From the Narthex

The Tragic End of the Kessler Twins

By Sabino Paciolla

United in life and dance — that’s how we remember them — Alice and Ellen Kessler were also united in their final farewell, a double assisted suicide. The Kessler Twins, the famous German artistic duo beloved since the 1960s, died this November at the age of 89.

The news shocked many, not only because of their celebrity — they performed on The Ed Sullivan Show and shared the stage with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Dean Martin, and Bing Crosby — but because of their unusual choice to die together, apparently without a terminal illness. They had made a pact long beforehand: to die at the same time and be buried in the same urn, next to their mother and their dog.

“After many successes, many in Italy,” ANSA reports (Nov. 17), the twins “had retreated to their home in Gruenwald, a small town on the outskirts of Munich. And it was there that the Bavarian police, who responded with a patrol around noon, found them today, unable to do anything but declare them dead, ruling out third-party liability. Confirming their conscious and planned choice was the German Association for a Dignified Death (DGHS), which explained…that it was an assisted suicide. The two sisters had been in contact with the organization for some time about resorting to a practice that, in Germany, is permitted under certain conditions: assisted suicide can be performed by adults who are capable of acting and do so solely on their own responsibility (euthanasia is prohibited in the country).”

What particularly struck me was a phrase the twins repeated in several interviews — “We no longer have any relatives, and if we do, we don’t know them” — suggesting a profound loneliness, eased only by the unbreakable bond between them, but one evidently not enough to overcome their fear of being alone. The unpredictability of death, in fact, raised fears that one would outlive the other, condemning the survivor to an empty existence.