Mascha Kaléko

I often try to reconstruct in my mind the atmosphere of famous literary cafés, like the Romanisches in Berlin. I know the names of some people who frequented it, like Erich Kästner, the novelist, and Kurt Tucholsky, the journalist. I doubt that Thomas Mann did, he was too serious a person to spend hours in cafés, and who would go to a place like that just to have a quick cup of coffee? Besides, he lived mostly in Munich. But maybe his children, Klaus and Erika did. And of course Joachim Ringelnatz and Else Lasker-Schüler.

I was glad whan I discovered another patron of the Romanisches. Her name : Mascha Kaléko. She was born 1907, not in Berlin, and not even in Germany, at that. Like many adoptive Berliners, she came from the eastern regions of the Austrohungarian empire. 

Her family moved to Germany escaping pogroms, and her first adress in Berlin was Grenadierstrasse 17, in Scheunenviertel, the eastern neighbourhood where many poor Jews lived. In Berlin, she studied philosophy and psychology, but what really interested her was poetry.

She published regularly poems in newspapers, like the Vossische Zeitung, the Berliner Tagblatt, and the Welt am Montag. In 1929 she publish her first poems in the renowned magazine Der Querschnitt. Playful verses, about the lives of poor people in the big city, with a peculiar mixture of melancholy and wit.

Her first book of verse, Das Lyrische Stenogrammheft. Verse für den Alltag (1933), though seemingly influenced by Erich Kästner's "Gebrauchslyrik" (lyrics for everyday use) with its cynical yet neo-romantic tone, nevertheless reveals a very personal style with a specific Berlinesque flavor.

One would think that being a Jew, Mascha would have left Germany 1933, as many others did. But the fact is, many German Jews managed to survive during that time, even though conditions got worse all the time. At last, she did emigrate to the U.S., in 1938.

After the war, her poetic work found a new German public. She visited Berlin a last time in 1974. She lived in Israel but dreamed of having a small apartment in Berlin, where she would spend some months every year. But she didn’t live long enough to realize those dreams. She died in 1975. 

One of her poems, from Das Lyrische Stenogrammheft.

City love

You meet hastily somewhere

and agree on a date sometime,

Something, hard to say what,

makes you feel you can’t live without it.

By the second raspberry ice-cream, you call each other « thou ».

You like each other and in the greyish mornings

you perceive already the glow of happy evenings,

You share the worries of everyday life

you share the joy of an extra salary.

The rest is taken care by the telephone.

You kiss each other on park benches,

Erotics, yes, but only on Sunday,

On other days, who would think of it ?

One speaks concretely, and rarely blushes.

No roses or daffodils are offered

And when you are tired of weekend adventures and kisses

you notify each other, through the State Mail

in stenographic writing, just a short word : « Off ! »

(My own translation) 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Above: the house where Mascha Kaléko lived in Berlin in 1936-1938, with a plaque on the entrance.

 

 

https://www.maschakaleko.com/

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/kal-x00e9-ko-mascha