Melancholia, Migration, and Mise en Scène. Comparing Else Lasker-Schüler and Emine Sevgi Özdamar

In what follows I am interested in how two German authors deal with ‘community melancholia’: Else Lasker-Schüler (1869–1945), a German-Jewish poet and performer, and Emine Sevgi Özdamar (1946–), a Turkish-German author and actress who belongs to the so-called ‘new German literature’ or migrants’ literature. Although both authors belong to different periods in German history, from the point of view of national identity, striking similarities exist in the historical intellectual discourse that surrounds German-Jewish literature during the first decades of the 20th century on the one hand and contemporary migrants’ literature on the other. I will focus on the function of theatricality in the work of both authors as a literary device that replies to or complies with the imperative of being part of a clearly defined culture or nation.