Masha Kaléko

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Masha Kaléko (born Golda Malka Aufen , born on 7. June 1907 in the Galician Chrzanów , Austria-Hungary , died on the 21st January 1975 in Zurich ) was a German-speaking , the New Objectivity attributed poet .

Life

Mascha Kaléko, born Golda Malka Aufen, was the illegitimate child of the Jewish-Russian merchant Fischel Engel and his future wife, the Austrian-Jewish Rozalia Chaja Reisel Aufen. In 1914, at the beginning of the First World War , the mother first moved to Germany with her daughters Mascha and Lea to avoid pogroms . Kaléko attended elementary school in Frankfurt am Main . Her father was interned there as an " enemy alien " because of his Russian citizenship . In 1916 the family moved to Marburg , and finally to Berlin in 1918 , to the Scheunenviertel in Spandauer Vorstadt (Grenadierstraße 17 - today, with changed house numbers, Almstadtstraße ).

Kaléko spent her school and university days here. Although Kaléko was a good student and also very keen to study later, her father was of the opinion that studying was not necessary for a girl. Her parents married in 1922, she was recognized by her father and was given the name Mascha Engel.

Kaléko began an office apprenticeship in 1925 in the workers welfare office of the Jewish organizations in Germany at 17 Auguststrasse . In addition, she attended evening courses in philosophy and psychology, including at the Lessing University and the Friedrich Wilhelms University (today Humboldt University ).

On July 31, 1928, she married Saul Aaron Kaléko, a Hebrew teacher who was almost ten years her senior and whom she had known since 1926. Towards the end of the twenties she came into contact with the artistic avant-garde of Berlin, who met in the Romanisches Café . So she learned u. a. Else Lasker-Schüler and Joachim Ringelnatz know.

In 1929 Mascha Kaléko published his first cabaret poems (in the newspaper Cross Section ), which, in a cheerful, melancholy tone, reflect the world of ordinary people and the atmosphere in Berlin of their time. From 1930 she worked on the radio and in the artist cabaret (Küka) . Edmund Nick and Günter Neumann set their texts to music, which were performed by interpreters and actresses such as Rosa Valetti , Claire Waldoff and Annemarie Hase .

In 1933 she published the Lyrische Stenogrammheft about which the philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote to her in 1959: "[...] Your 'Stenogrammheft' says that you know everything that mortals know." The nationwide National Socialist book burning in May 1933 affected the successful Do not work. It was published in January 1933 and the National Socialists didn't know at the time that Mascha Kaléko was Jewish. The little reader for adults was published in 1934.

Berlin memorial plaque in Charlottenburg , Bleibtreustraße  10/11. Mascha Kaléko lived here between 1936 and 1938.

1933/1934 Kaléko studied at the Reimann School in Berlin, a. a. in the commercial and publicity writing class. Their son Evjatar Alexander Michael was born in Berlin in December 1936 (his name was changed to Steven while in exile). The child's father was the conductor and musicologist Chemjo Vinaver , who came from Poland like herself . On January 22, 1938, Saul and Mascha Kaléko's marriage was divorced, and six days later Kaléko married Vinaver. She kept the name Kaléko as a stage name.

Soon her books were banned by the National Socialists as “harmful and undesirable writings”. The new family emigrated to the United States of America in September 1938 . There was no professional success for Vinaver there, Kaléko kept the family afloat by writing advertising texts and among other things wrote children's poems. In 1939 she published texts in the German-language Jewish exile newspaper Aufbau . In 1944, the Vinaver / Kaléko family received American citizenship . On December 6, 1945, Kaléko was actively involved when the New York Progressive Literary Club, an initiative founded by Heinrich Eduard Jacob to care for German literature in exile , commemorated deceased poets. An American publisher published her verses for contemporaries in 1945 . Kaléko lived in Greenwich Village from 1942 to 1957 during her time in New York ; a plaque has been in place since 2007 at her previous home on Minetta Street in Manhattan .

