This interview was originally published in the German magazine Stern on May 17, 1985. The scanned pages from the original article are reproduced below.
The English transcription below was translated directly from the original German article.
At 13 she was addicted to drugs and involved in prostitution. The book about her life became famous as an indictment of society. Ten years later, the real Christiane F. was presented by Stern as a living example of the emptiness and lack of prospects to which drugs can reduce a human being. In this uncompromising interview, the magazine portrayed her as an example not so much because of what she said, but because of what she seemed unable to say.
Stern interview with Christiane F.: “I don't like people anymore”
Report by Birgit Lahann | Photos by Gerd Krug and Klaus Meyer-Andersen | Originally published in Stern, May 17, 1985
Berlin-Neukölln. On the third floor of the old building, someone appears to have kicked in the door. A strip of wood has been nailed over the hole. “Key is at the police station,” it says. The three-room apartment belongs to Christiane Felscherinow, known as Christiane F. In the living room: a leather sofa, a mattress and a black coffin on grey velour. In the bedroom: a clothesline stretched across the room and ironing everywhere. Claude, the French bulldog, and the Doberman puppy have peed and pooped all over the third room, which is lined with newspapers. “The big one keeps trying to hump the little one,” she says, switching effortlessly from standard German into her Berlin dialect. “I have to separate them all the time.”
Christiane F. will turn 23 in a few days. She had become a symbol and a beacon of hope for a generation endangered by drugs. At 12 she took hashish. At 13, heroin. At 14 she went to the child-prostitution scene around Bahnhof Zoo. But she survived. She wrote the suffering of addiction and withdrawal off her soul. Christiane F. – We Children from Bahnhof Zoo was the title of the series in Stern, which became a bestselling book with a print run in the millions.
Afterward, she began an apprenticeship as a bookseller in a small town in northern Germany, but dropped out. “As an apprentice, you're just taken advantage of anyway. After half a year, I felt like I knew everything.” In the wake of the Neue Deutsche Welle, she tried her hand as a singer, was hired as a publicity stunt for a bad film in which she played a peepshow girl, and traveled aimlessly around the world. When her own life story was made into a film, she worked as a consultant during production. The film about Christiane F. also became a multimillion-mark success.
Then things went quiet around her until, a year ago, she was caught with heroin during a raid on a dealer's apartment in Berlin. The charge: “Acquisition of heroin for personal use.” Last week, she stood trial.
STERN: Christiane, you were sentenced to a fine of 3,000 marks because you were caught with heroin again. Did the verdict surprise you?
CHRISTIANE F.: Nah. I knew it. It was a show. The judges and prosecutors already know in advance how they want to punish someone.
STERN: Your lawyer brought a lookalike into the courtroom so you wouldn't be recognized. You ran out right after...
CHRISTIANE F.: ...the way they pounced on us. What annoyed me the most were the journalists. At that point, a person is just a commodity.
STERN: In court, you said you would never take heroin again. That that was the last time.
CHRISTIANE F.: Well, you can see what they go and write. I never said that. I can't possibly know that yet. I'd be making a fool of myself if it happens again. And then there's all this fuss again — so then I'm not staying in Germany, I'm emigrating.
STERN: And where would you want to emigrate to?
CHRISTIANE F.: Well, maybe to Italy.
STERN: Why Italy?
CHRISTIANE F.: Life there is so nicely loud, everyone talks over each other. I like that.
CHRISTIANE F.: I don't know. It was a coincidence. When you know the feeling of heroin, you don't forget it. In terms of the rush, it's just good...
STERN: ...and then it turns into a catastrophe. You've experienced all of that: addiction, getting money, stealing, prostitution. Two of your friends died from heroin.
CHRISTIANE F.: Prostitution, that was the worst. I would never do that again. After all, I'm older now.
STERN: But still, you let yourself be tempted again.
CHRISTIANE F.: Well, yeah, I'd rather take heroin than drink alcohol. There's no drug as bad as alcohol. Even heroin addicts don't hit rock bottom as hard as alcoholics.
STERN: But with heroin, it happens faster.
CHRISTIANE F.: So, the relapse didn't change anything for me. I haven't changed socially.
STERN: But now you've become a police matter again.
CHRISTIANE F.: Oh, the cops. The cops who arrested me were as old as I am. Snot-nosed kids, that's what they were. Terrible snot-nosed kids. So insolent and arrogant. They handcuffed us to the table legs like dogs. And we weren't allowed to talk to each other. And they ripped the cigarette packs out of our hands.
