Mascha Kaléko

Mascha Kaléko (born Golda Malka Aufen; June 7, 1907 – January 21, 1975) was a Jewish German language poet.

Biography
Art installation Mascha Kaléko by Rengha Rodewill, Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin

Her family moved from Galicia to Germany after World War I. In 1928, she married the Hebrew teacher Saul Aaron Kaléko. From 1929 on, she published poetry presenting the daily life of the common people in the newspapers Vossische Zeitung and Berliner Tageblatt.

In her poetry, she captured the atmosphere of Berlin in the 1930s. She attained fame and frequented places like the "Romanisches Café", where the literary world met, among them Erich Kästner and Kurt Tucholsky.

In January 1933, Rowohlt published her first book with poetry Lyrisches Stenogrammheft, which was soon subjected to Nazi censorship, and two years later her second book Das kleine Lesebuch für Grosse appeared, also with the publisher Rowohlt.

In 1938, she managed to emigrate to the United States with her second husband, the composer Chemjo Vinaver, and their one-year-old son Steven, who became a writer and theatre personality in adult life. Steven fell ill with pancreatitis while directing a play in Massachusetts, and died at the age of 31.

While in the USA, Mascha lived at several places (New York City and a few months in California) until settling on Minetta Street in New York City's Greenwich Village in 1942. Her fifth floor walkup apartment Minetta Street was a safe haven she always remembered fondly. Mascha became the family's breadwinner with odd jobs, including some writing copy for advertisements. The family's hope of a possible career for Chemjo in the film industry was crushed, and they returned to New York after a brief stint in Hollywood.

The Schoenhof Verlag in Cambridge, Massachusetts published Kaléko's third book "Verse für Zeitgenossen" in 1945 (German edition in 1958 by Rowohlt Verlag).

In 1956, Kaléko returned to Berlin for the first time. Three years later she was supposed to receive the Fontane prize, which she declined since it would have been handed over by a former Nazi official.

In 1959, she moved to Jerusalem, Israel, since her husband, who was conducting research on Hassidic singing, had better working conditions there. Mascha lacked knowledge of Hebrew and was thus somewhat isolated.

Kaléko died in January 1975 in Zürich where she fell ill en route back to Jerusalem from a final visit in Berlin. She is buried in Israelitischer Friedhof Oberer Friesenberg.[1]

Some of her poems were published posthumously, including "Sozusagen grundlos vergnügt", in 1977 in the collection In meinen Träumen läutet es Sturm (In my dreams, a storm is brewing).[2] edited by Gisela Zoch-Westphal, to whom Kaléko had entrusted her unpublished writings.[3]

Various attempts have been made to translate individual poems into English. In March 2010, for the first time, a representative number of Kaléko's poems appeared in English translation in the book "'No matter where I travel, I come to Nowhereland' - The poetry of Mascha Kaléko" (The University of Vermont, 2010, 112 pages). The author, Andreas Nolte, has selected poems from every phase of the poet's life. His translations follow the original German texts as closely as possible in order to maintain the kalékoesque content, diction, rhythm, and rhyme. Brief introductions provide additional information on Kaléko's remarkable biography.

Quote

From the poem "Mein schönstes Gedicht"

From the poem "Was man so braucht" (translations: Andreas Nolte):

The poem "Pihi":

Works
  • Das Lyrische Stenogrammheft. Verse vom Alltag (1933, reprint 1956)
  • Das kleine Lesebuch für Große. Gereimtes und Ungereimtes, Verse (1934)
  • Verse für Zeitgenossen (1945)
  • Der Papagei, die Mamagei und andere komische Tiere (1961)
  • Verse in Dur und Moll (1967)
  • Das himmelgraue Poesiealbum der M.K (1968)
  • Wie's auf dem Mond zugeht der kleine hurensohn (1971)
  • Hat alles seine zwei Schattenseiten (1973)

Published posthumously:

