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Nanouk Prins – Empty Forest

Stories 2022 Shortlist

By July 7, 2022Stories 2022

Based in
Netherlands

Photographed in
Netherlands

In 1909, a young mother called Emma Hauck was admitted to the psychiatric hospital of Heidelberg (Germany). She was diagnosed with Schizophrenia. Eleven years later she would pass away in an asylum in Wiesloch at the age of 42. Around that time a touching and intense collection of letters was found in the archives of the Heidelberg hospital. All of these letters were written obsessively to her husband Michael, begging him to collect her. Each desperate letter is written with overlapping words. Some read “herzensschatzi komm’ (darling come) over and over; others only repeat the words, ‘komm, komm, komm’ (come) thousands of times. The letters were never sent…

Greedy butterflies gather together.

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