Lasker-Schüler, Else
(2/11/1869, Elberfeld near Wuppertal - 1/22/1945, Jerusalem)

Daughter of a Jewish banker, she started publishing lyric poetry in 1902, which was generally well regarded. Apart from two marriages (1903-12 to Herwarth Walden, a citizen of Berlin and spokesman of expressionism), she lived the life of a vagabond-poet (friendship with Peter Hille), emigrated in 1933 from Switzerland to Palestine, where in 1945 she died impoverished and mentally incapacitated.

Trakl met her in Berlin in March 1914, when he visited his sister Grete who was recovering from the effects of a miscarriage. Her impressions of the poet can be found in the poem “Georg Trakl” (1915). Trakl dedicated his poem “The Occident” to her. The additional phrase “in admiration” is unparalleled in his dedications.

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