sunrise (which highlights the idea of the Orient as a ‘Morgenland’), and of course Jerusalem, she Orientalizes Judaism. Moreover, she depicts Judaism similarly to her own stereotyped imagination of Islam, which is to say that her Judaism takes place in a timeless biblical fairyland. 5 It was nevertheless Peter Hille, Lasker-Schüler’s Catholic mentor and friend at this period, who established her reputation as an Oriental Jewish artist. 6 In an influential - and still frequently cited - review from 1904, Hille wrote: Else Lasker-Schüler ist von dunkelknisternder Strähne auf heißem, leidenschaftstrengem Judenhaupte, und so berührt so etwas wie deutsche Volksweise, wie Morgenwind durch die Nardengassen der Sulamith überaus köstlich. […] Else’s Seele aber steht in den Abendfarben Jerusalems, wie sie’s einmal so überaus glücklich bezeichnet hat. Jüdische Dichter, schöpferische Dichter aus Judäerblut sind selten. Die Glut einer entlegenen Urseele ursprünglich, stark und bei Schmähungen ungereizt zu erhalten, ist nicht leicht. (238) Hille combines an Orientalist praise for the artist with the antisemitic prejudice about Jews’ lack of genius (which Otto Weininger so prominently asserted in his Geschlecht und Charakter in 1903), while attempting to explain this lack of genius through the long history of Jewish suffering. A sensitive awareness for what Hille calls “das müde Blut verbannter Jahrtausende und greiser Kränkungen” (238) in this same article, and for the lament as a traditional Jewish genre can be detected in Lasker-Schüler’s Orientalization of Judaism from her earliest publications (Gelber 213, 216—19). The poem Mein Volk , first published in the 1905 poetry volume Der siebente Tag , is the most prominent example of this (Gelber 217): Mein Volk Der Fels wird morsch, Dem ich entspringe Und meine Gotteslieder singe … Jäh stürz ich vom Weg Und riesele ganz in mir Fernab, allein über Klagegestein Dem Meer zu. “Ich, die Dichterin von Arabien” 371 DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 Hab mich so abgeströmt Von meines Blutes Mostvergorenheit. Und immer, immer noch der Wiederhall In mir, Wenn schauerlich gen Ost Das morsche Felsgebein, Mein Volk, Zu Gott schreit. (30) This famous poem reveals the importance and profoundness of Lasker-Schüler’s work within Jewish traditions (Körner 34). It discusses the problem of Jewishness in a secularized Europe, the fear of losing what is left of Jewish tradition, the long history of suffering and lament, and the unavoidable decision regarding how to position oneself in relation to this history (Hessing 103—35; Körner 139—53). The poem’s speaker is identifiable as a psalmist who sings “Gotteslieder.” Likewise, the word “Klagegestein” - which is an allusion to the Wailing Wall - unmistakably defines the speaker as Jewish. The explanatory insertion “Mein Volk” after the second mention of the crumbling rock then clarifies that it is the Jewish people that is spread across the earth and, in times of secularization, loses touch with its traditions and existence as a community. By calling her own blood fermented (“mostvergoren”), the psalmist is likely lamenting her own boundedness to the old religion, which she lightly criticizes for conservatism or decadence. As the poem makes clear, there is no choice of identity when othering is the surrounding society’s typical reaction to difference (Gilman ix). Crying to God in the East, the speaker finally expresses a feeling of solidarity with or belonging to the crumbling rock. She thus establishes herself as a Jewish voice speaking in the name of an ancient people and with the authority of an ancient tradition. Despite the undeniably Orientalist character of her early poetry, Lasker-Schüler’s first prose volume, Das Peter Hille-Buch from 1906, is set in a Nordic land of myths. In this, she also takes on her first relevant alter ego: Tino, who will develop into Tino, “Prinzessin von Bagdad” (97) in Die Nächte Tino von Bagdads from 1907, and later into “die Dichterin von Arabien, Prinzessin von Bagdad, Enkelin des Scheiks, ehemaliger Jussuf von Egypten, Deuter der Ähren, Kornverweser und Liebling Pharaos” (213) in Briefe nach Norwegen from 1911 and 1912. While the fictional content of Lasker-Schüler’s Orientalist works repeats the usual Western stereotypes projecting an eclectic Islamic wonderland, her Orientalist self-staging as Jewish artist occurs on the paratextual level. In a world in which a Mata Hari can make a living from her alleged Indian