My heart (novel)

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Mein Herz is an avant-garde letter novel by Else Lasker-Schüler , published in 1912 by Heinrich FS Bachmair in Munich and Berlin .

The author said goodbye to her second and last husband Herwarth Walden with a “mass game of pleasure”. All Sturm readers should find out about it via open letters - this woman did not want to let the men of Berlin get her down.

Memorial plaque on house Katharinenstrasse 5 in Halensee

background

The marriage ended in divorce in 1912. Before that, Else Lasker-Schüler wrote her husband over a hundred letters between September 2, 1911 and February 1912, which were subsequently preprinted under the heading Letters to Norway in the expressionist weekly Der Sturm . Else Lasker-Schüler continued to write for a while when Herwarth Walden and his friend, the lawyer Curt Neimann, returned to Berlin from Scandinavia. Kurtchen, as the letter writer calls the lawyer, had financed the Nordland tour.

content

Berlin culture - Ludwig Hardt lectured in the Choralion Hall - and Gossip and gossip from Berlin, Munich and Vienna also predominate in Else's communications: “Listen, Kokoschka is being followed up by the Neue Freie Presse ... even if he doesn't like me ... “Else Lasker-Schüler also reports on her encounters and table habits in the Café des Westens . Hiding her family worries, she succeeds in a consistently cheerful to cheerful tone. Paul Cassirer addresses her with Sir, Max Oppenheimer with Abbé and Richard Dehmel , the “Grand Caliph of all poetry” and Peter Altenberg pulls her through the cocoa. Or she eats big peas for lunch; sometimes referred to as the “firstborn” in Berlin. She sends greetings to the two traveling adventurers from other coffeehouse visitors - as there were Karin Michaëlis , Arnold Schönberg , Webern , Lene and Ludwig Kainer , Ada and Emil Nolde , Albert Ehrenstein , Döblin , Erna Reiss, Gustav Wallascheck, Hede von Trapp and William Wauer . The loved ones at home speaks their two escapees with "Dear boys," "dear Cook and Peary ", "North Pole researchers", " reindeer ", "skier", "ice bucket", "You guys cool Skagerrak tencharaktere", "northerners" and "You two Friends ”. She signed with Else, Tino of Baghdad, The Prince, Prince of Thebes and Yusuf Prince.

Else Lasker-Schüler confesses to Herwarth several Berlin lovers - first, Minn, who is the son of the Sultan of Morocco, second, the Slavs, and third, the bishop. Else has appointed the latter archbishop. The clergyman is allowed to kiss her hair. The Slav holds back as a man of honor - because Herwarth is away. But not the bishop. The "sweet" cleric has retired with the letter writer to his bachelor's house and they kissed. “Do you think that's bad?” Asked the tasting her husband in a letter in front of everyone. The archbishop is supposed to go for a walk with Else in Siberia. For Berliners, Siberia is on Lützowerplatz . She danced with the bearded son of the Sultan while visiting the Luna Park. Else was there with Gertrude Barrison . Since Else was kissed by Minn, she has loved “everyone” whose skin reminds her of gold brocade . This desirable man wants to pack her in his travel basket and off to Tangier . She really fell in love with the Slavs. Apparently Herwarth is not afraid of him, because he leaves Else's letter unanswered.

Her encounter with Dr. Döblin in the Café des Westens, because her boyfriend wants to operate on her thyroid gland and it may turn her into "a little cretin ". Doesn't matter with such an extremely smart girl like Else! Else really has enough friends now. The Peter Baum calls Pitter boom and wrote him letters in " Wupperthal Platt " about all sorts of topics - from the " Dütsche Triater " and " East Prösen ". Pitter and Paul Leppin don't address her as Else, but write “Dear Tino”. Patronizing it gives "the great essay ists Rudolf Kurtz the elephants orden with the emerald and black crocodile teeth chain First Class" In contrast, she castigates the possessiveness of the publisher Cohn , who dared but to reject her latest manuscript for sales prospects. Else watches the coffeehouse guests. Adolf Loos , who tells her about the African bush with “serious grace”, considers her kind and her deceased friend, the esthete Peter Hille , is a saint for her - St. Peter Hille, notes her. She dates one of her letters. The first of two letters to Max Oppenheimer is dated December 7, 1911. Georg Koch brings her “Chokoladenbonbons”. Paul Zech , “the only local poet on a grand scale”, is worth mentioning for Else because he is moving from Elberfeld, her place of birth, to Berlin.

