Inge Ginsberg

Ingeborg "Inge" Ginsberg (27 January 1922 – 20 July 2021) was an Austrian-Swiss author and singer. While in Switzerland during World War II, she was involved with the Italian resistance movement.

Early life and education Ginsberg was born Ingeborg Neufeld on 27 January 1922 in Vienna, Austria, the older of two children, to Fritz Samuel Neufeld (1889–1960), a businessman, and Hildegard Neufeld (née Zwicker; 1901–1975), into an affluent Jewish family.

Her father was the proprietor of a freight forwarding company in Vienna. The Neufeld family could trace their Austrian monastic roots back 800 years to the Melk Abbey. Her mothers family was originally from Zittau, Saxony in Germany.

Ginsberg attended schools up to 12th grade in Vienna.

World War II and escape During the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938, her father was sent to Dachau concentration camp. Ginsberg secured his released through bribery. In 1939, he was among the Jewish passengers on board the MS St. Louis during its journey to Cuba and back.

In 1942 her mother was able to flee across the Alps to Switzerland with the two children and Ginsberg's boyfriend Otto Kollman after surviving in Vienna for years. However, the threat still loomed over them, and her mother sold her jewellery collection to an Austrian count who arranged for them to be smuggled to Switzerland.

At the invitation of the Weizmann Institute, she was able to fly as a guest on the first flight of an El Al plane from Zürich to Tel Aviv. In Israel she met her second husband, Hans Kruger and they married in 1960. He was the manager of a luxury hotel, the Dan Hotel Tel Aviv. She had originally planned to lead a pioneering life in a kibbutz. She bought an apartment in Tel Aviv with the proceeds from the sale of three farms near Haifa. Her far-sighted grandmother, a lifelong Zionist, had acquired them in 1936.

In Israel she also met her third husband, also a Jewish emigrant from Vienna. She moved to Ecuador with Kurt Ginsberg and married him after a difficult divorce from Hans Kruger in 1972. She wrote several books based on her time in Ecuador. The couple lived alternately in Quito, Tel Aviv and Switzerland and later moved to New York for health reasons. When her husband died in 1999, she continued to live in Switzerland and New York.

In 2020, Ginsberg survived a COVID-19 infection. She died 20 July 2021.

In May 1945, with the start of Cold War in Europe, Ginsberg and her husband ended their activities as spies.

Music career In 1949 Ginsberg and her first husband were hired as house composers by the Swiss company Musikvertrieb. Her husband composed ten songs each week and one or two were then selected for use. The performers were well-known stars such as Vico Torriani and Lys Assia. The company Musikvertrieb was later integrated into Teldec (Telefunken-Decca Schallplatten GmbH). Through the mediation of a friend, the couple were also able to sell their music to the Gloria film company. Well-known songs were, for example, The cowboy always has a girl, Madeleine or Sing, sing Gitano.

In 1955, they were recruited by Capitol Records to write songs for Hollywood and so moved to the USA. The couple did not feel at home there, despite singers such as Dean Martin and Nat King Cole recording their work. It had the chorus "Sing and eat and drink and laugh, then the devil goes to hell". It was placed last in the public vote in the Swiss preliminary round for the Eurovision Song Contest 2015. Ginsberg and the Tritone Kings also put a new song forward unsuccessfully for the Swiss contribution to the Eurovision Song Contest 2016.

Ginsberg entered Switzerland's Got Talent aged 94 with a heavy metal number and became a sensation. She said she wanted to demonstrate that older people have a lot to contribute to society and should not be excluded from life. Her singing performances on YouTube has also led to widespread attention, being dubbed "Heavy Metal Grandma".

Works Ginsberg wrote several books. These included: The partisan villa. Memories of escape, secret service and numerous hits (in German Die Partisanenvilla. Erinnerungen an Flucht, Geheimdienst und zahlreiche Schlager) Edited by Manfred Flügge. DTV, Munich 2008. No Flowers in the Rainforest Gray Rabbit Publishing, New York 2013, (as Inge Ginsberg-Kruger). A life story. The Poems of Inge Ginsberg Gray Rabbit Publishing, New York 2014.