back- 372 Julia Ingold DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 ground, a Jewish-Oriental provenance serves the authentication of Orientalist art (Heizer 34). Around 1910, Lasker-Schüler also planned a performance project in which she herself intended to appear as her alter ego “Tino von Bagdad oder Schlôme von Jericho,” as she writes in a letter to Jethro Bithell ( Werke und Briefe 6, letter no. 229). Even though the play was never staged, Lasker-Schüler’s descriptions of it in her letters provide insight into her work as performance artist and the visual side of her Orientalism. She planned to read her ‘Arabic’ stories, as she called her Orientalist prose, in Arabic on a stage. Which means she would have someone translate her texts into Arabic with a phonetic transcription. She planned to read out the latter like Dadaist sound poetry. A translator would have read aloud the original German version simultaneously, while a “10jähriger Negerjunge in feuerrot, Fez etc.” (to Jethro Bithell; Werke und Briefe 6, letter no. 229) sitting at her feet would have handed her the manuscript. A dancer would also have given a physical interpretation of the text (to Jethro Bithell; Werke und Briefe 6, letter no. 237). It would have been a Dada-evening avant la lettre . This plan was already in place in 1910, namely seven years before Hugo Ball performed his famous sound poem Karawane in the Zurich-based Cabaret Voltaire, which took Orientalist imagery as pretext for avant-gardist art. In slight variations, one finds similar descriptions of this envisioned performance throughout Lasker-Schüler’s letters in 1910 and 1911. She also writes here about her outfit, the instruments she wanted to use, and many more details. After this project failed, Lasker-Schüler never planned a comparably ambitious show again, but contemporary accounts suggest that all of her readings were actually artistic performances. Although this particular performance never passed the status of a sketch, it reveals nevertheless how Lasker-Schüler worked with some of the most obvious colonial visual stereotypes, such as the Black boy with a fez, which is still present in the company logo of the Austrian coffee brand Julius Meinl. In reality, a fez was mainly worn by adult men in the Ottoman Empire. The European Jewish artist imagines herself as Oriental, but in the position of someone employing servants or, worse, owning enslaved people. Susannah Heschel writes about the Western European Jews’ double bind situation, since on the one hand they belong to the colonized other, on the other hand they are citizens of imperialist states (Heschel 95). Thus, Lasker-Schüler proceeds with the usual colonialist Orientalism, creating her own subaltern East. The Orientalist hierarchy is only disrupted in so far as Lasker-Schüler herself as Jewess is Orientalized and subordinated by the majority of German society. Like successful authors such as Karl May, she cultivates her exotic image, and by this follows fashion and contemporary commercial interests (Berman; Kirschnick; Schmetterling 176). The exotic, erotic Tino von Bagdad is of course on the one “Ich, die Dichterin von Arabien” 373 DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 hand a figure of female self-empowerment and on the other hand just a very common sexist and marketable stereotype (Liska). Lasker-Schüler’s quite conventional Orientalism changes with the introduction of her alter ego Prinz Jussuf, who has explicitly Jewish traits and surroundings. As Ricarda Dick argues, the Orientalist “Selbststilisierung” (122) meets the contemporary taste, but Lasker-Schüler pursues it so thoroughly and in her own way that the outcome is exceptional. In her serialized epistolary novel Briefe und Bilder, published successively in different journals from 1913 to 1917 as well as her collection of short stories Der Prinz von Theben from 1914, Prinz Jussuf ’s story and his visual world take shape, and thereby the subversive dimensions of Lasker-Schüler’s Orientalism (Dick; Berman 260—345). Along with these stories she develops her own distinctive drawing style and provides illustrations. She furthermore uses her graphics to extend her play with fact, fiction, and her alter egos to a visual level (Schmetterling 171): Lasker-Schüler herself had a classic bob haircut, for example, at a time that most of her drawn figures had the same hairstyle. She also inscribed her drawings with “Prinz Jussuf ” and signed her private letters with the