The author sustains the hilarious tone to the end. Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele demands the letter writer because of "the German legend and the high song". The actor Wilhelm Murnau will second and bring a surgeon. Else Lasker-Schüler calls the latter a quack.

Quotes

  • Else writes to Herwarth: "I know you and you know me, we can no longer surprise each other ... Think of a miracle, please!"
  • Else writes to her “lovely boys”: “... most of them die of time. That's why you should go back to your childhood a lot. "
  • Else attributes the saying "Art is talking to God" to Nietzsche and continues to philosophize: "You cannot get to heaven if you don't have it in you ..."

Identities

The author deciphered the much-mentioned Cajus-Majus herself: "Gnudirektor Cajus-Majus = Dr. Hiller “And by the Dalai Lama she doesn't mean the Tibetan Buddhist , but Karl Kraus . The real names pose little or no riddle: Berneis , the sky painter Ali Hubert , Fritz Lederer , Hoddis , Leonhard Frank as a painter in Berlin, Poiret , Höxter , Otto Freundlich , Pechstein , M. Richter , the teacher Helene Herrmann and Julius Hart. Nevertheless, there is still enough cryptic decoding work - for example: Who was Richard Weiss from Vienna?

reception

  • Else Lasker-Schüler wanted to be accepted “as poeta non doctus and truly inspired ”. Bänsch takes a critical look at the existing secondary literature on interpretations of poetic passages in the book; examines the relevant works by Karl Josef Höltgen, Astrid Gehlhoff-Claes and Jürgen Wallmann from the years 1955 to 1966. In such considerations, Bänsch refers several times to the phalanx of the "heavenly gifted", which Else Lasker-Schüler has listed with Hille, Jesus , Buddha , Goethe , Nietzsche, Heine , Hauptmann and Kraus . Bänsch compares the text with the night watch of Bonaventura .
  • On the one hand it is undisputed - the letters are not authentic, but made up. On the other hand, it must be emphasized that in the Café des Westens at the time the visitors discussed on an equal footing - for example the “poor poet” Peter Hille with the influential major critic Alfred Kerr .
  • No matter how the letter writer Else presents herself, once as Tino of Baghdad, Prince of Thebes and Yusuf Prince - that is, as a man, then as a woman who has lost her husband - she always confidently constitutes her self.
  • With the strong reference to the first person - already noticeable in the title of the novel - the author wants to keep the reader's interest in pictures of “really living people”.
  • Sprengel perceives the "orientalizing framing" of this "differentiated portrait gallery of Berlin bohemians" as an "intersection of cultures".
  • August 9, 2004: Meike Feßmann in the SZ
  • January 17, 2005: Beate Tröger in the FAZ : A game for everyone who knows me

literature

Text output

Initial release
  • My heart. A romance novel with pictures and really living people. 166 pages. With drawings by the author and the Prince of Thebes by Karl Schmidt-Rottluff . Verlag Heinrich FS Bachmair, Munich and Berlin 1912
Other issues
  • My heart. A romance novel with pictures and really living people. dtv, Munich 1988 (with permission from Kösel-Verlag ), ISBN 3-423-10642-5 (edition used)

