Else Lasker-Schueler, one of the most original figures in modern German literature, has been called “a Hebrew poetess in the German tongue.” She once said: “They wanted to translate my poems into Hebrew, but they are already Hebrew poems.” She was born in Elberfeld, Germany, into a noted family of rabbis, scholars, and community leaders, the Schuelers, but early on became an eccentric and a bohemian, calling herself, out of her passion for things Oriental, “Princess Tino of Baghdad” and “Prince Yussuf of Thebes.” She died in Palestine early in 1945, at the age of sixty-eight. Hebräerland (Land of the Hebrews) was among the last of her many volumes of poetry and prose. Readers desirous of knowing more about her are directed to Heinz Politzer’s article “The Blue Piano of Else Lasker-Schueler” in our April 1950 issue. The prose sketch, Versoehnungstag, appears here for the first time in English translation. It is taken from Else Lasker-Schueler: Dichtungen und Dokumente, edited by Ernst Ginsberg, and published by permission of the Koesel-Verlag of Munich. The translation of the piece is by Harry Zohn.—Ed.
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There is not a Jew who does not think of his parents on this day, the holiest of the year. To my father and mother the Day of Atonement was the birthday celebration of Jewry. It has been this to Jews in all countries, on every continent, and to their children and children’s children. The world of the Jew will eternally include this day, and it will, at some time, stand before God as a creation in His own image.
Hatred and strife are sung to sleep smiling, like tired, stubborn children. On the eve of the Day of Atonement we moved on tiptoe, lest we should disturb the sweet air of devotion. The table, with its damask cloth, is set for the high Angel of Atonement who is born anew each year to every Jewish house. Far away from the parental home, the daughter and the son are admonished by the Day of Atonement, a memory become a form, from whose brow the star of peace shines forth. Jews, dressed in their holiday best, tenderly present the Day of Atonement to their fellow Jews, and to all their fellow townsmen. . . . Rancor disappears from the heart; error, it becomes evident, was the sole cause of strife. On this day our hands are there to clasp yours. Hemlock grows on the site of the unreconciled encounter.
The candles were lit at dusk on the eve of the Day of Atonement; and in my home, my father was the only one still missing from the peaceful, flower-bedecked table. The flowers remained serene amidst the milky porcelain dishes and the fragrant soup bowl. We could hear father’s restless footsteps over our heads. He made use of the entire first floor for dressing, and now and then a harsh imprecation cradled in a psalm would issue from the parlor. . . . But even there, in the first, second, third mirrors, he failed to push the collar button in. . . . The button had grown overnight, or was it the devil’s doing! Our cook Dora, whom we called “The Red Cat,” hurried to his side, but soon we heard her sneaking downstairs, meowing poisonously; she even gave notice. Elise was sent up to Mr. Schueler; she was patienter, listening as my father explained to her the meaning of the Day of Atonement. It was she who always picked out the non-pinching high-button shoes for him, from his regiment of shoes, all twelve pairs standing at attention along the wall. . . . My father liked smart boots, and well-tailored suits. His snow-white hair and beard had been washed with violet-scented soap and carefully combed, the tips of his mustache twirled, and now he came in to us to the Atonement dinner, an air of promise about him and his eyes turned piously inward. We children could hardly contain our laughter, until he himself laughingly reproved us: it was a solemn occasion!
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We were sitting around the table now, not exactly like a family, but like a little world apart, each one of us a being of different make-up, with various intermingling elements of the blood but separated too, for better or for worse—nations united on the day of God. As the youngest, I was always permitted to sit next to my adored mother, who secretly put a tidbit into the pocket of my little checkered dress. I felt like Life Eternal next to her who, one day, had given birth to me; that evening, in the warm velvet of the room, I remembered how I used to play in the meadow under her heart. Whenever I think back to it my eyes half close again, when I write about it the letters bleed on the snowy paper.
