Reading & Discussion with Piano Accompaniment | Moderator: Dr. Steffi Brüning (Rostock Documentation and Memorial Center/LpB MV)
In 1985, a young pianist in Neubrandenburg took her own life; three and a half decades later, the writer Helene Bukowski came across her story. She approaches Christina gently, searching her life story for cracks and upheavals, but also for moments of great happiness, and in doing so connects the past with her own present. She gets to know a father who wants to realize his own dreams through his daughter, a mother who loves to take photographs, and a piano that stands immovably in the apartment. Bukowski follows Christina to Berlin, to the specialized music school with its cold practice rooms and daily drills. Later to Moscow, to study at the conservatory, through torrential rain and nights full of snow. And she discovers an illness for which a diagnosis has only recently been established.
Helene Bukowski, author, born in Berlin in 1993. “Who Wouldn’t Want to Stay Alive” was nominated for the 2026 Leipzig Book Fair Prize and was awarded the 2026 Annalise Wagner Prize.