After the war, Kaléko found a reading public again in Germany. The Lyrical shorthand booklet has been successfully transferred again from Rowohlt (1956), then the verses for contemporaries ; both made it onto the bestseller lists. Therefore Kaléko dared to return to West Germany. But she also acted as an alibi, because West German society did not want to seriously grapple with its own past. In 1960 she was to receive the Fontane Prize from the Academy of Arts in Berlin (West) ; when Kaléko found out that the former SS -Standartenführer Hans Egon Holthusen was on the jury for the award, she declined the nomination. The managing director of the academy Herbert von Buttlar excused Holthusen's SS membership in part as youthful folly. On the other hand, he accused Kaléko of spreading false rumors and disgusted them if “the emigrants don't like the way we do things here” they should stay away. In the same year she emigrated with him to Jerusalem for the sake of her husband . There she suffered greatly from linguistic and cultural isolation and lived disappointed and lonely. In 1968 her musically gifted son died in New York after a serious illness. After Vinaver died in 1973, she found strength to write again in the last year of her life.

In autumn 1974 she visited Berlin for the last time and gave a lecture there. Mascha Kaléko thought about moving to a small apartment in Berlin in addition to her home in Jerusalem in order to live in the place where she had happy memories of her youth. On the way back to Jerusalem, she made a stopover in Zurich, where she died of stomach cancer on January 21, 1975 , 14 months after her husband. Her grave is located in the Oberer Friesenberg Jewish cemetery in Zurich.

To the work

Mascha Kaléko's work is characterized by urban poetry with an ironic, tender, melancholy tone. As the only known female poet of the New Objectivity , she was often compared with her male colleagues, so she was called "female Ringelnatz" or called a "female Kästner". Her poems were sung - as chansons - by Diseusen like Hanne Wieder or are still performed today by singers like Rainer Bielfeldt or Rebekka Ziegler . The singer Dota Kehr dedicated an entire album to Kaléko with works by the poet set to music. The manager of Kaléko's literary estate is Gisela Zoch-Westphal , which is in the German Literature Archive in Marbach .

Works

Appeared during his lifetime

  • The lyrical shorthand booklet. Verses from everyday life. Rowohlt, Berlin 1933.
  • Small reading book for adults. The rhyming and the absurd. Rowohlt, Berlin 1935.
    • In one volume: the lyrical shorthand booklet. Small reading book for adults. Rowohlt Taschenbuch (rororo 175), Reinbek 1956 (28. A. 2004), ISBN 978-3-499-11784-8 .
  • Verses for contemporaries. Schoenhof Verlag, Cambridge (Mass.) 1945.
  • The parrot, the mummy and other strange animals. A book of verses for playful children of all ages. Torch bearer publishing house, Hanover 1961.
  • Verses in major and minor. Walter Verlag (Collection Kangaroo), Olten / Freiburg 1967.
  • Mascha Kaléko's sky-gray poetry album. Blanvalet, Berlin 1968.
  • How it goes on the moon and other verses. Blanvalet, Berlin 1971.
  • Everything has its two downsides. Sense & nonsense poems. Eremiten-Presse (Brochure 46), Düsseldorf 1973.

