Image: Reuters
Elke Heidenreich has parked in no time and moments later she is standing in the door. She’s wearing that red velvet jacket she’s worn through all her “Read!”- Accompanied broadcasts. “It was the first thing that came my way in the closet this morning, so I thought: maybe it will bring me luck.” The meeting point for the conversation with her is the Wolkenburg, a small baroque estate in the middle of the austere post-war architecture of downtown Cologne. Elke Heidenreich likes this jewel box, she often held readings here.
Elke Heidenreich will be 80 tomorrow, February 15, but she still looks energetic. “The women in our family do not age”she told the German Press Agency. “We don’t get gray hair, we don’t get wrinkles. We’ll fall down one day.” But of course: She also feels her age. Big birthdays don’t mean anything to her. That’s why she’s determined to sit down at her desk on her 80th like any other day. Okay, there will probably be a few bouquets of flowers arriving from past lovers. There will probably also be a few guests: her best friend Leonie von Kleist and her boyfriend Marc-Aurel Floros.
“We’ll eat a cake and drink champagne and say, ‘Old girl, you did it.’ But that’s it.” The journalist, columnist, moderator, writer, reviewer and cabaret artist is first and foremost herself and does not define herself through a specific function.
She became known in the 70s and 80s as a presenter of talk shows such as “Cologne meeting”, but above all with one of the first female comedy characters, the butcher’s wife Else Stratmann from Wanne-Eickel. Her warning to Lady Di before her marriage to Prince Charles in 1981 was downright prophetic: “Don’t take it, kid. He hadn’t learned anything like a prince!”
“Folks, buy and read!”
She had her greatest television success with the literary program “Read!” Back then, she could hold unknown books up to the camera and say: “Folks, buy and read!” And then people did. But after a good five years, she broke up with ZDF in 2008.
“I didn’t feel well treated, partly because the slot was constantly changing. I was right about the content, but I said it too undiplomatically. My style was too goofy. It’s often the case with me. After that I sulked and mourned for a while, but looking back I was glad. Because I was exhausted too. I could not anymore.”
She was now writing more herself, and consistently very successfully. She is currently working on the travelogue “you happy eyes” on the bestseller lists. To this day, she remains a disciplined worker. She gets up early and then goes for a walk with her canine friends, even though her own pug died last summer. She’ll probably get a new one soon. A cat has the author of the successful book “Nero Corleone” about an Italian tomcat, which was also distributed last year as part of the free book campaign in Vienna, because she goes away too often and cats just don’t like traveling.
After that, she sits at her desk from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. She answers e-mails, writes articles for the WDR, writes her books, currently a children’s book. Then comes the household: cooking, washing, shopping. She does everything herself, she has no help. When she has time, she reads. Even as a child in the Ruhr area, reading was her thing “great luck”. So she could forget the harsh world around her. “My parents were separated, my mother had to work and I was always alone. I just didn’t feel comfortable at home.” From the very beginning she also met people who recognized her abilities and encouraged them. For example, her needlework teacher who gave out the slogan: “Everything crochet, Elke reads!” Then she read aloud. “That’s how I learned it – easy to read.” She still loves reading to this day.
“Being young is no joke either”
“Getting old is no joke”she says. “But being young is no joke either. I wasn’t particularly happy when I was young. How much I suffered and cried when I was 17 and found myself ugly. I’m much more relaxed today. But also wistful and battered.”
When you get old you look back, and when she does, what she sees doesn’t necessarily make her happy.
“It is with great sorrow that I now see that the golden, safe years are over and governments are coming into power everywhere that are far removed from what we call democracy. That’s sad.” She is no longer even drawn to Italy, where she used to have a holiday home, as long as right-wing populist Giorgia Meloni is in power there. In the personal area, the balance is more positive. “You only see happiness in hindsight. Even with loved ones who break up. First you are happy or angry. And when it’s long gone and healed, then you see the happy years. I am thinking of my husband, who I am divorced from. We are no longer in touch, we are no longer friends either, but we had a wonderful marriage for 25 years. I know that now, and I’m eternally grateful for that.” Now the last stretch is coming up, and it can be exhausting. She knows that. Until then, she wants to carry on as before. “Despite my exhaustion, my basic feeling is gratitude. Everything was nice.”
Source: Nachrichten
