## Alice and Ellen Kessler, 1960s pop sisters who brought glamour to Italian TV, die aged 89
Alice and Ellen Kessler, the pop singing sisters who were famous in Europe in the 1960s, especially in Italy where they were credited for bringing glamour to the country’s TV network, have died aged 89.
The identical twins had chosen to have a joint assisted death at their home in grünwald, close to Munich, on Monday, said Wega Wetzel, a spokesperson for Deutsche Gesellschaft für Humanes Sterben (DGHS), a Berlin-based assisted dying association.
In Germany, active euthanasia is banned but according to the constitution every person has the right to a self-resolute death, a principle that encompasses the freedom to take one’s own life and use assistance provided voluntarily by third parties.
The sisters administered the life-ending drugs in the presence of a physician and lawyer, who then called the police. “The police come to check the situation and the circumstances, and if it’s all OK then it’s OK,” wetzel said, adding that their decision had been made “over a long period of time and was well thought through. There were no mental health issues.”
In an interview last year with Italy’s Corriere della Sera, the sisters said their wish was “to leave together, on the same day … The idea that one of the two will go first is very difficult to bear”.
They told the German newspaper Bild that they wanted their ashes to be placed into the same urn one day and for it to be buried alongside their mother and dog, Yello.
Born in 1936 in Nerchau, the sisters began as child ballet dancers with the leipzig Opera, with their singing and dancing career taking off from the age of 16 after their family fled East Germany for Düsseldorf. They represented West Germany in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1959, finishing in eighth place.
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