same name. This strategy suggests that Jussuf ’s adventures are encrypted references to real-world events. Briefe und Bilder starts as a series of letters addressed to the “blauer Reiter Franz Marc” (299), signed with “Jussuf ” (306), but written, as the headers state, by author Else Lasker-Schüler. The novel’s setting successively shifts from 1910s Berlin to the timeless and placeless eclectic Oriental world of Thebes, as well as from first to third person narrative. In the beginning, Jussuf, who is clearly identifiable as the author’s alter ego, writes that he wants to start a “kunstpolitische Zeitschrift” (306) called “die wilden Juden” (306). Later, Jussuf becomes more of a fictional character, as he calls his Theban friends or allies “wilde Juden”: “‘Die Zebaothknaben’ nennt sich der Bund der Söhne. Aus diesen wählte Ich sieben Häuptlinge und setzte Mich über sie als ihr Oberhaupt. Wir acht wilde Juden bilden nun eine Vereinigung, Ruben [= Franz Marc; J. I.]” (333). Described here as “wilde Juden” and “Häuptlinge” - with the latter word in its German-language usage denoting an association with Native Americans - Jews are made into an Orientalist equivalent of the colonial stereotype of the ‘noble savage’ (Spinner 94—120). 7 From part 12 (of 16) on, the chapters are not letters anymore but narrative prose - now not addressed but dedicated to Franz Marc who died in the war in 1916 - telling the adventures of Jussuf and his “wilde Juden” in third person. Over the course of the story, it seems the biblical Joseph becomes not only counsellor but emperor himself. He carries various titles, like “Abigail Jussuf Basileus” (319) or “Jussuf Abigail Malik von Theben” (326). Lasker-Schüler uses the Arab form of the name, ‘Jussuf,’ and merges elements and vocabulary that are 374 Julia Ingold DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 either associated with Islam and Arab culture or with Judaism (Al-Taie). Lasker-Schüler thereby Orientalizes both herself and (her) Jewishness (Ludewig). Beyond that she uses the Hebrew female name Abigail as a royal male title. This is paradigmatic for the way Lasker-Schüler artistically confounds common social roles. Without any hesitation or further comment she uses words and shapes motifs to disrupt matters of course (Schmetterling 171). Thus, Briefe und Bilder , later published as a collected volume under the title of Der Malik (1919), has often been called an “Anti-War Novel” (Rumold). The storyline follows the genderqueer pansexual Jewish Prinz Jussuf, who falls in love with the “Arier Giselheer” ( Der Malik 467) to his subjects’ disliking. Nonetheless, the love between the two “Fürsten der feindlichen Heere” (479) leads to a kiss instead of a battle on the day Giselheer’s “Arierschar” (479) goes to war against Thebes. This part of the story was published in 1916 in the midst of the First World War. Lasker-Schüler adopts old stories and prejudices to invert or change their usual hierarchies. By creating this Oriental Jewish kingdom she performatively ennobles Jewishness. Jakob Wassermann does something similar in his 1914 essay Der Jude als Orientale as he first attributes an Oriental side to Jews and second reframes this side as the Jewish character’s element that makes it sublime and genius (Berman 264—290; Heizer 33—34; Mendes-Flohr 83). 8 Even encyclopedias at that time record Jews’ alleged lack of genius. 9 Wassermann inverts this prejudice (Mendes-Flohr 77—132) while also employing Orientalist tropes usually denoting degradation as an explanation for uniqueness and creativity (Gilman 273). Lasker-Schüler’s well-known and well-established alter ego Prinz Jussuf is also the main character in her 1914 illustrated volume Der Prinz von Theben. Ein Geschichtenbuch . Following the episodes of Briefe und Bilder it is possible to observe the development of Lasker-Schüler’s graphic style from dilettante vignettes to dynamic, ornamental artworks. While the irregular and widespread parts of Briefe and Bilder just appear with stereotyped drawings in black and white, Der Prinz von Theben contains more elaborate reproductions of drawings with shades of grey. Lasker-Schüler’s pictures are as non-representational as possible and nonetheless need only a few lines to render a clearly Oriental scenery (Spinner 96). The illustrations are flat, decorative pen-and-ink drawings with a tendency to renew the art of the arabesque (Ingold). Whereas in Briefe und Bilder they have a subordinate function, merely