Issued posthumously

  • Fine plants. Roses, tulips, carnations, and more nutritious crops. Eremiten-Presse (brochure 68), Düsseldorf 1976.
  • The god of small weaving errors. Walks through New York's Lower Eastside and Greenwich Village . Eremiten-Presse (paperback 75), Düsseldorf 1977.
  • The storm is ringing in my dreams. Poems and epigrams from the estate. dtv, (dtv 1294), Munich 1977, ISBN 3-423-01294-3 .
  • Would you like a horoscope? Verses in major and minor. Eulenspiegel-Verlag, Berlin 1977.
  • Today is tomorrow already yesterday. Poems from the estate. Arani Verlag, Berlin 1980.
  • Day and night notes. Eremiten-Presse (brochure 105), Düsseldorf 1981.
  • I am from yesteryear. Chansons, songs, poems. Arani Verlag, Berlin 1984.
  • The star we live on. Verses for contemporaries. With drawings by Werner Klemke . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1984.
  • The few brilliant years. dtv, (dtv 13149), Munich 2003, ISBN 978-3-423-13149-0 .
  • Love poems. Selected by Elke Heidenreich . Insel Taschenbuch (it 3263), Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-458-34963-1 .
  • My song goes on A hundred poems. dtv, (dtv 13563), Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-13563-4 .
  • All works and letters in four volumes. Edited and commented by Jutta Rosenkranz. Volume 1: Works. Volume 2: Letters 1932–1962. Volume III: Letters 1963–1975. Volume IV: Commentary. dtv, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-423-59086-0 .
  • Be smart and stick to miracles. Thoughts about life. Edited by Gisela Zoch-Westphal and Eva-Maria Prokop. dtv, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-423-14256-4 .
  • Do you really love me? Letters to her husband. Edited by Gisela Zoch-Westphal and Eva-Maria Prokop. dtv, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-28039-6 .
  • Love poems. Edited by Gisela Zoch-Westphal and Eva-Maria Prokop. dtv, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-423-28063-1 .
  • The lyrical shorthand booklet. dtv, Munich, 2016, ISBN 978-3-423-28098-3 .
  • Dreams that lead you to travel. Poems for children. Illustrations by Hildegard Müller. Edited by Eva-Maria Prokop. dtv, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-423-64027-5
  • Fine plants. With illustrations by Eva Schöffmann-Davidov. dtv, Munich 2016, ISBN 978-3-423-28082-2 .

Song lyrics

  • To an organ melody. (Music: Edmund Nick)
  • The last time. (Music: Jochen Breuer)
  • The next morning. (Music: Jochen Breuer)
  • Childhood love a. D. (Music: Jochen Breuer)
  • Quasi a reminder letter. (Music: Edmund Nick)
  • Dawning evening. (Music: Edmund Nick and Günter Gall)
  • Are you still awake? (Music: Dorot Kreusch-Jakob)
  • Choir of the War Orphans. (Music: Konstantin Wecker)
  • The star lighter. (Music: Dorot Kreusch-Jakob)
  • Enfant terrible. (Music: Roger Henschel)
  • Give me your little hand (Music: Dorot Kreusch-Jakob)
  • I'm looking forward. (Music: Günter Sonneborn)
  • Little love song. (Music: Rainer Bielfeldt)
  • A long while. (Music: Dorot Kreusch-Jakob)
  • Mannequins. (Music: Friedrich Meyer)
  • A mail song, so to speak. (Music: Karl-Heinz Heydecke)
  • Reason unknown. (Music: Bettina Hirschberg)
  • Contemporary love letter. (Music: Wolfgang Meyering)

Audio book

  • Interview with myself. Mascha Kaléko speaks Mascha Kaléko. [Audiobook] 2 audio CDs , spoken by Mascha Kaléko, Gisela Zoch-Westphal, Gerd Wameling. Director: Günter Adam Strößner. Universal Music, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-8291-1877-4 .

reception

Settings (selection)

  • Martin Christoph Redel : Nowhere. Seven songs based on poems by Mascha Kaléko for mezzo-soprano and piano op.87 (2016). Boosey & Hawkes / Bote & Bock (Berlin), ISBN 978-3-7931-4165-5 .
  • Dota : Masha Kaléko. Poems by Mascha Kaléko set to music in collaboration with other artists. Loose Change Princess Records 2020.

radio play

Honors

Mascha-Kaléko-Weg in Berlin-Kladow (2015)
Mascha Kaléko Park in Berlin-Hellersdorf (2011)

On January 21, 1990, on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of her death, a Berlin memorial plaque was attached to her former place of residence (1936 to 1938) at Bleibtreustraße 10/11.

