Concert on the 100th anniversary of Bulat Okudzhava in Berlin 20 June 2024

Ekkehard Maas, guitar.

Concert for the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bulat Okudzhava and presentation of the book: poems and songs of Bulat Okudzhava in Russian and German (Translation: E. Maas).

Bulat Okudzhava (1924-1997) was a poet-singer and writer. He became popular in the late 1950s because he described the suffering of the Stalinist era and the war between the lines of his poetic songs. Ekkehard Maas, who was born in Naumburg in 1951, has been translating and performing these remarkable songs for 45 years. For his 100th birthday he published a book: Bulat Okudzhava ‘Mein Jahrhundert. Songs and Poems’ in German and Russian.

Э. For many years Maas has been running a ‘Literary Salon’ in his flat in Prenzlauerberg, where he has hosted famous (GDR times) writers and poets, as well as E. Yevtushenko, B. Akhmadulina, A. Bitov and, of course, B. Okudzhava. Eckhard is friends with the famous German bard Wolf Biermann, who wrote the foreword to his book.  

Eckhard Maas became interested in Russian literature thanks to the early stories of Maxim Gorky. It was thanks to them that, even in his school years, Ekkehard Maas sought intensive contact with the Soviet soldiers who set up their summer camps in the forests of his village. As in Gorky's stories, he would sit with them around the campfire, chew Russian bread, drink his first vodka and practise Russian with them. In 1976 he met Bulat Okudzhava and immediately began translating and singing his songs. Ekkehard Maas' translations are very accurate and many of them can be sung well in German as well. At his concerts one can hear songs in both languages. 

Ekkehard Maas studied theology and philosophy. For 45 years he has organised literary salons in his artists' flat in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district, where Russian authors such as Yevtushenkov, Bella Akhmadulina, Andrei Bitov and, of course, Okudzhava, along with Christa Wolf, Heiner Müller and Volker Braun, are frequent guests.