Mascha Kaléko " Bleibtreu heißt die Straße

Mascha Kaléko came into her own as a poet in late Weimar Berlin.  Her short, whimsical-satirical poems, tinged with melancholy, perfectly reflected the modern urban sensibility - along with the sense of dread - of Berlin in the early 1930s.  Her poems were admired by many of the Weimar luminaries such as Kurt Tucholsky, Thomas Mann and Eric Kästner. When not sitting in the Romanische Café with other artists and writers, she would be at home in her apartment on Bleibtreustraße - just off the Kurfürstendamm.  Here she was in her element, but after 1933 it was no longer a safe haven for any Jew. Somehow, Mascha Kaléko, along with her husband and one-year-old child, managed to flee Germany just before the November Pogrom of 1938.  She lived the rest of her life in exile, but never found her footing again as a poet - cut off from the oxygen of the Berlin she loved.

In 1974 Mascha Kaléko returned to Berlin and visited her old street.  She wrote about the mixed feelings in one of her late poems.

Mascha Kaleko: Bleibtreu heißt die Straße

Vor fast vierzig Jahren wohnte ich hier;
... Zupft mich was am Ärmel, wenn ich
So für mich hin den Kurfürstendamm entlang
Schlendere - heißt wohl das Wort.
Und nichts zu suchen, das war mein Sinn.
Und immer wieder das Gezupfe.
Sei doch vernünftig, sage ich zu ihr.
Vierzig Jahre! Ich bin es nicht mehr.
Vierzig Jahre. Wie oft haben meine Zellen
Sich erneuert inzwischen
In der Fremde, im Exil.
New York, Ninety-Sixth Street und Central Park,
Minetta Street in Greenwich Village.
Und Zürich und Hollywood. Und dann noch Jerusalem.
Was willst du von mir, Bleibtreu?
Ja, ich weiß, Nein, ich vergaß nichts.
Hier war mein Glück zu Hause. Und meine Not.
Hier kam mein Kind zur Welt. Und mußte fort.
Hier besuchten mich meine Freunde
Und die Gestapo.
Nachts hörte man die Stadtbahnzüge
Und das Horst-Wessel-Lied aus der Kneipe nebenan.
Was blieb davon?
Die rosa Petunien auf dem Balkon.
Der kleine Schreibwarenladen.

Und eine alte Wunde, unvernarbt.

(I lived here nearly forty years ago. …Something tugs at my sleeve / when I head down the Kurfürstendamm/ I’m strolling – that’s the word / And not looking for anything, that was my point. / And something keeps tugging/ Don’t be silly, I say to her./ Forty years! I’m no longer that person. / Forty years. How many times have my cells renewed in the meantime / Away fro home, in exile. New York, Ninety-Sixth Street and Central Park/ Minetta Street in Greenwich Village./ And Zurich and Hollywood.  And after that Jerusalem.  / What do you want of me, Bleibtreu? / Yes, I know. No, I’ve forgotten nothing. / Here was my happy home. And my distress. / Here my child was born.  And had to leave./ Here is where my friends came to visit, and the Gestapo./ At night we heard the streetcars / And the Horst-Wessel song from the pub next door./ What was left?/ The pink petunias on the balcony./ The little stationary shop./  And a wound that never healed.)

A photo of Bleibtreustraße today. See also Mascha Kaléko: A poet in New York

Comments

[Hattie]

so sad...

[koogleschreiber]

29-10-2016

Seitenansicht 10 Postings, kein einziger über den US Wahlkampf. Über Trump ärgern, über Clinton schweigen, Barrack who? Nicht mit mir.

DAS CLINTON VOTEN! ZACKZACK!

[David]

Was gibt's noch zu sagen? #NeverTrump