In 1995, on her 88th birthday in Berlin-Kladow, Strasse 179 was renamed Mascha-Kaléko-Weg . Mascha Kaléko's special relationship with Kladow is evidenced in a poem entitled Souvenir à Kladow , which she wrote in exile in New York. The first and last lines read: “I often think of Kladow in April.” The poem describes the memory of a house on a lake, about which the poet says: “I lived eighteen springs here.” It is unclear what kind of house or apartment in Kladow it was. Kaléko may have been able to use a weekend house owned by friends there in spring or early summer.

In 1996, the Mascha-Kaléko-Weg was named after her in the Oerlikon district of Zurich .

On May 11, 2006, the park on the former Adele-Sandrock-Strasse daycare center in Berlin-Hellersdorf was named Mascha-Kaléko-Park .

For Mascha Kaléko's 100th birthday in 2007, a plaque was placed on her New York home on Minetta Street, stating that the poet lived here from 1942 to 1959. In the upper area, next to a stylized portrait in profile, there is the following poem by Kaléko (left in German and right in English):

If once, in more peaceful times
The countries fight for the privilege
(Even if the concern seems premature):
“Well, which one from MK's quarters
Should the "lived here" board adorn ...? "

- I am voting for Minetta Street.

Also for his 100th birthday, Rengha Rodewill created a two-part art installation entitled Hommage à Mascha Kaléko , which was exhibited in September 2007 at the Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin.

  • Rengha Rodewill's installation Hommage à Mascha Kaléko

  • Figure and suitcase

  • Detail case

The Mascha Kaléko elementary school in the Berlin district of Mariendorf ( Tempelhof-Schöneberg district ) has had this name since June 7, 2018, the 111th birthday of Mascha Kaléko. Previously, the school was after zoologist Ludwig Heck designated to the National Socialism in the development of the intellectual edifice of racial theory and social Darwinism was involved and also closely associated with Nazism personally.

literature

  • Sigrid Bauschinger :  Kaléko, Mascha. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 55 ( digitized version ).
  • Sarah van der Heusen: Mascha Kaléko and the Fontane Prize. A case study. In: Berliner Hefte on the history of literary life . No. 8. Humboldt University, Berlin 2008, ISSN  0949-5371 , pp. 222-231.
  • Vera Hohleiter: In the footsteps of the poet Mascha Kaléko. Street corners that are reminiscent of Europe. In: Structure . The Jewish weekly newspaper. No. 15. Verlag des Aufbau, New York, July 27, 2000, ISSN  0004-7813 , p. 18.
  • Julia Meyer: "Bibbi, Ester and the parrot". Mascha Kaléko's Jewish authorship between 'Berlin Childhood around 1900' and Youth Aliyah. In: Berlin - Images of a metropolis in narrative media for children and young people. Edited by Sabine Planka. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8260-6305-3 , pp. 139–171.
  • Julia Meyer: Carnival-like nonsense center. Mascha Kaléko's Berlin poems as cabaret texts in a "cross section". In: German illustrated press. Journalism and Visual Culture in the Weimar Republic. Edited by Katja Leiskau, Patrick Rössler and Susann Trabert. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2016, ISBN 978-3-8487-2930-2 , pp. 305-330.
  • Julia Meyer: "Oh, two souls live in me for rent." Staging of authorship in the work of Mascha Kaléko. Thelem, Dresden 2018, ISBN 978-3-945363-64-5 .
  • Andreas Nolte: "I am voting for Minetta Street". Festschrift on the occasion of the 100th birthday of Mascha Kaléko. University of Vermont 2007, ISBN 0-9770731-8-1 .
  • Andreas Nolte: "Sometimes I feel as if my heart was breaking within me". The life and work of Mascha Kaléko as reflected in her proverbial poetry. In: Proverbs Research. Volume 23. Peter Lang Verlag , Bern et al. 2003, ISBN 978-3-03910-095-8 .
  • Christiana Puschak: Known, misunderstood and almost forgotten. The life and work of Mascha Kaléko. In: Zwischenwelt. Journal of the Culture of Exile and Resistance. 22nd year, No. 3. Theodor Kramer Society, Vienna December 2005, ISSN  1606-4321 , pp. 25-30.
  • Jutta Rosenkranz: Mascha Kaléko. Biography. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-24591-3 ; extended and updated TB edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-423-34671-9 .
  • Jutta Rosenkranz: “We have no other time than this” - Mascha Kaléko (1907–1975). In: Jutta Rosenkranz: Line by line my paradise. Eminent women writers. 18 portraits. Munich 2014, pp. 187–205, ISBN 978-3-492-30515-0 .
  • Elke Schmitter : Mascha Kaléko. Wonder too late. In: Verena Auffermann: Passions. 99 women authors of world literature. Bertelsmann, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-570-01048-8 , pp. 239–245.
  • Gisela Zoch-Westphal : From the six lives of Mascha Kaléko. Biographical sketches, a diary and letters. Arani, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-7605-8591-4 .