First my pre-warmed plate would be filled, then my father was served. He loved marrow balls and stealthily kept count of the number which the soup ladle mercilessly made disappear into the various plates; for all the attention he paid them, the marrow balls might have been made of flour paste! Sitting on my dear father’s left, my sister Martha Theresia was wool-gathering, her almond-shaped eyes like moons in her olive face. My other sister, Annamarie, the loveliest flower in the Wupper Valley, would sometimes link her arm with the strong hussar’s arm of my second brother; there was something so helpless about her delicacy. Seated between my middle brother and my eldest, who had come home from school for the holiday, my youngest brother, Paul Karl Schueler, feasted with great modesty and friendliness. . . . After the soup came fish in butter sauce, and lovely potatoes. Each time my father inquired to make sure that the fish was not eel—Moses forbade that kind of fish which preyed on dead bodies. And then came filet, garnished with vegetables, and the yellow plum compote for which we two children, that is, my father and I, had a special weakness. Nor did he seem to notice that my oldest sister was filling his plate with the rest of the compote—he went on lecturing us: one ought to stop eating while still hungry, that was the advice given him and his parents of twenty-two brothers and sisters by the famous medical authority of his Westphalian home town, who had been physician in charge of a thousand incurables. This went on until suddenly a flame came through the door opened by the servant, the flame licking at the plum pudding. My mother liked to serve this lighted food for dessert, and I was proud of so distinguished and dangerous a dish—plum pudding with fire and wine sauce! At length my father put his big napkin in his coat pocket . . . covered his dear head with his hand (it had to be covered in humility before God), and quickly, like an extempore exercise before the end of class, muttered. . . . “Shema Yisroel, adonoi elohenu, adonoi echod.”
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Thereupon he took the arm of my eldest sister, his daughter Martha Theresia, left the house, and walked through the nocturnal streets to the west end of town, to the synagogue. He had long since forgotten my mother’s plea to behave himself during the sermon at least. My father regarded the Day of Atonement as the greatest event of the year. On this day he forgot even his buildings and his plans. He was the most boisterous man I have ever met in my life, always with an imp sitting somewhere on the cushion of his red heart. Certainly he wasn’t gay-spirited from the depth of his heart (I can hear the literati asking me about that)—he was frolicsome in the breadth. He streamed, he surged, he destroyed; no dampener was on his spirits, and he indeed could butt his head through the wall. Suffering and Sorrow wore carnival bells when he crossed their path, and Joy tore his door off its hinges. As for his anger—it could rage mightily and so it did, in front of droll stage sets that threatened to collapse. My father never laid hands on anyone, but the maids often hid me in the built-in kitchen cupboard. If my father found me, I was punished—by not being allowed to go to school.
No sooner had he and my sister stepped inside the house of God than my father banged the door shut, thoughtlessly, just as at home; and his voice, which had some bit of roguery to communicate to every Jew, was audible to the farthest reaches of the balcony, where my sister Martha Theresia would take her place in one of the children’s seats. And when my father had finally spotted his daughter with the white-plumed hat upstairs, again he forgot to keep himself in check—if her neighbors were not to his liking. He disturbed the services without intending any sin; he fasted faithfully, uncomplainingly, without so much as even turning in thought to home where the water was already boiling in the coffee machine for the Mocha he used to break his fast with. Considerately, the evening star emerged from the clouds a quarter of an hour earlier than on other evenings of the year; still the Gentile caretaker wasn’t late, and he would say to my father: “Mr. Schueler, in all politeness, I’m liable to lose my job in this Jewish church if I don’t get you out of here.” My father took it in good part—this caretaker happened to be the brother of his old errand boy Robert, and he knew what he was about. Then, too, he earned a taler when he escorted my sister from the gallery and cautiously led her by her fingertips to the little garden of the synagogue, where my father and she then waited for our friends. . . .
The star of David at the front of the synagogue’s cupola was sending out its beams as the Jews left their temple, and to this day when I see it with my open eyes, I truly believe it diffuses its light. . . . Humbly, devotedly, the cantor, the holy man, bending over the Torah in front of the Ark, sings the psalms of an atonement that is as old as the stars. It is good to be a Jew, provided one has never evaded one’s Jewish-ness, has remained loyal to it and become one with it, not led astray by the world’s vanity, but laved by the River Jordan. Who could wrest me away from the age-old bones of Jehovah, unshakable rock! Each day Jews are made to undergo trials, and contumely tastes bitter to their palates, but gives rise to strength; yet not every Jew succeeds in preserving in his blood the ancestral flavor. . . .
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Else Lasker-Schueler, in a letter to the fainter Franz Marc:
Franz, yesterday I was in the synagogue, but I soon left for home. One should not remain in the palace of God any longer than the duration of the heart’s prayer. I love the Day of Atonement; the first kings of the Jews must already have observed it. The blood needs no drink on that day—it rushes toward God. My father observed the day and fasted; he was the Till Eulenspiegel of the untamed Jews, and his prayer for union with God made its way from his lips like a toast. He had never sat by the waters of Babylon and mourned, he had never crept with bowed back through the doleful rain of ghetto streets. Everything in him was bright and bubbly. He owned the city and its every house, and every man and all the property were his to give away. . . .
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