SOURCE: "Else Lasker-Schüler and Her People," in Ariel, Jerusalem, No. 41, 1976, pp. 61-76.

In the following excerpt, Hessing discusses Lasker-Schüler's regard for her Jewish heritage and its influence on her works.

I am not a Hebrew for the sake of the Hebrews, but—for God's sake! This confession, however, includes the love and the faith of an unshakeable devotion to His people. To my smallest nation amongst the nations, to which I belong with heart and soul.

Else Lasker-Schüler, Dos Hebräerland (The Land of the Hebrews)

She was born in 1869, into a pious Jewish family of Wuppertal-Elberfeld, Germany; between the years 1894 and 1911, she was married twice, and twice divorced; by 1933, when she had to leave Germany, her poetry had established her as one of the leading figures in the literary world of her country; she spent her last years in Switzerland and, after 1939, in Jerusalem...