They carried out along with Frank Sinatra. With Harry Belafonte. With Fred Astaire. And on Monday, Germany’s Kessler twins — Alice and Ellen — ended their lives collectively at age 89.
Police confirmed the dying to the Related Press, stating in an electronic mail that it was a “joint suicide.” The ladies shared a home within the suburb of Grünwald, simply south of Munich,
The sisters, who have been born within the city of Nechau on Aug. 20, 1936, “now not needed to reside” and “had chosen to finish their lives collectively,” the German outlet Bild reported Monday, in accordance with an automatic translation. Medically assisted dying is allowed in Germany beneath sure circumstances, the outlet mentioned, for people who find themselves legally succesful and performing of their very own free will.
The ladies have been inseparable in life in addition to dying, studying to bop once they have been kids and making use of their expertise with the Leipzig Opera kids’s ballet, the AP mentioned. In 1952, after World Warfare II ended and the household discovered itself dwelling within the newly created German Democratic Republic, East Germany, all of them fled to West Germany.
The tall twosome — reportedly 5-foot-10 — was found three years later whereas dancing in Düsseldorf in 1955, by the director of Paris’ Lido cabaret, in accordance with German information company DPA Worldwide. That launched a world profession for the Kesslers, who moved to Rome, toured the world and carried out with luminaries, DPA mentioned.
They refused a proposal to look in “Viva Las Vegas” with Elvis Presley, the AP mentioned, not desirous to get pigeon-holed in American musical movies. However in accordance with IMDb, that they had an honest profession in movie and TV, which included largely Italian and German tasks. They sang on “The Ed Sullivan Present” thrice within the early Nineteen Sixties and on “The Purple Skelton Present” in 1963.
The Kesslers labored nicely into their 80s, telling DPA at one level, “Being on the street as a duo solely has benefits. You’re stronger collectively.”
The ladies advised Bild in 2024 that that they had “stipulated in [their] wills” that they needed to be buried in the identical urn, alongside their mom and a beloved canine. They by no means married.
On Monday, Radio Monte Carlo posted a tribute to Ellen and Alice Kessler on social media.
“Alice and Ellen Kessler left collectively, simply as they lived: inseparable,” the radio station, which broadcasts out of Monaco and Milan, mentioned in Italian on Instagram. “Born in 1936, they have been an absolute image of European spectacle, together with music, dance and tv. In Italy, they turned celebrities because the ‘legs of the nation,’ icon[s] of class and stage presence for the reason that Fifties.
“A singular creative couple, able to leaving an indelible imprint on the collective creativeness.”
