„Meinwärts“ – Denkmal für Else Lasker-Schüler / “Meinwärts” – Memorial for Else Lasker-Schüler

The birthplace of the poet Else Lasker-Schüler was near this site, at Herzogstraße 29. Born in Wuppertal-Elbefeld in 1869, she mainly wrote poetry and plays, including the play “Die Wupper” (1909). Else Lasker Schüler died in 1945 in exile in Jerusalem. In 1987, a competition to create a memorial for the writer and her work was held whose winning entry was this design by Stephan Huber. The memorial consists of four black, walk-on granite plates as flooring on which two granite stelae of equal size stand facing each other. Portraits of the poet are inlaid in the opposite sides of the stelae as mosaics consisting of around 41,000 glass stones in black, white and greys. Both portraits are based on the same photograph from 1920, but one of the pictures is inverted. They face each other like mirror images and thus also refer to the inscription on the ground: “ELSE LASKER-SCHÜLER: MEINWÄRTS.” With this title, Stephan Huber references the final line of the poem “Weltflucht,” written by Lasker-Schüler in 1902:

Weltflucht
Ich will in das Grenzenlose
Zu mir zurück,
Schon blüht die Herbstzeitlose
Meiner Seele,
Vielleicht – ist’s schon zu spät zurück!
O, ich sterbe unter Euch!
Da Ihr mich erstickt mit Euch.
Fäden möchte ich um mich ziehn –
Wirrwarr endend!
Beirrend,
Euch verwirrend,
Um zu entfliehn
Meinwärts

(I want to return to the boundless
Back to myself,
The autumn crocus already blossoms
Of my soul,
Perhaps – it’s already too late to return!
O, I die among you!
Since you suffocate me with you.
I’d like to pull threads around me –
End the turmoil!
Confusing,
Confusing you,
To escape
Towards me)