MICHAEL LAUERMANN

age: 56 

born: 19th August 1946

first portrait taken: 11th January 2003

died: 14th January 2003

Michael Lauermann was a manager and a workaholic. One day he just keeled over. At the hospital they told him: ‘Brain tumour, inoperable.’ That was six weeks ago.

Lauermann doesn’t want to talk about death, he would rather talk about his life. How he managed to escape the narrow confines of his native Swabia and go to Paris. Studies at the Sorbonne. Baudelaire, street riots, revolution, women. “I really loved life,” says Lauermann. “Now it’s over. I’m not afraid of what’s coming.” There is no one by his side and that’s his choice. That’s not the way his life was. But he has no regrets. He even derives a certain enjoyment from this advanced stage of the illness – free and easy, a kind of weightlessness. He feels as if his body were fading away. He is not in pain. “I will soon die”, Lauermann says. 

Three days later there is a candle burning outside the door of his room. It indicates he has died.