After
grammar school, Petra Pascal became a
social insurance social insurances
clerk at the Hesse State Insurance Institution (now
Deutsche Rentenversicherung Hessen). She then studied singing for six years and took music and
ballet lessons. She took part in five international festivals and released several
single records in the 1960s, initially under the stage name Mariett Sora, including
Wenn Du gehst, mon ami and
Ohne dich together with
Hubert Wolf. In 1969, Pascal's first
long-playing record,
Kontraste, was released. At the beginning of the 1970s, she had some commercial success with chanson-like songs, which were also played in the
hit parades. Her greatest successes were
Das war ein Leben,
Raskolnikoff (1969),
Wie das Glas in meiner Hand (1971),
Drei Schritte vor und zwei zurück (1972) and
Ich bin ein Morgenmuffel (1979). Noteworthy was her
concept album Das Paradies ist noch nicht verloren (1974), on which she dealt with environmental protection and pollution and their consequences in 14 songs. The patron of the work was the then
Federal Minister of the Interior,
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, who also wrote the foreword on the back of the LP cover. From the 1980s onwards, Pascal worked primarily as a
radio presenter and
author. Her programs included: portraits of composers and artists on
HR 4, the
ARD-Nachtxpress of
HR and from 1991 on
WDR 4 the program
Café Carlton, which was discontinued at the end of 2006 after a program reform, and the
Schellack-Schätzchen, which she presented several times a year until the beginning of 2012. == Awards ==