STERN: And while doing that, they searched the dealer's apartment?
CHRISTIANE F.: Nah. They did that when we were gone. They need peace and quiet for that, don't they? So they can throw everything onto the floor properly. They really trashed everything.
STERN: That was exactly a year ago. Has there been a new temptation since then?
CHRISTIANE F.: Nah. I'm over that again.
STERN: And have you been back to Bahnhof Zoo?
CHRISTIANE F.: Bahnhof Zoo is such a “popular place.” The scene changes constantly. Bahnhof Zoo is everywhere. Back then, we were the ones at Zoo. And since then, somebody else. I don't get sentimental when I pass by.
STERN: For young people, up into the 1980s, you were a kind of Joan of Arc of the drug scene. You had survived; you had made it. Did you never feel the need to help drug addicts?
CHRISTIANE F.: No. I never felt responsible for other people. Everyone has to know for themselves what they're doing.
STERN: You didn't see yourself as an idol, as a symbol of hope for desperate people?
CHRISTIANE F.: I always found it funny when I read things like that in the newspaper. I never felt like an idol. That was another person.
STERN: This person, the famous Christiane F., has just spent eight weeks invited to Zurich, as a guest of the head of Diogenes publishing house. As a showpiece for high society?
CHRISTIANE F.: I did feel accepted. Anna Keel, the wife of Diogenes publisher Daniel Keel, had called me in Berlin and invited me to Zurich. A year later I finally went. They treated me like a daughter. I almost started calling them Mom and Dad.
STERN: And did Mom and Dad ask anything of you?
CHRISTIANE F.: Their two children always had a cultural program, and I was supposed to take part in it too.
STERN: What do you mean, “supposed to”? Was that checked?
CHRISTIANE F.: Yes, at dinner.
STERN: What did the program look like?
CHRISTIANE F.: It already started in Berlin, when Anna picked me up. I had to go with her to see Chekhov's Three Sisters. And it was great, really. The set too — real trees, fifty of them, with leaves and everything. It lasted four hours.
STERN: And in Zurich?
CHRISTIANE F.: There I also had to go to the Schauspielhaus. I was supposed to see something typically Swiss, except they spoke High German. It was the farce Noises Off. Terrible. A set with lots of doors, one person comes in and another goes out — terrible. Chekhov, at least, was a funny guy. I know that because I have books by him, a whole box set.
STERN: And what else was on the Swiss cultural program?
CHRISTIANE F.: Well, we were in Rome and met Fellini. We watched him filming, and afterward we had lunch at Cinecittà.
STERN: And what language did you speak?
CHRISTIANE F.: English. I'd really like to learn Italian.
STERN: And why don't you?
CHRISTIANE F.: No time.
STERN: No time? But you don't work. You ought to have enough time to study.
CHRISTIANE F.: Well, I should think about it. But studying alone at home doesn't work. I always need someone to push me. I'm a lazy person.
STERN: In Zurich, did you also meet the famous writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt?
CHRISTIANE F.: I didn't want to meet him. School reading ruined him for me.
STERN: How often have you read your own book, Christiane F. – We Children from Bahnhof Zoo?
CHRISTIANE F.: Maybe three times. I always tried to read it as if I weren't the person in it. I wanted to know why other people thought it was so good.
STERN: And what other books do you still like?
CHRISTIANE F.: Den Großkotz, by Mathias Nolte. And Cream Train, by Andrea De Carlo. Those are my favorite books.
STERN: Now you're back in Berlin, no longer protected by a family. But you're not living alone either. You brought a friend from Zurich, a Palestinian from Israel.
CHRISTIANE F.: Samir will be leaving again soon. It's still difficult for me to find a boyfriend. Most of them let me tyrannize them. When they start doing what I want, I stop respecting them. And besides — look at him. He smokes four packs a day. Impossible. I smoke too much myself. It really gets on my nerves when someone leaves the tap running while shaving because it's wasteful. Or when someone uses half a pound of dishwashing liquid to wash one cup. Household cleaning products pollute the environment just as much as industry does.
STERN: Have you become a Green?
CHRISTIANE F.: Unfortunately, the Greens are unprofessional. They're always fighting among themselves. And when someone with a full beard shows up, that scares people off right away.
