Elsa Bernstein

Bernstein, Elsa (Vienna, 1866-1949, Hamburg), pseudonym Ernst Rosmer, was the daughter of the musicologist H. Porges (1837-1900) who in 1867 moved to Munich, where he became an associate of R. Wagner. She married Max Bernstein (1854-1925), a high-ranking Munich lawyer and himself a writer. At 18 she began a career as an actress in Brunswick, but an eye complaint forced her to abandon it in (1887; however, three seasons in the theatre formed an invaluable experience for a woman who, as Ernst Rosmer, was to become Germany's foremost woman dramatist. Her early plays showed the influence of Ibsen (the author of Rosmersholm, 1886) and of G. Hauptmann, but she soon asserted her independence. Her first play, Wir Drei (1893, written 1891), presents a triangular situation reminiscent of Hauptmann's Einsame Menschen and rich in psychological intuition and tragi-comic irony, reaching a conclusion which is open-ended. Her next, more important, play, Dämmerung (1893), focuses on the issue of heredity and venereal disease which is central to Ibsen's Ghosts (1881), but more openly; her own different style of presentation is also clearly evident in her subtly-textured dialogue and imaginative use of stage lighting. Loss of sight, to which the title refers, threatens Isolde (as it did Bernstein) and she becomes dependent on her widowed father, Heinrich Ritter, a noted conductor and Wagner enthusiast. An operation by a young woman specialist, Sabine Graef, appears to save her sight, and brighter prospects open up for Isolde as well as for Ritter and Sabine, who are mutually attracted. But the respite is brief, and Ritter resigns himself to dedicating the rest of his life to the love and care of his now blind daughter. The play was staged by the Freie Bühne in 1893, the year before Otto Brahm took charge of Berlin's Deutsches Theater. Here he produced her comedy Tedeum (1895), a semi-naturalistic play, and the darker Johannes Herkner (1904), both Künstlerdramen. Bernstein's only work to achieve lasting success, Königskinder, a tragic fairy-tale play in verse, was first performed at the Munich Hoftheater in 1897 with music by Humperdinck, who in collaboration with her turned it into a full-scale opera which, premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1910, was taken up by many internationally famous opera houses. Another play similarly removed from everyday reality is Mutter Maria. In her three classical dramas, Themistokles (1897), Nausikaa (1906), and Achill (1910), her accomplished verse alludes to contemporary concerns. Having already caused a stir by introducing a highly professional female eye specialist on to the stage, she returned in Nausikaa, and especially in Maria Arndt (1908), to marriage, the most pressing theme of women writers of the period. Nausikaa's passionate insistence that marriage must be based on a true partnership of love and mutual respect expresses an ideal which in the context of a classical tragedy constitutes her hubris: in the early 20th-c. setting of Maria Arndt the ideal remains unfulfilled. Maria, caught up in a moral conflict which she can only resolve by resigning herself to a loveless marriage and renouncing the man she loves, persuades herself that in sacrificing her own happiness she will contribute to the self-realization of her teenage daughter Gemma in the new enlightened century. The play, a climax in Bernstein's art, adds a uniquely feminine nuance to the social drama of the period, thanks to its finely articulated, hypersensitive dialogue, which both conceals and reveals the mounting tensions in Maria, and recalls the programmatic words expressed in Bernstein's first play that her purpose was to convey the inaudible ‘scream’ of a woman's anguish; in this sense Bernstein set out to write on women as only a woman can.

Bernstein's creative period, during which she published eleven plays, came virtually to an end in (1911; some plays are still unpublished, others were lost as a result of persecution under the National Socialist regime. Out of loyalty to her sister she forewent a chance to leave Germany and suffered years of torment in the concentration camp at Theresienstadt, where, though frail and almost blind, she remained a source of strength and comfort to others. Following her release in 1945 she lived in Hamburg for her last four years. An appropriate assessment of her achievement has been slow to take place.

Else/Elsa Bernstein-Porges (born Else Porges, pseudonym: Ernst Rosmer; October 28, 1866, Wien - July 2, 1949, Hamburg-Eimsbüttel) was an Austrian-German writer and dramatist.

Contents 1 Life 2 Literary works 3 References 3.1 Bibliography of the Jewish Encyclopedia

Life

Elsa Bernstein was a daughter of Heinrich Porges, the friend of Richard Wagner, and married Max Bernstein. She was educated at Munich; and, for a short time, on the stage. An affliction of the eyes forced her to retire, and she thenceforth devoted herself to dramatic literature. Shortly after her marriage in 1892 to Max Bernstein, she wrote her first play, "Wir Drei," which created considerable discussion. It was really a dramatized version of the matrimonial and sexual views of Taine and Zola. Her next plays fell rather flat: "Dämmerung," 1893; "Die Mutter Maria," 1894; "Tedeum," 1896; "Themistokles," 1897; and "Daguy Peters." But unbounded admiration was elicited by "Die Königskinder," 1895—a dramatic fairy-tale. Though its plot was simple, the beauty of the theme and its poetry were such as to class it with Ludwig Fulda's "Der Talisman."

Literary works

Under the pseudonym "Ernst Rosmer"

• Dämmerung (Schauspiel, 1893)
• Wir Drei (Drama 1893)
• Madonna (Novellen 1894)
• Königskinder (Märchendrama 1895; 1895 von Engelbert Humperdinck vertont)
• Tedeum (Komödie 1896)
• Themistokles (Tragödie 1897)
• Mutter Maria. Totengedicht in fünf Wandlungen (1900)
• Merete (1902)
• Dagny (drama) (Drama 1904)
• Johannes Herkner (Schauspiel 1904)

As "Elsa Bernstein"

• Nausikaa (Tragödie 1906)
• Maria Arndt (Schauspiel 1908)
• Achill (Tragödie 1910)
• Das Leben als Drama. Erinnerungen an Theresienstadt (Tagebuch aus dem KZ, posthum 1999)

References

• Jürgen Joachimsthaler: Max Bernstein. Kritiker, Schriftsteller, Rechtsanwalt (1854-1925). Frankfurt/M. et al. 1995. Biography about her husband, containing a lot of biographical material about her as well.
• Ulrike Zophoniasson-Baierl: Elsa Bernstein alias Ernst Rosmer. Bern et al. 1985.

Bibliography of the Jewish Encyclopedia

• Das Jüngste Deutschland, pp. 317-320;
• Kürschner, Deutscher Litteratur-Kalender, 1901, p. 91;
• Lexikon Deutscher Frauen der Feder, i. 61;
  • ib. ii. 203.S

This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia article "Elsa Bernstein" by Isidore Singer & Edgar Mels, a publication now in the public domain.

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