The Mistress of the Castle - Play by Lea Goldberg in the New Translation by Gundula Schiffer

Lea Goldberg (29 May 1911, Königsberg) was a writer, poet, linguist, and literary critic - one of the leading intellectuals of Israel in her time. She spent her childhood in Russia and her youth after the revolution in Kaunas, Lithuania, where she also began her studies. She studied Semitic languages, history, and pedagogy; after a study period in Berlin, she earned her doctorate in 1933 from the University of Bonn.

In 1935 she emigrated to Tel Aviv in the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine, where she worked as a literary advisor to the Habima National Theatre. At the same time, she collaborated with the publishing house Sifriyat Po'alim and the newspapers Haaretz, Davar, and Al Ha-Mishmar, and was a member of the Shlonsky Group, an association of contemporary Israeli poets around Avraham Shlonsky.

As an author, she wrote poetry, literary criticism, children's books, and prose for adults. She spoke seven languages and translated numerous works by European authors into Hebrew. In 1952 she founded the Department of Comparative Literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she taught until her death in 1970.