Michael Buselmeier
- Elisabeth. A farewell
- Literature
Michael Buselmeier devotes himself unabashedly to a painful subject: dementia, and with it parting. The first-person narrator describes an elderly couple who gradually become alienated by the wife’s dementia and lose their roots. He describes how the disease mercilessly penetrates all areas of life and fundamentally changes the familiar togetherness.
Over a period of twelve years, Buselmeier records the dementia of his wife Elisabeth, beginning with a kind of essay on “the nasty old age”. Diary entries by the narrator and self-reflective notes by the sick person reflect the panic and bewilderment of both. They have no answer to what is happening to them.
Michael Buselmeier was born in Berlin in 1938 and grew up in Heidelberg, where he still lives as a writer, publicist, editor and literary city guide. His most recent publications are Ende des Vogelgesangs (The End of Birdsong ), about a childhood and youth in the war and post-war period, and the poetry collection Mein Bruder mein Tier (My Brother, My Animal). In 2010 Buselmeier received the Ben-Witter-Preis of the ZEIT-Stiftung.
In the context of the 7th Literaturherbst Heidelberg
