Christiane F.

What I learned from this book: How to shoot dope. Also: that 1) seeing David Bowie live; 2) in Berlin in the late 1970's; 3) while high on dope; is the ultimate trifecta and would have been my *really, really awesome dream come true.* In contrast, by the time I saw David Bowie live (and more than middle-aged), it was: 1) in the Midwestern United States; 2) while in college; 3) sober. So, so wrong. I read *Christiane F.* when I was 11- or 12-years old, I wanted to grow up and be like her. I show more thought it sounded very self-destructive, very ugly, very much a true and dirty (therefore genuine, therefore romantic) sort of existence for someone as unnecessary to the world as I. I tried, I failed, I lived. At least 20 punk-rock kids I ran around and grew up with as a teenager tried, too. They succeeded. They died. show less

In the nineteen seventies, West Germany manufactured better-quality cars than the United States did. It'd be hard to argue that any American band put out anything as delightfully weird as Can's "Tago Mago." The capper to all this might be that they also put out better teenage-wasteland drug memoirs. "Go Ask Alice" might have been written by a Mormon homemaker with a political axe to grind, but "Zoo Station" is the real thing: a disturbing, explicit first-person account of what it was like to show more be an underage junkie sex worker growing up in one of West Berlin's least-glamorous neighborhoods. Midlife memoirs, particularly those who describe troubled lives, are something of a guilty pleasure of mine, but believe me when I say that I've never read anything quite like this book. Perhaps I should say that I've never read anything that even comes close to it.

The story that Christiane F. and Kai Hermann tell is unblinkingly honest and perceptive in two important ways. First of all, "Zoo Station" is unblushing about sex in way I've come to regard as a typically European: sex acts are called what they are, real ages, dates, and locations are named, and both pleasure, fear, and shame are described without any compulsion to either romanticize or draw moral lessons from the book's events or its protagonists' choices. The emotional stages that we see Christiane move through are, honestly, typical of any teenager, except hers are distorted by heavy drug use, heroin addiction, and, later, sex work. The authors also describe what they feel were the precipitating factors that led Christiane to take up drug use at such a young age. There was, as other reviewers have mentioned, the backlash against the strict childhood that earlier generations of Germans had endured and the extreme repression of the Nazi period, but the authors also take care to describe how stifling life in a Berlin housing project could feel: there was nothing for teens to do there, and quite literally no place for them to be by themselves, unmolested by overbearing minders. It was a landscape dominated by concrete and hemmed in by onerous rules. Cooped up in strict, overcrowded schools or left to their own devices, no wonder Christiane and her friends turned to club-going, rock music, and drugs.

Much of "Zoo Station" is, in terms of plot, predictable enough: fun with drugs turns into a drudge, and then a trap, while sex work is a largely humiliating experience shot through with surprising moments of genuine self-assertion and solidarity with fellow streetwalkers. "Zoo Station" is an important book in that it allows Christiane to mourn the many, many friends and acquaintances she lost to heroin while, at the same time, paying homage to the surprising sweetness of her relationships with Detlef, her first real boyfriend, and with her female friends she met while in the business. The novel ends on a positive note, though it was rather depressing to learn that Christiane, while still living, continues to struggle with drug addiction well into adulthood. It's true: the monkey never dies. But this book serves as a remarkable artifact of one young girl's innocence, youthful energy, and, then, her unfathomably painful battle with addiction. It pulls no punches and makes no excuses. Recommended. show less

In some ways, German teen Christiane is like most other girls who live in industrialized nations--she loves her boyfriend, wants to fit in and have friends, and hopes to attend college some day. But in other ways, Christiane is different--she started using heroin when she was thirteen, and worked as a prostitute in Berlin to support her habit. Zoo Station is Christiane's own story, as told by ghostwriters, of her descent into Berlin's underworld of sex and drugs circa 1977.

Zoo Station is a show more compelling, yet frustrating read. No one seems to know how to help Christiane, least of all Christiane herself. She goes through full-blown heroin withdrawal several times, but then she finds herself shooting up again within hours or days. I read in a recent article in the German press that Christiane, who is now in her fifties, is still not clean, even after all these years. She is the first to admit that it is a miracle that she's still alive.

One odd feature of this new Zest Books edition (2013) is that it contains a photo insert of young German addicts, some of whom are not even mentioned in the text. One of these, a woman identified as Bärbel W., age 21, is quoted as saying, "If you want to quit, you need to have a reason. And right now, I just don't."

The sense of purposelessness Bärbel W. references seems to be at the root of Christiane's drug addiction as well. She said in a class discussion of Nazi Germany, "'In some ways I think I would've liked to be have been a teenager during the time of the Nazis. At least the young people back then had some ideals and could believe in something.' I wasn't really serious about that. But there was some truth to it" (p. 352). In Christiane's Berlin, permissiveness was the norm at both home and school, in sharp contrast to the regimentation of Nazi Germany. it is interesting that Christiane was first introduced to drugs at a church-run youth center. In the aftermath of the Third Reich, even institutions like churches and schools hesitated to exercise authority or assert a moral vision.

Some readers claim that Zoo Station glamorizes heroin addiction and prostitution, but I didn't find that to be the case. This may be because I'm not young and impressionable. To me, the memoir is an effective, if depressing, depiction of the helplessness and hopelessness of an addict. show less

Sie ist heute sechzehn, kam mit zwölf in einem evangelischen Jugendheim zum Haschisch, mit dreizehn in einer Diskothek zum Heroin. Sie wurde süchtig, ging morgens zur Schule und nachmittags mit ihren ebenfalls heroinabhängigen Freunden auf den Kinderstrich am Bahnhof Zoo, um das Geld für die Droge zu beschaffen. Ihre Mutter bemerkte fast zwei Jahre Iang nichts vom Doppelleben ihrer Tochter. Christiane F. berichtet mit minuziösem Erinnerungsvermögen und rückhaltioser Offenheit über show more Schicksale von Kindern, die von der Öffentlichkeit erst als Drogentote zur Kenntnis genommen werden. Die Geschichte der Christiane F. wiederholt sich in Berlin, in Kleinstädten und Dörfern bereits zehntausendfach. show less