© Mathias Bothor
The actress, who is part of the ensemble of the Vienna Burgtheater, receives much applause for her work.
October 16, 2024
Stephanie Pieper
Exceptional actress Caroline Peters in an interview about her debut novel "Another Life," complicated family relationships, and the role of her mother in her book.
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She has won the Grimme Award, the German Acting Award, the Nestroy Theater Award twice, and has been chosen as Actress of the Year just as often - Caroline Peters is a superstar of German acting and shines on the stage of the Vienna Burgtheater just as she does on television or on the big screen.
Like no other, she embodies the tragedy of Clytemnestra just as convincingly as the quirky inspector Sophie Haas in Murder with a Viewor the frustrated mother in Sönke Wortmann's blockbuster The First Name. What she touches turns into a ratings hit. And yet the choice Viennese has remained approachable, incredibly funny, down-to-earth, and always open to new challenges.
Caroline Peters has just written her first novel: Another LifeNot a biography, but an autofiction, based on her own life story and that of her mother, which she tells with great empathy and a lot of humor.
What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the word 'we' in connection with your family?
Me and my siblings. And then there are the parents. But they are the others. And I find that somehow ridiculous. Thinking like that as a child or teenager is understandable. The parents really are the others, the ones who tell you when to go to bed, who drive the car, and who have the money.
But why do we still think like that as adults? At some point, it must be possible to approach your parents on equal footing. Instead, most people remain stuck in these rigid family role patterns: the father, the mother, the child.
I find that unbelievably stiff and boring. The person or rather the personality behind it is not noticed at all. Why should you even meet then? Just to confirm old clichés or accusations once again?
I think that's how it goes for most people, that they become children again as soon as they cross the threshold of their parents' house.
And I want to break this view in my book. The first-person narrator tries to encounter her mother like an adult, like a friend. A woman who was once young herself, had ambitions, and fell in love. Moving away from this societal code, in which a mother always owes her child something - namely total self-sacrifice, complete devotion, and endless attention. When were these clichés of the perfect mother actually imposed on our personal relationships?
One sits across from each other in one's own kitchen and instead of talking to an interesting woman, one talks as a daughter with a kind of service worker whom one believes is responsible for one around the clock and responsible for all our botched lives. I find that tragic and wasted love. Because only when we realize that we all make mistakes, we are truly free.
How did you come up with this topic?
Through the roles I now play in film or theater: almost exclusively mother roles. And they are often not particularly interesting roles, to be honest. It's always the mother of or the wife of.
The mother in the German narrative form is never the protagonist and is usually treated stupidly. In addition, throughout my career, I have often been asked what my father does for a living or what our relationship is like.
Not once was I asked about my mother. That's also why, after the wave of father books in recent years, I absolutely wanted to write a mother book.
What does your mother do?
Unfortunately, she has been dead for a long time. I was 31 and she was 69 years old when my mother died after a long illness. Far too early. She was a Slavicist and Germanist, gave seminars at the university, was a translator, and published book series as an editor. Of course, she only worked part-time, as was appropriate for her generation. Otherwise household, upbringing, cooking every day, whether she liked it or not.
Do you have this real sense of togetherness with your mother were you able to create it?
No, there was simply not enough time for that. In my twenties I was hardly ever at home, and my parents knew next to nothing about my student life. I think that was quite normal in my generation. And when I then intensely took care of our sick mother together with my sister, she was already very unwell. She was in the hospital for a long time. We tried to organize everything. At the same time, we both had just started our first jobs and had little free time.
I think we still managed it well. Also, the distribution of roles in the family was not an issue for me at the time. And since I don't have children of my own, this mother issue only came up for me later.
I didn't have to watch myself turn into some version of my mother. I observed these conflicts elsewhere: with my siblings or friends.
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For a long time subconsciously inspiring her life path: Caroline Peters' mother in her younger years
What role do you play in your family?
I am the youngest. And although my father had two more children very late in life, that has remained the same for everyone. Even my younger siblings consider me the youngest, who can do nothing, knows nothing. Everyone is always surprised that I already drive a car.
Recently I explained to my little half-brother that I've had my driver's license for 34 years. It's absurd, but set in stone. And it's very funny because it confirms that family and objectivity or reality just don't match.
True, the family is the birthplace of fake news. It is said that no two children are born into the same family.
Exactly, the partnership of the parents changes, the financial situation, you are the first or second child. The social conditions are different. Everyone experiences their family differently and individually.
In our home, there is no anecdote that would be told the same way by two family members. There are always three to four, sometimes even more versions. But I have learned to let them all stand equally and not roll my eyes and claim that my memory is the only true one.
Otherwise, there is war, and family is sacred to me. I would never completely break off contact with someone. A break in communication is okay. But family is synonymous with my roots.
If I cut one of them off, I end up amputating myself. That's why it's so important to me that my book is read as autofictionand not as a biography.
Then it is not your family that is depicted here?
No, but I started from real situations and experiences and spun them further. By the way, boasting and even lying to make a story more exciting, glamorous, or simply funnier has a long tradition in my family.
The queen of it was my grandmother, who ended up as a refugee in Hesse. She never conformed to the role of the poor, humble refugee, but rather made the post-war years bearable for our family with her head held high with pride.
With incredible audacity, she laid grandiose stories over the petty, miserable, gray everyday life of the reconstruction in the province. And my mother also maintained her role as a princess in a charming and very intelligent way.
Successful debut as a writer: With great empathy, Caroline Peters tells in her autofiction about the questions a daughter has for her deceased mother and herself — and about what it means to follow one's own path. Rowohlt Berlin
So does Hanna, the mother in your book, resemble your own?
At least in terms of her attitude and her flamboyance, as far as she could live it out in her bourgeois circles. I also oriented myself on her biography for the key data. When was she born? When did the war end in her life? When did she study? And how did the time shape her? Flight and poverty, but also the new freedom of the 50s and 60s.
Is your mother also responsible for you becoming an actress?
She very strongly instilled this desire in me, simply because she constantly took me to the cinema, theater, museum, or concerts with great enthusiasm. For her, there was no adult art or children's art. My sister and I were always there.
Although I couldn't even read or write yet, art in all its facets fascinated and shaped me. I was rather shy and observant as a child, and I felt completely drawn to extroverted characters. I still feel how my mother sometimes comes over me in a role and unleashes these loud, expansive forces.
Did your mother also have three children by three fellow students whom she married one after the other?
No, I made that up. I liked this idea, this unconventional approach to marriage, this wildness. But my mother was married twice after all. And I also have only one sister, not two like in the book. My fictional sisters in the novel are modeled on parts of my personality.
Did you also grow up in a patchwork family?
The concept of patchwork didn't exist in the 80s. There were families and divorces. And if there was a new family, the old one had to give way. A divorce was considered a stroke of fate at that time, especially for children of divorce.
We were considered marked for life. What nonsense! In my graduation class, out of 120 children, maybe two couples were divorced. The rest were certainly not 118 happy marriages and families. The fact that we siblings and the whole extended family still have so much to do with each other today is again thanks to my maternal grandmother.
She created the tradition of meeting in a large group every five years. The occasion was always her birthday. Today, it's long been a ritual that I very much enjoy. We are scattered all over the world, from Canada to England and Vienna, and visit each other.
