Consultation hour

Dorte Janussen

Consultation hour November 12th

For more than 30 years, Dorte Janussen has been researching the early evolution of animals and the development of animal worlds at the bottom of the deep oceans.
Dorte Janussen, a Danish native, graduated from the FU-Berlin and completed her doctorate and habilitation in geology-palaeontology. Since 2001 she has been working as a marine biologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum and since 2004 also as a private lecturer at the Wolfgang-v.-Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. As a deep-sea researcher, Dorte Janussen has taken part in numerous expeditions, including in the Arctic and Antarctic, and she is (co-)author of more than 100 scientific publications. As a glass and light artist (artist’s name Dorte Sukavi), she finds her inspiration in the lights of polar ice landscapes and the glow of deep-sea animals.

Gesine Last

Consultation hour November 19th

Is there a positive way of dealing with death? Do people want to face their mortality? The co-curator of the exhibition un_endlich, Gesine Last, reports on the considerations that went into the conception of the unusual exhibition and reflects on her experiences with visitors and other participants in dealing with the often taboo subject of death.

Florence Rojas Keyser and Ellen Häring Vázquez

Consultation hour November 5th

Florence Rojas Keyser was born in Cherán, Mexico. She studied Social Anthropology at the UAM in Mexico City and did her Master’s in Interdisciplinary Latin American Studies at the FU Berlin. She works on political anthropology, social movements and environmental conflicts. She has lived in Berlin for five years.

Eleonore Häring de Vázquez, journalist with a focus on Latin America, has been a member of Calaca e.V. since the beginning and is now a board member. She came into contact with the Mexican Festival of the Dead in the 1980s when she worked for UNICEF in Mexico and was given a sugar skull with her own name on it by a colleague.

Maria Kauffmann and Robert Freitag

Consultation hour October 29th

Maria Kauffmann and Robert Freitag founded “Ab unter die Erde” 2020.
A person is so much more than mourning and crying. Of course, that is also part of saying goodbye, but not only. The problem they see in today’s funeral industry is that the current farewell rituals only focus on that. In the process, the life of the person is often pushed into the background. That is exactly what they want to change.
They want to celebrate the life of the person. The two have decided to put together different “characters” as packages in which one or the other can find themselves: Simple and plain as a pragmatist anonymously in an urn grave or loud and special in the musician package with a vinyl burial and a concert-like farewell party. Maria and Robert have set themselves the goal of organising alternative and special funerals with unique memorial services. When planning and carrying out these individual farewell parties and funerals, the focus is always on the deceased. The type and location of the funeral as well as the farewell party itself are organised according to the interests and passions of the deceased.

“We find that there are no taboos. Anything that helps to understand and process loss and farewell is not only right, but also important. What do you think? Let’s talk about it!”

Dharma Raj Bhusal

Consultation hour October 22nd

The doctor of law, sociology and industrial engineering came to end-of-life care through the death of an Indian friend. From the mother tongue to nutrition: the head of the intercultural outpatient hospice service Dong Ban Ja of the Humanist Association Berlin Brandenburg explains what end-of-life care looks like that takes into account the individual cultural context of the dying person.

Susanne Ganepola und Martin Kramer

Consultation hour October 1st

Dr Susanne Ganepola completed her specialist training at the Charité in haematology, oncology and stem cell transplantation from 2005-2009, before finishing her specialist training at the Asklepios Clinic Hamburg-Altona in the Department of Haematology and Oncology from 2009-2011. During these years, she began to focus more intensively on palliative medicine. Since 2014, she has been working as an outpatient in the oncology practice. In 2017, she acquired the additional designation as a specialist in palliative medicine.

There has been close cooperation with Martin Kramer and the Seestraße Oncology Practice since 2011. The nursing and palliative care service Kramer & Kramer, which was founded as a family business, received its health insurance authorisation in 1991. Before that, Martin Kramer worked in the intensive care unit. He completed further training in anaesthesia/intensive and palliative medicine as well as the professional title of quality manager in nursing. In their work, they want to enable people to live a safe and fulfilled life in their own homes for as long as possible. They are thus considered pioneers in the field of palliative home care. Martin Kramer has been a member of the board of Home Care Berlin e.V. Palliative Medicine Service for many years.

