Else Lasker-Schuler : A Life Paperback / softback

Else Lasker-Schuler, a pivotal figure in German Expressionism, presided over avant-garde cafe life in pre-World War I Berlin in much the same way Gertrude Stein did in Paris around the same time.

Her poetry, prose, plays and graphic art are not very well known in the English-speaking world, but her work has been enjoying a critical and popular revival since she was rediscovered in the 1960s.

Else Lasker-Schuler's life and work as a Jew, a woman, and a writer and artist in Nazi Germany and in other locations after Hitler's takeover are chronicled in this book.

It begins with her flight to Switzerland, after receving Germany's top literary prize, and then goes back to her childhood and follows her life through to its end in Jerusalem, where she died five months before Germany surrendered to the Allies.

It covers her marriages to Dr Berthold Lasker, brother of the world chess champion, and to Herwarth Walden, founder of the avant-garde periodical, gallery and publishing house ""Der Sturm"" (The Storm), and her friendships with Martin Buber, Karl Kraus, Franz Marc, Gottfried Benn and Gershom Scholem.