Intimate Associations: Reading Community in Sasha Marianna Salzmann's Außer sich (2017) and Else Lasker-Schüler's Der Malik (1919)

Abstract

Abstract: This article places Sasha Marianna Salzmann's novel Außer sich (2017; Beside Myself , 2019) in dialogue with Else Lasker-Schüler's experimental prose work Der Malik: Eine Kaisergeschichte (1919; The Malik: An emperor's story) to highlight the shared investments of these two Jewish and gender-variant writers. While situated a century apart, both respond in their work and lives to societal discrimination in similar ways: they make themselves visible as an Other and use the knowledge of their vulnerability as a starting point to build communities that defy antisemitism and gendered oppression. In this context, Lasker-Schüler's rejection of ethnic, religious, gendered, and sexual boundaries and her envisioning of new forms of kinship appear as a precursor of Salzmann's call for inclusive queer-feminist alliances. Reading these works alongside each other invites us to understand the vision of political-personal associations based on the experiences of antisemitism and gendered oppression as an abiding concern of German-Jewish literature.