Mascha Kaléko - Die paar leuchtenden Jahre

I was in Berlin not so long ago. I've posted photos about the three weeks I spent there. I love Berlin. I've been there as a kid. I've kissed my very first girl in this city and I can tell you this means something to me.

I've always been fascinated by Berlin. It's right in the middle of Eastern Europe and the West. It's the only place I know where you can find old USSR clothing and valuable banjos and mandolins brought there by soldiers of the US Force after WWII.

I've been very happy in Berlin. I was once in love there. I've been drinking beers, reading in public parks. I've dated an Australian girl who an accent so thick I could not get a word of what she said. These were happy days...

This might be the reason why I admire the poetess Mascha Kaléko so much. She was born on june 7, 1907 in a part of what was then the Austrian Empire and is now Poland. She had to flee to Berlin.

There she wrote some of the most beautiful poems of European XXth century poetry. She wrote about sleepness nights in a hot city, about lovers parting in a grey and sad morning, about waking up at 7 am to go to an office. This is pretty much a thing called life. If you're not moved by that my friend, then you have some cold blood in your veins and I am so sorry for you.

Kaléko was jewish.... after the nazis came to power, she had to move and ended up in NYC.

Ironically enough, it seems I'll never managed to get free from NYC. Even reading a German poetess in her own language drags me back to the banks of the East River. I've realized there is no escape, so I am taking this rather lightly. Kaléko lived in NYC somewhere in Manhattan, I think she lived on the Upper West Side, somewhere near W. 85th St.

Kaléko embodies the 1930's in Central Europe. She is a daughter of a sad and violent era. Howewer, she was not cynical.

That's the major difference between her generation and mine.