cläre otto enjoyed a middle-class upbringing. her father was a feed merchant. after finishing at her single-sex secondary school she came into contact with the circle of berlin-based expressionist poets around georg heym, else lasker-schüler and, most notably, franz pfemfert. would later describe her as "the soul and muse of the little circle". pfemert edited a left-wing political and literary magazine called "die aktion": cläre otto got to know his fellow contributors to "die aktion", among them the restless anarchist poet franz jung whom she would later marry and under whose shadow, according to some evaluations, she would spend much of her life. however, her first marriage was to another "die aktion" contributor, the writer and political activist richard oehring: the two of them were divorced after two years, in 1917. by september 1918 she was living with franz jung, although it would be another ten years before the two of them got married.