[3] Berta Lask was born into a prosperous Jewish family in Wadowitz, a small industrialising town at that time in Galicia, and a short distance to the southwest of Kraków.
It was also during this period, in 1894/95, that she studied in Berlin with Helene Lange who was already gaining a reputation as a leading advocate of women's rights.
In 1901 Berta Lask married Louis Jacobsohn (1863–1940), a neurologist and histologist who was teaching at Berlin's Frederick-William University (as it was known at the time).
[4] In 1912 her first unpublished stage work appeared under the title "Auf dem Hinterhof, vier Treppen links" ("In the backyard, four steps to the left").
[4] Along with her poetry, she published articles for "The Red Flag" ("Die Rote Fahne") and other less high-profile revolutionary newspapers.
[3] Her output included the chorus "The call of the dead — speaking chorus to commemorate Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg" ("Die Toten rufen - Sprechchor zum Gedenken an Karl Liebknecht und Rosa Luxemburg"), the plays "Thomas Münzer" (1925) and "Leuna 1921" (1927, but first staged only in 1956),[6] and children's books such as "Through Time on the Flying Horse" ("Auf dem Flügelpferde durch die Zeiten") and "How Franz and Greta traveled to Russia" ("Wie Franz und Grete nach Russland reisten").
[1] She lived in Moscow at least till 1936,[4] by which time all three of her sons and her husband had relocated from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union.
[1] Her husband, who had been semi-retired even before the Nazi take-over, and had never involved himself in his wife's political activities[10] (but was nevertheless professionally marginalised and in increasing danger because he was Jewish) arrived, using a tourist visa, only at the start of 1936, accompanied by her daughter in law, Dora and her baby granddaughter, Franziska.
Moscow, like Paris, had welcomed large numbers of refugees from Nazi Germany, forced to flee because of their politics, their race, or both.
[13] It has been suggested that she used a pseudonym partly in order to protect her sons and her husband all of whom had initially remained in Germany when Berta had fled.
[1] However, at the end of June 1936, a month after his thirtieth birthday, Ernst died of tuberculosis in the First University Clinic in Moscow hospital.
[1] After Lutz was arrested, his wife, Dora, keen to avoid getting caught up in Stalin's latest purge, left Moscow with their daughter Marianne (see the book Kafka's letzte Liebe by Kathi Diamant ).
[12] According to some sources, Berta Lask tried to return to Moscow from Arkhangelsk during the war in order to contribute to the struggle against Nazi Germany.
[3] Berta Lask lived her final years in East Berlin where she continued to write and was able to finish the semi-autobiographical novel on which she had started work in 1938.
[16] She was a member of the East German literary elite, and the country's powerful Party Central Committee offered public condolences when she died on 28 March 1967.