Berta Lask

Berta Lask Berta Jacobsohn-Lask
Born	17 May 1878 Wadowitz, Galicia, Austria-Hungary
Died	28 March 1967 Berlin, East Germany
Other names	Gerhard Wieland (pseudonym)
Occupation	Author Dramatist Journalist
Political party	KPD SED
Spouse(s)	Louis Jacobsohn (1863–1940)
Children	3s, 1 d
Parent(s)	Leopold Lask (1841–1905) Cerline Lask (?-1921)

Berta Lask (17 November 1878 – 28 March 1967) was a German writer, playwright and journalist. She joined the Communist Party in 1923 and much of her published work is strongly polemical.

Sources identify her under several different names. Between her marriage to Louis Jacobsohn in 1901 and 1917 she used, for some purposes, the name Berta Jacobsohn. After the death of both her brothers in law the couple changed their name to Jacobsohn-Lask. She also wrote under the pseudonym "Gerhard Wieland".

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. She was the third of her parents' four recorded children. Her parents had grown up in the north of Germany, and despite living in Austria-Hungary still held Prussian nationality. Her father, Leopold Lask (1841–1905), owned a paper factory in Falkenberg, far to the north. Her mother, Cerline Lask (?-1921) was a teacher. The elder of her brothers, Emil Lask (1875-1915), would achieve eminence as a Neo-Kantian philosopher.

In 1885 the family moved to Falkenberg in Brandenburg. Berta Lask attended primary school in Berlin and a secondary school (Gymnasium) in Bad Freienwalde, a short distance to the northeast of the capital. Her mother was dismissive of her wish progress with her education, and it was partly as a reaction against her mother's attitudes that Berta first made contact with political feminism. Through her brother Emil, three years her senior, she also came into contact with other intellectual currents of the time. In her late teens she began her first forays into serious writing. 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.

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