illustrating the narrative, in Der Prinz von Theben they are at least of equal if not of greater importance than the texts. Containing stories and pictures from the world of Thebes (Berman 330—35), Der Prinz von Theben features pictures which are Orientalist in terms of both content and form. While Lasker-Schüler’s style is inspired by Oriental “Ich, die Dichterin von Arabien” 375 DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 or at least what is supposed to be Oriental fine art (Dick), her dynamic, broken lines also fit perfectly with the fine arts of classical modernism. Fig. 1: Lasker-Schüler, Else. Der Prinz von Theben. Ein Geschichtenbuch. Leipzig: Verlag der weißen Bücher, 1914. Frontispiece. Image: J. I. With this eclectic approach, Lasker-Schüler not only conveys Orientalist content but also imitates Oriental style while inventing a modernist interpretation of the arabesque (Ingold 101—18). The book’s frontispiece (Fig. 1), inscribed König Abigail III. der oberste Priester empfängt sein Volk , illustrates Lasker-Schüler’s typical classical modern style with its affinity to calligraphy that may be an allusion to traditional Arab fine art. These same lines and motifs can be found in nearly all her 1910s artworks. For the frontispiece Lasker-Schüler works with pencil and ink to create a two-layered image. The composition is dominated by a figure that fills the whole size of the picture ground from upper to lower margin and depicts König Abigail III, another title for Prinz Jussuf. König Abigail III’s crown recalls the fantastic headdresses the artist already drew for some characters in Briefe und Bilder . Likewise, the face is shown in Lasker-Schüler’s signature pose and style: in profile with a bob haircut. At first glance the body of König Abigail III seems to consist only of wild lines, but upon closer look there are two hands emerging from a wide shirt, as is always worn by Jussuf and sometimes also by the artist herself in real life. As is typical in Lasker-Schüler’s drawings, the hands in this image are covered with tattoos of stars and the moon. Thicker, 376 Julia Ingold DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 calligraphy-like ink lines overlay thinner pencil lines forming the figure’s torso. Where the right breast might be one can recognize a domed building and some flat houses, which symbolically shows the monarch’s ties to his city as the city becomes part of his body. His body is then surrounded by parallel lines which suggest a halo, or a coat with a big tassel in the lower right half of the picture. In the lower left half of the picture, the fez-wearing “Volk” is gathered. The inscription in the right half of the bottom, with lines no less calligraphic than the drawings, holds a double status as ornament and writing. While all the stars in the picture are six pointed, the connections between the points within the stars are missing, meaning they are not clearly stars of David. In other pictures in this same volume Lasker-Schüler juxtaposes both ‘empty’ six pointed stars and stars consisting of two triangles, meaning that they serve here as a general Orientalist decoration rather than a specific symbol for Judaism. Every aspect of this picture represents an eclectic compilation of Lasker-Schüler’s already established graphic elements. The motif is rendered through light, playful lines that lend the picture a certain movement. While it is possible to identify objects, the picture can also be read as a purely ornamental sheet as figure and decoration merge. Similarly, whereas the total absence of illusionist depth and the thicker ink lines clearly drawn with a brush recall the calligraphic tradition of Islamic art (Schmetterling 176), the way lines and colors are placed to evoke identifiable objects is essential to the classical modernist artists. Until the late nineteenth century, the so-called ‘academic style’ prevailed, and even progressive painters like Édouard Manet or James McNeill Whistler worked in an illusionist way with realistic proportions and colors, as well as with depth to make the picture a quasi-traversable window into another world. The following generation of the avant-garde closed that window and made the picture a flat object with lines and color fields attached to a wall (Schmetterling 161). If they had immediately taken the radical step to stop rendering recognizable objects altogether, as Kandinsky and Kasimir Malewitsch later did, no one would have noticed the revolution. Only