Botanik des Wahnsinns

World Space Days. Literature and Participation
Reading and discussion with Leon Engler, moderated by Insa Wilke
When, during the forced eviction of his mother’s apartment, a mix-up causes everything of value to end up in the waste-to-energy plant, the narrator is left, quite literally, with only the scraps of his own family history. The narrator looks back on his family’s history: a grandmother with bipolar disorder, twelve suicide attempts, a mother who was an alcoholic, a father who was depressed. And he reflects on his own path: a childhood in a working-class neighborhood of Munich. The early fear of going mad. The escape from his family to distant New York. Years in Vienna with Freud in the coffeehouse. And how he eventually ends up in the institution—as a psychologist. While
working with patients, he learns that a person is always more than their illness, that listening is more important than diagnosing. Leon Engler has published numerous plays, radio plays, and short stories and was awarded the 3sat Prize at the Bachmann Competition in 2022. He works as an author, psychologist, and lecturer in psychology and creative writing.

Supported by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research, and the Arts