West Germany: Christiane F. Teen-age heroine in Berlin

Teen-age heroine in Berlin

German cinema has given the world a cast of characters as varied as the diabolical Dr. Caligari and the sultry chanteuse of Blue Angel. But none was ever quite like the film heroine that has recently drawn West German audiences to the movies in droves—Christiane F.: We Children from the Zoo Station. The protagonist starts off as a teen-age prostitute and drug addict who haunts the squalid fringes of West Germany's affluent society. On the screen, when she is not listening to David Bowie tapes in the labyrinthine subway corridors of the station near Berlin's zoo or shooting up heroin in its seedy lavatories, she totters on high heels along the Kurfürstenstrasse, a pitiful tart in search of cash to support her habit. What has made her the subject of such intense interest and controversy is that she really existed.

Over the past decade, West Germany has become Europe's biggest market for illegal heroin, and an alarming number of the estimated 50,000 hard-drug users are still in their teens. By the time the real Christiane F. was approached by two reporters from the West German weekly Stern, she had successfully shaken her heroin habit, but the story she told them of drug abuse among young people shocked a nation ignorant of the dimensions of the problem. A book based on her Stern disclosures became an instant bestseller in 1979 and has sold 1.3 million copies so far. What has astonished book publishers—and concerned many sociologists and parents—is the fact that 80% of those readers are teenagers. Explains Stern Reporter Kai Hermann: "Before the book came out, hardly anybody talked about drug addiction in West Germany. We assumed that we might capture the attention of parents, but we were not prepared for the explosion of interest among the kids."

As teen-agers packed theaters last week to see the cinematic Christiane F., played by Natja Brunckhorst, 14, experts on drug abuse feared that despite the film's realistic scenes of drug withdrawal, West German youths might be turning the former addict into a cult heroine and possibly a role model. Many teen-age girls have begun to imitate Christiane's style of dress and make pilgrimages to her former haunts. Complains Wolf Heckmann, West Berlin's drug commissioner: "The book and film have increased interest in drugs in this city. Kids who come to visit used to ask to see the Berlin Wall. Now they want to see the Zoo Station."