  The extensive air shower (EAS) experiment KASCADE has started data taking at
the laboratory site of the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe. The major goal is to
determine the elemental composition of the primary cosmic ray particles in the
energy range around and above the knee at $E_{\rm k} \approx 5 \cdot 10^{15}$
eV. Here, we shall discuss some results on tests of hadronic interaction models
required for air shower simulations, present the `knee' in particle size
distributions of electrons, muons, and hadrons, and finally discuss preliminary
results on the elemental composition which are based on event-by-event
measurements of the muon/electron ratio. The great advantage over previous
analyses which were based purely on {\em average} numbers of samples of events
is emphasized. The KASCADE data, analyzed in variety of different approaches,
favor an increasingly heavier composition above the knee.