when expressionist painters like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner continued depicting humans - albeit as disfigured and wild with surrealist colors - did the break from academic tradition become obvious. Lasker-Schüler’s graphics mock the Old Masters. Since the beginning of Western visual arts, drapery has been an important object to express style. Drapery is the picture element through which fine artists could prove their skills. In gothic fine art, for example, art historians today call one style ‘Zackenstil’ (jagged style) just because the drapes of the figures’ clothes are captured in sharp zig-zag lines. Through all artistic developments, the drapes remained a playful motif almost losing touch with its representational function and becoming more of a demonstration of virtuosity and l’art pour l’art . Thus Lask- “Ich, die Dichterin von Arabien” 377 DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 er-Schüler clothes Prinz Jussuf and his fellow characters in dramatic garments, playing with the objects’ defining lines as virtuously as the Old Masters. In so doing, she demonstrates her modernity by utilizing a motif of traditional visual art in her own idiosyncratic style. At the same time, she turns her back on the sublime art form of painting and turns instead to the graphic arts. This is significant in that painting and sculpture occupied the highest rank in the fine arts for centuries, whereas drawing served merely as the tool to prepare the ‘actual’ oeuvre. Classical modernists such as Lasker-Schüler challenged this hierarchy. Through her constant inversion of traditional hierarchies, Lasker-Schüler gives Judaism a noble quality and makes graphics a noble art form. The insights discussed here about Lasker Schüler’s drawing König Abigail III. der oberste Priester empfängt sein Volk apply more or less to all of Lasker-Schüler’s Theban illustrations in the 1910s. Her drawn figures are genderless and immaterial, fashioned from broken, dynamic lines. In the following years, Lasker-Schüler’s graphic arts become more and more distinguished, partly because she realized she could sell her graphics for a much higher price than her poems (Dick 148). Meanwhile, there is a general tendency in her artistic approach to ennoble the depreciated and to degrade the sublime. To treat these rough scribbles on simple paper like fully-fledged works of art is an act of ennobling seemingly worthless things. The same applies for Lasker-Schüler’s illustrations more generally, as illustrations supplement books and make them more precious. Similar strategies of ennoblement occur in her fantastic parallel worlds, when the female Jewish artist becomes the prince, the Jewish prince becomes the emperor of Egypt, and the Jewish characters figure in the highest ranks of hierarchy. Overall, Lasker-Schüler’s artistic strategies encompass content as well as form and material. Throughout her life, she worked with the simplest components, such as pencil, ink, and charcoal, and later sometimes colored crayons and chalk on paper. She also drew on old telegram blanks, wrote on ripped envelopes, and glued old shiny wrapping paper onto her graphics to gild them (Schmetterling 180). The result was not pleasing, but quirky works of art that resembled her writing style. Her works thus differed significantly from the usual Oriental sceneries (Schmetterling 176). Academic Orientalist paintings by artists like Jean-Léon Gérôme or Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres with their realistic style served colonialist hierarchies by recounting an archaic, exotic, and underdeveloped world with ‘barbaric’ customs such as slave trade and polygamy, and by mainly depicting women as erotic objects. Their realism pretends to portray the ‘real’ colonized Orient and thus even delivers justifications for colonization as an act of Western grace and enlightenment. Such paintings could thus be used like imperialist propaganda. While Lasker-Schüler did follow Orientalist fashions and fascinations as they occurred in both highbrow and lowbrow arts, 378 Julia Ingold DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 philosophy, and the sciences, she also adhered to the logics of the classical modernist avant-garde. Birgit M. Körner thus places her somewhere between the avant-garde and cultural Zionism (114—214). Lasker-Schüler’s ostentatiously artificial style created a flat graphic world that did not claim any connection to a geographic reality (Schmetterling 161). By bringing her own appearance in line with that of Prinz Jussuf ’s and vice versa, she claimed a connection between her Oriental story worlds and her real-life persona. In a 1921 reader’s letter she states, “Ich habe durch die Prinzenkrone nur dem Judentum einen Opal in die Schläfe gesetzt, […]” (“Zuschrift an ‘Die Weltbühne’” 21). Her visual Orientalism thus serves her self-Orientalization und with it her performative ennoblement of Jewishness. Today one might call this an empowering self-awareness and reappropriation of the disparaging label of Jewishness. 