André-Sebastian Zank

Consultation hour September 17th

André-Sebastian Zank, born on 15 March 1967 in West Berlin, is a pastor of the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia (EKBO) and, as a pastoral psychologist trained in depth psychology (DGfP), qualified in pastoral care, life counselling and supervision.

Originally a trained nurse, he became involved early on in the field of end-of-life care, hospice and palliative work.

From 2002, he established the hospice work at the Queen Elisabeth Herzberge Hospital (KEH) in Berlin-Lichtenberg. Today he is head and managing director of the Diakonie-Hospiz Lichtenberg gGmbH, founded in 2005 on the KEH grounds (mainly under the auspices of the Friedrich von Bodelschwinghschen Stiftungen Bethel-Bielefeld), an inpatient hospice with 10 places, as well as an outpatient hospice service. André-Sebastian Zank has been the chairman of the Hospice and Palliative Association Berlin e.V. (HPV-Berlin) since 2021.

Katharina und Parm und Oheimb

Consultation hour September 3rd

Parm and Katharina von Oheimb are scientists at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. The two biologists conduct research on the biodiversity, distribution and evolution of land snails and other molluscs. As part of his doctorate at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Parm von Oheimb studied the biogeography and evolution of freshwater snails and mussels in the Tibetan highlands. Katharina von Oheimb did her doctorate in Gießen on the spread of introduced zebra mussels in Europe. From 2015 to 2019, the researcher-couple worked at the Natural History Museum in London.

Terrestrial snails are one of the groups of animals particularly affected by current species extinctions, and in the last few decades alone a large number of snail species have been irretrievably lost. As part of their field research in Vietnam, the two scientists examined the impressive biodiversity of tropical regions. However, they were also repeatedly made aware of the vulnerability of these habitats.

Julia Kirschbaum

Consultation hour June 18th

Julia Kirschbaum is a psychologist and psychological psychotherapist.

During the pandemic, she worked in psychosocial emergency care in a Covid intensive care unit at Charité Berlin. Now she works as a ward psychologist in a cardiosurgical intensive care unit at the German Heart Centre at Charité.

Previously, in addition to her work as an outpatient psychotherapist, she treated chronic pain and psychosomatic illnesses at the orthopaedic rehabilitation clinic of the Oberlinhaus Potsdam. From January 2016 to July 2017, she was employed as a reference therapist in the Clinic m.S. Psychosomatics as well as in the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Charité. In 2013, she spent time in Shanghai, where she treated children and adolescents from various nations with mental illnesses.

Matthias Kühne

Consultation hour June 15th

Matthias Kühne is coordinator in the outpatient hospice service of the Social Services of Volkssolidarität Berlin.
With a degree in social geography, he trained as a health and nursing care worker in Halle/Saale in his late 20s and then worked as a palliative care specialist in Berlin in outpatient palliative care and in an inpatient hospice. Since completing a degree in nursing management, he has worked as a coordinator in the outpatient hospice service.

His focus there is on preparing volunteers for the psychosocial support of the seriously ill and dying. In addition to coordinating these volunteers in the various forms of care, his tasks also include training and counselling on the topics of palliative care and patients’ rights at the end of life.

His wish is that death should once again be socially integrated into life and celebrated in the same way as birth.

Sophie Deichert alias Sophie Schøntod

Consultation hour June 11th

Sophie Deichert aka Sophie Schøntod was born on a snowy Sunday in April 1986 and grew up next to a cemetery.
She was born with death in her cradle, as her great-grandmother died on the day she was born. In addition, she witnessed the dying process of her other great-grandmother at a young age and was allowed to accompany it unconsciously. She saw the first deceased when she was 12 years old. Since she was not very happy about his condition in the coffin, she had the desire to make it better, for him and also for her relatives and people she knows.

From 2004 to 2022, she specialized in reconstructing deceased bodies and providing open burial in almost every case.
She has completed training as a funeral director and certified thanatology practitioner.
In addition, she has attained instructor certification.

Dominik Kleinen

Consultation hour June 4th

Dominik Kleinen is a funeral director and operations manager at Grieneisen Bestattungen in Berlin. Grieneisen has been around since 1830 and is one of the largest funeral homes in Berlin and Potsdam with more than 30 locations. For many years, Mr. Kleinen has conducted mourning talks, held funeral speeches and accompanied workshops on funeral-related topics. Already in his childhood, Mr. Kleinen was interested in ceremonies such as funeral masses and other celebrations. In the course of his academic training as a cultural scientist, a distinct fascination for rituals developed. Today, Mr Kleinen finds these areas of interest again in his work as an undertaker.

