Actress Andrea Sawatzki, 62, shares traumatic childhood memories in an interview with 'Zeit'. At age 11, she had to care for her father alone after he developed Alzheimer's, while her mother worked nights. The experience deeply shaped her, leading to decades of suppression.
Andrea Sawatzki long suppressed her childhood traumas but now speaks openly about them. In an interview with 'Zeit', the 62-year-old actress describes how, at age 11, she took on the care of her father, Günther Sawatzki. The journalist developed Alzheimer's early and became aggressive and unpredictable. While her mother worked as a night nurse, the girl mostly cared for him alone.
Sawatzki recalls the difficult years: 'In the years when I had to care for him, there was eventually only fear and reluctance. And also hate,' as quoted in 'Zeit'. She describes numerous violent outbursts by her father. When he died in 1978, she felt an indescribable sense of happiness: 'If that was hate what I felt, then I hated my father immensely. Without the illness, I could have loved him just as much.'
These experiences later sparked fears of motherhood. 'I had the feeling that I cannot love,' she says. 'It was probably also the fear of being locked up again in such an apartment.' Without her own children, she could not have processed this phase. Sawatzki has worked through her childhood in her novels 'Brunnenstraße' (2022) and 'Biarritz' (2025). With actor Christian Berkel, 67, she has two adult sons and lives in Berlin.