Olga Krause

Olga Krause (born March 15, 1953 in Leningrad , Soviet Union ) is a Russian songwriter and writer.

biography

She was born in Leningrad in 1953 as the first child of the railway engineer couple Leopold Krause and Nata Grigorowitsch. According to the family chronicles, the father was of Austrian descent, the mother had Jewish-Polish roots. The family of four traveled extensively in the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s.

After finishing secondary school in Dnepropetrovsk at the end of the 1960s, she moved to Leningrad, where she attended a choir school and a. a. took fine arts classes at the Kirov Cultural Institute and the Hermitage. First publication of poems in the local newspaper "Gatchina-Pravda". Was active in several theater and literary associations from the 1970s to 1990s. In the 80s part of the artist group ETAP (Eng. "Experimental Songwriters Cooperative"). Numerous appearances on the official stages in Leningrad and tours in the Soviet Union. In the 1990s he also gave concerts in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands as part of the Russian-German cultural exchange.

Lives openly as a lesbian. Worked together with the art scholar Olga Zhuk on the publication of the magazine "Gej, Slavyanje" (Eng. "(G) ay, you Slavs"). In the 1980s she organized a "Club of Independent Women" in Leningrad, which was committed to supporting lesbians and single mothers. Together with Professor Alexander Kucharsky, she founded the first official LGBT organization of the RSFSR "Krylja" (Association for the Protection of the Rights of Gays and Lesbians "Wing") in October 1991.

In 2006 her book "Mein Weg in die Musik" was published. The autobiographical story was reissued in 2009 in an expanded version under the title "Otpetaja Zhizn" (Eng. About "a tough musical life"). In 2007, the Moscow queer publishing house published the anthology "Jo-mojo" (untranslatable, German for "ach du mein Fresse"). Since then, further publications of poetry and prose online and self-published.

Musical work

• Winter concert in the St. Petersburg Theater Museum (February 2014)
• "Two Moons"
• "Torn From the Chain", 2005
• "That's why!" 2006
• "Best of", 2011
• "Whitsun Bird", 2011
• "Romances", 2012

bibliography

• "Katja's Garden": The Katharinen Garden in the center of St. Petersburg was the most important meeting place for gays and lesbians in Soviet times. The narrative volume is a collection of stories about the people and meetings in this "cruising zone". In Russian. Ridero, 2017, 142 pp., ISBN 978-5-4485-6303-4
• "The Kharkiv Booklet": Poems 2011-2018. In Russian. Ridero , 186 pp., ISBN 978-5-4485-6404-8
• "Behind the facade of this garden": historical stories. In Russian. Ridero, 2017, 116 pp. ISBN 978-5-4490-0619-6
• "In free flight": Fantastic stories. In Russian. Ridero, 2018, 114 pp. ISBN 978-5-4490-4080-0
• "Yo-mojo". Queer Publishing Moscow, 2007, in Russian. 140 pp., ISBN 5-91108-011-7
• "Otpetaja Zhizn": autobiographical stories. Tver, Verlag Novaya Realnost, 2009, 165 pp., ISBN 978-5-98144-107-3 , German translation "Too kess for the KPSS: My life as a songwriter in the Soviet Union"

Web links

• official website
• Poems by Olga Krause on the stihi.ru portal (in Russian)
• Olga Krause on the proza.ru portal (in Russian)
• Short biography of Olga Krause on the portal gay.ru (in Russian)
• Interview with Olga Krause from Radio Svoboda: "Insanity and malice on the rise" (in Russian)
• Article about the life and work of Olga Krause on the portal opendemocracy