Heinz Hoenig: He has had a difficult year

The year 2024 started off so hopeful for Heinz Hoenig (73): In January, he was one of twelve candidates for the 17th season of the RTL show “I’m a Star – Get Me Out of Here!” a. “I was up for it this year. I just want to experience it. I’m free to do it now,” he said optimistically in advance. But the strain in the open air in Australia was apparently too great. After twelve days he had to leave the jungle camp on the orders of the doctors. A few months later, things got much worse for the “Das Boot” star.

“The jungle is a strenuous challenge for everyone. Heinz Hoenig performed excellently for almost two weeks,” RTL said at the time. “Our medical team has decided to take him out of the camp as a precaution. Heinz Hoenig is doing well and is with his family.” You could tell in the jungle that he was under the weather. He often appeared exhausted and was banned from most trials. Nevertheless, his exit from the jungle came as a surprise to the audience. Afterwards, however, he seemed to recover quickly and rehearsed for the musical “A Little Peace”.

But the performances had to take place without him. At the beginning of May he was flown by helicopter to the Berlin Charité in a life-threatening condition. A bacterial infection had spread to the entire aorta and damaged a stent inserted in 2012. A new stent was then inserted in an emergency operation. To make matters worse, a hole was discovered in his esophagus. After a few days, doctors brought the actor out of an induced coma so that he could make his own decision about what to do next. Hoenig decided to undergo the operations, the first of which was carried out on the esophagus in May.

Since Hoenig’s admission to the hospital, family and fans have been worried about the actor, who became known with films and series such as “Das Boot” (1981), “Der Schattenmann” (1996) and “Der König von St. Pauli” (1998). In the wake of the health problems, it became known that Hoenig did not have health insurance. In order to be able to pay the high costs for the vital treatments, Ralph Siegel’s (79) agency “Siegelring” launched a fundraising campaign that raised more than 100,000 euros within just a few days.

There are difficult months ahead not only for Hoenig. 2024 was also challenging for his wife Annika Kärsten-Hoenig (39), with whom he has been married since 2019 and has two sons (2 and 4 years old). She hardly left her husband’s side in the clinic and temporarily moved with her small children from Blankenburg in the Harz Mountains to a small apartment in Berlin. The constant uncertainty and worry about her husband gnawed at her. “The doctors then told me that they had to resuscitate my husband that night,” she said about another shocking moment in July.

After an almost six-month stay in hospital with many ups and downs, Heinz Hoenig was only allowed to return home in September. Since then he has been cared for by his wife, who is a trained nurse. Annika Kärsten-Hoenig: “Heinz was really happy. At first he couldn’t believe he was finally back home. Together with two very good friends, our boys and my daughter, we gave him a warm welcome.” Juliano and Jianni “never left their father’s side at all. They really missed him very much.”

The 73-year-old is still waiting for an operation on the aorta, for which he still needs to regain his strength. Nevertheless, the family now wants to enjoy the holidays together. “This Christmas will be very special,” emphasized Kärsten-Hoenig in an Instagram story at the beginning of December. Back then there was already a foretaste of the celebration of love: The 39-year-old prepared a special surprise while her husband was taking a nap: She and a friend secretly set up a 2.10 meter Christmas tree in the living room to music from the Rolling Stones decorated him. “The most beautiful thing about the tree, here, look, it’s a guardian angel.” When she then pushed Heinz Hoenig into the living room in a wheelchair with his eyes closed and then had him open his eyes, he couldn’t hold back tears of joy.

During the RTL annual review “2024! People, images, emotions” he described how dramatic things were for him: “I was on the way to my mother – that means to my death. And she said: ‘What do you want here? ?’ And I went back to life.” After this near-death experience and the challenging past few months, he is looking forward to the future that remains for him: “I want to keep living! Live, live, live! I still have a lot planned. I have my wife and my children, that’s the most important thing . And living for it alone makes all the difference.”