The poetess Mascha Kaléko (1907-1975) fled from Nazi Germany to American exile in 1938 after achieving significant literary success in Berlin, and she moved to Israel in 1960. Her life, marked by displacement, exile, and loneliness, found expression in easily accessible poems, whose most outstanding feature is the versatile and skillful use of proverbs and sayings. These run like a red thread through all phases of her work and thematic areas. The study combines paromological, literary, and historical aspects, focusing on the formulaic language to trace all the important stages in the poetess's life. At the same time, it provides a comprehensive overview of her entire literary output. The selected quotes from her work and from her unpublished estate are arranged with explanatory and interpretative remarks in such a way that the present text becomes an impressive example of a German fate in the 20th century.