10 Despite this progressive quality of Lasker-Schüler’s work, one hierarchy that generally remains unquestioned in her prose and images is the racist world order that enslaved and subjectified Black populations. This was already noticeable in Lasker-Schüler’s plan for the aforementioned performance as “Tino von Bagdad oder Schlôme von Jericho,” where she planned for a Black child to serve as a quasi-requisite for the Orientalist stage setting. In one description of the intended show in a letter to Max Brod (8 Apr. 1910) she writes, “und einen kleinen Neger mieten wir uns zum Vortrag, der uns Sachen überreicht abends - Bläckende Zähne, rollende Augen” ( Werke und Briefe 6, letter no. 234). With the baring teeth and rolling eyes she recalls the usual racist depiction of Black persons in caricature. The editors of the Kritische Ausgabe remark that next to the n-word is a drawing of a “Gestalt mit schwarzem Kopf und Fez” (letter no. 234). The Black child as servant with fez is a European colonialist invention and a fixed component of the project. Lasker-Schüler retains the motif and transfers it to the world of Thebes where - appropriate to the shallowest stereotype - Prinz Jussuf has of course a Black servant. Lasker-Schüler then places the fez on the head of Prinz Jussuf ’s Black servant in question, Oßman. When she handwrites the latter’s name the O represents a head covered by the fez (Fig. 2). Like other fixed visual formulas ‘Oßman’ becomes one of Lasker-Schüler’s own graphic signs. Oßman is clearly marked as African since Prinz Jussuf calls him for example “Meinen treuen Somaliknecht Oßman” ( Der Malik 471), linking him to the country which was colonized by Italy and the United Kingdom at that time. Even though Oßman seems to have a deep emotional bond with Prinz Jussuf - he plays the postillon d’amour in the forbidden love story between Giselheer and Prinz Jussuf (508, 516) - he is not one of the ruler’s comrades (“Spielgefährten” [477]), the “wilde Juden,” but “der ewige Knecht” (482). “Ich, die Dichterin von Arabien” 379 DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 Fig. 2: Lasker-Schüler, Else. Postcard to Kurt Wolff, 19 Mar. 1913. Postcard and Image courtesy of Kurt Wolff Archive. Yale Collection of German Literature. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Call Number: YCGL MSS 3, [23]v. Briefe und Bilder , the central text about Prinz Jussuf ’s coronation and rule, was created during a longer period from 1913 to 1917. It was collected, completed, and published in 1919 under the title Der Malik . While the novel’s inverted world has a carnivalesque aspect, allowing Lasker-Schüler to subvert traditional gender roles, heteronormativity, and the colonialist suppression of the reputedly barbaric people of color in the Orient, she notably does not question the subaltern status of Black African people. Still the most carnivalesque scene evolves around Oßman on a holiday when servant and ruler switch roles, whereby Oßman’s behavior cannot be described as anything other than brutish. In his part as “Somalimalik” (497) he sniffs at a woman (497), has humans roasted (498), and devours whole animals with skin and hair. Shown as a wild creature, he clearly fulfills the cliché of an African cannibal for the amusement of Jussuf ’s subjects, “Die Schwermütigen wurden vor Lachen gesund, den Krüppeln wuchsen die Glieder wieder; alle wollten sie den schmausenden Basileus sehen” (473—74). It is thus left to the readers whether to interpret this exaggeration as a satire of colonialist stereotypes. In the context of Lasker-Schüler’s Orientalism, I nevertheless read this depiction as an unquestioned affirmation of a racist mindset, for while the Black character plays an expected role and is only ennobled on a holiday as a spectacle to entertain the voyeuristic people of Thebes, the fluid and unconventional treatment of gender, sexuality, and Jewishness gains