It is a small miracle that Anneliese Figue is still alive. On March 9, 2020, she collapsed while on vacation on Lake Garda and was taken to a Munich hospital with the diagnosis of Corona, where she fought death for eleven weeks, including one month in a coma. The 79-year-old has now physically recovered from the exertion, apart from the not yet fully restored lung activity. But her soul is suffering because her longtime boyfriend died a year ago.
“Lately I’ve been feeling sad and wistful,” says the native of Poznan, who has lived in Dürrnhaar since 1989 and will spend Christmas alone in her second home in Munich. “I’m really scared about Christmas Eve and Christmas Day,” she admits. And that although she thinks it is wonderful when the lights are on and Christmas carols are sung together. It is a shame for her that she can no longer go to a church where she can find consolation. But she doesn’t want to let herself get down. “I’m not burying myself,” she says. And she already knows which mood enhancers she will prescribe for herself for the steady time: Classical music and excursions into nature.
Anneliese Figue, who studied piano and singing at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, then was an extra, small actor, actress and prompter in the Munich Residenztheater and the National Theater for more than 40 years, lets her soul be comforted by Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Bruckner and Grieg, also sits down at the piano himself. And if that doesn’t help anymore, she gets on tram line 25 and goes for a little shopping spree to Grünwald, or with the S-Bahn to Tutzing to enjoy nature and get other thoughts again. “There are bus drivers who volunteer for duty on Christmas Eve to avoid the trappings,” says the 79-year-old with a smile on her face.
On Wednesday she took the night train to Poland to take a one-week cure in Bad Flintsberg, “because of the joints,” as she says. A constant travel companion is her flute, which she has played more than ever since her discharge from hospital in summer 2020 to strengthen her damaged lungs. That she didn’t have to die at the time is a gift enough for Anneliese Figue, and she also gives something away herself. The two “boys” who take piano lessons with her will soon get them for free.
The steady time is a bland time this year. With this series, the SZ tries to bring at least a little bit of light into Advent every day.