On the death of Christoph Schlingensief

Christoph Schlingensief is dead. It's unreal. Even though we all knew that he had been suffering from deadly cancer; he had made it public - and the way he was dealing with it. He published "Heaven Could Not Be As Beautiful As Here: A Cancer Diary.", visited talk shows, went on tour with the aim to raise funds for his last big project, an opera house - or better: an opera village - in Burkina Faso. In doing so, he narrated about himself, his life and his confrontation with death.

Christoph Schlingensief's death hit me like a bolt from the blue.
That's how it always is with death. It doesn't make a difference if you already knew that this moment would come sooner or later. That a person disappears from life; is not there any more, not readily available any more, is history - this only becomes clear when the moment arrives. The message is followed by emptiness and speechlessness. Stopping for a moment.

The medial cape

Like many others, I heard about Christoph Schlingensief's death from the Internet on Saturday, and I experienced that moment as unworthy.
Between two appointments, I only meant to look up an address on the computer to continue driving to my next job.
It once again happened to be via Facebook that this message spread within seconds. A link to the Schlingensief-Homepage. However, I cannot find anything there.
Not really necessary int he first place as it is obvious what this link will reveal. The users' comments are unequivocal. I type his name into the news search field and I find confirmation:
And here it is. I'm sad, really sad. And yet I have to shut down the computer, get in my car and keep on driving.

During my journey, I have time to think about the fact why his death affects me so much. I never met Christoph Schlingensief personally.
Up until a few years ago, I had always experienced him as a smart and funny creative artist whose actions I could smile about - but he had never been tangible for me. He was always covered by a medial cape; mostly of a so-called provocateur. He staged himself as if he was standing above things, always seemed untouchable.

I had also only marginally perceived his suffering from cancer at first.
It's a personal thinkg, I thought, which should stay personal.
I wasn't interested in any details because I felt this was an invasion of privacy that is done more than enough by the media - and not only by the so-called boulevard press.

Aside from the media bell

My relationship with Christoph Schlingensief didn't start until last year. We were just preparing our episodes of "The Ruhr Area - recorded and remixed", and we had decided to dedicated one episode to the City of Muehlheim. We wanted Helge Schneider to be part of it and the band Bohren & Der Club of Gore.
This is how we came about Christoph Schlingensief who grew up in Muehlheim an der Ruhr. Being the unadjusted and unconventional personality that you cannot pigeonhole that he was, he seemed to fit perfectly into our concept. And the more I researched his person, the more I was looking forward to meet this human being for a conversation - to talk to hom abou the Ruhr Area, the arts, and to get to know him aside from the media bell.

Organising one's emotional life

The contact to his office was friendly and supportive. They signalised interest but Schlingensief was once again in Africa at the time. Even when enquiring at a later date, no date could be found.
Schlingensief had become fully active again, was constantly on tour and put all of his energy into his Africa project.

However, the door to the interview had not fully been closed and this is how I started researching him a bit more - in particular his illness that was subject to intense public discussion. I bought his book and started reading it. An intense experience. Not only because I found myself really close to Schlingensief all of a sudden because the book showed him vulnerable and as a victim but also optimistically and with the will to live. It even organised my own emotional life. A family member, only a few years older than Schlingensief, was also suffering from cancer and at that point it had become clear that his state would not get any better and that the unavoidable was lying ahead. The affected did not make his emotions subject of discussion within the family - he remained silent which hit the ones close to him especially hard. Thanks to Schlingensief's book, I was able to understand how he must have felt - in particular because I only heard about changes very late due to me living a few hundred kilometres away. I felt left out. The diary made me sad but it also gave me strength to face the topic.

Saying the unsaid

I finished Schlingensief's book the same morning when I heard that my relative had died. And it still hit me out of the blue. Yet Schlingensief's words gave me the opportunity to channel my own emotions. Since that moment, I felt directly linked to his fate.
A few months later, we heard that Schlingensief's state was worse.
There were no more public appearances - apparently his disease had become worse. The unavoidable seemed inevitable and yet the message about his death hit me - like so many others - out of the blue and unprepared.

There are countless obituaries of Christoph Schlingensief by now.
You acknowledge the person and his work which are inseperably interconnected.
In this canon, however, it should not disappear what he achieved for thousands of people by putting his illness and his fear of death up for public discussion.
He touched a tabu which I had not really been aware of myself, and in doing so, he created more than one discourse, more than one thankful topic for talk shows - he said the unsaid and thus showed the affected ways to deal with the topic which had mostly been defined by chaotic emotions and thoughts and a helpless speechlessness.
I'm sure that I'm only one of many who will thank him forever.

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