Lesung und Gespräch | Volker Weidermann | Wenn ich eine Wolke wäre
»I have to rely on miracles«: Mascha Kaléko's journey to Germany
January 1956: Seventeen years after Mascha Kaléko fled Nazi Germany at the last minute, she returns. It is a journey into the past - coupled with the anxious question of whether it can also be a journey into the future.
She travels to Berlin, the city where she had been happy, where she became successful as a poet, the city she loved, and across the whole country for a whole year. Almost daily, she sends letters to New York, to her husband, the love of her life, recounting - of fairy-tale successes, a miracle in Berlin, abysses, of an old, new country.
Volker Weidermann writes about a single year and, in it, reveals an entire German-Jewish life. It is the story of a poetess, in whose humor, spirit, and melancholy we recognize ourselves.
Volker Weidermann was born in 1969 in Darmstadt. After journalistic stints at "taz", "FAS", and "Spiegel", he led the feuilleton at ZEIT with Christine Lemke-Matwey and is now its cultural correspondent. His published books include "The Book of Burned Books" (2008), "Ostende" (2014), and "Dreamers" (2017, all published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch). Weidermann also hosted the "Literary Quartet" on ZDF for five years.
Ana Schlaegel is an actress at the Ravensburg Theater, producer, director, coach.
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
