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Dreaming of Mozart: Lilith, the baritone of the Berlin choir for the homeless

2020-12-05T05:00:14.175Z


A cultural initiative has allowed homeless people with drug and mental health problems to find a way to feel useful. This is the story of one of its members, who wants to meet the public again after the pandemic


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His high-heeled boots resonate among the columns in the courtyard of St. Jacob's Church in the Berlin district of Kreuzberg.

It's seven in the afternoon on a cool autumn Thursday.

Lilith, a black woolen cap that covers her long dyed blonde hair and a mask that covers her stubble, enters with a hurried step.

The rehearsal of the male voices of the choir, where she sings as a baritone, is about to begin.

She only has time to chat briefly with Dean, a slim young man with a bushy beard and a tail whom Lilith defines as part of her little family.

Like her, Dean has been with the

Straßenchor for

11 years

, the Berlin street choir created in 2009 by classical musician Stefan Schmidt.

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Throughout these years the choir has allowed homeless people with drug and mental health problems to find a way to be, for once, protagonists.

And thanks to the concerts, which since it exists it has been doing in famous places such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the Straßenchor has also represented a source of income for many of its members.

However, now the pandemic is putting its existence in danger.

The prohibition by the German authorities of singing indoors, the impossibility of rehearsing in the church where they used to meet, and the impossibility of paying a new rent - due to the lack of concerts and the loss of donors - have left Lilith and the rest of the choir without rehearsals from last spring until late summer.

And once they were able to meet again in the open air, in August, the choir had already been decimated.

"Before the covid, in the weekly rehearsals there were as many as 50 people," Stefan Schmidt recalls in a telephone interview.

“Today, we did not arrive at 3:00 pm: many people live far away and do not want to take the subway to come;

the elderly and those with AIDS do not want it either in case they are infected ”.

It all started when, at 16, her mother and father kicked her out of the house for being openly gay

Lilith doesn't seem like an easy person to scare.

In her 46 years of life, she has undergone such hard experiences that, in her own words, she has become "perhaps less human, sometimes directly a misanthropic dog."

It all started when, at age 16, her mother and father kicked her out of the house for being openly gay and for her esoteric beliefs.

Today she is a

Völva

, "a priestess according to the Scandinavian religious beliefs of pre-Christianity," she says.

After leaving the family home, he left the town of Rodalben, where he had grown up, near the French border, and went to Frankfurt.

"For four years I lived on the street amidst drugs, prostitution, rapes and all the ugly things that you can imagine that can happen to a village boy: as a homeless person, you have no rights," she remembers sitting in the messy room and packed with objects from the shared flat where he lives in Wilmersdorf, a quiet, residential neighborhood in West Berlin.

At the end of the nineties he left Frankfurt and arrived in the capital, where he continued to live in prostitution and move "from floor to floor".

At that time he ended up in jail twice, for debts and for beating a policeman.

It was during the period that he spent in prison in 2006 when he made a decision that would mark his life: to make the transition from man to woman that he had dreamed of since adolescence.

By then he had already been living in an apartment for three years that he had managed to rent thanks to a state subsidy.

“I needed to have a safe place for myself and I realized that if I wanted to change, I had to go towards the

system

and not against it,” he explains.

“When I had a house, I immediately stopped prostituting myself: I didn't like how it made me feel,” she recalls.

The job search began quickly: "When you work with the

system,

you have to find jobs: what I liked and felt I could do was cook."

Today her star dish is Irish stew and cooking represents a way of showing affection to others.

Therefore, whenever he could, he prepared the dinners that the choir used to share after rehearsals before the pandemic hit.

The Straßenchor came into his life in 2009 (the same year as the “big operation”), thanks to his friend Dean, who was already participating in it.

As he explained, there was a local television that was following the first steps of the choir.

“I wanted to know from Stefan if it was just a show for the television cameras and then he would abandon poor people back to the streets, or if he was serious.

He assured me that we would continue and that has been 11 years ”.

Stefan Schmidt explains that the driving force behind creating a choir designed primarily for street people was being able to feel useful.

At least, in Lilith's case, it looks like she's succeeded.

“The choir is my family and it has helped me to feel that I am worth it: when you are homeless and poor, everyone looks down on you and you feel ashamed and useless;

we have done things with him that we would never have imagined ”.

His mouth opens in a smile as he remembers when, in 2012, they sang the

Carmina Burana

at the Berlin Philharmonic with all tickets sold out.

When you are homeless and poor, everyone looks down on you and you feel ashamed and useless;

with the choir we have done things we never would have imagined

Claudia Steckelberg, professor of social work sciences at the University of Neubrandenburg, highlights the empowerment effects of this type of initiative for people in marginalized situations: “The feeling that they have value gives people the motivation to change things and to join with others to do it ”.

And he adds: “However, these cultural projects do not receive public funding because they are not seen as something important, but as a luxury;

instead, I believe that they are essential for survival ”.

Lilith also highlights other advantages of the choir: “It also gives me stability and a routine”.

That was very important to her a few years ago, when she suffered from severe depression.

And he is again today, when because of the covid-19 he has lost his job.

The small vegetarian restaurant where he had been working for some time has not survived the lockdown.

She supports herself thanks to state aid and is looking for a job as a cook.

Meanwhile, the choir director looks for a new rehearsal location and a way to raise money until the concerts and donations return.

Again, due to restrictions to contain the pandemic, the trials have been suspended.

Lilith and the choir hope to sing

Mozart's

Ave Verum Corpus

again soon

: they started rehearsing it last year and dream of having an audience to dedicate it to.

This article is part of a series produced thanks to

IJ4EU (Investigative Journalism for Europe)

.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-12-05

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