  • Feine Pflänzchen. Rosen, Tulpen, Nelken und nahrhaftere Gewächse (1976)
  • Der Gott der kleinen Webfehler (1977)
  • In meinen Träumen lautet es Sturm. Gedichte und Epigramme aus dem Nachlaß.(1977)
  • Horoskop gefällig? (1979)
  • Heute ist morgen schon gestern (1980)
  • Tag und Nacht Notizen (1981)
  • Ich bin von anno dazumal (1984)
  • Der Stern, auf dem wir leben (1984)

Notes
  1. it seems likely that she read of the Pihi bird in Apollinaire's Alcools, published in 1913.)
gollark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh3Yz3PiXZw
gollark: It's bold to call that "logic", really.
gollark: "Actually, 1 + 1 is 9."
gollark: "Your statement is really blunt and leaves no room for debate, we have to consider other possibilities *might* be correct."
gollark: "You once said 'I'm struggling with this differential calculus problem', what makes you qualified to say anything about maths?!?!?"

References
  1. "Zürich: Jüdischer Friedhof - Oberer Friesenberg" (in German). alemannia-judaica.de. Retrieved 18 December 2015.
  2. Isenmann, Ingrid. "'Mascha Kaléko: Das lyrische Stenogrammheft'". literaturundkunst.net (in German). Retrieved 28 October 2018.
  3. Hoenig, Verena (18 July 2007). "Mascha Kaléko - Sozusagen grundlos vergnügt". Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (in German). Retrieved 28 October 2018.

Sources
  • Julia Meyer: „Bibbi, Ester und der Papagei“. Mascha Kalékos jüdische Autorschaft zwischen ,Berliner Kindheit um 1900' und Jugend-Alijah. In: Berlin - Bilder einer Metropole in erzählenden Medien für Kinder und Jugendliche. Hg. von Sabine Planka. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2018, ISBN 978-3-8260-6305-3, S. 139-171.
  • Julia Meyer: Karnevaleske Blödsinnzentrale: Mascha Kalékos Berliner Gedichte als Kabaretttexte im "Querschnitt". In: Deutsche illustrierte Presse. Journalismus und visuelle Kultur in der Weimarer Republik. Hg. von Katja Leiskau, Patrick Rössler und Susann Trabert. Nomos, Baden-Baden 2016, ISBN 978-3-8487-2930-2, S. 305-330.
  • Julia Meyer: „Zwei Seelen wohnen, ach, in mir zur Miete." Inszenierungen von Autorschaft im Werk Mascha Kalékos. Thelem, Dresden 2018, ISBN 978-3-945363-64-5.
  • Andreas Nolte: "Mascha": The Poems of Mascha Kaléko. Burlington/VT: Fomite Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-942515-92-0. Dual-language book (English/German) with translated poems and biographical information.
  • Andreas Nolte (Editor): Mascha Kaléko: "'No matter where I travel, I come to Nowhereland' - The Poetry of Mascha Kaléko." Translated and introduced by Andreas Nolte. Burlington/VT: The University of Vermont, 2010. ISBN 978-0-9817122-6-0
  • Jutta Rosenkranz: "Mascha Kaléko - Biografie". Munich: dtv-Verlag, 2007. ISBN 978-3-423-24591-3
  • Andreas Nolte (Editor): "'Ich stimme fuer Minetta Street' - Festschrift aus Anlass des 100. Geburtstags von Mascha Kaléko." Burlington/VT: The University of Vermont, 2007. ISBN 0-9770731-8-1
  • Andreas Nolte: "'Mir ist zuweilen so als ob das Herz in mir zerbrach' - Leben und Werk Mascha Kalékos im Spiegel ihrer sprichwörtlichen Dichtung." Bern: Peter Lang-Verlag 2003. ISBN 3-03910-095-5
  • Gisela Zoch-Westphal: "Aus den sechs Leben der Mascha Kaléko." Berlin: arani-Verlag, 1987. ISBN 3-7605-8591-4
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