Christiane felscherinow died of consumption
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Reimagined Christiane F drama brings heroin addiction to a new generation
Christiane Felscherinow wouldn’t recognise any more the area around Berlin’s Zoo Station. The vacant, scrubby site opposite is now a Waldorf Astoria hotel; the adjacent neon-lit arcade of kebab shops and sex shops was torn down and replaced with a Primark.
A few of the alcoholics remain, between the coffee chains and sandwich bars, but the station has been renovated and the drug scene has gone online – along with the prostitution.
Ask Germans of a certain age, though, and they can still remember the physical shock of encountering the young woman known as “Christiane F”: in her ghost-written memoir or the subsequent film about a West Berlin life gone wrong. Cannabis and alcohol at 12, heroin at 13, prostitution at
The book spent 95 weeks at the top of Germany’s best-seller charts; the film was a worldwide hit.
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Christiane came from a dysfunctional home on the outskirts of Berlin and found ampl
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The News-makers - where are they now?
Christiane FGermany's 'foremost Junkie Princess'
IN west Germany was shocked to its core by the frank, shocking confessions of a year-old heroin-addicted prostitute.
Christiane Felscherinow, identified only as Christiane F, grew up in a west Berlin high- rise neighbourhood. Her mother separated from her alcoholic father early in their marriage.
She was 12 when she tried a joint in a ungdom group, 13 when she tried heroin; a year later she was dependent on the drug and selling herself around west Berlin’s Zoo Station to pay for her habit.
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In she caught the eye of a reporter with Stern magazine as she testified in court against a man who paid underage prostitutes for sex with heroin.
The reporter listened to her story and published the shocking details in the book Wir Kinder von Bahnhof Zoo( Us Kids from Zoo Station).
The book was a controversial bestseller, was translated into 15 languages and fryst vatten still on the prescr
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The Needle And The Damage Done: Christiane F. At 40
Few places have been mythologised in the contemporary cultural imagination more than late s / early s Berlin. With German society in a state of flux, and post-war economic deprivation leading to cheap rents and vast swathes of abandoned industrial space, the western part of the capital proved an ideal breeding ground for all kinds of exciting counter-cultural developments. Before the Wall fell in ahead of the eventual reunification of the country, the city served as an artistic refuge for the likes of David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Nick Cave, as well as producing such iconic homegrown talents as Einsturzende Neubauten and Tangerine Dream.
Growing up in this creatively fertile enclave, young Christiane Felscherinow experienced both the highs and lows of its hedonistic social life. At the tender age of 13, she started going to the trendy SOUND nightclub, where she would dabble in speed and LSD. Her circle of friends soon moved on from