Else Lasker-Schuler: writing hysteria.(hysteria and sex roles in the works of Else Lasker-Schuler)

An examination of Else Lasker-Schuler's connection to the discourse of hysteria so pervasive in her day tells us much about how she viewed herself as a woman and an author. Images and metaphors of hysteria figure within Lasker-Schuler's prose texts "Der Fakir" and "Arthur Aronymus," and her autobiographical essays "Lasker-Schuler contra B. und Genossen" and "Only for Children over Five Years" can be analyzed within the context of the case history as literary genre. In writing about her own illness and that of her fictional characters, Lasker-Schuler both criticizes the gender relations of her time and invokes the repressed desires and radical possibilities inherent in the language of hysteria. (JR)

**********

The word "hysteria" evokes a complex of images associated with the turn of the last century: fin-de-siecle drawing rooms populated by nervous women, fainting spells, convulsions, paralysis, and nervous ticks, Anna O. and Dora, Charcot and Freud, hypnosis and the "talking cure." But hysteria has a history that extends back to ancient times and, as Elaine Showalter argues in Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media, forward to the present day, for although it may be known by other names, hysteria is no less prevalent in today's society than it was a century ago. (1)

As a physical disorder, hysteria is associated with a long list of ailments, but its symptoms (and the explanations for them) have evolved over time, adapting to an ever-changing historical and cultural context. What was considered demonic possession in the year 1000 might be labeled "Multiple Personality Disorder" in the year 2000, and in both cases the diagnosis must be read within a given "network of medical, supernatural, religious, and aesthetic discourses" (Bronfen 102). Hysteria can take many forms, but, as Showalter writes, it "cuts across historical periods and national boundaries, poses fundamental questions about gender and culture, and offers insights into language, narrative, and representation" (Hystories 7, my emphasis). This discursive dimension of hysteria makes it interesting for scholars of literature: an examination of Else Lasker-Schuler's connection to the discourse of hysteria (which was particularly pervasive in her day) tells us much about how she viewed herself as a woman and an author.

 
   For five years, because it was recognized too late, I was very, very 
   sick on account of Dr. Lasker, I had a fever day and night, my life 
   and my physical ability to work are weakened. I cannot earn money 
   from outside employment, although I have completely recovered. 
   It was devastating for me. If I didn't have a child, I would wander 
   about or put an end to it all, the world can survive without poems 
   by ELSch (Lieber 91). 

In this excerpt from a letter to publisher Kurt Wolff, undated but written around 1913, Else Lasker-Schuler offers a brief version of her marriage to Dr. Berthold Lasker and its negative impact on her life. The couple married in Lasker-Schuler's hometown, Elberfeld, in 1894 and moved to Berlin that year. Few details are known about the marriage, aside from the fact that Lasker-Schuler was not well suited to a quiet life of bourgeois homemaking. In 1896, she began taking painting lessons and set up her own studio; in 1899, she left her husband to join the circle of young bohemian artists surrounding Peter Hille and published her first poems; in 1903, she and Lasker were legally divorced.

It is unclear whether Lasker-Schuler actually suffered from a lengthy illness during her marriage to Lasker, and if so, what the nature of it may have been, but it is possible that she suffered from hysteria. From the eighteenth century on, the spread of hysteria parallels the rise of bourgeois culture. By the late nineteenth century, hysteria had reached epidemic proportions, and Else Lasker-Schuler corresponded to the stereotype of the typical patient: she was a young, middle-class woman with artistic inclinations and little to keep her occupied. Indeed, in many respects, Lasker-Schuler shares much in common with Bertha Pappenheim, also known as "Anna O.," the subject of Josef Breuer's case history in his and Freud's Studies on Hysteria (Studien uber Hysterie, 1895).