News from Germany

[Sean]

Patients are getting shafted three times: First by the disease, then by the medical profession, then by governments and the insurance industry and broader society.

Must be those sweet sweet secondary benefits of the 'sick role' we keep getting promised.

 

[Chandelier]

Produktion

Day of Infection

Felicia Zeller
World Premiere

The healthcare and pension system is highly complex.
It is opaque, possibly unjust. It is absurd.
Huge sums of money are at stake, and it affects all of us.
A minefield tailor-made for Felicia Zeller.
What path does an application take? Why are claims rejected, the burden of proof reversed? Who holds interpretive authority over conditions that are hard to read yet deeply distressing, such as long Covid? What is an F diagnosis that can doom my application? And what happens after an objection is filed and before the case reaches the social court?
This is where unusual people and unusual cases come together: in the social court.

Felicia Zeller is one of the most successful and frequently performed playwrights of our time.
She has received numerous awards, including the Else Lasker-Schüler Prize, primarily for her dramatic work, and has developed a highly distinctive style: a highly musical—and therefore highly comic—tangling of language, with speech itself becoming an expression of social and psychological overload.
The sociotopes of her plays include job-creation schemes, fertility clinics, offices, and public authorities—Kafkaesque worlds.
Many of her plays have been nominated for the Mülheim Dramatists’ Prize, including The Tax Authority, which Christoph Diem premiered in Braunschweig in 2019.
Felicia Zeller has been connected for over twenty years through continuous collaboration with Christoph Diem, actress-director Ursula Thinnes, and former artistic director Dagmar Schlingmann.

Running time: approx. 2 hours 35 minutes, one intermission.

Tag der Ansteckung
von Felicia Zeller
Regie: Christoph Diem, Bühne, Kostüme & Video: Florian Barth, Dramaturgie: Holger Schröder.
Mit: Tobias Beyer, Valentin Fruntke, Gertrud Kohl, Klaus Meininger, Götz van Ooyen, Saskia Petzold, Ines Schiller, Ana Yoffe.
Premiere am 23. Januar 2026
Dauer: 2 Stunden 35 Minuten, keine Pause

www.staatstheater-braunschweig.de


Critique

Tag der Ansteckung – Staatstheater Braunschweig – Christoph Diems Uraufführung von Felicia Zellers Auftragswerk zu Long Covid ist ein Balanceakt zwischen Faktenfülle und Gerichtsgroteske

24. Januar 2026. Ein kleiner Husten. Ein leichter Schnupfen. Nichts Großes. Aber die Symptome der ehrenamtlichen Richterin Lydia L hängen als große bedrohlic

www.nachtkritik.de

AI Summary:

Felicia Zeller’s new play Day of Infection, premiered at the Staatstheater Braunschweig in a production by Christoph Diem, tackles the realities of Long Covid—more specifically ME/CFS—through the frame of a courtroom drama.
At the center is the case of nurse Elke E, who hopes a legal ruling will finally secure recognition of her illness and her inability to work.
Notably, Elke herself never appears on stage; confined to her bed, her fate is debated in her absence.
Zeller focuses on the failures of the healthcare and insurance systems, exposing how sufferers are dismissed, pathologized as psychologically ill, or pushed through harmful rehabilitation programs.

True to Zeller’s style, the play operates at the fracture points of malfunctioning systems, using fragmented, verb-less language and sharp repetition.
While the accumulation of facts and legal details can at times feel dry or didactic, the Braunschweig ensemble brings wit, energy, and nuance to the text, preventing it from becoming merely documentary.
Florian Barth’s flexible stage design—conference tables constantly rearranged into an increasingly chaotic maze—visually mirrors the bureaucratic entanglements faced by patients.
Balancing advocacy and satire, Day of Infection emerges as both a passionate plea to take Long Covid seriously as a physical illness and a darkly comic courtroom grotesque that lays bare the structural failures of the healthcare system.

 

[Dolphin]

Has this been highlighted already? I can’t find it.

Brigitte, a mainstream German women's magazine, has published a special edition about #MECFS

ME/CFS: Ein Leben im Dunkeln

Frauen erkranken dreimal häufiger an ME/CFS als Männer. Wie sieht ein Leben mit der Erkrankung aus? BRIGITTE hat mit Betroffenen, Angehörigen und Experten gesprochen.

drvjdg.clicks.mlsend.com

Google translation

ME/CFS: Ein Leben im Dunkeln

Frauen erkranken dreimal häufiger an ME/CFS als Männer. Wie sieht ein Leben mit der Erkrankung aus? BRIGITTE hat mit Betroffenen, Angehörigen und Experten gesprochen.

www-brigitte-de.translate.goog

Article on it in English:

‘BRIGITTE’ SPECIAL EDITION – MECFS​

'Brigitte' Special Edition - MECFS - Chronic Living Therapy

Brigitte, a mainstream magazine with a large circulation in German-speaking countries, published an excellent special edition about ME/CFS.

chroniclivingtherapy.com

 

[OrganicChilli]

Has this been highlighted already? I can’t find it.

