Ines Paulke

Ines Paulke (20 September 1958 – 17 February 2010) was a German pop singer. She worked as a pop singer for the bands Motiv and Datzu before becoming a solo artist. Paulke won several prizes and was voted singer of the year for 1987. She released her CD record, Die Farbe meiner Tränen, in 1988, which saw her voted the recipient of the most successful record of the year award known as the Goldene Amiga. Paulke took up performing in cabaret, musicals and theatre after the Berlin Wall fell.

Biography On 20 September 1958, Paulke was born in Gräfenthal, Thuringia. In her childhood years she played the guitar and took piano lessons at a music school. Paulke sang in the school choir and was part of a school band. She did an apprenticeship as a nurse before going on to study classical music at the district music school in Gera, Thuringia. Following initial funding contracts, Paulke worked as a pop singer for the bands Motiv and Datzu. Paulke's solo CD record, Die Farbe meiner Tränen, was released in 1988. It achieved sales of 120,000 in East Germany, On 7 October 1989, she performed at the International Marketplace of Festivals in Nashville, Tennessee, United States, and won the $1,000 bronze medal accolade during the Distant Accords Awards competition. She also toured China.

She spent around six months working in the Personality Night Show held at the Friedrichstadt-palast during 1990 and again in 1994 and 2003. and was the performer of the song that introduced Leipzig's bid to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. Paulke had two children from a previous relationship. On the night of 17 February 2010, she died by suicide by choking as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning whilst she was in her car at a lake close to Thannhausen, Bavaria, having suffered from depression in the final months of her life.

Legacy Birgit Walter of Berliner Zeitung described Paulke as a "wonderful singer with the big, bell-clear voice and the cautious stage presentation, always had something aloof, almost elitist, and always kept a little distance from the audience... She has always seen herself as a star after she was celebrated as such." The correspondent for B.Z. called her voice "voluminous".