Sabine Kuegler

Sabine Kuegler (born December 25, 1972 in Patan , Nepal ) is a German writer . Kuegler wrote the bestseller Jungle Child , which was filmed in 2011 under the same title . Her parents lived in Nepal with the Danwar language group (Danuwar) to study their language and to do missionary work. For political reasons, they had to leave the country in 1976 and returned to Germany. The family later went to Western New Guinea to join the Fayu people , who lived deep in the jungle with no contact with the outside world.

After her return to the western world, Sabine Kuegler completed an apprenticeship at a Swiss boarding school in Montreux on Lake Geneva at the age of 17 . In her first book she describes her experiences from two social environments and their controversy as well as her personal adjustment difficulties. Their life stories and problems are typical of so-called third culture children , people who grew up in several cultures during their childhood and adolescence.

Life

Sabine Kuegler is the daughter of the German missionaries and linguists Doris and Klaus-Peter Kuegler. When she was five years old, her parents moved with her and her two siblings (Judith and Christian) to West Papua, the Indonesian part of the island of New Guinea . There they were the first whites to live with the natives. Sabine Kuegler got to know the jungle there and grew up with the customs of the Fayu, a tribe known until then only for its alleged cannibalism. From them she learned, among other things, how to use a bow and arrow, how to differentiate between poisonous and edible plants and how to react to a wild boar attack. So she gradually developed all the skills that one needs to survive in the jungle, got used to the local food, e.g. B. snakes and worms, bathed, watched by crocodiles, in the jungle river, had to survive several malaria outbreaks and came into contact with social rites such as blood revenge .

In 1989 she left West Papua and went to a Swiss boarding school for girls. The western world perceived it as a culture shock: In the jungle there is physical war, in Europe there is mental war, and it is worse. Despite personal difficulties in contact with civilized life - her adjustment difficulties led to a suicide attempt - she soon met her first husband. Since then she has lived in different parts of the world, including Tokyo and Switzerland.

In 2005, she published her first book entitled Jungle Child , which became a bestseller and earned her public notoriety and appearances on television shows. The film version of Dschungelkind started on February 17, 2011 in German cinemas.

In 2006 she made her first experiences as an actress and played a role in the ZDF film In Heaven, Love is written differently than a nurse. In the same year she published her second book Call of the Jungle, the report about her return to the scene of her youth, the tribe of the Fayu and their present day endangerment. In contrast to the first volume, Sabine Kuegler dealt this time with the historical and political situation in West Papua. According to her own statements, she risks a future entry ban by the Indonesian government.

In October 2007 she published Give Money to Women! a book about economic cycles and the role of women and men in developing countries.

engagement

Sabine Kuegler is committed to sustainable development cooperation. She is a prominent child godmother and ambassador of the start helper program of the children's aid organization World Vision Germany . She is especially committed to project measures that benefit pregnant women and small children. She is also the patron of the project Because We Are Worth It, the OroVerde Tropical Forest Foundation .

Sabine Kuegler has been one of the German ambassadors for the UN Decade of Biological Diversity since November 2011 .

Works

• Jungle child . Droemer Knaur , Munich 2005, ISBN 3-426-27361-6 ; as Knaur-Taschenbuch 78149, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-426-78149-4 ; as audio book (told by Sabine Kuegler, 3 CDs approx. 220 min.), Universal Music, Berlin 2005, ISBN 978-3-8291-1525-4 . ( No. 1 on the Spiegel bestseller list in 2005 )
• Call of the Jungle (Original title: Call of the Jungle , translated from English by Angela Troni). Droemer Knaur, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-426-27393-4 ; as Knaur-Taschenbuch 77972, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-426-77972-9 .
• Give the women the money! And they will change the world . Zabert Sandmann, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-89883-189-5 .
• Hunter and hunted . Droemer, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-426-27494-1 ( autobiography ); as an audio book , read by Helene Grass. Director: Wolfgang Stockmann (abridged, authorized reading version, 3 CDs), Random House, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-8371-0270-3 .
• The adventures of the jungle kids , staged reading, original version told by Sabine Kuegler (audio book, 2 audio CDs, staging: Dicky Hank, Dennis Kassel, director: Verena Roelvink), Baumhaus, Bergisch Gladbach 2009, ISBN 978-3-8339-5009- 4 . (= Surfers - if you don't want to read, you can hear! ).
• The jungle adventure . The flying dogs [With pictures by Paola Migliari. Text in collaboration with Cornelia Neudert]. Tree house, Cologne 2010, ISBN 978-3-8339-0375-5 . ( Children's picture book ).

literature

• Doris Kuegler: Jungle Years - My life with the indigenous people of West Papua . Gerth Medien, Asslar 2011, ISBN 978-3-86591-585-6 (Sabine Kuegler's mother describes the time in West Papua from her point of view).

Web links

• Literature by and about Sabine Kuegler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Sabine Kuegler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Jörg Steinleitner : promInterview - Steinleitner meets stars: Sabine Kuegler Jungle child: The girl from the jungle An interview. 2005 . 
• Eberhard Rathgeb : Books: Book a jungle child. In: FAZ.net . March 14, 2005 (discussion with background information). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Westfalenblatt from 5./6. March 2011
2. ↑ Interview ( memento from November 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) with Beckmann from February 21, 2005.
3. ^ Roland Seib: Sabine Kuegler: Call of the Jungle . For a review, see page 22 in circular no. 71/07 of the Pacific Network e. V. ( PDF , approx. 2 MB), accessed on September 20, 2015.
4. ^ Report in the ZDF magazine aspekte about Sabine Kuegler's return to her adopted home West Papua and her second book.
5. ↑ Interview ( memento of October 13, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) with Beckmann from October 1, 2007.
6. ↑ From jungle child to World Vision ambassador ( Memento from December 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), September 2009.
7. ↑ Sabine Kuegler ( Memento from April 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) on the pages of the UN Decade of Biological Diversity.