Web links

Commons : Mascha Kaléko  - collection of images, videos and audio files


Texts for the 100th birthday

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Julia Meyer: "Two souls live, alas, in me for rent." Staging of authorship in the work of Mascha Kaléko. Thelem, Dresden 2018, ISBN 978-3-945363-64-5 , p. 59 ff .
  2. ^ Letter from Martin Heidegger to Mascha Kaléko, February 27, 1959, in the estate of Mascha Kaléko, DLA Marbach . Statement and quote from: Jutta Rosenkranz: Mascha Kaléko. Biography. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-24591-3 ; extended and updated TB edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-423-34671-9 , pp. 177, 276.
  3. ↑ Swantje Kuhfuss-Wickenheiser: The Reimann School in Berlin and London 1902–1943. A Jewish company for international art and design training up to its destruction by the Hitler regime. Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-86858-475-2 , p. 540.
  4. ↑ Jan Koneffke Neue Zürcher Zeitung March 16, 2013: "But why are you so serious?" accessed December 29, 2019
  5. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Mascha Kaléko
  6. ↑ Jutta Rosenkranz: Mascha Kaléko. Biography. dtv premium 24591, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-423-24591-3 , p. 257.
  7. ^ Mascha Kaléko: The lyrical shorthand booklet. Small reading book for adults. Rowohlt Taschenbuch (rororo 175), Reinbek 1956 (28. A. 2004), ISBN 978-3-499-11784-8 , p. 2.
  8. ↑ Ursula Homann: "I stay the stranger in the village" In: Der Literat 47th year, June 6/2005.
  9. ↑ Information about the holdings of the DLA about Mascha Kaléko.
  10. ↑ The street is called Bleibtreu. In: Deutschlandfunk Kultur , November 11, 2017.
  11. ↑ www.gedenkenafeln-in-berlin.de
  12. ↑ Mascha Kaléko: Souvenir à Kladow , quoted on blogs.taz.de on the 110th anniversary of his death on June 7, 2017.
  13. ^ People from the region: Mascha Kaléko kladower-forum.de
  14. ^ Mascha-Kaléko-Weg in Zurich gebrueder-duerst.ch
  15. ↑ District Office Marzahn-Hellersdorf of Berlin, September 20, 2005: Template for information for the meeting of the District Assembly on October 27, 2005 ( Memento of September 10, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF)
  16. ↑ The park is named after the Jewish writer Mascha Kale'ko berlin.de, April 27, 2006 (press release).
  17. ↑ »I am voting for Minetta Street« maschakaleko.com
  18. ↑ Press release on the installation Hommage à Mascha Kaléko in the Georg Kolbe Museum openpr.de, September 4, 2007.
  19. ↑ Rengha Rodewill's Hommage à Mascha Kaléko 2007 in the Georg Kolbe Museum Berlin Video on YouTube (1:14 min.)
  20. ^ School chronicle. In: mascha-kaleko-grundschule.de , accessed on August 20, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Kaléko, Masha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Aufen, Golda Malka (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-speaking poet
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Galician Chrzanów , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1975
Place of death Zurich