Leon Engler »Botanik des Wahnsinns«

In the organizer's words:

January 13, 2026 / 7.30 pm / Literature Café

Leon Engler "Botany of madness"

When a mix-up during the eviction of his mother's apartment sends everything of value to the incinerator, the narrator is literally left with nothing but the garbage from his own family history. How could it have come to this? The narrator looks at his family's biography: a family tree of madness. The grandmother bipolar, twelve suicide attempts, the grandfather a regular customer at Steinhof, the mother an alcoholic, the father depressed. And he looks back on his own path: a childhood in Munich's working-class district. The early fear of going mad. The escape from his family to distant New York. Years in Vienna with Freud in the coffee house. And how he finally ends up in an asylum - as a psychologist. Working with patients, he learns that a person is always more than their illness, that listening is more important than diagnosing. Above all, however, he soon has to ask himself what a normal person is (Dumont 2025).

Leon Engler grew up in Munich and studied theater, media, film and cultural studies as well as psychology in Vienna, Paris and Berlin. He has published numerous plays, radio plays and short stories and was awarded the 3sat Prize at the Bachmann Competition in 2022. He works as an author, psychologist and lecturer in psychology and literary writing. "Botanik des Wahnsinns" is his debut novel.

Admission: 10,- / 7,- EUR

Event organized by Literaturhaus Leipzig e.V.