Raquel Rastenni

Invitation to book launch

Two is best, I think., but we hope to see many more when the Danish Jewish Museum hosts the launch of the biography of Raquel Rastenni written by Torben Kitaj and published by Turbine. We will offer a glass of bubbles and snacks, and there will be a presentation by the author.

Raquel Rastenni

Raquel Rastenni was the biggest star of Danish pop in the 1950s and 1960s. All Danes over 50 know her songs. Every Sunday afternoon, Raquel Rastenni would fade into living rooms across the country on the radio program Giro 413 with songs like “Jeg rev et blad ud af min dagbog”, “Heksedansen” and “Hele ugen alene”. She was called “smilelets sangerinde” and “livsglædens gesandt”, but her songs were often a mixture of joie de vivre and melancholy.

Raquel Rastenni was much more than a simple pop singer. She was a distinctive woman who was given nothing in return, and her biography is therefore about the Jewish girl who grew out of poverty, who fled during the war, who created her own career in a male-dominated entertainment industry, who had a child alone, and who ended her career in time and sang Jewish songs to the end.

The first biography

The biography is the first to be written about her. Torben Kitaj has based the book on extensive source study and interviews with, among others, Kristen Bjørnkjær, Jørn Hjorting, Henrik Krogsgaard, Dorthe Kollo, Pia Rosenbaum and several others.