Félix Ayoh’Omidire

Consultation hour May 28th

Félix Ayoh’Omidire is the Professor and Chair of Brazilian and Afro-Latin-American Studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, where he was, until recently, the Director of the Institute of Cultural Studies. He earned his academic degrees from Nigeria, Benin, Portugal and Brazil with a doctorate in Afro-Brazilian Literary and Cultural Studies from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in 2006. Since the 1990s his research has focused on the Yoruba Worldview and the Construction of Cultural Identities in Latin American and Caribbean countries (Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Trinidad e Tobago, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Venezuela, Jamaica). He is currently the DAAD-Gastprofessur of African Diaspora Studies at the Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

Professor Ayoh’OMIDIRE sits on the board of many museums in Nigeria and Brazil. He is also a member of the Scientific Committee of the Musée International du Vodun under the Presidency of the Republic of Benin.

Félix Ayoh’OMIDIRE has written close to 20 books and published over 100 scientific articles on the Yoruba Identity in Africa and the African Diaspora.

Nadine Eichner

Consultation hour May 21st

Nadine Eichner, Sister Iman was born on 11.01.1981 and lives in Berlin as a single mother of 10-year-old Adam. She converted to Islam in 2003 and works voluntarily as a mortuary attendant for 10 different Islamic funeral homes. She also gives seminars and courses on the rites of Islamic ablution. She is active in grief guidance and is the contact person for relatives before, during and after the ablution.

Ilja Labischinski

Consultation hour May 7th

Ilja Labischinski studied Ancient American Studies, Anthropology and History of the Americas in Bonn, Berlin and Madrid. During his traineeship at the Ethnological Museum from 2015 to 2017, he worked on the scientific basis for the return of objects to the Chugach in Alaska. He then worked as a coordinating curator for the Ethnological Museum and the Museum of Asian Art at the Humboldt Forum. Within this framework, he curated the collaborative exhibition project “Against the Current. The Omaha, Francis La Flesche and his Collection”. Since 2019, Ilja Labischinski has been working as a provenance researcher for collections from colonial contexts at the National Museums. The focus of his work is the reappraisal of the contexts of appropriation of human remains in the collections of the Ethnological Museum.

Ulla Rose

Consultation hour April 3oth

Ulla Rose is the managing director of Home Care Berlin e.V., the association for specialized outpatient palliative care in Berlin.

She is a nurse and palliative care nurse, a teacher for nursing professions, a course leader for palliative care certified by the German Society for Palliative Medicine and a course leader for last aid courses, as well as an interculturally trained chaplain.
In addition to her management duties, her areas of activity include advising seriously ill patients and their relatives on palliative care issues, training professionals and lay people, advising institutions, and participating in committees related to palliative care at the state level.

Recruiting young professionals for palliative care is a major concern for her, which is why she is passionate about fulfilling a teaching assignment in a nursing degree program for the field of palliation.

Inka Pabst

Consultation hour April 16th

After graduating from high school, Inka Pabst was looking for adventure and moved to Paris with little money, no job and little knowledge of the language and lived there on street music and love. Later she studied dance, acting and singing and has been an actress and singer on the stages of the world for half of her life. At some point, her second passion came back with a vengeance: writing. As an author or co-author, she developed plays, wrote songs and children’s books. Inka Pabst lives with her family in Berlin and Leipzig.

Jürgen Röhr

Consultation hour April 9th

Jürgen Röhr is a retired police officer, emergency chaplain (2009), head of PSNV (Psychosocial Emergency Prevention) as well as expert advisor and speaker. Born in 1959, he trained as a police officer until 1983. In 2003, he was shot and seriously injured by a spree killer. After his retirement in 2006, he volunteered for the self-help group Schusswaffenerlebnis, where police officers can find help after being shot. Since then, more than 350 colleagues have found his support in seminars and talks. His commitment was honoured with the Federal Cross of Merit in 2019 and the Order of Merit of the State of Berlin in 2020. Jürgen Röhr lives in Nauen and has two children.