Biography 013

Christiane Fichtner - Biography

1974 Christiane Katherina Meikert was born on 25 May to F. and L. Meikert from Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Shortly after she was born, the family moved from Frankfurt to Friedrichshafen, near Lake Constance. Nothing of significance occurred during the first two years of Christiane's life.

1977 Christiane heard cries that sounded like desperate screaming. She was sitting in her room at the time. She went out of the apartment and into the yard. The small apartment she and her parents lived in was next to a farm on the edge of town. She could hear the crying more clearly outside. It sounded like it was coming from the barn. She went inside and saw the farmer. He was drowning kittens. That evening, her parents told her that there were too many cats in the world and that not all of them could have a home. Besides, the small ones were too weak to survive the winter. Christiane was not satisfied. The crying had been so pitiful, and she could not understand how kittens could not simply be brought into the warmth of an apartment, or taken to the animal shelter.

1981 Christiane's parents gave her a cat for her seventh birthday. Her parents thought she would take good care of her new pet and be responsible. She fed the cat and cleaned its litter box, but she seldom played with it or petted it, and she did not give it a name.
Christiane never forgot the kittens in the barn. She always felt that if she liked her cat too much, she would somehow betray those dead kittens.

1985 Christiane went to secondary school (Gymnasium). She liked school and had many friends. Some of them she had known since pre-school. She listened to her first Beastie Boys and The Cure albums together with them, and was especially close to her friend E. All of them decided to dye some strands of their hair the same color, blue, red or green. Christiane fell in love with a skateboarder. Her parents were not happy about that. They blamed Christiane's friends for her poor grades in school.

1989 Christiane had to make an important decision. It was either start taking drugs or become a girl scout. Her friends no longer only smoked grass; they took pills and harder drugs. Christiane was not sure what she should do. They were her best friends, but she did not want to do the things that they did. She had to decide: Do drugs or go hiking and learn how to build a yurt. She decided to become a girl scout, go hiking and learn how to build a yurt. She often felt alone in the beginning, and the scouts were not cool. She missed her friends, and building a yurt was not very exciting.

1991 After spending one year in the USA, Christiane returned to Germany on the day President H. W. Bush's deadline expired. While in the US, she had written letters to soldiers stationed in Iraq. One of them had sent her his class ring. Sometime after the Gulf War started, she received a letter from his parents saying that he had been shot by accident during a military exercise. Christiane was reminded of the kittens long ago. The soldier's parents sent her a copy of a letter he had written about her. Since receiving that letter, she has felt liberated from the dilemma that had haunted her since she was three years old. The soldier wrote about right and wrong, about being strong, about his job, which was killing people because they were enemies and because they were the weaker ones in that situation. He also wrote about her, Christiane, as a person who had influenced him through her letters. She had always written how much she was against the life of a soldier, and this had made him feel even more strongly about the war and his role in it. Christiane felt relieved for the first time in her life since the death of the kittens. She started wearing the soldier's class ring everyday, and she changed her name to Christiane Fichtner, which had been the soldier's last name. She had been assigned to him as a pen pal because of his German ancestry. After her stay in the US and the letter from the soldier, Christiane started to become more politically aware. She started to read about Vietnam, the Baader-Meinhof group, World War II, marital law, terrorism, ethics and human rights.

1994 Christiane applied for law school because she thought that she would be able to change things as a lawyer. She started studying in Hamburg. After only a few semesters, Christiane quit studying.

1997-2001 Christiane moved to Cologne. She worked odd jobs and drifted aimlessly through life. She was about to give up on herself. Then 9/11 happened, and Christiane decided to study art. The burning towers of the WTC had opened her eyes. She still wanted to help the weak and to fight for justice, but the world would probably never be a just place. All of this she could express in her art. She also hoped that if she played her cards right, she might even get rich.

2002 Christiane started studying media art at the Academy of Visual Arts (HGB) in Leipzig. She started making only political art. Terrorism, military capitalism and human rights are the only themes that interested her.

2006 Christiane is almost done with her studies has already had some success as an artist.

 

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