subversive momentum. In conclusion, Lasker-Schüler’s visual Orientalism as it would have been performed on stage would have been quite conventional, whereas her art was quite exceptional. Already at the turn of the century, Lasker-Schüler used her 380 Julia Ingold DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 Jewishness to cultivate her image as a mystic and exotic artist. In the 1910s, her Orientalism began developing aspects as subversive as her art forms. She created an eclectic Jewish-Oriental world out of an interplay between words and image and derived benefits from the stereotype of the Jew as Oriental for her artistic self-staging to prove her works’ authenticity and inspiration. By appropriating an imposed ‘identity,’ she made emancipatory and affirmative use of her Jewishness as artistic material. While the fantastic, dreamy Orientalism of Lasker-Schüler’s works has nothing to do with any real countries east and south of Europe, this also brought an important impulse to the artistic avant-garde, with the Orient as unfilled space allowing for and inspiring further artistic experiments (Schmetterling 172). Lasker-Schüler is processing a nonexistent imaginary Orient and inscribes herself into it. Rather than displaying an other, she becomes the other. Her visual Orientalism is unique, because her graphics do not depict Oriental objects, but in imitation of arabesques, they become Oriental objects. Lasker-Schüler’s texts, graphics, and real-life self-staging are inseparable parts of a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ in which she subverts hierarchies of different areas. She remains interested in ways to uplift the discarded and depreciated, be it marginalized or powerless groups or even literal waste. Notes 1 When I use the terms Orient and Oriental here it always only means the Western fantasy since there is no ‘real’ Orient behind that. I will not use quotation marks every time I use the terms. 2 Körner describes Lasker-Schüler’s “Entwicklung einer weiblichen und orientalischen poetischen ‘Identität’” (154—72). 3 There is an online display with materials from the Lasker-Schüler Archives at the Deutsches Literaturarchiv in Marbach am Neckar and the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem that gives exemplary insights into Lasker-Schüler’s graphic arts: laskerschuelerarchives.org. 4 Gelber examines Lasker-Schüler’s fin de siècle-style poetry as contribution to Eroticism and Masochism in Cultural Zionism in a chapter with the same name (203—46). 5 In Jüdischer Inslam. Islam und jüdisch-deutsche Selbstbestimmung Heschel traces the affirmative reception of Islam by Jewish scholars and artists from the 1840s to Lasker-Schüler’s times. 6 Körner, in her chapter “Die jüdische Dichterin” - Vorbehalte der Forschung (29—34), shows how this images stuck and has influenced Lasker-Schüler’s reception ever since. “Ich, die Dichterin von Arabien” 381 DOI 10.24053/ CG-2024-0018 7 Spinner shows that Lasker-Schüler’s Orientalism includes the primitivist vision of Islam which Said already described (94—120). 8 Cf.: “Wo sich hingegen der einzelne wieder des großen Zusammenhangs bewußt wird, wo er im Schoß der Geschichte, der Überlieferung ruht, wo urewige Symbole ihn tragen, urewige Blutströme ihm Adelsbewußtsein verleihen und zugleich alles Errungene und Erworbene organisch damit verschmilzt, da mag er wohl den Weg zu Göttlichem leichter als andere finden. Der Jude als Europäer, als Kosmopolit ist ein Literat; der Jude als Orientale, nicht im ethnographischen, sondern im mythischen Sinne, als welcher die verwandelnde Kraft zur Gegenwart schon zur Bedingung macht, kann Schöpfer sein.” (Wassermann 132) 9 Cf.: “Die Arbeitsgebiete, auf denen sich die Juden in wissenschaftlicher Hinsicht betätigen, sind die dramatische und die Tonkunst, ferner die Medizin, die Mathematik, die Philologie und die Sozialwissenschaften, und zwar sind die Männer, die sie geliefert haben, mehr talentvolle als geniale Naturen.” (“Juden” 330) 10 In chapter two of his book, Mendes-Flohr examines the connection between “Fin de Siècle Orientalism, the Ostjuden , and the Aesthetics of Jewish Self-Affirmation” (77—132) in general. Works Cited Al-Taie, Yvonne. “‘Vorführung meiner Blutsverwandten’: Else Lasker-Schülers arabische Chiffren jüdischer Identität.” Zeitschrift für Deutsche Philologie 133.4 (2014): 553—71. Berman, Nina. Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne. 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