Ausersehen means 'chosen' or 'destined'. It's a more formal and poetic word than common synonyms, carrying a sense of fate or predetermination.
In the song, the line "Die für uns ausersehen sind" (Who are destined for us) speaks to the idea of soulmates or people meant to be together. It evokes a feeling of profound connection and the bittersweet realization that such a bond, once lost, may never be found again.
"Kurzer Epilog" is a quiet look back at a love that ended because neither person would say the thing that mattered. The very first line sets the tone: one of them kept using the formal "Sie" right up to the end, while staying silent about the closeness they actually had. Everything else follows from that gap between what was felt and what was spoken.
The verses are a list of small refusals. She learned to wait and to suffer. He watched her, then talked about leaving, and she never asked why or where. He heard her laughing with other people and knew none of them meant anything to her. She let others pay her compliments she did not want. "Not a word out of your mouth, you had time. No sound from mine, for I had honor." Pride on both sides, and the silence just keeps growing.
Then comes the line that gives the whole song its ache: she would have followed him into infinity. It is said plainly, in the past conditional, about something that never got the chance to happen.
The last part turns to the summer they threw away. No summer was ever that big or that clear, and they wasted it with careless hands. Only once the game is over do they understand it was the last one. He leaves, it starts to rain, and she recognises the shape of an ending. The closing thought is the hardest part: the people who were meant for us are the ones we never meet again.
The song is Dota Kehr setting a Mascha Kaléko poem to music, with Rainald Grebe joining her, which is why the words feel spoken as much as sung. The delivery stays soft and unhurried, and the long wordless stretches at the end leave room for everything that was never said.
Dota Kehr, known simply as Dota, is a German singer-songwriter and producer born in West Berlin in 1979. Before music, she trained and worked as a physician, and she still brings that same precision to her lyrics today.
She grew up in Berlin, picked up the saxophone as a teenager, and started out busking on the street before learning guitar in her early twenties. Under the name Kleingeldprinzessin she built a following with songs influenced by bossa nova, before founding the band Dota und die Stadtpiraten, now known simply as Dota. Her music blends jazz and bossa nova grooves with sharp, socially aware German lyrics, and she has released her albums independently through her own label, Kleingeldprinzessin Records.
"Kurzer Epilog" comes from Dota's project setting the poetry of Mascha Kaléko, the celebrated German-Jewish poet, to music, with fellow German musician Rainald Grebe joining her on this track. It is a quieter, more literary side of her work, letting Kaléko's words about love and loss carry the song.