Christiane FGermany's 'foremost Junkie Princess'
IN 1979 west Germany was shocked to its core by the frank, shocking confessions of a 14-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 youth 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.
In 1978 she caught the eye of a journalist with Stern magazine as she testified in court against a man who paid underage prostitutes for sex with heroin.
The journalist 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 is still on the prescribed reading lists of many German schools.
In 1981 the book was filmed as Christiane F, with a David Bowie soundtrack. Although her identity was protected by the authors and publisher, a drug-free Christiane F went public and tried to make a career from her newfound celebrity as, what one tabloid called, Germany's "foremost junkie princess".
Anxious to be a punk singer, she recorded a solo album in 1982, appeared in two films and moved to Switzerland to live with a boyfriend.
However, she began taking drugs again and the relationship broke up. She moved back to Berlin where she was charged with possession and spent 10 months in prison.
On her release in 1987, she moved to Greece for six years and fell in love – with a heroin- addicted shepherd.
"Junkies attract each other, as if by magic," she told Sternmagazine.
In the mid-1990s, back living in a Berlin suburb, she signed up to a methadone programme and disappeared from the headlines, telling one newspaper she regretted ever going public with her story.
In hindsight, she said, the book had probably seduced more young people into taking drugs than it put off.
All went well until 2008 – “Christiane F on drugs again” was how the Berlin tabloids broke the news that the now 46-year-old was once more addicted and her teenage son had been placed in care. Still in treatment, her most recent words to the media were: “There is a curse on me . . .”