Secondary literature

  • Karl Josef Höltgen : Investigations into the poetry of Else Lasker-Schülers. Bonn 1958 (also Diss. Phil. Univ. Bonn 1955)
  • Jürgen Peter Wallmann : Else Lasker-Schüler. Genius of the Germans. 140 pages. Stieglitz Verlag, Mühlacker 1966
  • Dieter Bänsch : Else Lasker-Schüler. To criticize an established image. Diss. University of Marburg 1969. 271 pages
  • The nights of the Tino of Baghdad. P. 57–90 in Else Lasker-Schüler: The Prince of Thebes and other prose . dtv 10644, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-423-10644-1 .
  • Meike Feßmann : pawns. Else Lasker-Schüler's first-person figurations as a game with the author's role. A contribution to the poetology of the modern author. (Diss. FU Berlin 1991) M & P, Publishing House for Science and Research, Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-476-45019-8 (Licensor: Metzler, Stuttgart 1992)
  • Doerte Bischoff: Suspended Creation. Figures of sovereignty and ethics of difference in Else Lasker-Schüler's prose. (Diss. Uni Tübingen 1999) Max Niemeyer, Tübingen 2002, ISBN 3-484-15095-5 .
  • Sigrid Bauschinger : Else Lasker-Schüler. Biography. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 3777, Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2006 (Licensor: Wallstein, Göttingen 2004), ISBN 3-518-45777-2 .
  • Peter Sprengel : History of German-Language Literature 1900–1918. From the turn of the century to the end of the First World War. CH Beck, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-406-52178-9 .
  • Sylke Kirschnick: A thousand and one signs. Else Lasker-Schüler's Orient and Berlin's everyday and popular culture around 1900. Dissertation. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3207-3 .
  • Kerstin Decker : My heart - nobody. The life of the Else Lasker students. Propylaea, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-549-07355-1 .
  • Heidrun Loeper (Ed.): Else Lasker-Schüler. The rotating world factory. Berlin views and portraits. : TRANSIT , Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-88747-282-5 .

Web links

See also

Use of the dedication My Heart - Nobody. from the book My Heart

Remarks

  1. ↑ Besides the marital crisis at the time the letters were written, the author had other worries. The upbringing of the son Paul had to be financed and the sister Anna was dying. (Bauschinger, pp. 177–178)
  2. ↑ Towards the end of the text, a letter refers to yesterday in February (edition used, p. 96, 11th Zvu).
  3. ↑ Else Lasker-Schüler writes "Choralionssaal" (edition used, p. 83, 1. Zvo)
  4. ↑ When Thomas Mann had once entered the "Café des Westens" and had an overview of the bohemians there, in view of his colleagues from the writing guild, he is said to have slipped: "When do these people actually work?" (Decker, p. 11, 13. Zvo)
  5. ↑ Minn is a character from The Nights of Tino of Baghdad (p. 66 in: The Prince of Thebes and other prose ).
  6. ↑ see the opposite word poeta doctus

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Bänsch, p. 201, 4th Zvu
  2. ↑ Edition used, p. 52, 5th Zvu
  3. ↑ Decker, p. 13, 8. Zvu and p. 33., 5. Zvu
  4. ↑ Decker, p. 23, 15. Zvu
  5. ↑ Decker, p. 13, 5. Zvo
  6. ↑ Edition used, p. 44, 6th Zvu
  7. ↑ Edition used, p. 80, 7. Zvu, p. 90, 15. Zvu, p. 100, 3. Zvu and Loeper, p. 112, footnote 10
  8. ↑ Döblin's later wife Erna Reiss see under Alfred Döblin
  9. ↑ Gustav Wallascheck
  10. ↑ Kirschnick, p. 172, see also engl. Barrison Sisters
  11. ↑ Edition used, p. 51, 5. Zvo
  12. ↑ Edition used, p. 30, 15. Zvu
  13. ↑ Edition used, p. 32, 11. Zvu
  14. ↑ Edition used, p. 32, 11. Zvu
  15. ↑ Edition used, p. 47, 4. Zvo
  16. ↑ Edition used, p. 87, 2. Zvo
  17. ↑ Edition used, p. 63, 6. Zvo
  18. ↑ Bänsch, p. 73, 11. Zvu
  19. ↑ Bänsch, p. 154, 10. Zvu to p. 155, 11. Zvo
  20. ↑ Bänsch, p. 113, 17. Zvo, p. 172, 1. Zvo
  21. ↑ Bänsch, pp. 204-205.
  22. ↑ Bauschinger, p. 174, middle
  23. ↑ Bauschinger, p. 172 below
  24. ↑ Bischoff, p. 97.
  25. ↑ Feßmann anno 2002, p. 29, 10. Zvo
  26. ↑ Sprengel, p. 37, 6th Zvu and p. 404.
  27. ↑ Meike Feßmann reviews Mein Herz in 2004 (at buecher.de under the tab "Reviews")
  28. ↑ see also Dieter Bänsch: Else Lasker-Schüler. To criticize an established image. (Diss. Uni Marburg ) Metzler, Stuttgart 1971, ISBN 3-476-00184-9 .
  29. ↑ Reading sample (Italian)
  30. ↑ Else Lasker Schüler biography as a film in the IMDb