Inge Ginsberg
Inge Ginsberg (born As Ingeborg Neufeld on January 27, 1922 in Vienna ) is an Austro-Swiss journalist , author and singer .
Life
Born as Ingeborg Neufeld, she grew up in Vienna as a member of a wealthy Jewish family. The family can trace their Austrian roots back 800 years to a residence as monastery Jews of the Melk monastery .
After the so-called annexation of Austria to "Greater Germany" in 1938, the life of her family was torn apart. The father, Fritz Neufeld, was first sent to the Dachau concentration camp and was later among the 937 Jewish passengers on board the HAPAG passenger ship St. Louis in 1939 during its long odyssey to Cuba and back.
The mother was able to flee across the Alps to Switzerland with the two children Inge and Hans Walter in 1942, after having survived illegally in Vienna for years. Like many other refugees, the Neufelds ended up in their country of refuge, first in the Adliswil reception camp and later in several labor camps: Lucerne, Langenbrück and Lugano.
In 1944 Inge was offered the job of a housekeeper in Lugano through mediation. Her job was in a villa financed by the OSS , the American intelligence service, which was used to spy on German troops in northern Italy.
After the war she married her first husband Otto Kollmann, who had already fled Vienna with her. In the following years they lived mainly in Zurich and worked together on their musical career.
In 1956 Inge separated from her husband and worked as a journalist for Weltwoche in Zurich . At the invitation of the Weizmann Institute , she was able to fly as a guest on the first El Al flight on the new direct line Zurich-Tel Aviv.
In Israel she met her second husband, Hans Kruger. The hotel manager of the first luxury hotel in Israel, the Dan Hotel Tel Aviv , to which she had been married since 1960, enabled her to lead a prosperous life again. She had originally planned to lead a pioneering life in a kibbutz. She bought the Tel Aviv apartment with the proceeds from the sale of three farms near Haifa. Her far-sighted grandmother, a lifelong Zionist , had already acquired this in 1936.
In Israel she also met her third husband, also a Jewish emigrant from Vienna. Inge moved to Ecuador with Kurt Ginsberg and married him after a difficult divorce from Hans Kruger in 1972. Based on her time in Ecuador, she wrote several books. The couple lived alternately in Quito, Tel Aviv and Switzerland. The Ginsbergs moved to New York for health reasons. When Kurt Ginsberg died in 1999, Inge Ginsberg kept the name and has lived in Switzerland (Zurich / Arosa) and New York ever since.
espionage
In 1944 Otto Kollmann had a job as a bar pianist in Cafe Federale in Lugano. He was recruited by the American secret service OSS to listen to the German-speaking guests. Through his mediation, Inge was hired as housekeeper in the diplomatic villa "Villa Westphal". The residents of the villa were mostly Americans, but also Italians who came and went across the nearby border to fight the German occupiers and the Italian fascists. Inge was actively involved in smuggling weapons from Ticino into the war zone and in smuggling the wounded from Italy into Switzerland. This happened with the knowledge of Major Max Waibel , Head of Intelligence Section 1 (NS-1, Rigi) of the Swiss Army.
At the beginning of May 1945 Inge witnessed a secret operation when men freed a man from "her" villa who had been in the hands of other partisan groups. This man was SS General Karl Wolff , commander in chief of the German troops in northern Italy. This company, called " Operation Sunrise ", in which the Swiss secret service was also involved, ended the war in northern Italy 6 to 8 weeks earlier. It was part of a deal between the Germans and the Americans, thanks to which it was also possible to save Italian cultural treasures such as da Vinci's "Last Supper" in Milan from the threat of destruction.
In May 1945, after the end of the war, the Americans dismissed Inge and Otto from their service. There was now a Cold War in Europe, the priorities were set differently. Inge and Otto Kollmann refused to continue spying against the Soviets in Vienna.
Music career
In 1949 the Kollmanns were hired as house composers by the Swiss company Musikvertrieb. Otto Kollmann composed ten songs per week, one or two of which were then selected. The performers were well-known stars such as Vico Torriani and Lys Assia . The Musikvertrieb company was integrated into TELDEC Telefunken-Decca Schallplatten GmbH , which arose from the German Telefunken and the British DECCA. Through the mediation of a friend, the Kollmanns were also able to sell their music to the Gloria film company. Well-known songs include The Cowboy Always Has a Girl , Madeleine or Sing, sing Gitano .
In 1955 the Kollmann couple were recruited by Capitol Records to write songs for Hollywood. Despite the acquaintance with greats like Doris Day , Dean Martin or Nat King Cole , the couple did not feel at home there and soon returned to Europe. Nevertheless, they left their mark there, e.g. B. with Dean Martins Try Again or Nat King Coles Merci, Merci .
Ginsberg started a second music career in 2013 when she applied for the Eurovision Song Contest 2014 with the song Inge Ginsbergs Song . The song about suicides among young people was eliminated in the preliminary round for Switzerland.
"Sing and eat and drink and laugh, then the devil goes to hell" is the motto of the song Totenköpfchen , which Inge Ginsberg sang together with the metal band The TritoneKings in the Swiss preliminary round for the 2015 Eurovision Song Contest . In the public voting, however, they reached the last (18th) place. A new song has now been composed and written for the Swiss contribution to the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 in Sweden. Here, too, Inge Ginsberg worked again with the TritoneKings.
Works
- The partisan villa. Memories of escape, secret service and numerous hits. Edited by Manfred Flügge . DTV, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-423-24680-4 .
- No Flowers in the Rainforest . Gray Rabbit Publishing, New York 2013, ISBN 978-1-61720-741-9 (as Inge Ginsberg-Kruger).
- A life story. The Poems of Inge Ginsberg . Gray Rabbit Publishing, New York 2014, ISBN 978-1-62755-632-3 .
Web links
- Peter Bollag: »Laugh at death«. In: Jüdische Allgemeine . January 28, 2015 .
- Vanessa Nikisch: Inge Ginsberg: The rocking great-grandma. In: SRF . February 12, 2016 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ginsberg, Inge |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Austrian-Swiss journalist, author and singer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 27, 1922 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Vienna |