Else Lasker-Schüler: Das Hebräerland (1937)
Else Lasker-Schüler: Das Hebräerland (1937)
In Tel-Aviv sind alle Menschen Juden, alte und neue, vergilbte und blühende. Der Richter ist Jude, der Polizist, der liebenswürdige Bürgermeister, der uns eben so väterlich zunickte, aber auch der Soldat. Eine Stadt, von Hebräern gebaut, gefüllt mit Hebräern. Doch gastlich empfängt ein jeder von ihnen den Andersgläubigen.
[In Tel-Aviv, everyone is Jewish, the old and new, the wizzened and the blossoming. The judge is Jewish, as is the policeman, the amiable mayor who just nodded to us like a father, but also the soldier. A city, built by Hebrews, filled with Hebrews. Yet each and every one of them welcomes those of other faiths. (ed. trans.)]
Quotation from Das Hebräerland (1937) by Else Lasker-Schüler
Else Lasker-Schüler's life and work were closely linked. Both were marked by the imaginative worlds which she created and which became reality for the poet, for instance when she presented herself dressed as Prince Jussuf in the streets of Berlin. Inevitably, exile represented a decisive break, both for herself and her work.
The loss of her home greatly increased her yearning for the land of her Jewish ancestors. Her only work of prose, Das Hebräerland, published in exile, was based on her impressions of her first journey to Palestine in 1934. It testifies to her deep roots in the Jewish cultural tradition and adds a further crucial aspect to her work: the social history of Judaism.
Das Hebräerland tells of holy places and the people living in an ideal Jewish state. "Thus everyone treats each other with respect. It is unfitting to sow discord here in the Holy Land." (ed. trans.) (Lasker-Schüler, Konzert, Prosa, Schauspiele, 2000, p. 203.) Yet upon moving to Jerusalem in 1939, she noted ruefully that the reality of everyday life could not live up to the utopia she had created. She wrote with resignation: "This is no longer Erez Israel [...] but Erez Misrael. [...] If the Jews cannot behave any differently, God shall choose another people." (ed. trans.) (Ben-Chorin, Jerusalem, 1988, p. 139f.)
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