Musikalische Lesung: Mascha Kaleko - Die Nachtigall in meinem Garten schweigt - Musikalische Lesung mit Judith Jakob und Joachim Jezewski
Judith Jakob traces the life of the poet Mascha Kaléko through her verses and diary entries. She is musically accompanied at the piano by Joachim Jezewski.
Mascha Kaléko is born in 1907 in Chrzanów, Galicia. In 1914, the family emigrates to Germany and moves to Berlin after the First World War. In the late twenties, Mascha Kaléko connects with a circle of poets and writers at the "Romanisches Café," where she meets, among others, Tucholsky and Claire Waldoff; she is compared to Erich Kästner and the young Heinrich Heine. She is a poet of everyday life, capturing the spirit of the times; her poems from the lives of “ordinary people,” in which she unites Berlin wit with the sorrow and wisdom of the Jewish East, are received enthusiastically. Her first book, the “Lyrical Stenogram Notebook,” becomes a bestseller for the Jewish writer in 1933. After her second book, “The Little Reading Book for Adults” (1935), Mascha Kaléko's writings are banned by the National Socialists. Nevertheless, they circulate widely underground.
In 1938, she emigrates to America with her husband Chemjo Vinaver and their son. Difficult years follow, marked by poverty and isolation. She writes little. In the 1950s, Rowohlt publishes her poems again. She is nominated for the Fontane Prize, but she declines it as a former SA member sits on the jury. Out of love for her husband and his musical life's work, she emigrates to Israel, where she will always feel like a stranger. It becomes quiet around Mascha Kaléko again. Life's adversities shape her existence. In 1968, her son unexpectedly passes away, and in 1973, her husband succumbs to a severe illness. In 1974, she travels to Europe for the last time. She gives a final reading in Berlin. Mascha Kaléko dies in 1975 in Zurich.
Homesickness, for what? When I say homesickness, I say "dream."
For the old homeland hardly exists anymore.
When I say homesickness, I mean a lot:
What weighed us down in exile for so long.
We are now strangers in our hometown.
Only the "pain" remains.
The "home" is gone.
Photo: Joscha Seehausen & Jörg Schnabel
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
