SOURCE: "The Poetry of Else Lasker-Schüler," in Modern Languages, Vol. XLIII, No. 2, June, 1962, pp. 53-60.

In the following essay, Guder surveys the major themes of Lasker-Schüler's poetry.

Examining the whole body of [Lasker-Schüler's] poetry from the publication of her first volume of verse, Styx, in Berlin, 1902, to Mein Blaues KinFier, written in exile and published in 1943 in Jerusalem, two years before the poet's death, one realizes that throughout her whole life her poetry was the expression of one unchanging experience. This experience was the outcome of an aim which was deeply rooted in Else Lasker-Schuler's thought and feeling, and of which a clear definition is given by the poet herself in her essay 'Meine Andacht':

Ich habe mich stets befleissight, nicht nach Gold aber nach Gott zu graben; manchmal stiess ich auf Himmel [Gedichte 1902-1943, 1959].

When Else Lasker-Schuler is classified as one of the German...