CHAPTER 5: „Sehnsucht nach dem Anderswo“. Utopie und Nicht-Orte in der weiblichen Exillyrik = “Longing for the Elsewhere”. Utopia and Non-Places in the Poetry of Exiled Women Writers

The emotional and social upheaval caused by leaving one's homeland led to a profound sense of alienation for many German-speaking women writers exiled after 1933. This sense of disconnection often manifested in a poignant psychological farewell to a now inaccessible homeland. The poetry of these exiled women authors reveals a persistent search for a new and idealized homeland, navigating between memories of the past, hopes for a utopian future, and fantastical or dreamlike visions. As spatial perception becomes destabilized in exile, poetry emerges as a means to reimagine the homeland – now a "non-place" – infusing it with new existential significance and poetic dimensions. This paper examines the theme of "longing for elsewhere" in the poetry of Else Lasker-Schüler, Hilde Domin, and Mascha Kaléko, illustrating the transformation of physical places into utopias, dystopias, heterotopias, spaces of memory, and non-spaces.