Pulling money out of people’s pockets as moderator of a charity gala between saddle of veal in a hay flower coat and mint cheesecake, that’s the Champions League of cultivated evening entertainment, and you don’t have to be a proven fan of Günther Jauch to attest him to be absolutely ready for the final. Ex-colleague Marcel Reif, with whom he gave German television history a few great hours in 1998 in a premier class match that was goalless even before the kick-off (Reif: “Never before would a goal have done a game so good”, Jauch: “For everyone who didn’t switch on in time: The first goal has already been scored!”), listens in the second row and, like the other hundred guests, is very enthusiastic that Jauch can call up top form.
Right at the beginning, to describe the six-figure donation pledge by the third mayor, Verena Dietl, as “greetings from the city purse, financial amuse-gueule and beacon for a monetary conflagration this evening”: wonderful. The way he threatens to confiscate his bags: great. Or eliciting the sum from the next donor: Anne Rademacher, the managing director of the Paula Kubitscheck-Vogel Foundation, promises a seven-figure amount in all seriousness. He also doesn’t miss unusual movements in the hall: “Ms. Antje-Katrin Kühnemann, you have a pen in your hand – what does that mean?” Well, she writes down the donation account: “The QR code is not for me. I transfer.” Mission accomplished.
It is a special evening in many respects with Wilhelm von Kaulbach’s space-filling “Battle of Salamis” in the Senate Hall of the Maximilianeum. It’s about dying, which is something only the others do, as one likes to tell oneself. Getting old, staying healthy and falling asleep: That’s winning the lottery, says Katharina Rizzi, managing director of the hospice service “Dasein”, which has been in existence for 31 years.
Günther Jauch with the managing director of “Dasein”, Katharina Rizzi and board member Markus Müller.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
The reality is different, and the city of Munich is not prepared for such cases: there are just 28 permanent hospice places in the city of 1.5 million – 50 places for one million inhabitants are needed. But after long struggles, something is now happening: The “Hospice House of Life” is to be built on Weinbauernstraße in Giesing, a last home for the dying and at the same time a meeting place. 12 to 16 inpatient beds are planned, construction to start in 2023, opening in 2025. Cost: twelve million. Hence the donation gala.
Prominent guests report on their own experiences on the subject. Cabaret artist Christian Springer tells how he brought his mother back home from three different homes because he couldn’t stand it. How he couldn’t get over his mother’s weakness, tiredness and lack of appetite at home, asked the hospice for help: “These aren’t duzi-duzi euthanasia assistants, they have strength and optimism!”
Doris Dörrie talks about the time when her husband became seriously ill 26 years ago and she asked herself: What can I do? She still knows Katharina Rizzi’s answer like today: “You just have to be there. And if you can’t, we’ll be there.” Dörrie would like to die in such a way “that someone is there, without fear of being a burden, with a view of a tree. And I want to live to the end, as autonomously, cared for and pain-free as possible”. In Buddhism there is a recommendation to meditate at night in the cemetery or to repeat the phrase ‘Your body will be a corpse’ over and over again. “That sounds bad, but it’s true,” says Dörrie.
But the time before death can be a very rich and very fun one, she adds, quoting Anthony Hopkins: “None of us will get out of here alive. So stop treating each other like a souvenir. Eat delicious food. Walk in the Sun. Jump into the sea. Tell the truth and wear your heart on your sleeve. Be silly. Be kind. Be weird. There is no time for anything else.” Or as Wolf Haas wrote: Come, sweet death.