Language:
German
Year of publication:
2000
Titel der Quelle:
Jüdischer Almanach
Angaben zur Quelle:
2001 (2000) 127-144
Keywords:
Lasker-Schüler, Else,
Abstract:
Based on a lecture held in Berlin-Brandenburg, September 1998. Recalls that in 1932 Lasker-Schüler received the Kleist Prize for her life work, especially her just-published "Arthur Aronymus"; in 1933 she became an exile and in 1938 was deprived of her German citizenship. "Arthur Aronymus", published both as a play and as a story, is based on her father's childhood in Geseke in eastern Westphalia. Historically, there were anti-Jewish outbreaks in Geseke in 1844, because of the resistance of a Jewish father to the conversion of his 14-year-old son. In the story and play, the inhabitants threaten to burn one of Arthur's sisters as a witch; a priest offers to prevent this if little Arthur's father will let him grow up as a Christian. The father refuses: "My fathers came to God directly and my son should come through mediation?" The priest is impressed, and the story ends with the sister saved and the priest sharing the Passover Seder with the Jewish family out of a feeling of respect for their difference. The play could no longer be performed in Germany and has seldom been performed since, partly, perhaps, because after the Holocaust it seemed too rosy; but it contains powerful descriptions of the violence that can be unleashed by antisemitism.
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