STERN: Rather bourgeois prejudices...
CHRISTIANE F.: ...but otherwise they don't get enough votes.
STERN: So you're in favor of tactics?
CHRISTIANE F.: Of course. And then that letter to Christian Klar. That's impossible — all that familiar “du” stuff, I'm sick of it. I thought the ending was good.
STERN: Have you ever had a proper discussion with the Greens?
CHRISTIANE F.: No. I hate discussions.
STERN: What's more interesting than discussing things?
CHRISTIANE F.: Sometimes I watch everything on TV... preferably in bed. Newspapers, I can't manage those. At most Time magazine, and I'm happy if I get through that in fourteen days. Music? What everybody else listens to doesn't interest me. If everyone runs off to Tina Turner, I don't have to. I prefer amateur bands.
STERN: With a Walkman?
CHRISTIANE F.: Mine was stolen — like everything. A friend ripped me off. Cristina. Everything gone: cosmetics, clothes, cups and plates, and 700 marks — absolutely everything. I don't want to have money anymore either. I can't deal with money; I'm too good-natured. I live in the wrong world, with the wrong friends. But I can't change it.
STERN: Is there nobody you could turn to if you were doing badly?
CHRISTIANE F.: No.
STERN: And your mother?
CHRISTIANE F.: I don't know what to say to my mother.
STERN: Doesn't it bother you that you dropped out of your bookseller apprenticeship?
CHRISTIANE F.: No. Daniel Keel dropped out too. Apprenticeships are old-fashioned anyway. You can learn all of that in half a year — and then you just get taken advantage of.
STERN: Are you at least old-fashioned enough to cook for yourself?
CHRISTIANE F.: I can't cook. If nothing is put in front of me, I don't eat anything.
STERN: Is there a role model, a woman you would like to be?
CHRISTIANE F.: (Long pause.) Nah. I mean, I'm really not that bad myself.
STERN: Do you actually have no plans at all?
CHRISTIANE F.: When I make plans and things don't go the way I imagined, it's always too depressing. That's why I have no wishes and no dreams.
STERN: How far ahead do you think?
CHRISTIANE F.: I don't even make an appointment for something that's a week away.
STERN: And vacations?
CHRISTIANE F.: When I want to travel, I leave right away. I buy myself a ticket and off I go.
STERN: Now you've just returned from peaceful family life in Switzerland back to the oh-so-terrible Federal Republic.
CHRISTIANE F.: When we came from Zurich, we had to change trains in Hanover. I was wearing a pink suit with a red Palestinian scarf. And then I was pushing the luggage cart too. Everyone stared...
STERN: ...at Christiane, the oppressed one...
CHRISTIANE F.: ...yeah, full on. And I was furious, and when my boyfriend said, “Take the scarf off,” I said no. I wanted people to get even more confused.
STERN: How do you do that?
CHRISTIANE F.: I spent a long time trying to enlighten people, to change them. I've given up on that. If I can, I try to make them even dumber. And they gladly let it happen. I don't like people anymore.
STERN: But you don't like being alone either.
CHRISTIANE F.: I hate that. When my boyfriend goes back to Israel, I call someone who then comes and lives here.
STERN: So, fear of loneliness. What else?
CHRISTIANE F.: Well, I have this trauma about trains. I always think that when I die, I'll die under a train — that someone will push me under it from behind.
STERN: In recent years you earned a lot of money from your book and bought this apartment. Where did the money go — maybe into the coffin here in your living room?
CHRISTIANE F.: Nah. That's where I keep all my bills.
STERN: So you're not exactly flush with cash at the moment?
CHRISTIANE F.: Broke. I have to pay fifty-six percent in taxes...
STERN: ...which you forgot to mention.
CHRISTIANE F.: And when money comes in, the tax office grabs it immediately. They even disconnect my phone. The housing association fee hasn't been paid either — 230 marks a month for garbage and stuff.
STERN: How do you plan to earn your money in the future?
CHRISTIANE F.: Well, I really can't imagine that working is fun. It's always uncomfortable when someone asks what I do for work. The way people always look so uncomprehending when you say you don't work. They simply can't understand living off friends. I'm probably not mature enough yet to know what I want.
STERN: But what would you feel like doing?
CHRISTIANE F.: Most of all, I'd like to have a private animal shelter. But my friends are against it. They say I shouldn't throw my intelligence away on something like that. I should do something that changes the world.
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