Botanik des Wahnsinns

When a mix-up during the eviction of his mother's apartment results in everything of value going to the incinerator, the narrator is literally left with the garbage of his own family history. The narrator looks at his family's biography: his grandmother is bipolar, has attempted suicide twelve times, his mother is an alcoholic, his father is depressed. And he looks at his own path: a childhood in Munich's working-class district. The early fear of going mad. The escape from his family to distant New York. Years in Vienna with Freud in the coffee house. And how he finally ends up in an asylum - as a psychologist. 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 literary writing.

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