They decided to leave exactly as they had spent their lives together. Alice and Ellen, the Kessler twins, were inseparable and wanted to die at the same time, chose a date to leave the scene for some time, and committed assisted suicide. A long life, 89 years, lived side by side on and off stage, with a promise they made to each other some time ago: to leave together and be buried in the same urn, next to the bodies of their mother and beloved dog Yello.
Videos When the Kessler family returned to Sanremo
After their many successes, many in Italy, they retired to their home in Gruenwald, a small town on the outskirts of Munich. And it was there that the Bavarian police, who intervened with a patrol around noon, found them today without being able to do anything other than confirm their deaths, excluding third party responsibility. The German Association for Death with Dignity (DGHS) confirmed that their choice was conscious and planned, and explained to the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper that this was an assisted suicide. The two sisters had been in contact with the organization for some time to carry out a practice that, in Germany, is permitted under certain conditions: adults, capable of acting and carrying out such acts exclusively under their own responsibility, can commit assisted suicide (euthanasia is prohibited in the country). They had planned every detail, even the date. Bavarian newspaper Abendzeitung revealed that they had just received a letter canceling their subscription today. Alice, who then signed the letter, wrote the text on the computer, indicating November 30 as the cancellation date. Then he fixed it by communicating the cancellation directly ‘effective from 17.11.2025’.
“Underneath is his signature, perhaps the last of his life. With a thick, long line underneath, as vibrant as the twins’ lives on the show. A definite line,” commented Abdenzeitung editor-in-chief Michael Schilling. There is something in this final decision that marks their lives: the desire to be independent and guide all their choices to the end. Born in Saxony, near Leipzig, in 1939, they left East Germany at the age of sixteen to move West, to Dusseldorf. “Our careers would have been very different if we had stayed in the GDR,” Ellen Kessler told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper. Since childhood they had to deal with their father, an alcoholic, who, although he encouraged them to dance, often beat their mother. “Domestic violence is an everyday problem. We promised ourselves that it would not happen to us too,” Ellen told Bunt magazine. They have also made it clear that slowly fading away, losing autonomy and independence, is not an option for them. It is inconceivable that either of the two could continue to exist without the other. Their grandmother also had twins and after her husband’s death she spent her old age with her sister.
ANSA Agency Alice and Ellen Kessler make Italy dream of THE PORTRAIT From escapees from the GDR, to celebrities. Two, together, independent “When one died, the others soon followed,” Alice and Ellen recalled. According to the German press, the two women decided together to end their existence, having arranged for their ashes to be kept in the same urn, along with the ashes of their beloved mother Elsa and their poodle Yello, as they revealed last year to the German newspaper Bild. And they have prepared everything, even their inheritance, deciding to leave their property to Doctors Without Borders: “We no longer have relatives and if we had them, we didn’t know them. We chose them because they risked their lives for others, they received the Nobel Peace Prize and they meant it”, they said in several interviews in recent years. Just last July they received the Bavarian Order of Merit from Markus Soeder, an honor that is only given to a group of people who cannot exceed two thousand units. And only a few weeks ago they appeared in public: on October 24 they attended the premiere of the Roncalli circus ‘ARTistART’ show in Munich. They left once again, one last time, together. And together they set off on their final journey.
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