Mascha Kaléko – A Life in Poetry

Musical reading with Ingrid Birkholz, accompanied on the piano by Ronny Kaufhold

„SShe wrote her life, and she lived her poetry.“ Marcel Reich-Ranicki

Actress Ingrid Birkholz reads poems by the great Jewish-Russian poet Mascha Kaléko, who became one of the most famous artists in Berlin's cultural life in the 1920s. Admired and courted for her subtle wit and clear language, her publications reached incredible heights. Her poems are currently experiencing a major renaissance, as her texts about love and the little things of everyday life in a rapidly developing city continue to touch readers today.

Mascha Kaléko, who fled to Germany with her family in 1914 to escape the pogroms against Jews and was forced to emigrate to America in 1938, retained an irrepressible zest for life in her poems, despite the harsh blows of fate, which brought comfort and hope to thousands of readers.

The reading evening presents a journey through life based on Mascha Kaléko's poems, accompanied by pianist Ronny Kaufhold. With classical piano music by Edvard Grieg, Maurice Ravel, Johann Sebastian Bach, and others, he expands the audience's sensibilities and takes the content beyond the atmospheric intentions of the texts. Ingrid Birkholz will also sing four chansons, which are settings of poems by the poet.

Accompanied by small delicacies from the Schmokenberg® kitchen