Botany of Madness - Leon Engler

Reading and conversation with Leon Engler, moderated by Insa Wilke

When his mother's apartment is forcibly evicted and everything of value is mistakenly sent to an incinerator, the narrator is left with only the refuse of his own family history. He reflects on his family's biography: a grandmother with bipolar disorder and twelve suicide attempts, an alcoholic mother, a depressive father. And he traces his own path: childhood in a working-class district of Munich, an early fear of losing his mind, flight from his family to distant New York, years in Vienna with Freud in the coffeehouse, and finally landing in a psychiatric institution - as a psychologist. Working with patients, he learns that a person is always more than their illness, that listening matters more than diagnosis.

Leon Engler has published numerous plays, radio dramas, 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.