Reclaiming Bildung: Else Lasker-Schüler’s Counter-Narrative

Abstract

This article builds on previous scholarship on Bildung in German and German Jewish literature and culture to argue that the poet and dramatist Else Lasker-Schüler employs and subverts the white supremacist, patriarchal, and heteronormative construct of Bildung. While other scholars have examined Lasker-Schüler’s last drama IchundIch (1940) through the lens of exile, this analysis considers the drama through the perspective of Bildung, thereby recuperating Lasker-Schüler into the broader tradition and discourse of Bildung, which tends to overshadow female writers and, in scholarship, tends to be written primarily by male scholars. Lasker-Schüler’s technique of intertextuality within the play destabilizes this concept of Bildung and functions as a means of critique of the assimilationist force that Bildung sought to offer. Seen in this manner, Lasker-Schüler’s drama produces a counter-narrative that challenges the master plot narrative of Bildung.