And what I learned along the way.
Christiane Felscherinow – Hamburg, 1983
AMSTERDAM – While traveling through Belgium and the Netherlands, I stopped at every bookstore I could find. I didn’t care about the language of the books, whether they were new or secondhand, or the size of the store. I was looking for one book, and I could not find it.
Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo is a widely known memoir by Christiane Felscherinow, recounting her life as a 14-year-old heroin addict in 1970s West Berlin. Originally published in 1978 in German, it was later translated into 15 different languages. I read the English translation of her story on archive.org, the only site where I could find a free English copy. It was gripping, devastating, and a must-read for anyone – as I’d expected.
After reading Zoo Station online, I desperately wanted to find a print version of the book to read. I first looked for English copies online and found a secondhand one on Amazon going for over $300, with an “unknown” point of distribution. Nope. I found nothing on eBay or Facebook Marketplace. I searched the catalogues of every library within 300 miles of New York City. Not even the Smithsonian Archives had a recorded copy. Every link to promising archives or independent bookstores led to dead internet pages. Even on the English publisher’s website, the book was listed as out of print.
During my search on foot in Amsterdam and Brussels, I faced the same response in every bookstore I visited.
“Do you have the book about Christiane F? Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo? … In English? Deutsch? Dutch? Italian? French?”
Every bookseller knew exactly what book I was talking about. They’d click their tongues and shake their heads.
“Not since the ’80s, I’m afraid.”
I felt like I was losing my mind. I was standing in an alley of independent bookstores, where Van Gogh used to buy his books, and I could find nothing. Christiane F’s memoir was very famous, definitely in Germany, and arguably everywhere else. Three million copies had been sold worldwide, and it was required reading for German schoolchildren. There’s even a cult classic film based on her story (which is also difficult to find) featuring David Bowie. My mom had read the English Christiane F. as a teenager in 1980s New York, so I knew English copies existed. Yet, at least where I was looking, they had vanished.
Eventually, I resigned myself to buying a Dutch copy I found in a large international bookstore in Amsterdam.
It was the last copy they had in any language.
NEW YORK – Although my search for an in-print English version of Zoo Station was unsuccessful, I learned a lot about Christiane along the way. What was most impressive was how her memoir came to be written in the first place.
Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo is brutally honest in its depiction of young heroin addicts in gritty 1970s West Berlin. Christiane and her friends, who got high at Zoologischer Garten station, were prostituting themselves at the metro station to support their habits at as young as 13. Christiane was only 16 when her memoir was first published – with the help of two journalists from Stern magazine that had “discovered” her while she was testifying in court against a man on trial for paying underage prostitutes in heroin. Without her declaration in court, Wir Kinder vom Bahnhof Zoo would not have been written.
Although her memoir was initially published anonymously, Christiane Felscherinow eventually came forward and claimed her story publicly. At that time, she was clean. Through her life and into the present day, her addiction to heroin ebbs and flows. Present day Felscherinow is dying, and living, with hepatitis C—a common blood-borne illness among IV drug users. In the same interview with Vice USA where she shared this diagnosis, Felscherinow also expressed regret over telling her story at all. Christiane was quoted as saying that her book and the subsequent grungy biopic probably enticed young, unhappy kids to do heroin, rather than stay away from it.
Indeed, after scouring the internet while doing research, I found online forums like Reddit that included users admitting they were inspired to try heroin after reading Christiane F. The romanticized vision of crawling around Zoo Station and shooting up heroin is not uncommon. It’s potentially even the mainstream.
u/Huliatt on Reddit – “Christiane to me was a brave, misunderstood adventurer.”
During my international search, I picked up another book in Amsterdam titled Hep-Cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of America’s Romance with Illegal Drugs. Its cover features a beautiful woman with a needle in her arm. The 500-page reference book is colorful and glamorous in its exploration of why the U.S. is so fascinated with drugs. Like Felscherinow said, the allure of heroin isn’t lost in the danger of her life—it’s amplified by it. The danger of drug culture is exciting, globally. Subversion is exciting.
And West Berlin in the 1970s was the subversive culture. Zoologischer Garten station was infamous for drugs and prostitution. Christiane’s story didn’t stand alone; West Berlin’s rock scene, fueled by David Bowie and other alternative rockers, attracted lowkey drugs and then the harder ones and finally the heroin that killed many kids – pronounced dead of “Zoo Station.”
In 2013, Felscherinow published a second memoir about her life post-fame, Christiane F. Mein Zweites Leben (My Second Life). I’ve already started looking for it online. It’s not easy to find.
Grace S.
LINK TO THE CHRISTIANE F FOUNDATION: Christiane F. Foundation. Suchtprävention und Suchtaufklärung