Bettina Flitner & Bettina Engelhardt – Meine Schwester | Lesung

In the organizer's words:

A joint event by the Proust bookshop, Schauspiel Essen and the Förderverein Essener TelefonSeelsorge e.V. to raise awareness of World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10.

When photographer Bettina Flitner learned of her beloved sister's suicide a few years ago, her first reactions were shock, paralysis and despair. But then she decided to tell the story. The result is a deeply moving, masterful text, a book of liberation.

With an incorruptible eye trained on photography, full of devotion, humor and sadness, Bettina Flitner tells the story of an intimate sibling relationship: a childhood in the 1970s, the years at the Waldorf School, the memory of the charismatic grandparents, including a famous reform teacher, the father a cultural manager and exponent of the left-liberal educated middle class of the old West Germany, a year in New York, the vacations on Capri, the first love adventures in puberty. And then the cracks: the children are overwhelmed by their parents' lives of sexual libertinage, the mother's flight into depression, the parents' unfulfillable career expectations of their daughters.

Bettina Engelhardt is currently staging "Meine Schwester" at Schauspiel Essen. Bettina Flitner and Bettine Engelhardt will read from the book and talk.

Price information:

We have a small contingent of free tickets, just contact us or send us an e-mail.