Brigitte, a mainstream German women's magazine, has published a special edition about #MECFS

ME/CFS: Ein Leben im Dunkeln

Frauen erkranken dreimal häufiger an ME/CFS als Männer. Wie sieht ein Leben mit der Erkrankung aus? BRIGITTE hat mit Betroffenen, Angehörigen und Experten gesprochen.

drvjdg.clicks.mlsend.com

Google translation

ME/CFS: Ein Leben im Dunkeln

Frauen erkranken dreimal häufiger an ME/CFS als Männer. Wie sieht ein Leben mit der Erkrankung aus? BRIGITTE hat mit Betroffenen, Angehörigen und Experten gesprochen.

www-brigitte-de.translate.goog

Article on it in English:

‘BRIGITTE’ SPECIAL EDITION – MECFS​

'Brigitte' Special Edition - MECFS - Chronic Living Therapy

Brigitte, a mainstream magazine with a large circulation in German-speaking countries, published an excellent special edition about ME/CFS.

chroniclivingtherapy.com

I think they published a single article a couple of months ago and people were urged to buy the magazine so the editors could get a sense of what everyone wants to read. It was shared widely on social media and I reckon pwME reached out to them and prompted them to pick up the topic again.

 

[Yann04]

Moved from News from Austria and Switzerland to news from Germany

Has this been highlighted already? I can’t find it.

Brigitte, a mainstream German women's magazine, has published a special edition about #MECFS

ME/CFS: Ein Leben im Dunkeln

Frauen erkranken dreimal häufiger an ME/CFS als Männer. Wie sieht ein Leben mit der Erkrankung aus? BRIGITTE hat mit Betroffenen, Angehörigen und Experten gesprochen.

drvjdg.clicks.mlsend.com

Google translation

ME/CFS: Ein Leben im Dunkeln

Frauen erkranken dreimal häufiger an ME/CFS als Männer. Wie sieht ein Leben mit der Erkrankung aus? BRIGITTE hat mit Betroffenen, Angehörigen und Experten gesprochen.

www-brigitte-de.translate.goog

Article on it in English:

‘BRIGITTE’ SPECIAL EDITION – MECFS​

'Brigitte' Special Edition - MECFS - Chronic Living Therapy

Brigitte, a mainstream magazine with a large circulation in German-speaking countries, published an excellent special edition about ME/CFS.

chroniclivingtherapy.com

Interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Brigitte was the best-selling women's magazine in the first quarter of 2018 with a circulation of 389,279 copies

Brigitte (magazine) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Edit: Done
Apparently it’s german so perhaps mods can move to news from germany thread?

 

[John Mac]

NDR 2 Spezial: ME/CFS - die unerforschte Krankheit

ME/CFS – Nur fünf Buchstaben. Aber für hunderttausende sind sie, eine Diagnose, die das ganze Leben verändert.

www.ndr.de

​

NDR 2 Spezial: ME/CFS - die unerforschte Krankheit​

Donnerstag, 05. Februar 2026, 18:00 bis 19:00 Uhr

ME/CFS – Nur fünf Buchstaben. Aber für hunderttausende, alleine in Deutschland, eine Diagnose, die das ganze Leben verändert. Die Abkürzung steht für "Myalgische Enzephalomyelitis / Chronisches Fatigue Syndrom".


Es ist eine neurologische Erkrankung, häufig ausgelöst durch schwere Infektionen, zum Beispiel auch durch Corona. Offiziell sind mehr als 600.000 Menschen in Deutschland daran erkrankt, aber es dürften deutlich mehr sein. Erschöpfung und Müdigkeit, das sind die häufigen Symptome bei leichten Verläufen. Schwerer Erkrankte werden oft zu Pflegefällen. Gerüche, Töne, Berührungen oder auch Tageslicht sind dann kaum auszuhalten. Die Chancen auf eine Heilung stehen aktuell nicht gut, da die Krankheit ist bisher kaum erforscht. Wir sprechen mit Erkrankten, aber auch mit Pflegenden und Medizinern.
Zu hören im NDR2 Spezial am Donnerstag um 18 Uhr.


English translation

ME/CFS – Just five letters. But for hundreds of thousands, in Germany alone, a diagnosis that changes their entire life. The abbreviation stands for “Myalgic Encephalomyelitis / Chronic Fatigue Syndrome”.

It is a neurological disease, often triggered by serious infections, for example Corona. Officially, more than 600,000 people in Germany are suffering from it, but there are probably significantly more. Exhaustion and tiredness are the common symptoms of mild cases. People who are seriously ill often need to be cared for. Smells, sounds, touches or even daylight are then almost unbearable. The chances of a cure are currently not good, as the disease has hardly been researched yet. We talk to sick people, but also to nurses and doctors.
You can hear it on NDR2 Spezial on Thursday at 6 p.m.

 

[Nightsong]

Haven't had the opportunity to read through but, in my search alerts today, there was a link to a new book written by a health journalist about ME/CFS in the German media. For those with access it is downloadable via SpringerLink.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-50566-0