Author Elke Heidenreich (80) has no problem with age at all. “I think you shouldn’t be afraid of old age, it’s part of life,” she said on Wednesday at the Frankfurt Book Fair. “Growing old is not a bad thing, it is not a decline, it is not a flaw, it is part of life.”
If you’re not sick or too poor, “but if you’re lucky enough to grow old like me without a care in the world, then that’s a wonderfully serene thing.”
Life was much more difficult at a young age: “When I was young, I was busy with a thousand heartaches, I didn’t know where to go, I had to do terrible jobs to earn my way through college. I was always overwhelmed.” She was overwhelmed by many options: “Should I have children, shouldn’t I have any? Do I actually want to get married or would I rather remain independent?” At 80, none of this is a problem anymore. “At 80, I sit there and think that I no longer have to prove anything to anyone. And she is grateful for a life in a country without war, “that is no longer so easy to have in the world,” emphasized Heidenreich.
“I look back full of gratitude and serenity and think, now is actually the best time, now it could go on like this for a while, but of course I see the end.” The poet Jean Paul once said that an arrow is shot at every person at birth and hits them at the hour of death. “I hear mine buzzing sometimes,” she said. “But it doesn’t scare me and I feel like nothing can happen to me anymore.”
Heidenreich presented her book “Frau Dr. Moormann” at the trade fair
